I don’t want to be a silent dog

In April 2025, Walter Steffen’s film “Ein stummer Hund will ich nicht sein” (I Don’t Want to Be a Silent Dog) was released in theaters, for which I conducted archival research. I also researched in the archives of the Dachau Memorial Site—the recent encounter with this place of horror, where I had filmed with Max Mannheimer in 1999, was once again deeply moving.

Roll call at Dachau concentration camp. Image: Federal Archives

Dachau 1945

KZ Dachau April 1945. Image: Historiathek

The film tells the story of Catholic priest Korbinian Aigner, who courageously opposed the Nazi regime in his sermons and religious instruction and, despite adverse circumstances, became a symbol of hope in the Dachau concentration camp by secretly breeding new apple varieties. The collected archive material—from faded photographs and original documents to rare film sequences—not only provides the film with a solid factual basis, but also visual stimuli that allow the audience to immerse themselves directly in the events of the past.

As a prisoner at the Dachau camp, Korbinian Aigner was assigned to work in the so-called “herb garden.” The herb garden was a particularly bloody part of the concentration camp; the mere cultivation of the moorland with pickaxes and shovels cost numerous prisoners their lives. The setting of this plantation, with greenhouses and medicinal plant beds, formed a particularly eerie offshoot of the Dachau death factory. Here, under the direction of a former Weleda official, plants were grown using esoteric methods. One must imagine the gardens in bloom in June or July, rows of yellow-orange calendula plants or blue-flowering lavender beds. Behind them, the backdrop of the main camp – the death factory.

Korbinian Aigner bred apple varieties in the Dachau camp. They were called “KZ-one,” “KZ-two,” or “KZ-three.” After his liberation, he said that this task had kept him alive and strengthened his will to persevere. The Korbinian apple, bred in the Dachau camp, lives on today.

Documents of the Inconceivable

While searching for images in the memorial’s archive, I came across a file on a Munich-based SS biologist who grew tomatoes in the herb garden in the winter and spring of 1945. Imagine the scene: the brave scientist meticulously measuring and recording the sprouting of tomato seeds at different moon phases. To the glory of her supreme leader Heinrich Himmler. Less than 200 meters away, in the main camp, thousands of prisoners were dying of dysentery, typhus, or typhus fever during those weeks. High above the researcher’s head, American bomber squadrons flew overhead to drop their deadly cargo on Munich or further afield. Low-flying allied aircraft were probably also on their way. The presence of emaciated, ragged, half-dead prisoners made no impression on her. She wrote pages and pages about tomato growth. Such things can be read in the archives of the Dachau Memorial Site.

„Ein stummer Hund will ich nicht sein“ is a film that keeps the memory of courageous acts of resistance alive and inspires us all to stand up for humanity and justice.