However, there were no liturgical items to be found at the concentration camp, and attempts to procure any of these items from a Russian Orthodox Church in Munich was futile. Besides the Orthodox in Dachau, a "block" of Catholic priests had been allowed to stay together during their imprisonment, and they had been allowed a room in their barrack in which they could say Mass every day before they began their work. They offered this makeshift "chapel" - a bare room containing only an icon of the [[Theotokos of Czestochowa]]. Vestments were made of new linen-towels raided from the hospital of the SS-guards, and red crosses, meant to denote medical personnel, were sewn to adorn these towel-vestments.

Although 40 percent of the prisoners at Dachau were Soviet prisoners of war, very few were allowed to participate, as Russian forces, in the days between liberation and Pascha, started the "repatriation" process for this group. However, the services commenced, there being twelve Orthodox priests and one deacon there, mostly Greek and Serbian, and the entire service, from the Paschal Canon to the Sticheras to the Gospel to the Homily of St. John Chrysostom were all done by memory, alternating between Slavonic and Greek.