The former Dachau Concentration Camp being used for housing refugees. Refugees in the former concentration camp Dachau. Dachau was a Nazi concentration camp opened on 22 March 1933, which was initially intended to hold political prisoners. It is located northwest of Munich in the state of Bavaria, in southern Germany. In the postwar years, the Dachau facility served to hold SS soldiers awaiting trial. After 1948, it held ethnic Germans who had been expelled from eastern Europe and were awaiting resettlement, and also was used for a time as a United States military base during the occupation. It was finally closed in 1960.