He ate the cheese mixture (which I ate only when I was very hungry), and sorted out the words “cheese” and “bacon”, and he loved the stuff. Two more columns containing the rest of our company, off to our right, made the same maneuver so that all of us presented one front. Bill and I were told to go into the tower, go to the top floor, to stay there, and to keep people from coming out through the hole. Once we presented that front, those of us who were on top of the tanks jumped off and spread out on the same front. They subside in my mind, and, then, in the spring always, some small trigger will set them off and I will be immersed in these experiences once more. In one sense, they had not committed murder; rather, the German had committed suicide. It was a warm afternoon so I took my jacket off, dropped it on the table and leaned on the ledge of the opening for a while. A most welcome sight to my eyes was the absence of the stack of bodies as I came through the door from the cell area. I spent the time straightening my gear out and loading up the pockets of my field jacket. He repeated it again, and he had the pronunciation close. Majdanek was captured virtually intact. There was still space between us and the group in front of us, the people on both sides now relaxed, one side considerably more jubilant than the other, but all of the tensions were gone. At least, as absolved as I was ever going to be. Three quarters of me was from German background, solid German stock. The lane we were walking on bent to the right as we cleared the building. It had all happened not too long before we arrived. Four hours of education happened that night which could have happened no place else. How did leaders, diplomats, and citizens around the world respond to the events of the Holocaust? The two of us walked slowly until Tim caught up to us. What would I be like? Why had he made notes on the back... Two Weeks at Nordhausen. I recall that I was very much on the alert. We made another cup of cocoa, this time over a Sterno can rather than a fire on the table. I saw the lights up in the camp, but, at that time of night, nothing distracting was going on. The two professors thought that was remarkable–to be able to bomb with such precision. in the U. S. Army, there was no way that I could learn the origin of the orders that started it all. What I do remember is that we eventually drove up some gentle valley where there were trees on either side of us, when we made a sharp left turn, so sharp that those of us on the tops of the vehicles were grabbing things to keep from falling off. Liberation of Woebbelin Concentration Camp by a U.S. unit. I broke off another corner and handed it to him and he mimicked my actions. The smoke was still rising when I walked in. In that building were rooms devoted to each of the organs: a kidney room, a liver room, a heart room, etc. Things I could not yet understand–could never understand. I could have accepted a likeness to some members of the German army whom we had fought, but there were many I would have been uncomfortable with. The SS bought itand surrendered. They were, literally, skeletons covered with skin–nothing more than that–there appeared to be no substance to them. From time to time the jeep would stop and he would ask questions. Later that evening, sitting on the front steps of the barracks with a group of people from the company, Sergeant Blowers among us, the three of us started to pick up the parts of the story we had missed because we were on guard at the towers. I tried to give him some boxes of K-Rations, but, hell, he was eating better than that at the mess tent. Tears were coming down his cheeks. The bunks were much too short even for short people. I had everything I needed for a cup of coffee except heat. In the weeks preceding the arrival of Soviet units, Auschwitz camp personnel had forced the majority of Auschwitz prisoners to march westward in what would become known as "death marches." The first thing he got was another chocolate bar, and he took his time with that while we worked some more on our language. They also encountered substantial evidence of the mass murder committed at Majdanek by Nazi Germans. It did not seem real. The ungrateful Jewish prisoners just went ahead and died, in spite of the best efforts of German medicine at the time. As we passed through the door someone from the company said, “the crematorium.” Until then I had no idea what a crematorium was. © Copyright 1995-2020 Remember.org. In December 1987, as chief of the A bright and shiny jeep came through the gate, with this fellow standing in front of the passenger seat, holding onto the windshield. Human bodies neatly stacked, naked, ready for disposal. Nothing could really hurt them further, but it hurt me that they were now an exhibition. I think my only comment was, “Jesus Christ.”. Washington, DC 20024-2126 The jeep sped back out the gate and on down the road and George just sat. There was a tiny char mark on the table by now, the word apparently having been passed around. I waved my arm at him letting him know that it was all right to come on through the fence, to come up the tower. There was water in my canteen. The others with me didn’t speak either. But it was all too real, it was the only life that some of the prisoners had known for years. He had no idea what candy was until then. We saw the mountains ofdead bodies, etc., although it was not necessarily new to us as we were directlyinvolved in uncovering this sort of activity, but on a somewhat smaller scale. All of them stripped. I got to my tower, crawled up the staircase, and relieved the fellow from the third platoon. That is the way Abe Cheslow put it as he began to tell in detail of his hours at Dachau soon after his tank broke into the camp. The stack was about five feet high, maybe a little more; I could see over the top. We hit those fences with enough speed so that it was unclear to me whether it was the first level, or the second, or the third, but at least one of those levels was hot with electricity. Could I have been that? Remember.org helps teachers and students find the best resources on the Internet, and connect them through a collaborative learning structure developed since 1994. The only life he knew was that of the concentration camp. People were scurrying about, and most of the prisoners were headed toward the gate. A group of guys from the company noticed us and said, “Wait till you see in there.”