Decades after the war, commando, writer and poet Michael Burn unearthed his account of a visit to Dachau in 1935. He was appalled to discover how indifferent he had been to the more brutal aspects of the camp.* The commandant’s account of the horrific punishments meted out had at the time caused him merely to comment: ‘Those who may shudder will remember that the cat-of-nine-tails is even in England not yet obsolete.’29 Why, he wondered years later, had he not, as a reporter for the Gloucester Citizen, demanded to know what kind of trial or defence the prisoners had been allowed; or how the
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