How many Jews were murdered at Dachau?
The precise number of Jewish deaths at Dachau is unknown. According to the Nazi camp records, there were a total of 31,951 recorded deaths from all causes at Dachau, which included people of all religions and ethnic groups. Dachau was primarily a camp for political prisoners, common criminals and religious dissidents. The majority of the prisoners who died in the camp were Catholic. It was the policy of the Nazis to send the Jews first to ghettos and then to extermination camps in Poland, not to concentration camps in Germany. When the death camps in Poland were closed between June 1944 and January 1945, the surviving Jews were transferred to camps in the Greater German Reich, including some who were brought to Dachau and then sent to the sub-camps of the main Dachau camp. In the final days of the war, Jewish prisoners in the sub-camps were brought to the Dachau main camp, along with Jewish prisoners evacuated from Buchenwald. There were 2,539 Jews at the Dachau main camp when it was l
