Eighty years to the day after the liberation of the Dachau concentration camp in Germany, a new memorial plaque was unveiled Wednesday to honor the U.S. Army’s 45th Infantry Division, which freed the camp’s survivors on April 29, 1945.
The ceremony took place at the former Jourhaus gatehouse of the Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site, the Bavarian Memorial Foundation said in a statement.
Speakers at the dedication included Karl Freller, director of the Foundation; James Miller, U.S. Consul General in Munich; and Brig. Gen. Steven P. Carpenter of the 7th Army Training Command. Holocaust survivor Abba Naor and retired Sgt. Maj. Charles Giddens, representing the 45th Infantry Division Association, were also in attendance.
Following the unveiling, guests gathered in the memorial’s cinema hall for a staged reading titled “But It Was True: We Were Free.” Performed by students from the Bavarian International School, the program drew from letters, diaries and testimonies of survivors and liberators, offering a poignant account of the events surrounding the camp’s liberation. Gabriele Hammermann, director of the Dachau Memorial Site, introduced the performance.
The event marked the start of a series of commemorations in May, the month in which much of Western Europe was liberated from Nazi rule in 1945. A central memorial ceremony is scheduled for May 4 to honor both the victims of Dachau and the soldiers who freed them.
Dachau, located about 10 miles northwest of Munich, was the first Nazi concentration camp. Established in March 1933, it became a model for the camp system that followed.
More than 200,000 prisoners passed through Dachau, and more than 30,000 were registered as having died there, though the true toll is believed to be significantly higher, according to Israel’s Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial.