Waffen SS Waffen SS M-35dd steel helmet with Dachau attribution

[Cody Grayland]

Waffen SS M-35dd, Q64. Helmet has been painted a total of four times; when initially factory issued, a black repaint with new decals, a green repaint with new decals followed by another green repaint with Pocher decals.

The helmet was liberated from Dachau by Col. Paul Roy who supervised inmate rehabilitation at the camp and comes with a scrap book containing a four-page press release and interview by the Voice of America along with a dozen large photos of the camp and a scene of retribution. A chilling reminder indeed.

The helmet has been in some very high-powered collections but now resides in my humble little gathering, and, is featured in Kelly Hicks latest work "SS-Steel". While not my best condition SS helmet it is without doubt my favorite SS helmet.

Hope you enjoy,

Cody

Edited August 20, 2011 by Chairman

[Cody Grayland]

2

[Cody Grayland]

Interior. Liner is marked "E. St St_Otto Rasinger, 8KP,I SS-TV St. Oberb'

[Cody Grayland]

Runic detail.

[Cody Grayland]

NS detail.

[Richard Gordon]

Cody

It is an amazing and yet as you say somewhat chilling helmet.

As much as I would welcome a DD WSS helmet in my collection I just don't know if I could have one of this pedigree. The Dachau part of it's history is just maybe too much for me.

Hope to see many more of your fine helmet collection grace these screens.

Rich

[Cody Grayland]

Hi Richard,

For many, the Dachau association can be a bit 'off-putting', but, for me, the historical significance more than offsets the 'creepy' factor.

Cheers,

Cody

[Bernie Brule]

An awesome helmet Cody. I never tire of seeing that one.

[Bob Coleman]

An awesome helmet Cody. I never tire of seeing that one.

CODY-

A GREAT PIECE!! EXCELLENT CONDITION, PROVENANCE AND HISTORICAL SIGNIFICANCE. HAVE YOU RESEARCHED THE OWNER? ALTHOUGH SOME WILL HAVE A PROBLEM WITH THE PROVENANCE, STRONGLY

FEEL THE FACTS AND ARTIFACTS OF THE HOLOCAUST REQUIRE HISTORICAL PRESERVATION. THE CONFERENCE BEING HOSTED IN IRAN IS THE LATEST ATTEMPT TO REWRITE HISTORY. TO BELIEVE THEIR POSITION IS TO BELIEVE THAT IN THE CLOSING PHASES OF A WAR THAT WAS STILL TO BE WON, THE ALLIES PUT TREMENDOUS RESOURCES IN TO CREATING THE GREATEST CHARADE IN THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD. IT ALSO DENIES THE EYEWITNESS TESTIMONY OF THOSE WHO WERE THERE-ALLIED AND GERMAN.

IT ALSO DENIES THE TESTIMONY BROUGHT FORWARD IN THE SUBSEQUENT WAR CRIMES TRIALS. THE DENIERS NEVER ANSWER THE QUESTION OF WHAT HAPPENED TO 11 MILLION PEOPLE.

BACK ON TRACK, A WONDERFUL ADDITION TO YOUR COLLECTION.

BOB

[Paul R]

Thank you for posting this helmet!! Unquestionable attributed items are not easily found anymore.

You stated that this helmet is not the best one you have, condition wise?! It looks fairly complete and mint to me!!!!

[PKeating]

Impressive. Looks hardly worn, in the sense that, unless my eyes deceive me, you can still make out the overspray from its time as a black helmet. I wouldn't be worried about the Dachau/Oberbayern connection. It's merely an historical object. Not every SS man who spent time at Dachau was connected with the prison camp part of the complex although I'll grant you that a member of the Oberbayern Standarte probably was. However, it is not as if the helmet was worn by a guard at Treblinka.

PK

Edited December 14, 2006 by PKeating

[Chris Boonzaier]

Impressive. Looks hardly worn, in the sense that, unless my eyes deceive me, you can still make out the overspray from its time as a black helmet. I wouldn't be worried about the Dachau/Oberbayern connection. It's merely an historical object. Not every SS man who spent time at Dachau was connected with the prison camp part of the complex although I'll grant you that a member of the Oberbayern Standarte probably was. However, it is not as if the helmet was worn by a guard at Treblinka.

PK

Agreed, it is often forgotten that Dachau is not "just" the name of a camp. It is a suburb in which the Camp was in. There were seperate weapons schools, training camps, etc. etc. that had nothing to do with KZs.