. Concentration Camp Liberators Reveal Their Silent Trauma “Don’t Think it Can’t Happen Here”. He was being led back into the prison. And the odor, my God, the odor. The black liberators who helped defeat the Nazis and free the Dutch get their due. We had no answers. It was an exhibition. The prisoners came up and surrounded us, moving with us as they jabbered, but they spoke a language we did not understand–they were probably speaking several languages we did not understand. When we split at the end of the four hours, he pointed to my pack of cigarettes. The answers were all monosyllabic. They had intended to kill us, which would have been easy and totheir advantage because they wanted to cover what was going on the edge of townat the time. It appeared that those trays could hold three bodies at a time. I felt I knew why the prisoners of Buchenwald did what they did – so I did not stop them. It is unclear how many SS members were killed in the incident but most estimates place the number killed at around 35–50. Containing the prisoners was not expected to be any trouble because they understood the need, and they were being provided for in every way that we could think of: the field hospital had just arrived, a big mess unit was on the way, loads of PX rations were coming. There are so many things from that week I wish would go away, things I wish could be scrubbed from my memory. He was caught before all of his weight was on the rope, and they set him back on the table. We could see their house down the hill through the leafless trees from our seats on the front steps. It would not be the most desirable of burials, but we would be rid of part of the exhibit. I do not expect a complete purging — that would be expecting too much — but if I can get these memories to crawl deeper into my mind, to reappear less vividly, and less frequently, it will be a help. As a Jewish officer who helped to liberate a concentration camp, he held an intensely deep and personal connection to everything he witnessed as he worked to liberate Dachau. There must have been more than ten of those sets, extending down that brick wall. After a bit I crawled up on the table and sat on it cross-legged. 1 of 10 Birney (cq) Havey, aka 'Chick', was a Soldier in World War II who helped liberate the Dachau concentration camp near Munich. I told the two professors about the young person who had been at my tower the past afternoon, and described him as best I could. We were about to do what Sergeant Blowers had told us to do–take a walk in the woods. There were bits and pieces of personal gear still left around the barracks, but not much. Washington, DC: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 1995. We learned more from an American Lieutenant who had entered the camp later as an interpreter. The camps, most of which were small could be drawn on for “free” labor.Political prisoners were worked to death and it didn’t matter to the Germans, asthere were plenty more where they came from. An American lieutenant had just been captured by chance as heand his driver had wandered into the town from the otherdirection. By the time they returned to the camp the bodies in the stacks were already being loaded on to trucks to be carried away to the mass grave. All of the wagons were filled entirely with emaciated human corpses. The lower bunks served as rungs of a ladder to the upper ones. They did not tie the noose, nor did they fix it to the ceiling. We looked and said not a word. Units of the 42nd "Rainbow" Infantry Division and 45th "Thunderbird" Infantry Division were involved in the liberation of the camp but it remains uncertain which unit … They entered the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, near Celle, in mid-April 1945. Abzug, Robert H. Inside the Vicious Heart: Americans and the Liberation of Nazi Concentration Camps. As the Soviet troops approached Majdanek at the end of July, the remaining camp personnel hastily abandoned the Majdanek concentration camp without fully dismantling it. We wandered off in that direction, coffee cups in hand. In fact all the interpreter would have needed would have been a few words and a pointed finger. When the Germans left, the crematorium was still going full blast, burning up a storm, the chimney belching out that black smoke. I am a WW2 vet who was in the 102nd Infantry Division which spear- headed the 9thArmy drive across Europe to the Elbe River where we met the Russians. None of us–well, none of us in the lower ranks–knew what it was we were up to or where we were, but we were fully expecting a fire fight with German troops, whose camp we had just stormed and taken, and we thought they would be angry at us. The rules of the U.S. Army state that a liberator is a soldier who arrived at a concentration camp within 48 hours of the first soldier to enter the camp. I have seen that photograph several times in the years since, and every time I see it my stomach rolls a little, my mind goes into some kind of a dance, and it takes me a little time to return to normal. We got to the gate and saw the carnival atmosphere, and our good spirits vanished. The Liberation of the Nazi Concentration Camps 1945: Eyewitness Accounts of the Liberators. There were temporary lights strung around for the medics to do their work. Any prisoner could tell me anything he wished from now on, and I would believe. We looked for the lamp shades–we found only the lamp bases where they had been. There was the slightest of communication. It was tough to imagine, but there it was. Another