Many Catholics attending the Eucharistic Congress here are visiting the site of the Dachau concentration camp where an exhibition has been set up depicting the atrocities committed by the Nazis during the Second World War. A pilgrimage to the site by Catholic youth attending the Congress will take place on Friday.
Displayed at the exhibit, which was prepared by former inmates of the camp, were torture instruments used by the Nazis, including steel-tipped whips and a blood-stained flogging block. Also displayed were SS documents authorizing medical experiments to be performed on camp inmates and uniforms worn by Nazi guards.
Visitors to the exhibition were given brochures explaining the operation of the camp during the Nazi regime. The brochures included a reproduction of SS Document Z-32, which listed the “rentability” of camp prisoners who could be rented to factories in the area for $1.50 per day.
The average life of an inmate, according to the document, was estimated at nine months and the Nazis calculated that a prisoner was worth about $225. The SS document added in a footnote, however, that “one must not forget there is also a little profit to be had from the bones and ashes which can be used as fertilizer.” Prisoners were used as slave laborers in 139 factories in the Munich area, the document revealed.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
