Beyond imagination
The soldiers were confronted with unimaginable suffering during the liberation of the concentration camps. Help came too late for many former concentration camp prisoners.
Corpses, garbage, emaciated and terminally ill prisoners – when the Allied troops liberated the concentration camps in the Reich territory in 1944 and 1945, they were met with incomprehensible suffering. The soldiers were unprepared for the gruesome scenes they encountered in the Nazi labor camps and killing centers.
The first concentration camp to be liberated by the US Army was the Ohrdruf sub-camp near Gotha, code name SIII . Around 20,000 prisoners from various European countries passed through the camp between November 1944 and April 1945. They were forced to drive piles into the ground of the neighboring Jonastal valley, presumably to set up temporary quarters for the Nazi leadership. The American troops under General George S. Patton arrived in Ohrdruf on April 4, 1945.
Witnesses to the brutish murders
Charles Thomas Payne, great-uncle of former US President Barack Obama, was one of the first soldiers to enter the camp. More than 60 years after the liberation, he described in a newspaper interview how he experienced the situation back then:
Then we arrived at the camp with the big wooden gate and the barbed wire fence. Earlier that day, the guards had rounded up prisoners and mowed them down with machine guns near the entrance to the camp. They were all still clutching their mugs, as if they had been called to dinner. The camp was also strewn with corpses, stripped naked and piled in large heaps. They had starved to death. Never before had I am imagined I would witness something like this.”.
Charles Payne, member of the US Army and great-uncle of former US President Barack Obama
The US Army operations report of April 4, 1945 read: “Battle-hardened veterans, who had seen death many times before, gazed silently at the Nazi slaughterhouse. Some cried. Death on the battlefield was something they were able to comprehend. But this premeditated, brutish murder was beyond their imagination.”
Documenting the horror
General Patton and his commanders decided that this horror had to be documented for the world to see. The US Army’s Signal Corps was dispatched to Ohrdruf to take photos and shoot footage. A week later, US General Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces, also came to Ohrdruf to see for himself. He visited the barracks and grounds and also inspected the instruments of torture and the camp gallows.
Securing supplies
Later that same month, on April 23, 1945, the US Army also liberated the Flossenbürg concentration camp in the Upper Palatinate Forest. Between 1938 and 1945, around 100,000 prisoners from over 30 nations were imprisoned in the main camp and the sub-camps – and at least 30,000 of them perished. Many were assigned to extremely hard forced labor in the Flossenbürg quarry. The SS also evacuated this camp before the Allies arrived, sending tens of thousands on death marches or loading them into freight cars. Around 1,600 prisoners remained, many of them mortally ill. The US Army’s military report shows that the soldiers initially focused on providing basic supplies.
Help came too late for many prisoners
According to the report, Major J. Blum – the officer in charge – initially requisitioned milk, butter, eggs and other agricultural products to feed the prisoners, especially the sick. The SS mess hall was converted into a kitchen.
There was no medical staff in the camp, so doctors among the prisoners helped to provide medical care for the sick. All patients and beds were treated with DDT powder to eliminate lice. The soldiers prepared the SS barracks so they could place seriously ill people in quarantine. Those in somewhat better health were transferred from the main camp. But the help came too late for many prisoners: some survived liberation by only a few hours, and over 100 died in the following weeks.
Treating the dead with dignity
The liberators did what they could to give the deceased a dignified burial. Major Blum halted cremation of the bodies and had the crematorium closed. Due to the large number of dead, there were initially not enough coffins available and the mortuary had to be enlarged so that the morticians could work properly. Protestant and Jewish military chaplains visited the camp and attended to the funerals at the cemetery.
Executions and acts of revenge
Most SS members had long left by the time the Allies arrived in both Flossenbürg Concentration Camp and Dachau Concentration Camp, which was liberated on April 29, 1945. Only a few were left behind – and some paid for it with their lives. For example, shots were exchanged between American soldiers and SS men in the Dachau Concentration Camp on the day of liberation. Originally planned for 6,000 people, the camp was home to around 32,000 prisoners vegetating in the cramped conditions of the completely overcrowded barracks, many of them terminally ill and almost starving. Some guards who surrendered were executed by US soldiers at the camp wall, others were killed by prisoners. But the overwhelming majority of concentration camp prisoners rejected these acts of revenge.
Perspectives on liberation
Our dossier marking 80 years of liberation presents a range of perspectives on the end of Nazi rule and its aftermath.
