Typhus
Diary sheet of prisoner Jon Sølvberg 11 February 1945:
"Now we are almost in the middle of February and I'm still here in the tent. It's getting scary here in Dachau now. Typhus and typhoid fever is raging, it's a horror. Many Norwegians are dead, and more will probably die. We are now approximately 160 persons left here."
The death of 92 Russian officers.
One of the crimes committed in the Dachau camp was the execution of 92 Russian military officers in 1944.
Inmate Nico Rost secretly kept a diary about everyday life in the camp.
He wrote;
"15 November 1944
A day of horror: Ninety-two dead.
I sat beside the bed of Sep, my Austrian friend from the RöntgenKammer,
who suffered again from his stomach ailment, when a Czech from the
Schreibstube came in and whispered that the 92 Russian officers were
fetched out of the bunker and carried away fifteen minutes ago.
We understood immediately where: at the low ashore at the crematorium.
For there to be executed.We spoke not a word, sat silently waiting.
Sep opened the window. I only later understood why ....
The food-collectors went to collect the soup, sick were carried in and out,
new bandages applied, wounds cleaned There was screaming in pain,
discussion about the future and reading. Sep and I sat quietly waiting.
Then came the first shot. Instinctively we grabbed each other's hands.
Sep looked at his watch: 11.30. Again shots. And again. And again.
Again and again.
But the food-collectors came back with the soup and made a deafening noise.
"Good soup" - "Good soup”-We tried to count them," Thick Soup "
We bend out of the window: again shots, shots, shots.
At 12.05 for the last time– finally.
Sep then only said: ‘immer dran denken - nie vergessen’
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Russian Orthodox Chapel at the Dachau memorial ground |
( always think about it - never forget )
- A line from a song that Ernst Busch often sang.
He did not say it rhetorical, not even solemn, but very calm,
very determined, and expressed exactly what we thought."
Source Nico Rost, Goethe in Dachau.
See the original dutch text .