Obj. ID: 49684
Memorials International Holocaust Monument at Dachau, Germany, 1968
Name of Monument
International Monument, Dachau Concentration Camp
What/Who is commemorated
Prisoners of Dachau Concentration Camp
Description (prose)
The International Monument fills the Appellplatz (roll call square), in front of the maintenance building. The memorial consists of several parts built in two main phases and joined in the second (1968) phase. The completed design encourages the visitor to journey along a path of education and catharsis. Entering the site from the Jourhaus, the building located in the southwestern part of the camp that was the point from where prisoners themselves had first entered the camp, the visitor – like the prisoners - passes through the gates with the slogan Arbeit macht frei (works makes one free).
Visitors to the Memorial Site face an entry wall. Its inscription calls the visitors to follow the example of the prisoners and actively defend a society without terror and tyranny. The path leads to the lowest point of the Monument, intended to represent the despair and suffering of the prisoners. From here Nandor Glid’s central bronze sculpture of human figures entangled in barbed wire is visible. It is framed by stylized concrete pillars symbolizing the guard installations.
James Young described the sculpture as a “forty-five foot long, black bronze grid of human forms enmeshed in barbed wire. Arms and legs stretch taut and thin like wire; hands and feet are represented in broken star clusters, like barbs. Torso and heads jut out at excruciating angles, mouth wide open in silent cries ...” (Young, 66)
At the end of the ascending path, the visitor confronts a simple block-shaped tomb with the ashes of an unknown prisoner that looks like a classical altar, suggesting a sacrificial aspect to the prisoners’ suffering and death. Inscribed into the wall behind the tomb in five languages is the exhortation “Never Again”. The edges of the bronze lid on the tomb are inscribed in different languages, identifying the contents as ashes of the “unknown prisoner.”
Across from the sculpture of entangled human figures is a large bronze relief (completed by Nandor Glid in 1965) in the form of a chain that symbolizes the solidarity between the prisoners in the concentration camp. The relief features triangles in different colors. The chain “links” are filled with signs made of multi-colored enamel, conceived by Glid and executed by Ana Bešlić.
The triangles symbolize, through their form and colors, the characteristics of various categories of camp inmates. Notably missing are black triangles for “asocial” prisoners, pink triangles for homosexual prisoners, and green triangles for the so-called “professional criminals. “Asocial” prisoners included Roma and Sinti as well as disabled individuals, alcoholics, beggars, homeless people, nomads, and prostitutes. When the Monument was erected these victim groups were not recognized as persons persecuted by the Nazis.
Inscriptions
On entry wall:
French
PUISEE L’EXAMPLE DE CEUX OUI FURENT EXTERMINES ICI DE 1933 a 1945 DANS LA LUTTE
CONTRE L NAZISME FAIRE QUE LES VIVANTS S’UNISSENT POUR DEFENDRE LA PAIX, LA LIBERTE
ET LE RESPECT DE LA PERSONNE HUMAINE
English
MAY THE EXAMPLE OF THOSE WHO WERE EXTERMINATED HERE BETWEEN 1933 - 1945
BECAUSE THEY RESISTED NAZISM HELP TO UNITE THE LIVING FOR THE DEFENSE OF PEACE
AND FREEDOM AND IN RESPECT FOR THEIR FELLOW MEN
German
MOEGE DAS VORBILD DERER DIE HIER VON 1933 BIS 1945 WEGEN IHRES KAMPFES GEGEN DEN NATIONALSOZIALISMUS IHR LEBEN LIESSEN DIE LEBENDEN VEREINEN ZUR VERTEIDIGUNG DES
FRIEDENS UND DER FREIHEIT UND IN EHRFURCHT VOR DER WUERDE DES MENSCHEN
Russian
Пусть пример тех борцов против нацизма кто был замучен здесь с 1933 по
1945 год объединит мир живых в борьбе за мир и свободу за уважение к
человеческой личности
On the wall beneath the sculpture:
1933-1945
On the wall behind the tomb with ashes, in Hebrew, French, English, German, and Russian:
לעולם לא עוד
PLUS JAMAIS
NEVER AGAIN
NIE WIEDER
НИКОГДА БОΛЬШЕ
On the tomb with ashes, on each side of the bronze lid:
CENDRES DU CONCENTRAIONNAIRE INCONNU
ASHES OF THE UNKNOWN CONCENTRATION CAMP PRISONER
[n.b. inscription in two other languages (German? Hebrew?) on other sides of tomb]
Commissioned by
Comité International de Dachau (CID) (International Committee for Dachau)
Maintained by the Stiftung Bayerische Gedenkstätten (Bavarian Memorial Foundation)
This memorial was erected by the Comite International de Dachau in honor of the ten thousands of martyrs who died here as victims of National Socialist tyranny. It was dedicated on 8 Sept. 1968. It confirms and underscores that the end of the path is reserved for an extra-ecclesiastical martyr memorial.