This helmet falls in as a Creme de la Creme item.... i dont collect SS... but would looooove to have this.

[Paul R]

Yeah... me too!!

[Kev in Deva]

Hallo Gentlemen, a really nice helmet and a great connection to a piece of history some people would have us forget, or even deny the place exsisted, back in the 1990s I had chance to visit the site in question and found it to be a very moving experience, while some Holocaust historians do not rate Dachau as a Death Camp, there was a large amount of Death and suffering caused there, even one person suffering was one to many in my opinion.

Some Facts & Figures with regards Dachau Concentration Camp:

The Dachau concentration camp was opened on March 22, 1933 in a former gun powder factory. It was to be used as a political re-education camp. The first prisoners were 200 members of the Communist and Social Democrats political parties who were arrested after the Reischstag (German Congressional building) was deliberately set on fire on the night of February 27, 1933. Some of the first prisoners were members of the Congress, who were suspected of plotting to overthrow Hitler who had just taken office as the German Chancellor on January 30, 1933. They were at first held in Landsberg prison which was the same prison where Hitler served time after his attempt to take over the government on November 9, 1923.

(We must not forget that Concentration camps were first used by the British in the Boer War when 76,000 women and children were incarcerated in South Africa, deaths occured in the British Camps, but not in the deliberate way the Nazi's used them, more so from ignorance and ill supplies to meet the demand of the amount of people incarcirated, leading to famine and sickness.)

The Soviet Union had an extensive network of concentration camps, called gulags, which were first opened in 1918 after the Communist revolution in November 1917. The gulags continued to operate into the 1950ies and 4.5 million+ out of the 18 million inmates died in the gulags.

Dachau is recognized as the first official concentration camp in Germany, but there were other camps opened around the same time. Dachau was the first camp opened in the state of Bavaria. A camp was set up at Oranienburg near Berlin around the same time that the Dachau camp was opened in March 1933. The Oranienburg camp was rebuilt as the Sachsenhausen camp, starting in 1936. The rebuilding of Dachau began around the same time period.

According to the Nazi records, the total number of registered inmates was 206,206. According to the US Seventh Army report, there were 221,930 inmates brought to the camp between 1933 and April 26, 1945 plus an additional 7,000 who were brought to the camp in the last few days before it was liberated. These 7,000 prisoners had been evacuated from other camps and were not registered when they arrived at Dachau.

The precise number of Jewish deaths at Dachau is unknown. According to the Nazi camp records, there were a total of 31,951 recorded deaths from all causes at Dachau, which included people of all religions and ethnic groups. Dachau was primarily a camp for political prisoners, common criminals and religious dissidents. The majority of the prisoners who died in the camp were Catholic. It was the policy of the Nazis to send the Jews first to ghettos and then to extermination camps in Poland, not to concentration camps in Germany. When the death camps in Poland were closed between June 1944 and January 1945, the surviving Jews were transferred to camps in the Greater German Reich, including some who were brought to Dachau and then sent to the sub-camps of the main Dachau camp. In the final days of the war, Jewish prisoners in the sub-camps were brought to the Dachau main camp, along with Jewish prisoners evacuated from Buchenwald. There were 2,539 Jews at the Dachau main camp when it was liberated.

According to a book published by the US Seventh Army immediately after the war ("Dachau Liberated, The Official Report by The U.S. Seventh Army*), there were a total of 29,138 Jews brought to Dachau from other camps between June 20, 1944 and November 23, 1944. This report says the Jews were brought to Dachau to be executed and that they were gassed in the gas chamber* disguised as a shower room and also in the four smaller gas chambers*.

* According Dachau Museum Director Barbara Distel, the gas chamber at Dachau, which was disguised as a shower room, was never used for any purpose. The Dachau Memorial Site also says that the four smaller gas chambers were disinfection chambers used to kill lice in the camp clothing.

Although people died in the Dachau camp, including some Jews, Holocaust historians do not refer to Dachau as a death camp because Jews were not sent there for the express purpose of being murdered. The six Nazi death camps where Jews were gassed were Chelmno, Majdanek, Sobibor, Treblinka, Belzec, and Auschwitz-Birkenau, all of which were in what is now Poland.

