Dachau concentration camp United States Army", Vol. 3, page 382. Authorities worked night and day to alleviate conditions at the camp immediately following the liberation as an epidemic of black typhus swept through the prisoner population. Two thousand cases had already been reported by that 3 May. By October of the same year the camp was being used by the U.S. Army as a place of confinement for war criminals, the SS and important witnesses. It was also the site of the Dachau Trials for German war criminals, a site chosen for its symbolism. In 1948 the Bavarian government established housing for refugees
Helmbrechts concentration camp subcamp in Poland. Many died as a result of beatings for lack of productivity. In early April 1945 the front closed in on Germany. Commandant Doerr ordered the women and a few men, one being a rabbi, to depart on a death march to the Dachau concentration camp. Along the way the Nazi guards learned that the US Army liberated the camp and turned the march into (then still occupied) Czechoslovakia. Along the way many prisoners died. The Germans left all the non-Jewish women at the Zwodau (Svatava) subcamp on the seventh day of the march but took with them