Archaeologists have uncovered the remains of 35 Nazi attack dog kennels at the Dachau concentration camp near Munich, alongside what are believed to be human bones from the crematorium
Archaeologists digging at the notorious Dachau concentration camp have discovered Nazi attack dog kennels together with what are thought to be human bones. A team operating at the former death camp close to Munich found 35 kennels that previously held vicious dogs trained by Hitler’s infamous Schutzstaffel (SS) units.
German shepherds, Dobermanns, Boxers, and other formidable breeds were conditioned to be extremely violent and launch savage and wild attacks on helpless prisoners. In an even more chilling discovery, researchers found layers of ash containing bone fragments believed to be human remains from the ovens where the bodies of slaughtered prisoners were methodically burned.
“The crematorium area and the dog-handler area formed a closely connected functional unit as places of terror,” said Gabriele Hammermann, director of the Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site, near Munich, Germany.
These profoundly disturbing findings, made during excavations close to the former crematorium, have revealed fresh insights into the industrial scale of the Nazi terror machine at the camp. Dachau was a location where more than 41,500 people were killed through starvation, disease, torture, and murder.
The SS weaponised dogs, deliberately training them to carry out savage attacks on prisoners attempting to escape the camp’s horrific conditions. These ferocious and imposing animals were also deployed alongside forced labour gangs, keeping the starving and exhausted inmates in a constant state of terror as they slaved away for their Nazi captors, reports the Express US.
In 1942, the SS established a dedicated canine unit at Dachau, positioning the animals just yards from the facilities where the remains of murdered prisoners were cremated. Recent excavations, carried out ahead of plans to redesign sections of the site’s memorial, have unearthed the foundations of a vast SS dog-handling facility that had remained concealed for decades.
During the dig archaeologists also established that the site housed the crematorium’s administrative offices, where SS personnel coordinated and documented the incineration and disposal of bodies. The remarkably well-preserved kennels are expected to provide historians with fresh insight into how the Nazis trained, housed and deployed their attack dogs to maintain their brutal grip over inmates.
Dachau, established near Munich in March 1933, was the first permanent Nazi concentration camp and served as a blueprint for the sprawling camp network that followed. More than 200,000 prisoners from across Europe were held at Dachau and its satellite camps throughout Hitler’s 12-year reign.
Jews, political adversaries, clergy and resistance members endured starvation, savage beatings, gruelling forced labour, torture and appalling medical experiments. When American forces freed the camp on April 29, 1945, they were met with scenes of incomprehensible horror.
Several of the servicemen who bore witness to the atrocity subsequently took their own lives.
Railway carriages were crammed with the bodies of slain prisoners, while thousands of survivors were skeletal, desperately unwell and traumatised by years of Nazi savagery.
Mathias Pfeil, Bavaria’s principal heritage conservation officer, stated the Dachau findings underscored the increasing significance of archaeology as the generation of Holocaust survivors diminishes.
He characterised the soil at the camp as “the last and incorruptible witness to Nazi crimes.”
The disturbing findings have prompted discussions with organisations representing victims and survivors regarding how these suspected human remains ought to be handled, alongside how to preserve the recently uncovered site.
The archaeological excavations were launched by the Freising State Construction Office and guided by the Bavarian State Office for the Preservation of Monuments (BLfD).