Today all one has to say is Auschwitz to conjure up horrific images of Nazi privation, torture and murder. The Operation Reinhard camps are typically the first to come to mind when one mentions the Holocaust. However, the Nazi camp system started long before the outbreak of World War II. Konzentrationslager Dachau in Upper Bavaria was “the first large-scale concentration camp in Germany, converted from an old gunpowder factory by the Nazi regime in [March] 1933.”[1]
On 21 March 1933, The Munich Latest News reported, “The Munich Chief of Police, Himmler, has issued the following press announcement: On Wednesday the first concentration camp is to be opened in Dachau with an accommodation for 5000 persons. ‘All Communists and—where necessary—Reichsbanner and Social Democratic functionaries who endanger state security are to be concentrated here, as in the long run it is not possible to keep individual functionaries in the state prisons without overburdening these prisons, and on the other hand these people cannot be released because attempts have shown that they persist in their efforts to agitate and organise as soon as they are released.'”[2]
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