Dachau, 78 Years On: Bearing Witness

Dan Dougherty of the 45th Thunderbird Division, Erin Faith Allen, and Lockered Bud Gahs of the 42nd Rainbow Division

Last month I accompanied Lockered “Bud” Gahs, Dachau liberator, to the 78th commemoration of the liberation. I have been sitting with the weight of it ever since.

There is no efficient way to describe what it means to move through these events as a working historian. The word "privilege" is accurate but insufficient. What it actually feels like is something closer to obligation. To be present, to document, to hold still long enough that the magnitude of what you are witnessing can register properly.

The memorial staff at Dachau outdid themselves as always, in welcoming Bud and the eighteen survivors who attended the commemoration events. To sit among this generation, to hear them speak, to watch them find one another across decades of separate survival, there are no words adequate to the task. So I will simply report what I saw.

Three Men

At some point during the weekend, three men stood together in the place that had bound their fates 78 years earlier.

Dan Dougherty served in C Company, 157th Infantry Regiment, 45th "Thunderbird" Division. Bud Gahs served in the Anti Tank Company, 222nd Infantry Regiment, 42nd "Rainbow" Division. Leslie Rosenthal was born in a sub-camp of Dachau and liberated there.

This year Dan and Bud were the sole representatives of their respective divisions at the commemoration, and the only liberators present. One morning the three of us sat together for an hour and Dan and Bud talked, and I documented it for an upcoming short documentary about the experience.

Bearing witness to two men who came through the hell of combat and one man whose life thrives against every odd stacked against him. I have no framework for that kind of morning except gratitude.

Joseph

The photograph from this trip that I keep returning to was taken with Joseph Alexander, a survivor who has seen one hundred years of life despite enduring twelve concentration camps.

His hat read: Not everyone looks this good at 100.

In spite of everything, Joseph Alexander is here. His story is not mine to tell in full, but I will say this: his presence reorients whatever you thought you understood about human endurance.

The Bunker

One afternoon near closing time I found myself alone in the Bunker, the prison building on the camp grounds. The hush in that space is not actually a hush. It has a texture and a weight that silence would be the wrong word for.

I thought mostly of Noor Inayat Khan, SOE operative, Sufi mystic, princess by lineage. She was held and executed at Dachau after captivity across multiple locations. Despite sustained torture she did not betray her network. Not a word.

Her story has been an inspiration for my work for many years. The official record holds only so much of what actually happened in places like this. The rest requires exactly the kind of slow, deliberate reconstruction that I have built Fortitude Research to do.

Returning home from Dachau and finding the words always takes time.