Approximately 150 to 200 prisoners were forced to participate in experiments conducted by Dr. Sigmund Rascher for the German Air Force. About half of them died as a result. The Nazis claimed that the subjects were chosen from the German criminals or the Russian Communist Commissars in the camp who had been condemned to death. At least one of the subjects was Jewish; he had been condemned to death for breaking the Nuremberg Law against race mixing. There were also approximately 1200 Dachau inmates who were used for experiments, done by Dr. Karl Schilling, to find a cure for malaria. The subjects of these experiments were Catholic priests who were prisoners in the camp.

Incoming inmates at Dachau were not tattooed. Auschwitz-Birkenau was the only camp where prisoners were tattooed. However, prisoners who were transferred to Dachau after the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp was closed already had a tattoo when they arrived.

Dachau was primarily a camp for men, but in the last days of the war, a few women were transferred to Dachau from other camps that had been evacuated. When the Dachau camp was liberated, there were 225 Jewish women there. They had arrived at Dachau only a few weeks before liberation. There were also a few women who were held as "special prisoners" in the bunker, as the camp prison was called; they were the wives of VIP prisoners, such as Kurt von Schuschnigg, the former Chancellor of Austria.

The very first prisoners who died at Dachau were buried in the Old Cemetery in the town of Dachau. Later, the bodies of those who died at Dachau were cremated in the ovens there in an attempt to prevent epidemics. The ashes were put into urns and sent to the families of the deceased during the early days of the camp. Ashes of Dachau victims from other countries were buried in the woods on the northwest side of the Crematory.

These graves of unknown victims are marked with a Jewish monument and Catholic Crosses. There is also a box of ashes in front of a wall with the inscription "Never Again," located in front of the east wing of the Museum.

Inmates who died after the camp was liberated are buried in the Waldfriedhof, another cemetery in the town of Dachau. A new cemetery on Leitenberg hill was opened by the Nazis in October 1944 when they ran out of coal to cremate the bodies of the dead inmates. There are 7,439 mostly unknown Dachau prisoners buried in mass graves there, including some who died after the camp was liberated. Leitenberg hill is on the outskirts of the town of Dachau in the former suburb of Etzenhausen. After Dachau was liberated, there were 800 bodies of the victims cremated in the ovens at Dachau; their ashes are presumably buried at Dachau.

Dachau was liberated on April 29, 1945 by soldiers of the US Seventh Army. There were two divisions involved, the 42nd Infantry (Rainbow) Division commanded by Brigadier General Henning Linden and the 45th Infantry (Thunderbird) Division, commanded by Lt. Colonel Felix Sparks. Dachau was not the first camp to be liberated. That distinction belongs to Majdanek in Lublin, Poland, which was liberated by the Russian Army on July 23, 1944. The first camp to be liberated by the American Army was Buchenwald, on April 11, 1945.

The first soldier to enter the entire Dachau complex, which included an S.S. garrison, an S.S. training center and the prison compound, was probably Pfc. John Degro, the lead scout of Company I, 3rd Battalion, 157th Infantry Regiment, 45th Division of the US 7th Army, who entered through the railroad gate into the S.S. section of the camp. Lt. William Cowling III of the 42nd Division of the US 7th Army claims to have been the first American soldier to enter the prison enclosure inside the Dachau complex.

Both the 45th Infantry Division and the 42nd Infantry Division were invited to put up a plaque in honor of their liberation of Dachau, but the 45th declined. The 20th Armored Division was providing tank support for these two Infantry Divisions which were on their way to capture Munich when they came across the Dachau camp. When the 45th declined to be honored, the 20th Armored accepted an invitation to put up a plaque in their honor on the wall opposite the plaque in honor of the 42nd.

According to the last roll call taken at Dachau on April 26, 1945, three days before the liberation, there were 30,442 prisoners in the main camp which is now the Memorial Site. There were an additional 37,223 in the sub-camps surrounding Dachau. Many of the Dachau prisoners were survivors who had been evacuated from other camps and had only arrived in Dachau a few weeks before the liberation. Additional prisoners from other camps arrived at Dachau after the final roll call and the official count by the US Seventh Army at the time of liberation was 31,432 prisoners in the camp.

The Nazis were fearful that Jewish and Russian prisoners would exact revenge by raping and killing German civilians and looting their homes if they were liberated. Three days before the American Seventh Army arrived to liberate Dachau, the Nazis evacuated 1,759 Jews from the camp by train. They also evacuated an additional 6,887 prisoners, half of them Jews and the other half Russian POWs, and marched them toward the South Tyrol. 137 privileged and high ranking prisoners at Dachau were also evacuated for their own safety in case there was violence when the liberators arrived.

