One of the most sadistic and brutal concentration camps was Dachau, which was the first which
was opened.
It was found on the grounds of an abandoned munitions factory, and was close to Munich.
It was opened by Himmler and was staffed by many brutal and terrifying SS guards, and
here the prisoners lived in terrible fear constantly.
They believed that they would be executed at any point, and prisoners who could not
complete as much work often were.
There was a huge amount of torture used at the camp and there were standing cells which
forced inmates into cramped cells for a long period of time.
These were so tight that the prisoners could not sit down or crouch, and there was very
little oxygen.
There were also floggings in which people were secured to whipping posts and they were
beaten.
Around 188,000 people passed through Dachau’s barbed wire fences, and over 41,000 never
made it out alive due to the executions, diseases, starvation and ill treatment that occurred
there.
But there was a forgotten kind of torture that was used upon the prisoners which drove
them crazy, and aimed to break their will.
Join us today as we look at the horrific sonic torture of dachau, remember to support our
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When Dachau opened on the 22nd March 1933 it could hold up to 5000 prisoners.
However it was said that the camp commandant at the time Theodore Eicke then, ‘tried
with all the means available to him to teach the prisoners nationalist principles and to
drive the internationalist ones out.’
Eicke reorganised Dachau into the concentration camp he believed would be the most productive,
and he crafted the guards into becoming brutal and violent SS members who would not think
twice as to use their whips and weapons, and even take the lives of prisoners.
They used Dachau as a ‘tool for education,’ and used hard discipline to reform and force
people into what the Nazis wanted them to be.
Many however were were locked up for years inside of Dachau, and Eicke would utilise
modern technology inside of the camp to help him nazify the prisoners.
He used music to instil in the prisoners the German identity that they were missing.
A loudspeaker system was created at Dachau in the summer of 1933, and to pay for this
the Jewish prisoners had to donate money and valuables for this.
They were threatened that the SS would beat them if they did not pay and give over valuables
for the loudspeaker, and the Jewish prisoners got together to collect the money.
The commission members ‘agreed to the demand, but asked ins turn to be treated humanely,’
but the SS would not adhere to this request.
It was said, ‘They gladly accepted the donation, but roundly rejected the request for more
humane treatment.’
However loudspeakers were placed all around the camp, and to begin with they were sometimes
connected to radio stations.
There was one speaker placed on top of the shunt room, and one prisoner scribed the sound
from the radio as, ‘When the first sounds came from the speakers, we were sure that
the modest amount of rest and quiet normally brought by the evening was gone forever.
After a few awkward crows, the beast began to play marches: the Italian fascist march
and the Badenweiler march.
This musical vomit lasted a little while, but then the noise machine began again.
In the beginning the radio crackled uninterruptedly with noise.
The number of records played was small, but the music had a penetrating power.
As if from the halls of Valhalla, a Teutonic bard howled ‘To Your Arms,’ in a voice
that sounded like it came from a wild animal.
It continued ‘Deutschland erwache aus deinem schweren traum!’
(i.e. the song ’Germany awake from your dream!’).
This treatment of national awakening through German song lasted well into the night.
It concluded with the German national anthem and the Horst Wessel-Song.
And so the great mother Germania sat invisibly by the beds of even her most depraved sons,
singing them to sleep.’
So the SS would play patriotic nazi music through the speaker system to demoralise the
prisoners, and they also played marching music also.
Prisoners initially as mentioned were allowed to hear news on the radio, but this rule was
quickly changed.
But sometimes snippets of the news would get through to the prisoners.
One inmate said, ‘there was always someone who had heard the radio that day,’ and it
was even discovered that prisoners managed to listen to a report on a football match
played between Germany and Belgium.
However the loudspeaker system then became used by the Commandant to screech and scream
and berate prisoners constantly with his hate filled speeches and anti-semitic tirades,
and during one of these it was said the loudspeaker even broke.
But then two more speakers were installed inside the corner of the cafeteria in Dachau.
During mealtimes, music was plated still and one prisoner stated that, ‘We ate tripe
with a military march potpourri,’ and with this most of the prisoners found that the
background music was an intense disruption and nuisance.
Many who went to dachau would state that after a period of time, it was not even noticeable,
and the point of the music was to submerge the prisoners of Dachau in Nazi music.
The music and propaganda that was heard around the camp was also put into action during festivals
and holidays which were important to the Nazis.
For example the loudspeaker also played during elections and spouted out Nazi propaganda,
but on these days the Nazis would torture many of their prisoners inside of Dachau,
and they would be forced to listen to vitriolic and virulent antisemitic language spouted
by the leaders of the party.
Hitler’s broadcasts would be played, and during the Nazi party congress of Summer 1933
the prisoners work was stopped so they could listen to the Nazi speeches and the ominous
music that went with them.
One prisoner said, ‘int he late afternoon and early evening, the musical hors ‘d’oeuvres
were brought out.
Parade marches and jingoistic music by Wagner, it was great difficulty that we digested the
turgid speeches of the Fuhrer.’
Those who were allowed to vote inside of Dachau were allowed to do so and were forced to vote
for the Nazis over the camps’ speaker system.
Hours and Hours of Hitler’s speeches were played aloud to the inmates.
As Dachau was the first camp, it was seen as the prototype camp, and the Nazis would
try many different ways here to drive inmates mad, and to bombard them with the reminder
that they were different, and were not of the Nazi ideals.
They saw the loudspeakers as a way of suppressing the political opposition and driving them
to the point of conformity.
The broadcasts were an added issue for the inmates as they had to often stand silently
listening to them for a long period of time in the roll call yards, and many others found
the discriminatory messages played through the speakers system as another form of terror
and horror.
People were being constantly reminded that they were imprisoned at the hands of people
who were their enemy.
One former inmate stated, ‘For us, the radio did not mean something like entertainment,
but a new form of torment for our souls.
We had to listen to the speeches of the Führer and to him brutally insulting ourselves and
our comrades.
We were forced to listen to songs that just as much mocked our beliefs.’
Music was also used during prisoner interrogations and the torture that occurred there.
On Sunday mornings, prisoners would be taken to a small house behind the guards room, and
there they were beaten with clubs by the SS members, and then were hit on the hands and
also on the soles of the feet.
They were brutalised, and the music was a camouflage and mask for the screams and sounds
of the torture.
The music hid the horror, and there was one guard who was known as ‘Ivan the Terrible,’
who following one torture session he lit a cigarette and in front of the prisoners, began
to dance on one leg to the music on the radio that was coming from the speaker.
But the horror of Dachau was a constant for the prisoners and inmates that lived there.
Along with the screeching sounds from the loudspeaker, the inmates had to live with
the constant beatings, terrible conditions and poor sanitation and food.
It was completely terrifying to have been an inmate at Dachau, and it was the inspiration
for many other death camps, and the guards who worked here would often go to larger sites
such as Auschwitz where they would spread the horror that they learned at Dachau.
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