Dachau database available

Steve Morse and Peter Landé have created a One-Step search application for the 160,000 people at Dachau Concentration Camp. JewishGen volunteers initially developed the database, and Landé edited and revised it.

Volunteers cited often poor legibility of records, and efforts have been made to correct some errors. Periodically, the database will continue to be revised and supplemented.

While many of Steve's wide array of helpful tools handle searching on other sites, this database is on his own site, in the Holocaust and Eastern Europe section.

When available, information may include: Family name, given name, date of birth, place of birth, last place of residence, street or provincial location, prisoner number, category of prisoner, date of arrival in Dachau, ultimate fate of prisoner in Dachau.

"The extent of records for concentration camps varies widely, with the most extensive files available for camps located in Germany (Buchenwald, Dachau, Flossenbürg, Neuengamme, Ravensbrück and Sachsenhausen), France (Natzweiler), the Czech Republic (Theresienstadt) and Austria (Mauthausen), with partial records for such Polish camps as Stutthof, Auschwitz, Gross Rosen and Majdanek. Some of these records are available on the web thanks to the efforts of Jewishgen, but access to most remains restricted to major museums or memorial sites at camp locations. As noted above, there are virtually no records for the death camps such as Sobibor and Chelmno and extermination sites in Lithuania and the former Soviet Union.

The purpose of making this Dachau collection available was to illustrate the vast diversity of persons who became victims of the Nazi system. Dachau was the oldest concentration camp (see below) but it was chosen less for its historical interest than because its records are available without restriction, having been located at the United States National Archives and Records Administration and the United States Holocaust Museum."

Dachau was the first camp established (March 1933) by the Nazis. Some 200,000 prisoners from 30 countries (most from Poland) were in the main camp or sub-camps. Some 35,000 prisoners died in Dachau, tens of thousands were released at various times between 1933-1945. In April 1945, thousands of others were liberated by American troops. Many prisoners were transferred from Dachau to other camps; this database does not include their fate. While tens of thousands of the prisoners were Jews, the overwhelming majority were imprisoned for other reasons.

Thanks to Joy Rich of New York for the pointer to this addition to Steve's site.

For more information, see the introduction to the database.