REUTERS

Thursday January 24, 2002

What does the Dachau-Museum say about Dachau's "gas chamber"?

Until 1960 it was acclaimed by the German parliament and recorded at the Nuremberg Trials that mass gassings had in fact taken place at Dachau. However, since 1960 it is officially agreed that there were no human gassings at Dachau. The official Dachau-Concentration-Camp Museum has put up the above sign that reads in five languages: "Gas chamber, disguised as a 'shower room' - never used as a gas chamber."

"There were, most historians now agree, NO HUMAN GASINGS AT DACHAU." Los Angeles Times - 07 January 2000

Nazi Leader's Grandson Fined Over Online Quotes

MUNICH, Germany (Reuters) - A grandson of Adolf Hitler's deputy Rudolf Hess was fined for public incitement on Thursday after putting remarks by Hess on the Internet.

Hess was quoted as saying there were no gas chambers in Dachau concentration camp near Munich during the Second World War and that the Americans installed them afterwards to scare tourists, Munich district court said.

Wolf Andreas Hess, a 23-year-old student, had only been trying to assemble historical documentation about his grandfather, the defense counsel said.

The counsel said Hess was not trying to incite anyone, adding that he had paid attention in his history lessons and knew there was a Holocaust.

Hess was fined $1,184.

Beyond his grave in his Bavarian home town of Wunsiedel, Rudolf Hess remains a source of fascination for Germany's small band of neo-Nazis who regard him as a martyr and believe he was murdered by his British captors.

Hitler dictated his book "Mein Kampf" to Hess while in prison in 1923-24. Hess fell into Allied hands in 1941 after parachuting into Scotland in an apparent personal bid to broker peace with Britain.

He was tried as a war criminal and sentenced to life imprisonment. He was found dead in Berlin's Spandau prison in 1987 at the age of 93 after spending 46 years in jail.