Many of the 31,951 deaths resulted from epidemics of typhus and other contagious diseases. There were horrendous epidemics in all the concentration camps after survivors from Auschwitz were brought to Germany in late 1944 and early 1945. Typhus is caused by body lice and the epidemic was carried to Germany from Poland by prisoners who had body lice. Out of the 31,951 deaths in Dachau, 13,158 of them occurred during the typhus epidemic in the last four months that the camp was in operation, according to the Nazi records. According to the US Seventh Army official report, there were 16,717 non-Jews who were executed at Dachau between October 1940 and March 1945. The report also says that 15,724 prisoners were brought to Dachau and were not included in the official count of 206,206 registered inmates. Many of those who were executed at Dachau were Russian POWs who were shot* on orders from Adolf Hitler who issued a command before the invasion of Russia in 1941 that all captured Communist Commissars in the Soviet Army should be executed.

* These men were shot on the S.S. Rifle Range and not in the camp itself.

There were 900 prisoners who were dying from typhus in Dachau when the American liberators arrived; thousands more were sick from typhus and other contagious diseases. They were emaciated because they were too sick to eat. The prisoners were not deliberately starved; food was scarce all over Europe during the war and food was rationed for civilians. In the early days of the camp, before the war, the Dachau prisoners were well fed. Those who did heavy work received four meals a day, including the traditional German "second breakfast." During the last days of the war, when railroad lines were being bombed, the transportation system broke down and it was hard to get food to the camp. Nevertheless, the prisoners were fed right up to the day of liberation and the majority of the survivors were in reasonably good health.

In the month of May 1945, there were 2,226 Dachau inmates who died in the typhus epidemic which was still raging. There were 196 more deaths in June 1945. The epidemic was finally brought under control by the Americans with the use of DDT to kill the lice and typhus vaccine to stop the spread of the disease. The Germans did not have DDT or vaccine to prevent typhus.

The Dachau concentration camp was never a secret. The town residents saw the inmates on a daily basis when they were brought to the town to work in factories there. Prisoners also worked on building roads and a new cemetery in the town. New inmates arrived at the train station in the center of town and walked two miles through the town to the camp. The townspeople tried to help the inmates in any way they could. The town residents sent packages of food and medicine, which the Nazis distributed to the inmates. When work details from the camp came to the town, the residents risked being imprisoned themselves in order to give food to the inmates while they were working, a practice which was forbidden by the Nazis. The pharmacies gave free medicine to the inmates when they were working in the town and the town dentist secretly provided dental care for the prisoners.

The Nazis honored the 1929 Geneva Convention with respect to prisoners from all countries which had signed the convention, including allowing the Red Cross to distribute food packages in the concentration camps, beginning in August 1942. Between the Autumn of 1943 and the end of the war in May 1945, the Red Cross distributed 1,112,000 packages containing 4,500 tons of food to the Nazi concentration camps including Dachau and even the Auschwitz death camp.

All the original buildings in the prison compound, which were part of the gunpowder factory, used in WW1, were torn down and replaced by new buildings, starting in 1936. Of those new buildings, only the administration building, the gate house, the bunker, and the two crematoria buildings outside the prison compound are still standing.

The first guards at the "Dachau Prison Camp" were Bavarian state police officers from Munich who were requisitioned by Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler, the Acting Chief of Police of Munich since March 9, 1933. Police Captain Schlemmer was in command of the police unit. On April 1, 1933 Himmler was appointed Commander of the Bavarian Secret Police; at the same time he was also put in charge of all existing and future concentration camps by a special decree of Minister of Interior Adolf Wagner. After April 1, 1933, Himmler was also in charge of the political auxiliary police, a unit of the Bavarian State Police that was now a part of the SS. The first guard unit of 60 S.S. men to enter Dachau after April 1 was under the command of SS-Sturmführer Robert Erspenmüller.

The SS officially took over the guarding of the camp on April 11, 1933, by which time the number of guards had increased to 138. By April 30, 1933 there were 234 S.S. men guarding the inmates at Dachau. With the changing of the guards on April 11, Bavarian State Police Captain Schlemmer was replaced by Captain Winkler, but the state police no longer had any power over the guards.

