The original caption for this photograph reads: This pile of clothes belonged to prisoners of the Dachau concentration camp, recently liberated by troops of the U.S. Seventh Army. Slave laborers were compelled to strip before they were killed. Germany.
Dachau was the first concentration camp established under the authority of the SS. More than 28,000 people died at Dachau between 1940 and 1945, but the total number of deaths at the camp is not known. By April 1945 the water, sewage, and electrical systems had all failed; 32,000 sick and starving prisoners had been jammed into a space intended for one-third that number; and more than 39 railroad boxcars filled with dead people had been transported there for disposal. The U.S. Army’s 116th Evacuation Hospital was one of the first medical units to enter the camp after its liberation.
