Born on 7th September 1925 in Orzechowice Urkrania, Teofil was unfortunately living in a border town, and with the borders continually shifting, the village became part of the Polish Prymisi region prior to WWII.

 While preparing to train as a Russian Orthodox priest, he was forcibly taken from the monastery by the SS and placed into forced labour in Munich.

 Working underground for 15 hours a day on the VI and VII Rockets he got together with some other young men in 1944 and planned to sabotage the plant. Unfortunately the initaitve failed yet despite constant and brutal interrogation by the SS they could not find enough evidence to implicate him directly in the act.

 As a suspect the then 19 year old Teofil was therefore sent to Dachau Concentration Camp near Munich in Bavaria (now Germany), being interned on the 17th March 1945.

 Upon entering the camp, he had to progress through a line of SS Troops taken from the adjoining camp and be subjected to racial taunts and physical abuse before being processed in the induction centre. Here he was removed of all personal belongings including his clothes and subjected to further physical and verbal abuse before being allocated a workgroup and hut.

 As the Gestapo destroyed all records it is not known which hut he was allocated, but it would have been either the ones at the back of camp (reserved for clergy) or with his fellow Polish Internees near the centre of the camp who numbered in the thousands.

The huts were placed in rows parallel to road that ran the length of the camp. Poplar trees were planted down this road which together with the carefully manicured gardens located in front of the administration centre, gave everyone outside (including the International Red Cross who visited in the 1940's) the impression that Dachau was indeed a work camp for the repatriation of dissidents and undesirables to the German Third Reich.

With SS Barracks surrounding most of the camp, and with the Herb Gardens located on the other side, direct visibility of the interior of the camp by those living outside was extremely limited.

As a "Protected Custody" internee, or "Schultzhaftling" (which is a catch all classification given at that time), with an internee number 146209 (meaning he was the 146,208th internee placed in these camps) he was decreed by the Gestapo to be ""NAL" or "Nicht aus dem Lager".

This meant that he was not to work in any of the sub camps set up around Dachua at that time.

He was clearly considered a flight risk, and as a known dissident to beliefs of the Third Reich, he was immediately classified in Dachau as someone who needed to be under constant, direct supervision by the Gestapo. Consequently he was put to work within the camp witnessing unspeakable acts imposed by the SS Guards against his fellow prisoners and humanity in general.

At one stage he was even forced to extract the gold from the teeth of the internees who had died or had been executed before mass burial, and carry the bodies in a wooden wheelbarrow to mass graves on site.

During his incarceration, oil was in such short supply that the dreaded Crematorium was forced to shut down, meaning the bodies of those who dies or were executed were piled high in the crematorium body room, awaiting transportation to mass graves that were dug just outside the prison boundaries.

He survived repeated beatings that started on his entering the camp, and was tortured on more than one occasion with pieces of glass actually being stiched into his left hand to ensure that he favored his right. Left in Latin is “Sinister”, and to favour one’s left hand by the Gestapo and members  of the Third reich was considered un-natural.

The largest piece of Glass removed from his left after liberation being one and a half inches by half an inch, so we can only speculate as the type of pain he was in.

It is apparent that Teofil spent at least some time in the Bunker within Dachua where he would have been stripped naked, and forced onto a table so that the SS could beat his back and buttocks. Punishment in this instance being likely for anything as trivial as failing to have his dinner plate scrubbed sparkling clean, or even having an SS Guard on his work detail not like the way he walked, or the way he looked.

The consistent bashings he received over this time resulted in permanent damage to his ears and buttocks which he carried for the rest of his life.

Teofil was liberated from Dacha by the American 20th Armored Division during 1945, suffering from Typhoid, weighing less than 6 stone (48Kg) while being 6ft (182cm) tall, after witnessing and surviving unspeakable horrors.

Despite having evidence and written statements of the atrocities committed, the European Authorities at the time confiscated all evidence that he managed to gather before allowing him to leave Germany.

They just wanted it all to go away.

After liberation, the Occupying American Forces used Dachua as a placement camp for refugees before turning into a Barracks for the Occupying Army.

In 1962, the crematorium was designated as a Memorial to the site, yet the actual site was not designated as a memorial until the early 2000's. A museum now exists on the site of the former administrative centre. At the rear of the camp, a nunnery has been created with a memorial for the Russian Orthodox people who were interned.

 More recent additions have seen memorials for the Jews, and other interned created at the rear of the former camp.

 Today, up to 4,000 people a day during summer visit the site.

 Upon exiting the site there are a number of volunteers who have set up a survey site, questioning only those of German origin as to the visit to the site. Simply put, I believe that not denial as to what happened, but a desire to "want it all to go away", has been prevalent for many many years. Only now, some 60 years later, do I believe that there is becoming a wide spread acceptance within Germany as to what happened.

 That said, it is important NOT to view the atrocities at Dachu and all the other camps during WWII  as a crime by the German people against humanit.

 Instead it is a crime by all humanity evidenced through the broader reluctance by all nationalities to take action at that time.

 Responsibility for the existence Dachua rests with all nationalities.

 What happened in the Concentration Camps was suspected and known by many at the time though they chose to turn a blind eye.

 As for Teofil, after spending some time working in mines in Europe, he then moved to Australia via Freemantle and eventually settled in Port Augusta after a brief stint in Adelaide.

 I have posted photos taken at the Dachua Concentration Camp Memorial site in my photo album.

 Please view them.

As you can tell I visited the site of the Dachua Concentration Camp Memeorial site today, spent some time with the archivists, and have walked upon the same ground he did with the thousands of others who were before him..... but god knows I will never be able to feel the pain or see the horrors they did during that time.

I also prey that I never will.

"NEVER AGAIN"