The guards were now under the command of SS-Hauptsturmführer Hilmar Wäckerle. On April 19, 1933 Wäckerle began referring to himself as the Camp Commandant. Wäckerle was instructed by Himmler to draw up a set of rules for discipline in the camp. His rules were extremely harsh and a number of prisoners died after being punished.

Some of these victims were Wilhelm Aron , Dr. Rudolf Benario, Fritz Dressel, Sepp Götz, Ernst Goldmann, Arthur Kahn, Erwin Kahn, and Karl Lehrburger. Herbert Hunglinge committed suicide to escape the unbearable conditions in the camp.

The deaths in the Dachau camp came to the attention of the Munich prosecutor after Sophie Handschuch made a formal complaint in 1933, demanding to know the true cause of death of her son who had been an inmate at Dachau. After an investigation by the Munich police, W?ckerle was charged with murder for the deaths of Louis Schloss on May 16, Leonard Hausmann on May 17, Dr. Alfred Strauss on May 24 and Sebastian Nefzger on May 25.

Because of the criminal charges, Himmler was forced to relieve Wäckerle of his command, as of June 25, 1933. The charges against Wäckerle were later dropped and he left Dachau on July 15, 1933. He was posted to a new position in Stuttgart. After the war started, Wäckerle was sent to the front as a Waffen-SS officer; he died in battle.

Hilmar Wäckerle was succeeded by Theodor Eicke who took command on June 26, 1933. Eicke was promoted to Inspector of all the Concentration Camps and was later transferred to headquarters in Oranienburg. Eicke was killed in a plane crash during the war.

The next Commandant of Dachau was Heinrich Deubel who was dismissed by Heinrich Himmler after a few months for being too lenient with the prisoners. He was succeeded by Hermann Baranowski, who was subsequently transferred to the Sachsenhausen camp where he became the first Commandant there.

Between April 1936 and 1941, the Commandant of Dachau was Hans Loritz; he was later transferred to Sachsenhausen where he became the next Commandant, succeeding Baranowski. Loritz committed suicide in February 1946 after he was arrested as a war criminal and imprisoned by the Soviet Union.

Loritz was replaced by Alex Piorkowski who served as the Commandant of Dachau for six months in 1941 - 1942. Piorkowski was fired from his position by Himmler. He was accused of murder and was tried by a special SS court headed by an S.S. officer, Konrad Morgen. He was not convicted, but was nevertheless expelled from the Nazi party. Piorkowski was also tried by an American military tribunal at Dachau; he was convicted and was hanged in 1948.

Piorkowski was replaced by Martin Gottfried Weiss who served as the Commandant of Dachau from September 1942 to August 1943. Weiss had previously been the Commandant of the Neuengamme camp from April 1940 to August 1942. He was transferred to the Majdanek camp in Poland where he was the Commandant from September 1943 to May 1944. Weiss was then promoted to be the Inspector of all the Concentration Camps.

Weiss was replaced by Wilhelm Weiter who was the Commandant of Dachau from September 1943 to March 1945. Weiter committed suicide on May 6, 1945 after being captured by US forces in Austria.

The Commandant of the Dachau concentration camp, when it was liberated, was Martin Gottfried Weiss. He had initially replaced Alex Piorkowski who had served as Commandant for 6 months in 1941 - 1942. Weiss had previously served as the Dachau Commandant from 1942 until 1943. He was then transferred to the Majdanek death camp, after the Majdanek Commandant, Karl Otto Koch, had been arrested by the S.S. and put on trial for crimes committed while he was previously the Commandant of Buchenwald.

Wilhelm Weiter replaced Weiss in 1943, but Weiss was subsequently brought back to Dachau in March 1945 to take over in the final weeks of the war. Weiss left the Dachau camp on April 28, 1945, the day before it was liberated, leaving SS Lt. Johannes Otto in charge. Weiss was hanged on May 29, 1946 after being convicted in the first proceedings of the American military tribunal at Dachau, which began on November 15, 1945.

The Dachau concentration camp was surrendered by 2nd Lt. Heinrich Wicker to the 42nd Infantry Division of the US Seventh Army, accompanied by a Red Cross representative carrying a white flag. He was later reported missing by his mother and sister, who had been staying at the S.S. garrison while they were visiting him. He is presumed to have been killed after the surrender.

