Dachau concentration camp on to KZ Dachau. During April 1945 as U.S. troops drove deeper into Bavaria, the commander of KZ Dachau suggested to Gestapo Chief Heinrich Himmler that the camp be turned over to the Allies. Himmler, in signed correspondence, prohibited such a move, adding that "No prisoners shall be allowed to fall into the hands of the enemy alive." On 24 April 1945, just days before the U.S. troops arrived at the camp, the commandant and a strong guard forced between 6,000 and 7,000 surviving inmates — on a death march from Dachau south to Eurasburg, then eastwards towards the Tegernsee.
Theresienstadt concentration camp and the Red Cross pleas to intervene in favor of concentration camp prisoners, but it was hesitant to accept Nazi invitations to visit concentration camps. Carl Jacob Burckhardt, an ICRC official who made most of the key decisions regarding Nazi Germany, stated in a September 1935 meeting that it was "dangerous to occupy oneself" with the concentration camps; he was certain that such visits would be exploited by the Nazis for propaganda purposes. Burckhardt did eventually visit Dachau concentration camp; his main complaint was that political prisoners and criminals were not kept separate. The ICRC considered its primary focus to be prisoners of war