A 97-year-old World War II veteran and a longtime resident of Marin is being saluted for his role in the liberation of the Dachau and Allach concentration camps.
Dan Dougherty was interviewed by a historian on April 30 about his role in the liberation and viewed schematics of the sites during a trip to Germany on April 30. A guest of honor a ceremony in 2020, Dougherty provided only a digital accounting of his experiences due to pandemic.
“I saw exactly where our company entered and where we split up,” said the Marin resident of nearly 40 years, who took the trip with his wife Norma and seven family members.
Dougherty insists on precision when sharing his eyewitness account of the liberation of Dachau.
During his brief stay at the camps — over just two days — Dougherty saw boxcars filled with corpses, victims of the brutal genocide by the Nazi. His recollections, as detailed and exact as they are, are rich with the frailties and humanity of the American soldiers who confronted the atrocities.
“Nobody had anything of profound significance to say,” Dougherty said. “But we knew we had a mind-boggling experience and we all talked until about midnight.”
Set up in 1933, Dachau was the first of the Nazi concentration camps, established outside the village of Dachau, near Munich. The fall of camps came just weeks before the official declaration of Victory in Europe Day — known as V-E Day — on May 8, 1945. More than 40,000 people died.
“The family is so proud of his service, all that he contributed, all that he saw and his participation in the liberation of the camp, equally his desire to want to tell exactly what happened,” his son, Phil Dougherty of Novato, said of his father, now a resident of Fairfield.
“He’s strategic in his research to find out exactly where things happened and where he was when it happened,” he said. “It’s remarkable.”
Dougherty grew up in Austin, Minnesota and joined the Army just after finishing high school in 1943. He was a member of C Company, 157th Infantry Regiment of the 7th Army during the liberation of Dachau.
Dougherty recalled vicious fighting at the Siegfried Line, a massive fortification line along the German border. He was wounded and out of combat for a few weeks and participated in the capture of Nuremberg.
After his company crossed the Danube River, officers shared that they had “special orders” to investigate a concentration camp called Dachau.
The camp was located in an abandoned munitions factory near the northeastern part of the town of Dachau, about 10 miles northwest of Munich in southern Germany, according to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
“We didn’t know what a concentration camp was at that time,” said Dougherty, then a staff sergeant.
On the march to the camp, Dougherty encountered boxcars crammed with human corpses, victims of the genocide at the nearby camp. There were about 2,300 bodies, Dougherty said, between 39 boxcars.
His company arrived just after Company “I” which was later documented for extra-judicial reprisal killings of Nazi guards due to the carnage found at the camp.
Dougherty said he was assigned to search for guards, but found none. He said he saw civilian reporters and a hospital for the SS, or Schutzstaffel.
That night, he slept in a single-family home with his platoon. He planned to find the crematorium and prison compound the next day, but they were reassigned before dawn the next morning to resume the attack on Munich.
Outside of the city, Dougherty and Army soldiers liberated the Allach-Karlsfeld concentration camp. They gave their rations to prisoners, he said. They found no guards.
He and his troops were told to commandeer lodging in Munich that night.
Dougherty took possession of a shotgun owned by an elderly German resident there and sent it back to the United States. It stood in his closet, unused, until the 1990s. He was visited by the current resident of that home, now a professor at the University of Munich — and returned it to him.
Wolf-Armin von Reitzenstein, who was the 5-year-old grandson of the German residents during the American occupation, had Dougherty over for dinner in the very same home during Dougherty’s visit.
“I remember the outside of the house very, very well,” Dougherty said.
Following the fall of Europe and the dropping of the atomic bomb at Hiroshima, Dougherty and many of his compatriots returned home.
Dougherty said he reflected on the history and impact of the war during the ceremony.
“There isn’t anything to see today besides a plaque on a nondescript building at Allach,” Dougherty said. “I learned a lot about what we had come upon that day.”
Sean Stephens, the county’s veterans service officer, said there are about 10,000 veterans countywide, and1,136 are from World War II.
“I haven’t heard of any other World War II veterans in Marin that were a part of the liberation of Dachau,” Stephens said. “But what is most amazing to me is that most of the World War II veterans didn’t tell many people about what they’ve seen or what they did. They saw it as bragging. But they saved the planet. They saved our country.”
Glenn Ross, president of the Marin County United Veterans Council, said he attended the memorial service of a Petaluma veteran who was part of a liberation of Dachau when the man passed in 2017.
“We were looking for the better good of a country at that time,” Ross said. “It’s what made me want to serve my country.”
Both Stephens and Ross emphasized the significance of recognizing veterans in the weeks leading up to Memorial Day, the federal holiday that honors U.S. military personnel who died while serving in the armed forces.
“No matter when you served or where you served in the military, I am proud that you served,” Stephens said.
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