The first inmates were 200 Communists who were brought by the Bavarian State Police in four trucks from the Landsberg am Lech prison to Dachau on March 22, 1933. They were registered alphabetically, so Prisoner No. 1 was 24-year-old Claus Bastian, a law intern from Munich. He was released from Dachau in September 1933. He had a successful career as a lawyer and lived for awhile in the town of Dachau.

Some notable prisoners were: The Rev. Martin Niemöller - one of the founders of the Confessional Church

Dr. Johannes Neuhäusler - Catholic Bishop

Kurt von Schuschnigg - former Chancellor of Austria, who opposed the Anschluss

Edouard Daladier - premier of France at the time of the German invasion

Leon Blum - premier of France in 1936 and 1937 and France's first Jewish premier

Georg Scherer - native of city of Dachau who later became Mayor of Dachau

Other well know survivors were Josef Müller , Leonard Roth, Walter Neff, Richard Titze, Eric Preuss, Nico Rost, Bruno Bettelheim, Arthur Haulot, Max Mannheimer, Hjalmar Schacht, Oskar Müller, Zola Philipp, Joel Zak, Kurt Schumacher, Georges Walraeve, Eric Braun, Werner Cahnmann, General Andre Delpech, Alfred Haag, Josef Huber, Hans Kaltenbacher, Otto Kohlhofer, Otto Pies, Heinrich Stöhr, Rene Simon, Wadim Sobkov, Vldek Spiegelmann, Walter Cieslik, Robert Eisinger, Bernt Englemann, Otto Färber, Leopold Figl, Paul Hussarek, Eugen Kessler, Edmond Michelet, Reimund Schnabel, Hans Schwartz, Walter Vielhauer, and Alfred Werner.

When Dachau was liberated, there was one American, Lt. Rene J. Guiraud, a member of the US Office of Strategic Services (OSS) who had been arrested as a spy. There were also 5 other American civilians who were prisoners in the camp, according to Marcus J. Smith in his book, "The Harrowing of Hell." According to Nerin E. Gun, a survivor of Dachau, there were 11 Americans imprisoned at Dachau at various times in its history.

According to a U.S. Seventh Army report written by Lt. Col. Walter J. Fellenz, there were 17 SS-Totenkopf guards in Tower B who were killed during the liberation of the camp by soldiers of the 45th Thunderbird Division and the 42nd Rainbow Division.

According to Col. Howard A. Buechner, the chief medical officer of the 45th Infantry Division, who arrived on the scene moments after the shooting of Waffen-SS soldiers at Dachau, there was a total of 520 S.S. soldiers executed by the 45th Infantry Division and 40 SS guards were shot or beaten to death by the liberated prisoners. Col. Buechner wrote his version in a book entitled "The Hour of the Avenger."

In his book "Deliverance Day," Michael Selzer wrote that the American liberators marched 122 of the Waffen-SS soldiers who had surrendered to a wall, and with their hands up in the air, shot them with machine guns. According to Selzer, the Commander of the S.S. Camp Complex, Heinrich Skodzensky, had only moments before surrendered the S.S. camp to Colonel Jackson of the 45th Infantry Division of the US Seventh Army, saying in English, "I am the commanding officer of the guard in the camp, and I herewith surrender the camp to your forces." Skodzensky was shot along with the others, according to Robert H. Abzug in his book "Inside the Vicious Heart."

According to 45th Division Commander Col. Felix Sparks, the number of German P.O.Ws who were executed with their hands in the air at Dachau "did not exceed fifty with thirty probably being a more accurate figure," before he stepped in to stop the shooting by his men. Col. Sparks was quoted by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in a book entitled "1945: The Year of Liberation."

There was one prisoner from the Belgian Congo: Jean (Johnny) Voste, who was there when the camp was liberated. Voste was a Belgian Resistance fighter who had been arrested in 1942 for an act of sabotage in the town of Malignes, near Antwerp. Photographs show that there was also at least one black prisoner at Allach, a sub-camp of Dachau.

The majority of the prisoners who lived and died at Dachau were Christian. It was primarily a camp for political prisoners, German criminals, and Christian clergymen who opposed the Nazis. Dr. Johannes Neuhäusler, who was a prisoner at Dachau, was a Catholic Bishop and it was his suggestion to build Christian memorials in honor of the Christians who died there. He also suggested that a Jewish memorial be built. One of the most famous prisoners at Dachau was the Rev. Martin Niemöller, a Protestant minister.

Also held in the Camp were Gypsies and Jehovah's Witnesses, & Catholic Priests.

