Allach sub-camp was established on March 19th 1943 and was the largest sub-camp of the Dachau sub-camp system. The camp itself was located approximately 10 miles away from the main camp at Dachau. According to Marcus J. Smith in his book “Dachau: The Harrowing of Hell”, Allach was divided into two sections, one for 3,000 Jewish prisoners and the other for 6,000 non-Jewish prisoners. The camp also divided men from women but the women’s camp was much smaller holding only 200 to 300 individuals. Prisoners in the non-Jewish camp were mainly French, Russians, Poles, Dutch and Czechs.

 

The camp's main task was to serve the BMW factory which manufactured armaments and produced and repaired aircraft engines for Junkers. It was the first of seven such camps to perform this role, but a small detachment of prisoners also worked in the Allach porcelain factory  where they produced the famous porcelain that was highly prized by the Nazi high command. 

 

Towards the end of the war Allach became a destination point for many prisoners forced on ‘death marches’ by the SS as a means of evacuating them from other camps.

 

Marcus J. Smith served as a doctor in the US Army. He was assigned to take care of the prisoners following Allach camp's liberation by the US 42nd Rainbow Division on 22nd April 1945. The division entered the camp at around 9 o’clock on 30th April, followed by the 66th Field Hospital Unit. The 66th Field Hospital was tasked with taking care of the prisoners, given that a typhus epidemic had reached the camp a week before its liberation. The hospital unit then moved on to Dachau main camp on May 10th in order to deal with the typhus epidemic there. Smith explains in his book that 14,000 injections were administered to prisoners at Allach on May 14th.[1]

 

A prisoner by the name of Leo Goldner recalled that the first American soldier to approach the camp walked up to the gates and announced “You are free”. This soldier was George Thomann from Akron in Ohio.[2]

 

“One day before liberation, we, the prisoners learned somehow that our liberation was imminent. During the night from (April) 29 to 30, the camp was attacked by US artillery and had some victims, but the target was a German Air Defense unit, situated in the vicinity of the camp. During the twilight of the morning, both the SS from the camp and the German military from the Air Defense disappeared.”

 

Boris Kobe (1905-1981) was a Slovenian architect and painter who made a set of tarot cards while he was at Allach. The cards were decorated with illustrations depicting life in the camp.[3]

 

Ivor Perl, aged 13 in 1945, had been working in the camp for months dressed only in thin clothes and with little more than a slice of bread a day to eat. He carried on working despite suffering from typhus. He was also forced to lie about his age, claiming he was 16 in order to avoid being killed by the guards. Ivor had been told to lie about his age by his mother while the family were in Auschwitz. His mother and his seven siblings remained at Auschwitz and died there.

 

The conditions at Allach were brutal. On one occasion, a group of prisoners tried to hide in a cave in order to avoid work in the underground chambers at the BMW factory. When the guards discovered them, they threw grenades into the cave rather than pulling the men out.[4] Inspections were carried out twice a day by an SS doctor. If the prisoners weren’t fit to work they were taken away and shot. Ivor was one of many prisoners forced to march to Dachau on a death march, but he survived the war and now lives in the UK.

 

The factory incorporated production areas which had walls 9 to 15 metres thick.[5] These areas were never fully completed. Prisoners marched to the factory from the camp each morning via a bridge over the Schwabenbrook and another wooden bridge over Dachaustrasse (Dachau Street). The prisoners then had to pass through avenues of barbed wire. The factory also had a small prison within its grounds.

 

Marcel G. Riviere, a future editor of the Progress of Lyon, wrote:

 

“The winter is particularly harsh in Bavaria… A sharp wind blowing through the camp, into the pine forest we cross to get to the BMW factory, a parade of spectres framed by armed men and evil dogs. The cold is stuck to our skin, glued to the skin as, for months, hunger is stuck to the stomach. And this [roll] call this morning lasted a long time. A brief command pulls us away from our thoughts. We are facing the heavy doors of a building of the BMW factory. The men of the team in column form for return to camp. Our column unravels.”[6]

 

In 1944 Allach camp was extended with the construction of the Organisation Todt (OT) camp in neighbouring Karlsfeld. The city archives still holds records of the camp, including requests for a sewerage system for Karlsfeld made by BMW in 1942. In 1945, the factory began to make rocket parts as well as components for aircraft. There were two divisions within the factory, BMW Bau (construction) and BMW Fertigung (aircraft).[7] The SS received from BMW 6 Reichmarks (RM) per day per worker, about half the pay of a regular employee. From this, 0.30 RM was deducted for lunch, which consisted of 1 litre of soup. The prisoners were also given 150 grams of bread each initially, served at 9 o’clock. By the end of the war this bread ration had been reduced to 65 grams. Dinner consisted of 1 litre of soup with 200 grams of bread.

 

Allach was originally constructed to hold 6,000 prisoners, but the population often expanded to around 22,000 prisoners consisting of 23 different nationalities.[8] The working hours were 06.00 to 12.00 and then 13.00 to 18.30. The prisoners were roused at 04.00 and roll call was taken at 05.15. In the winter though the prisoners got up at 05.00. Lights out in the barracks was at 21.30.

 

The barracks themselves were of wooden construction and were swarming with lice, requiring the prisoners to undertake de-lousing sessions every Sunday. Most of the SS guards were German nationals but there were also some from Hungary, Romania and Croatia, all allied at the time to Nazi Germany. The camp was commanded by Obersturmfuhrer (1st lieutenant) Josef Jarolin assisted by SS Haupscharfuhrer Sebastian Eberl. Jarolin was sentenced to death in December 1945 and this was carried out in May 1946. However, Eberl claimed that he had been suffering from multiple sclerosis (MS) and managed to secure an acquittal. Subsequent investigations of him were launched up until 1976 when they were stopped and consequently Eberl managed to evade punishment for his crimes. He died in 1982.

 

The roll call ground in the camp featured a permament gallows brought from the main camp at Dachau.

 

Today, only one of the stone sanitary barracks survives. In 1997 two memorial plaques were attached to its walls, one in German, the other in French. The foundation of barrack hut 5 is still visible and is now a roller skating track. An office block stands upon another.

 

[1] Smith, Dachau: The Harrowing of Hell

 

[2] http://www.scrapbookpages.com/DachauScrapbook/DachauLiberation/Allach.html

 

[3] http://laughingbone.blogspot.co.uk/2007/08/boris-kobes-tarot-cards-from-allach.html

 

[4] http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2518619/Winter-camps-Holocaust-survivor-died-Auschwitz-worked-concentration-camps-aged-just-13-recalls-bitterest-months-Nazi-persecution.html

 

[5] http://www.comiteinternationaldachau.com/en/english-home/11-english-news/201-allach-eng

 

[6] http://www.encyclopedie.bseditions.fr/article.php?pArticleId=14&pChapitreId=34548&pSousChapitreId=34553&pArticleLib=Le+Kommando+d%92Allach+%5BDachau%2C+camp+de+concentration+nazi-%3ET%E9moignages%5D

 

[7] http://bmwslave.wordpress.com/2014/07/08/dachau-concentration-camp-workers-at-bavarian-motor-works-bmw-in-munchen-allach-1943/

 

[8] http://www.comiteinternationaldachau.com/en/english-home/11-english-news/201-allach-eng

 

[9] http://www.ausstellung-zwangsarbeit.org/en/285/

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