No citizen of Dachau is without a deep sense that something was wrong

Occ-GY/ch14
The small city of Dachau was, in a way, more of a discovery for the Americans than the camp itself. It had existed side by side with the camp for twelve years. The tracks on which trains brought in prisoners and carloads of corpses for the crematorium ran through the city along the Nibelungen Strasse, and the guards frequently marched prisoner work details through the streets. Asked whether they realized that in the last three months at least 13,000 people had lost their lives barely a stone's throw from them, the citizens of Dachau claimed shock and surprise and answered, "Was koennten wir tun?" (What could we do?) . Asked whether they had seen the prisoners come in on the railroad, they insisted that the trains all came at night and that the cars were sealed. The camp had brought prosperity to Dachau, and many had profited directly from it. Those who had not benefited were more willing to talk. They said that people knew what was going on and were disturbed by it but had been afraid to say anything for fear of economic retaliation and even more afraid to do anything because the shadow of the camp also hung over them. Seventh Army G-2 reached, for the time, a remarkably charitable conclusion:
No citizen of Dachau is without a deep sense that something was wrong, terribly wrong, on the outskirts of their town. Those who really did not give a damn were few. Those who did show opposition should be honored. But it should be pointed out in justice to the others that they were people who could seclude themselves from the community without harming their sources of income. [47] Hqs, Seventh Army, ACofS G-2, Dachau Report [no date], in Seventh Army, 107-2.0.