story: There had been a factory a couple of kilometers down the railroad line from Buchenwald that was manufacturing something that was in demand by the German government. General Patton had assigned us to this place for four days, ostensibly to keep the now-free prisoners off the roads needed to supply his troops who were racing through Germany at the end of the war. No one knew how this gang of prisoners had been able to sneak out the hole in the fence to get to the village. That flipped me. There was no electricity so the search lights in the tower didn’t work. My relief arrived, but I didn’t notice him until he was on the way up the stairs, turning the lights on as he came. What I remember now are bits and pieces, and certain of those bits surface more rapidly than others. Finally I merely slumped and realized how good a cup of coffee would taste. I was nineteen, Bill and Tim were eighteen–chronologically anyway. There were packets of instant coffee (horrible stuff) in my pocket along with packets of sugar. After the tour had been administered, the group headed back out of the gate and back down the road to Weimar. In no time we were out of them–they just disappeared. The little fellow in the tower with me became all excited and tried to explain things to me. I didn’t understand. Would I be like the people who had instituted and guarded a place like Buchenwald? Soviet troops first arrived at Majdanek during the night of July 22–23 and captured Lublin on July 24. It was then that the smell of the place started to get to me. There were a few women prisoners, but we wouldn’t see them for a time as they had been taken immediately to the field hospital to be checked over and cleaned up. (Photo by FPG/Hulton Archive/Getty Images) After Soviet troops liberated Majdanek in July 1944, they proceeded to liberate camps throughout Eastern Europe, including Auschwitz in January 1945. Washington, DC: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 1995. I was an assistant bazooka man, and I had a sack with ten bazooka rounds hung over my shoulder; I had an M1 Garand, and some bandoleers of ammo for that; some grenades hanging one place and another; a fully loaded cartridge belt; and I was on my toes ready to scramble off that tank at the first sign of trouble. Beyond the fence were two more layers of barbed wire fence not quite as tall. There was more, but it was impossible to assimilate it all at once. I was too far down the hill to discern the nature of what was going on, but I was betting it was the people from Weimar touring the camp after being marched out from the city. 1945: The Year of Liberation. We hit the fences, blew through them, and shorted out whichever it was on the damp ground. Lee Berg served in the 102nd Infantry Division and 5th Army. As we approached the gate area, we noticed the place was in a kind of a mild uproar. 1016 Jewish prisoners were being burned alive there in a barnon the edge of town by the SS troops who held the town. I quit. The next time he stepped gently off the end, and the table was quickly slid away from him and out of his reach, and he dangled there. One particular night our bombers flew over the camp to the factory, which they pulverized. We heard stories that night from two professors who had been non-Jewish prisoners at Buchenwald for over four years. Our officers winked us outon “special” mission so we could see what was going on. I imagined it would be very beautiful there in the summer with all of the trees leafed out. I had the ability and the means to stop the whole thing, and I did not. Our platoon sergeant had us form up some and relax, then signaled that horde of human beings to stand fast; he just held both hands up, palms out, and motioned them backwards slowly. End of the Holocaust: The Liberation of the Camps. As the first presence from the outside world, the Allied liberators presented a dual reality for detainees in concentration camps. Glenn Edward Belcher: Dachau Liberator. Ms. Rosenblum's father, Walter Rosenblum, photographed the liberation of the Dachau concentration camp. I had enough. Auschwitz was the largest Nazi killing center and concentration camp complex. Liberation of Buchenwaldby Harry J. Herder, Jr. Over fifty years ago, I went through a set of experiences that I have never been able to shake from my mind. Remember.org - The Holocaust History - A People's and Survivors' History. It turned out that we didn’t need any of that hardware. Sleep did not come easily. The females had been forced into prostitution often (though not the Jews). The three of us looked, and we walked down the edge of those stacks. I had had enough. Sergeant Blowers broke us out a little after eleven o’clock that night. There were three of those lamp shades–the history books say there were two, but there were three. We were flooded with information. I stayed close to Stover, my bazooka man, ready to do whatever it was he was going to do. Liberation of Gunskirchen, Austria – May 4, 1945 This pamphlet was produced by the US Army after theyliberated a concentration camp in Austria called Gunskirchen Lager.The book recounts in detail, and with very graphic photos, the tragedy they found in the camp. I had more cigarettes to give him when we parted too. Serving with the combat engineers under U.S. Gen. George S. Patton in World War II, his squad liberated the Buchenwald death camp. I made up my mind to really load up before I came to the tower the next day. I set all my things down and surveyed the scene in front of me. What were those photos doing in my father’s trunk? Another story (to me the most gruesome): German doctors at the camp were doing research on some human diseases. I was not about to sleep, however. None of us, no one in our company, even amongst those who had been the originals, was prepared for what we were now surrounded by. Four of us asking questions, two providing the answers. They had been made aware, like most people in the United States, of what had gone on. The degree