sub-set tree: 
| Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site Pater-Roth-Str. 2a 85221 Dachau
H | Holocaust | Concentration camp | Barbed wire
H | Holocaust | Concentration camp | Prisoner
H | Holocaust | Concentration camp | Triangular camp badge
|
Concrete
Granite
“On March 22, 1933, the Nazi regime opened a concentration camp on the grounds of the disused Königlich Bayerische Pulver- und Munitionsfabrik Dachau, a defunct factory complex that once produced gunpowder and ammunition. This prison and place of terror existed for twelve years. More than 200,000 prisoners from over 40 nations were imprisoned in the Dachau concentration camp and its subcamps; at least 41,500 persons died here of hunger and illness, from the torture they suffered, were murdered, or perished from the consequences of their imprisonment.” [K-Z Gedenkstaette-Dachau website]
After 1948, the camp housed thousands of German refugees from the Sudetenland and was used as an American military stockade. Between 1948 and 1960, approximately 5,000 people lived on the site awaiting new housing elsewhere.
In 1955, on the tenth anniversary of the liberation, survivors organized the Comité International de Dachau (CID), with the purpose of transforming the former camp into a commemorative site. Townspeople resisted, but the group got some assistance from the Americans on the site who helped set up a small museum at the crematorium site. In November 1959, CID held a competition for a memorial. Meanwhile, in 1960, a Catholic memorial chapel was erected, dedicated by Polish and German priests as a “Monument of Atonement.” At the dedication, Johann Neuhaeusler, the Roman Catholic auxiliary bishop of Munich and himself an inmate at Dachau for four years, preached forcefully against antisemitism, and asked for atonement for the “murder of many millions of the people of Abraham, the destruction of so many synagogues...” (Young, 64).
In 1963, the CID, chaired by Albert Guérisse, chose Nandor Glid’s architectural design (produced with Vera Kovacevic) for a monument on the site of the Appelplatz. This included a monumental bronze relief that resembled three links of a chain to symbolize the prisoners’ unity and solidarity. This part of the Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site, together with a documentary exhibition, opened in May 1965.
The Memorial Committee then invited four sculptors to submit designs for the international monument. They were Nandor Glid and Dusan Dzamonja of Yugoslavia, Herman Klug of Germany, and Grizel Niven of Great Britain. According to James Young, “They were to work toward expressions of three themes: spirit of resistance, suffering of the victims, and hope for a better future.” The jury was comprised mostly of survivors and former Dachau inmates. Primarily for fund-raising purposes, American liberators were also invited to join. Funds were also contributed by the city councils of Munich, Dachau, and Paris, as well as the Luxembourg government. (Young, 65-66).
Again, Glid was chosen for the new sculpture. He designed several versions, and intended for the visitors to come upon a wall with an inscription from The Book of Job (38, 16; 17) “Hast thou walked in the search of the depth?” in memory of those who “lost their lives because of their battle against National Socialism.” Instead, an inscription in five languages implores the viewer “to unite the living for the defense of peace and freedom and in respect for their fellow men.” The final design inaugurated on September 8, 1968, recalls Glid’s work on a monument he created in Mauthausen, completed in 1958. The new Dachau monument quickly became an iconic representation of Holocaust suffering.
"International Monument,"
K-Z Gedenkstaette-Dachau website, https://www.kz-gedenkstaette-dachau.de/en/historical-site/virtual-tour/international-monument/.
Katz, Fred, My Road to Remembrance: A Photographic Journey and History of Over 100 Holocaust Memorials from Auschwitz to New York (Austin, Texas: Greenleaf Book Group Press, 2023)
Marcuse, Harold, "Dachau: The Political Aesthetics of Holocaust Memorials," in Lessons and Legacies III: Memory, Memorialization and Denial, ed. Peter Hayes (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1999),138-168, 278-287.
Subotić, Irina, Nandor Glid (Belgrade: Fondacija Vujičić koleccija, 2012).
Young, James. The Texture of Memory: Holocaust Memorials and Meaning. (New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 1993)., 60-72.