The convent and the Church with the cross on top of it were built prior to the building of the Jewish Memorial. No religious services are held at the Dachau Jewish Memorial, although Mass is said every week inside the Catholic Church. The prayer room of the Jewish Memorial is underground and the Christian cross cannot be seen from there. The majority of the prisoners who died at Dachau were Catholic. Dr. Johannes Neuhäusler, a former prisoner at Dachau, is buried inside the convent church.

The number of homosexual prisoners in the Dachau camp, throughout its 12-year history, is unknown, but according to Paul Berben, the official historian of the Dachau camp, there were 110 homosexuals counted on April 26, 1945, the day of the last roll call. According to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, the total number of homosexuals sent to all the concentration camps in Germany, during the 12 years of Hitler's regime, was around 10,000. Most of the homosexuals in Germany lived in Berlin and the majority who were arrested were sent to Sachsenhausen, a large concentration camp near Berlin. Many of them were released after serving a minimum of six months. Some of the 10,000, who were sent to concentration camps after being arrested under Paragraph 175, the law against committing homosexual acts, were actually male prostitutes who were not homosexual, according to Rudolf Höss who was an adjutant at Sachsenhausen before becoming the Commandant of the Auschwitz death camp.

Germans who trained at the S.S. camp in Dachau include: Adolf Eichmann, Rudolf Höss, Josef Kramer, Theodor Eicke, Martin Gottfried Weiss, Karl Richard Baer, Hermann Baranowski, Karl Fritzsch, Max Koegel, Hans Loritz, Egon Zill, and Johann Aumeier.

Hopefully some of the members of the forum will find this interesting.

Kevin in Deva

Edited November 1, 2023 by Dave Danner
fix diacritics

[Paul R]

Thank you for posting this detailed history. It was a very informative read!

Regards

Paul

[Bob Coleman]

Kevin-

A fascinating bit of information to accompany the history of this helmet. Many collectors have no idea what a large and diverse compound comprised the overall Dachau facility. Although I was aware of much of what you wrote, there were a few new historical facts I learned to day. Great piece of research.

Bob

[Stogieman]

Hi Kev, a rather poignant dissertation. Thanks.

[dts]

"Hopefully some of the members of the forum will find this interesting."

Ummm..... YES!!

DTS

[Chris Liontas]

Waffen SS M-35dd, Q64. Helmet has been painted a total of four times; when initially factory issued, a black repaint with new decals, a green repaint with new decals followed by another green repaint with Pocher decals.

The helmet was liberated from Dachau by Col. Paul Roy who supervised inmate rehabilitation at the camp and comes with a scrap book containing a four-page press release and interview by the Voice of America along with a dozen large photos of the camp and a scene of retribution. A chilling reminder indeed.

The helmet has been in some very high-powered collections but now resides in my humble little gathering, and, is featured in Kelly Hicks latest work "SS-Steel". While not my best condition SS helmet it is without doubt my favorite SS helmet.

Hope you enjoy,

Cody

Wow Cody, to have a documented helmet like this is amazing. I have rarely seen such nice documentation to come out of German helmets from the III Reich era.

If this isnt your best.....well lets see it!! :lol:

[PKeating]

Cody

It is an amazing and yet as you say somewhat chilling helmet.

As much as I would welcome a DD WSS helmet in my collection I just don't know if I could have one of this pedigree. The Dachau part of it's history is just maybe too much for me.

Hope to see many more of your fine helmet collection grace these screens.

Rich

Dachau was a large complex of which the concentration camp, forced labour barracks and penal facility were actually fairly small parts. It is unlikely that this helmet ever saw the inside of the concentration camp. It was probably held as part of training staff stores. It may have been worn by guards on ceremonial duties in nearby Munich, especially given its previous black incarnation. Cody, I presume the liner shows traces of the black spray-over typical of all black Allgemeine-SS M35s. I believe the black versions were simply green M35s given a couple of coats of black gloss by the lads in the motor transport and maintenance sections, according to a third-hand veteran anecdote. No need to see it as a grisly Holocaust relic, anymore than the insignia and uniforms liberated by GIs from Dachau or, for that matter, the handful of SS-pattern parachutist smocks intended for SS-Fallschirmjäger and Jagdverbände units but never issued.

PK

[Spasm]

Gents

I need to read all this again once the first one has settled in. Just fascinating, I'll be back after going to have a lay down.

Spaz