Gas chamber of the Dachau concentration camp, Dachau, near Munich, Germany. It was the first of the Nazi concentration camps opened in Germany, intended to hold political prisoners. Its purpose was enlarged to include forced labor, and eventually, the imprisonment of Jews, German and Austrian criminals, and later foreign nationals from countries that Germany occupied or invaded. As U.S. Army troops neared the Dachau sub-camp at Landsberg on 27 April 1945, the SS officer in charge ordered that 4,000 prisoners be murdered. Windows and doors of their huts were nailed shut. The buildings were then doused with gasoline and set afire. There were 32,000 documented deaths at the camp, and thousands that are undocumented..
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