Roll call, exhausting working conditions and selections were some of the horrendous events that the prisoners had to endure, and allied to these torments was the prospect of confinement in the Dachau Bunker.
Plate 35: The Bunker (contemporary photograph)
The Bunker was a prison within a prison. It was designed to house up to 120 prisoners. The Bunker courtyard was one of the places where executions and corporal punishment in the form of ‘pole hanging’ was inflicted upon prisoners. Seven poles, with four hooks on each pole, were erected in the courtyard and prisoners were hung for between one and two hours, suspended only by their shoulder joints with their hands tied behind their backs and feet suspended off the ground. This procedure moved into the shower room in 1941, and then in 1943 the practice ceased,92 because the Nazi regime needed all the available labour for the war effort.
The Bunker was a place where the SS inflicted unimaginable violence on the prisoners, a place where their violent, torturing excesses could be practised away from prying eyes.93 Imprisonment in the Bunker was usually administered after corporal punishment. The most common period of detention was 42 days, with a meal every fourth day, although the length of detention and the food varied according to the caprice of the SS, some prisoners endured in the Bunker for months. The SS also indulged in a variety of tactics in order to prolong the torture of prisoners within the Bunker. They would fire guns down the corridor, beat prisoners, encourage guard dogs to bark so that prisoners could not sleep, and deliberately spill the prisoners’ food as it was being distributed.94