Legacies of Dachau: The Uses and Abuses of a Concentration Camp, 1933–2001

by Harold Marcuse

• ISBN13: 9780521552042
• ISBN10: 0521552044
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2001-03-26
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

Auschwitz, Belsen, Dachau. Three generations later, these names still evoke the horrors of Nazi Germany around the world. This book takes one of these sites, Dachau, and traces its history from the beginning of the twentieth century, through its twelve years as Nazi Germany's premier concentration camp, to the camp's postwar uses as prison, residential neighborhood, and, finally, museum and memorial site. With superbly chosen examples and an eye for telling detail, Legacies of Dachau documents how Nazi perpetrators were quietly rehabilitated to become powerful elites, while survivors of the concentration camps were once again marginalized, criminalized, and silenced. Combining meticulous archival research with an encyclopedic knowledge of the extensive literatures on Germany, the Holocaust, and historical memory, Marcuse unravels the intriguing relationship between historical events, individual memory, and political culture, to offer the first unified interpretation of their interaction from the Nazi era to the twenty-first century.

Table of Contents

List of illustrations	xi
List of tables	xv
Preface	xvii
Abbreviations and glossary	xix
Dachau: past, present, future	1	(1)
The Dachau camp, 1916-2000: a brief history	2	(3)
A visit to Dachau, 2001	5	(10)
I Dachau 1890-1945: a town, a camp, a symbol of genocide	15	(58)
Dachau: a town and a camp	17	(30)
Before 1933	17	(4)
The camp opens, March 1933	21	(3)
The Nazification of the town, 1933-1935	24	(2)
The image of the ``clean'' concentration camp	26	(5)
The expansion of the camp system, 1936-1939	31	(4)
Wartime changes, 1938-1942	35	(2)
The extermination of the Jews	37	(5)
The Dachau camp during ``total war''	42	(5)
Dachau: a symbol of genocide	47	(26)
Dissolution, 1944-1945	47	(3)
Insurrection and liberation, 28-29 April 1945	50	(2)
The media blitz, May 1945	52	(3)
The German bystanders: ``We didn't know!''	55	(4)
Atrocities and ``reeducation''	59	(5)
The survivors	64	(3)
Genocide on trial	67	(6)
II Dachau 1945-1955: three myths and three inversions	73	(114)
``Good'' Nazis	79	(48)
Hans Zauner, mayor of Dachau 1933-1945, 1952-1960	79	(2)
German army general Gert Naumann	81	(4)
The Cold War backdrop	85	(3)
Denazification and ``brown-collar criminals''	88	(6)
``Brown-collars'' in the denazification laundry	94	(3)
The end of the ``war crimes'' trials	97	(3)
Brown-collar criminals as victims	100	(3)
Brown-collar ignorance	103	(1)
Brown-collar criminals as rescuers	104	(2)
Rescuing brown-collared ``victims''	106	(2)
Brown-collar criminals as leading citizens	108	(3)
Article 131 and the ``renazification'' of West Germany	111	(3)
Denazification: a fiasco?	114	(5)
The victims of the 1950s: German POWs and expellees	119	(8)
``Bad'' inmates	127	(31)
Helping the survivors: compulsion or compassion?	128	(2)
Institutionalizing aid: the origins of Wiedergutmachung	130	(5)
The former camp plantation, 1947-1948	135	(6)
The founding of West Germany, 1948-1949	141	(1)
Skeletons resurface: antisemitic stereotypes and the Leiten Affair	142	(9)
Anticommunism and the criminalization of the survivors, 1949-1953	151	(4)
The survivors disappear from public view, 1950-1953	155	(3)
``Clean'' camps	158	(29)
Concentration camps as model prisons	158	(2)
German refugees from the East, 1948	160	(2)
A ``residential camp'' for refugees	162	(4)
Refugees as inmates of ``clean camps''	166	(4)
The exhibitions in the crematorium, 1946-1950	170	(3)
Removing the exhibition, 1951-1953	173	(8)
Closing the crematorium, 1953-1955	181	(6)
III Dachau 1955-1970: groups and their memories	187	(140)
The first representations of Dachau, 1945-1952	189	(10)
