Dachau concentration camp Dachau concentration camp Dachau concentration camp (; , ) was the first of the Nazi concentration camps opened in Germany, intended to hold political prisoners. It is located on the grounds of an abandoned munitions factory northeast of the medieval town of Dachau, about northwest of Munich in the state of Bavaria, in southern Germany. Opened in 1933 by Heinrich Himmler, its purpose was enlarged to include forced labor, and eventually, the imprisonment of Jews, German and Austrian criminals, and eventually foreign nationals from countries that Germany occupied or invaded. The Dachau camp system grew to include nearly 100 sub-camps,
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