Personal Effects from the Dachau Concentration Camp

Scope and content

Original personal effects, envelopes.

Among the effects from Concentration Camp Dachau, there are also the possessions of 21 prisoners who had obviously stolen these objects themselves. These 21 persons had first been imprisoned in Concentration Camp Buchenwald, before they came to Concentration Camp Dachau. They were so-called "BV" prisoners, i.e. they were under "Befristete Vorbeugehaft" (temporary preventive detention). These 21 persons were taken from Buchenwald to Warsaw on 19th July 1943 where, as functional prisoners in the newly established Concentration Camp Warsaw, they were supposed to keep those prisoners under guard who had to abandon the ruins of the Warsaw Ghetto that had been destroyed and liquidated in May 1943. The task was to search the ruins for any valuable objects, usable building materials, and also for surviving Jews. The prisoners of Concentration Camp Warsaw were transported to Dachau in the summer of 1944. None of the 21 functional prisoners had possessed any effects before their departure from Buchenwald, but now they arrived and owned foreign currency, watches, gold chains etc. Eyewitnesses and documents give account of these functional prisoners acting extremely brutally towards the prisoners of Concentration Camp Warsaw.