The first Leiten temple, 1945-1946	189	(3)
The statue of the ``unknown concentration camp inmate,'' 1949-1950	192	(2)
The ``home-baked'' Leiten temple, 1950-1952	194	(5)
Rising public interest, 1955-1965	199	(22)
Early media events: Anne Frank and Night and Fog	200	(3)
Youth groups in Dachau	203	(3)
Brown-collar crimes and the Ludwigsburg ``Central Office''	206	(4)
National Socialism in West German schoolbooks	210	(2)
Media attention: from the Eichmann trial to the Auschwitz trial, 1960-1964	212	(2)
The statue of limitations revisited, 1965-1979	214	(3)
German historiography of Nazi crimes	217	(4)
Catholics celebrate at Dachau	221	(21)
The crematorium-monastery plan, 1945	221	(1)
The KZ barracks chapel and the postwar SS church	222	(3)
The Italian chapel ``Mary, Queen of Peace''	225	(3)
Bishop Johannes Neuhausler (1888-1973)	228	(2)
The Chapel of Christ's Mortal Fear, 1960: a turning point	230	(7)
The Carmelite convent	237	(5)
The survivors negotiate a memorial site	242	(20)
Establishing an International Organization, 1950-1955	242	(2)
I Returned to Dachau: Nico Rost, 1955	244	(1)
The ``Spirit of the Camp Street:'' Otto Kohlhofer and Leonhard Roth	245	(2)
Government foot-dragging, 1956-1964	247	(2)
The new memorial site, 1955-1965	249	(3)
The new museum 1960-1965	252	(4)
A monument for the Soviet POWs executed at Hebertshausen, 1964	256	(2)
The international memorial, 1959-1968	258	(4)
Jews represent the Holocaust at Dachau	262	(14)
Early Jewish commemoration after 1945	263	(3)
The new Jewish memorial building, 1960-1967	266	(5)
Tragedy at the 1972 Munich Olympics	271	(1)
Foreign Jewish tourists, 1960s to the present	272	(4)
Protestants make amends at Dachau	276	(14)
Martin Niemoller (1892-1984)	277	(1)
The need for a Protestant church in Dachau	278	(4)
The ``Church of Reconciliation''	282	(4)
The ``Action Sign of Atonement''	286	(1)
The dedication ceremony, 1967	287	(3)
The 1968 generation: new legacies of old myths	290	(37)
A theory of age cohorts	291	(5)
The story of Detlef Hoffman, b. 1940	296	(1)
Generational conflict	297	(4)
The national political context	301	(3)
``Mastering the past'': education or defamation?	304	(8)
Fascistoid antifascists? Mythic resistance in the postwar cohort	312	(5)
Left-wing terrorism, 1968-1977	317	(3)
Dachau, September 1968	320	(3)
New ways of using the past	323	(4)
IV Dachau 1970-2000: new age cohorts challenge mythic legacies	327	(80)
Lorenz Reitmeier (b. 1931), mayor of Dachau 1966-1996	329	(4)
Visitors' statistics: the post-1970 boom	333	(2)
The 1970s: redefining the three myths and ending ignorance	335	(14)
From victims of Nazism to victims of tourism and the media	336	(1)
The ``bad tourist''	337	(1)
Eradication as resistance	338	(2)
Cultural heritage as resistance	340	(2)
The end of ignorance: re-realizing the Nazi past	342	(1)
The TV mini-series Holocaust: learning the victims' point of view	343	(4)
A 1979er discovers Nazism	347	(2)
The 1980s: relinquishing victimization	349	(23)
The effects of Holocaust on the educational establishment	350	(3)
Rediscovering ``forgotten persecutees''	353	(2)
The boomerang effect: 1948ers revive German victimization	355	(1)
National politics, anniversaries, and diplomacy	356	(3)
Dachau vs. Bitburg, 1985	359	(5)
The Weizsacker speech and the ``Historians' Controversy''	364	(5)
Kurt Piller (b. 1959), mayor of Dachau 1996-	369	(3)
The 1990s: resistance vs. education	372	(35)
The dialectic of mythic resistance	375	(4)
Personalizing the perpetrators: ``Crimes of the German Army'' and the Goldhagen debates	379	(3)
Mythic resistance in Dachau: the creation of a youth center, 1983-1998	382	(6)
Intellect vs. emotion: Dachau as a ``site of learning''	388	(4)
Myths and enlightenment: the 1996 Dachau renovation guidelines	392	(10)
The 1989ers: from reflex to reflection	402	(5)
Notes	407	(157)
Index	564