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.
Priest Barracks of Dachau Concentration Camp for conducting a baptism there. He was the first priest killed in the concentration camps. The Blessed Bernhard Lichtenberg died en route to Dachau in 1943. In December 1944, the Blessed Karl Leisner, a deacon from Munster who was dying of tuberculosis received his ordination at Dachau. His fellow prisoner Gabriel Piguet, the Bishop of Clermont-Ferrand presided at the secret ceremony. Leisner died soon after the liberation of the camp. The Protestant Church of Reconciliation opened in 1967. The distinctive architecture was designed by Helmut Strifler. A steel gate within the chapel by Fritz Kuhn is inscribed with words from