The bunkers were intended for the production of Messerschmitt Me 262 aircraft, but none were produced at the camps before the United States Army captured the area.

Kaufering was the largest of the Dachau subcamps and also the one with the worst conditions; about half of the 30,000 prisoners died from hunger, disease, executions, or during the death marches.

[2] Existing underground areas, such as caves and mines, were not suited to factory production, so new concrete bunkers were to be built, using concentration camp prisoners for labor.

[4] Unusually, the construction of the camps, as well as providing food and medical care, was the responsibility of the Organization Todt (OT), not the SS, which sought to extract the maximum labor for the minimum expense.

The prisoners deported to each camp had to construct the accommodation themselves,[5] The resulting huts, partially buried for camouflage from aerial reconnaissance,[2] were completely inadequate for the weather conditions.

[8] When the United States liberated the area in April 1945, the excavation of Weingut II was not complete, but already production machines had been set up.

[11] The murderous conditions meant that most prisoners were incapacitated in a short time, and OT and construction workers brutally beat victims in order to extract labor.

[5] OT workers complained that, due to severe vermin infestation, prisoners spent time attempting to rid themselves of fleas when they were supposed to be working.

Because the companies that hired the workers complained that they had to pay for the labor of prisoners unable to work, transports totaling 1,322[5] or 1,451 people were dispatched to Auschwitz in September and October 1944, where the victims were gassed.

[12] The SS hierarchy at Kaufering had mostly served at eastern death camps, such as Majdanek and Auschwitz, which had been liberated by the Red Army.

[5] Eight thousand Jews were forced to leave the Kovno Ghetto in July 1944, as the Red Army approached; male prisoners were separated from the women and sent to Kaufering.

[28] Additional Jews arrived at Kaufering that summer during the liquidation of labor camps in the Baltics about to be overrun by the Red Army.

[29] These Jews had already survived countless "Aktions" in which victims were taken away to be murdered, and three years of forced labor, as well as long transports in cattle cars.

[30] On 10 October 1944, a transport of Jewish men who had been imprisoned at the Theresienstadt Ghetto in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia arrived via Auschwitz.

Those who were sick, with diseases such as typhus, spotted fever, and tuberculosis that were widespread in the camp, were fed even less,[5] and rations were further reduced as the war drew to an end and shortages arose.

However, survivors of the Kovno Ghetto continued to publish a clandestine newspaper, Nitsots (Spark), handwritten and illegally distributed.

In mid-April, SS general Ernst Kaltenbrunner relayed orders from Adolf Hitler for the Luftwaffe to bomb Dachau, Landsberg, and Mühldorf, which all had high Jewish populations.

The Gauleiter of Munich, Paul Giesler, ordered Bertus Gerdes, administrator of Upper Bavaria, to prepare plans for the extermination of the surviving prisoners.

Kaufering IV, where those incapable of walking were held, was set on fire on the orders of the SS doctor, Max Blancke.

[5] A large displaced persons camp was located in Landsberg in the postwar era, led by Lithuanian Jews who had survived Kaufering.

[45] By the railroad tracks outside the village of Schwabhausen, there are three mass graves next to the railway line, victims of Allied strafing, which are marked by plaques.

The site of Kaufering VII was purchased after a Jewish survivor donated the money on the condition that a memorial be erected, which has not been accomplished.

[49] Restoration work was done between 2009 and 2016 on three intact and three ruined earthen huts and the housing of the SS guards, by the Europäische Holocaustgedenkstätte, winning the Bavarian Historic Conservation Prize in Gold.

Jahrhundert association and its director, Anton Posset, have refused access to the site to survivors and their families, the Israeli ambassador Shimon Stein, and inspectors of the Bavarian List of Monuments.

Landsberg am Lech has a prominent plaque in the center of town commemorating the German soldiers who died in both World Wars, but no memorial to the Holocaust victims.

[47] There is a modest memorial at Kaufering III,[53] while a student project to establish an information board was not maintained and fell into disrepair.

[47][56] Download coordinates as: see German article with pictures The liberation of Kaufering IV was depicted in the second half[57] of Episode 9 "Why We Fight" of the TV mini-series Band of Brothers, a dramatization of E Company, 506th Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division.

[58][59] Although it was filmed in Hertfordshire, England, the episode is a realistic recreation of actual events depicted in historic photos and newsreels.

The American soldiers, who had previously fought from a parachute landing on D-Day through France and Germany, have become disillusioned, but confronting the horrors of the Nazi regime reminds them why they are fighting the war.

[63] Large parts of the book are purportedly set in Auschwitz, where Frankl spent only three days, but actually depict his experience at Kaufering.