of immersion varies from year to year, but there is no gradual diminution with time. A post-mortem of the body would be done, and those organs affected by the disease would be preserved and stored. Bridgman, Jon. Not yet. The Germans had made no effort to rebuild it. After a bit, I got the idea that the person on the end of the rope had been one of the German guards at the prison camp, and these people found him in a small village near the camp. It was not clear to me what the plant had been making, but, in any event, it was the place where most of the political prisoners worked. Later, when I thought more about it, I realized whatever growing he had done had been on the rations of that camp. The man had seen everything I could imagine could be seen, and this place was having this effect on him. The rules state that a liberator is a soldier who arrived at a concentration camp within 48 hours of the first soldier to enter the camp. The three of us at the gate stood there, looked, turned our backs, and walked away. Go to the Top of the Page || Return to Cybrary, Dunn, M. D. He was being given instructions, and, as we watched, it wasn’t long before I and the people who had come with me realized he was being told how to tie a noose in the rope. Things that he had learned interviewing prisoners in the hospital. It took him a little while but he finished the candy bar, looking at me with wonderment the whole time. But in those warehouses that remained, Soviet soldiers found personal belongings of the victims. The wife, Ilse Koch, favored jodhpurs, boots, and a riding crop. All Rights Reserved. They came out of the buildings and just stood there, making me feel foolish with all of that firepower hanging on me. We let them continue. Horrors worse than those found in the German concentration camps of Buchenwald and Belsen were discovered in the stinking hell-hole of Dachau, captured by troops of the 42nd and 45th Infantry Division of the Seventh U. S. Army April 30,1945. I gave him other things from the K-Ration packages, among them a small can with cheese and bits of bacon, which we opened with the can opener I wore on my dog tag chain. Our noses, rebelling against the surroundings they were constantly subjected to were not functioning anywhere near normally. There were some heavily wooded areas around the outside of the camp, and the spring weather was turning the leaf buds a fuzzy green color. Local World War II veteran Don Schoo describes his experience when he was witness to the liberation of the Buchenwald Concentration Camp. No more. I hoped that I would not have been like most of the Germans I had seen. If you'd like to share your story on Remember.org, let us know, all we ask is that you give permission to students and teachers to use the materials in a non-commercial setting. He did so immediately. Earlier that day before the arrival of US troops, an underground prisoner resistance organization seized control of Buchenwald to prevent atrocities by the retreating camp guards. The first major Nazi camp to be liberated was Majdanek, located in Lublin, Poland. I came across a chocolate bar and taught him the word “candy”. I had wondered how human beings could treat other human beings as the prisoners at Buchenwald had been treated. I have had that under my hat for the past forty-six years. The next morning we did a check on the building, and there they were. I have never ever told her, or my father either, most of these stories about Buchenwald. He had them all inside his shirt and went streaking back through the whole in the fence and on up the hill. Death camp liberators to be honored 50 years after end ... - IT HAS BEEN 50 years since William Roberts stared into the hollow eyes of a starving Polish prisoner at the Nordhausen concentration camp. The table was moved until he barely stood on its edge. Into the jeep and he was all over the place in just a few minutes. Scowling, we quietly walked back to the barracks. Liberators confronted unspeakable conditions in the Nazi camps, where piles of corpses lay unburied. He told us this story about her: Once, she ordered all of the Jewish prisoners in the camp stripped and lined up; she then marched down the rows of them, and, as she saw a tattoo she liked, she would touch that tattoo with her riding crop; the guards would take the man away immediately to the camp hospital where the doctors would remove the patch of skin with the tattoo, have it tanned, and patch it together with others to make lamp shades. The trench knife from my belt helped me make some more of them, and I ended up with a tidy bunch of wood chips. Later on, when things became quieter, military government people arrived to help the prisoners get home–if there were homes for them to get to. CTRL + SPACE for auto-complete. I thought of my German heritage, my Grandfather Hugo who had come from to the United States from Germany while he was still a teenager, my mother’s grandparents who had come over from Germany long before that, my mother who had grown up early in this century in a small town in Minnesota, where there were two catholic churches: one for the Germans, the other for the Irish. I had no idea how rich one was when one had a whole pack of cigarettes. That was the start. His eyes opened wide. We asked them questions and we were given answers. Would they think it was worth it? Once we were through the fences we turned left a bit and took off up a gentle cleared hill toward a concentration of buildings. Until now. This wasn’t something that happened consciously, it was just something that happened. That train of thought took me further and further from my own guilt, and, in a little while, I was absolved. I stared out at the darkness, and there were two reasons for not seeing anything: my eyes couldn’t see anything, and my mind wouldn’t see anything. An interpreter met them at the gate, marched them around, and, according to the word I heard later, carefully explained in great detail what had been going on in the camp.