1933 Guardian Article: Communists to be interned in Dachau

[nam78_two]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/fromthearchive/story/0,,1735980,00.html


The President of the Munich police has informed the press that the first concentration camp holding 5,000 political prisoners is to be organised within the next few days near the town of Dachau in Bavaria.


Here, he said, Communists, "Marxists" and Reichsbanner leaders who endangered the security of the State would be kept in custody. It was impossible to find room for them in the State prisons, nor was it possible to release them. Experience had shown, he said, that the moment they were released, they started their agitation again.


If the safety and order of the State were to be guaranteed, measures were inevitable, and they would be carried out without any petty consideration. This is the first clear statement hitherto made regarding concentration camps.

It is widely held that the drive against the Socialists will reach its height after the adjournment of the Reichstag next week.

Absolute power for Hitler: The Cabinet at its meeting this afternoon decided on the text of the Enabling Bill which it will submit to the Reichstag. If this bill is passed, the Hitler Government will be endowed with absolute dictatorial powers. The Act will enable the Cabinet to legislate and to make laws even if these "mark a deviation from the Constitution", except that the Reichstag and the Reichsrat must not he abolished. But as these will be put out of action for four years, this provision will not inconvenience the Government, which will even have full powers at the end of four years to alter the electoral system by decree.


Military expenditure: As the Budget would be settled by decree, and as the figures would not need to be made public, there would be no extra-Governmental control of public finances, and the Government would be free to increase military and naval expenditure without the least publicity.

[BrotherBuzz]

1. That is why all versions of the poem attributed to Martin Niemöller

listed the Communists first.

When the Nazis came for the communists,
I remained silent;
I was not a communist.

When they locked up the social democrats,
I remained silent;
I was not a social democrat.

When they came for the trade unionists,
I did not speak out;
I was not a trade unionist.

When they came for me,
there was no one left to speak out.

[nam78_two]

3. Still relevant

:(

[watrwefitinfor]

8. And this was a direct result of the failure

And this was a direct result of the failure of those who saw the coming danger most clearly - the Communists and the Social Democrats - to form a united front and provide leadership in opposing Hitler.

There is a time to put aside petty differences, and even differences that do not, in normal times, seem petty. We are in one of those times, and most of our differences right now are petty.

Wat

[pnorman]

2. That was a very valuable find!

"Unlawful Combatants of 1933" is how it could be described. The Reichsbanner mentioned, was the German Social-Demoratic "private army"; one of three such groups essentially legal in the Weimar Republic. The others were the Communist Party's Rote Fahne (Red Flag), and the Nazi's Sturm Abteilung (SA --- Brown Shirts).

pnorman

[nam78_two]

4. yup/nt

[pnorman]

5. Confession!

Sometimes I make essentially content-free comments on certain threads, just so I can find them again. My bookmark & memo collection is very disorganized, so this gives me plenty of time to place these where they can be easily found when needed. But in this case, my comment was probably relevant.

pnorman

[Kurovski]

6. I resisted clicking on this, and yet, here I am.

K&R.

[Solly Mack]

7. I've seen Dachau - the original ovens and the "newer/efficient" models

the showers with false shower heads made from sprinkler caps attached to the ceiling...and the wall slots where the gas was dropped from the outside.


the heavy wooden, and deeply scored beam across the ovens that was used to hang people - drop them down onto the rack and then push them into the ovens

[Pachamama]

11. I used to live in Munich and my office was just north of Dachau -I'd drive

past and through the Dachau area daily. It is a nice little town/village with gardens and houses all around...Oh no, no one knew what was going on there, especially when in the summer time the children would see "the snow" falling from the sky....

I always got chills and wondered how people didn't "know"...how the kept silent...how they allowed it to happen....

This is how it started....

[nebenaube]

12. yep! been there and seen that too.... "NEVER AGAIN".... n/t

[HardRocker05]

9. would be interesting to see what german papers reported re. the same event

[1932]

10. Nazis destroyed labor unions by imprisoning all the labor leaders

many of whom were Jewish. They got the rest by targeting Communists.