Facing the guilt
The days of concentration camp liberation from the perspective of German neighbors
Allied forces reached the first concentration camp on Reich territory on April 4, 1945 – the Ohrdruf sub-camp of Buchenwald. The US soldiers found piles of charred corpses. There were barely any survivors. Just a few hours earlier, the last prisoners had been herded towards Buchenwald. Twelve thousand completely emaciated bodies had trudged through the villages in the days before, past the houses of the Germans, many of whom would later claim that they had known nothing. How did Germans experience the concentration camp liberation 80 years ago? This article sets out to search for clues.
“The prisoners in the camp are usually led through the town in the morning and evening. Seeing the columns of prisoners is not exactly pleasant for the population,” wrote Albert Schneider, mayor of Ohrdruf, to the Gotha district authority in January 1945. He was displeased that the townspeople were seeing the deplorable condition and mistreatment of the concentration camp prisoners as they walked to their forced labor assignments, and he asked for their route to be redirected. The sub-camp of the Buchenwald concentration camp south of Gotha had been established only a few weeks before.
The suffering of the concentration camp prisoners was obvious
Starting in November 1944, 20,000 people were deported to the camp in the final months of the war. Here in the remote Jonastal valley, they were tasked with carving underground facilities out of the rock. These structures were probably intended to serve as a new Führer headquarters. The district authority rejected the mayor’s request, and the people of Ohrdruf continued to witness the deplorable state of the concentration camp prisoners on a daily basis. Some slipped them crusts of bread as they passed by, while others eagerly helped to recapture escaped forced laborers, as Pastor Karlheinz Lämmerhirdt from neighboring Bittstädt noted in his journal. Most of them were brutally executed on their return to the camp, partly as a deterrent.
Schoolboy Rudi Schlegelmilch saw what they had to endure there when he and his friends ventured into the Jonastal valley in search of adventure: “When we got deep into the valley, we were able to observe the concentration camp prisoners. (….) They were just shuffling around and were beaten by their guards for this. (…) We were already old enough to understand the terrible suffering of the prisoners and were aware that one day we would be called to account for these inhuman acts, so the grown-ups said ‘Enjoy the war, the peace that comes afterwards will be terrible for us because the victors are bound to exact their revenge’.”
Afraid of the end of the war?
Friedemann Behr from Arnstadt, eleven years old at the time, encountered forced laborers while out collecting milk: “They were scantily clad, totally emaciated, a real picture of misery. Our blood froze. One of them said to us ‘Salt, please give us salt’. We ran away in fear. (…) All we knew was that everyone was afraid of the concentration camp.” Another young resident later reflected on her thoughts in the spring of 1945 as she watched the concentration camp prisoners being herded to work: “Some people nodded to us furtively, as if to say, just wait, soon the fascists’ rule will collapse and the war will be over. We were ashamed, because instead of doing something to give them courage and hope, we were afraid.” The Allies were indeed advancing in early April. Those concentration camp prisoners who were still strong enough were marched through the village one last time in front of the citizens of Ohrdruf.
Albrecht Dürer from Liebenstein, a neighboring community, remembers it as follows: “At the age of 13, I witnessed the death marches of Special Camp S III Jonastal through our village and saw the half-dead men in blue and white striped prisoner clothing shuffling along in their wooden shoes. Completely emaciated, they shouted for bread and water and were punished for it with rifle blows. I witnessed how the fascists treated people who were completely defenseless and were desperately hoping for the end of the war, for their liberation. We saw how prisoners were forced to dig their own graves with pickaxes and shovels before being treacherously gunned down.”
Facing the guilt
Days later, the bodies were still lying by the wayside and in the streets, as Toni Böttner, a cook from neighboring Crawinkel, reported in 1961: “Grandma, said my little grandson, there are so many dead bodies lying on the road in Jonastal valley and the cars are just driving over them. So even our grandchild had to witness the barbarity of fascism.” It was no longer possible to deny or ignore the Nazi atrocities. The Allies made sure of that. They discovered countless corpses when they reached Ohrdruf sub-camp. With every additional concentration camp that was liberated – Buchenwald, Bergen-Belsen, Sachsenhausen, Dachau, Ravensbrück – the contempt with which the Nazi regime viewed humanity became increasingly clear. The world needed to know what the Germans had allowed to happen. Soldiers, the press and neighbors were brought in to see the atrocities with their own eyes.
Compulsory visits to concentration camps
On April 7, the employees of Ohrdruf town council, the Town Mayor Schneider and his wife, and local factory owner Thilo Mühlberg were forced to inspect the camp and witness the conditions at firsthand. The mayor and his wife committed suicide that same night. “We didn’t know, but WE knew,” they had scribbled on a scrap of paper beforehand. Following the liberation of Buchenwald concentration camp on April 11, more than 1,000 Weimar residents were forced to see the appalling conditions there with their own eyes.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vfRKtdGfvWg&t=667s
Reburial of the murdered
The Allies instructed local residents to dig mass graves in the following days. Those who had been murdered needed a dignified burial. Margarete Behr from Arnstadt wrote in her diary on April 13: “A lot of dead bodies are being found around Arnstadt, in Jonastal valley, where they were killed by the SS. They are forcing local party members to dig up the bodies of the people who were killed and bury them properly. A strong smell of decomposition hangs over the town, and everyone is struck silent with horror.”
Unjust punishment?
Similar scenes unfolded after the liberation of the concentration camps near Flossenbürg, Dachau, Mauthausen and Neuengamme as local residents were forced to witness the atrocities committed on their doorsteps. The villagers were brought to the sites of the sub-camps as part of a deliberate effort to directly confront the entire nation of perpetrators with the unimaginable sight of the victims. Many sought to forget what they had seen as soon as they could, and hardly anyone discussed the experience. Those who did, refused to accept any responsibility. On April 22, 1945, Weimar Provost Richard Kade had a proclamation read out in all of the city’s Protestant churches: “So we may confess before God that we carry no blame for these atrocities.”
Even “Death Mills,” a documentary film about the concentration camps, which the Allies began showing in cinemas in Bavaria in January 1946 and in Hesse, Hamburg and Berlin in March 1946, did little to change this perception. Instead, many felt that the confrontation with Nazi crimes was an unjust punishment, while others continued to emphasize their ignorance. In 2018, Elfriede Schlegelmilch, who was forced to visit Buchenwald concentration camp as a 17-year-old, told Der Spiegel magazine: “I thought: This simply can’t be real. Are you dreaming or what’s going on here? (…) If someone tries to tell me today that none of it ever happened, I can only reply that I saw it with my own eyes! And I will never, ever forget what I saw.”
A long road to liberation
The liberation of Germany from the Nazi regime was more than just a single date – it was a long, dramatic process that lasted many months. It began with the landing of Allied troops in Normandy and continued with fierce battles, while a steady stream of reports revealed the horrors of the concentration camps. As the Allies advanced, the Nazis tried to cover up their crimes – they destroyed files, cleared camps, dispatched prisoners on death marches and committed the cruelest acts of violence right up to the very end. At the end of the war, there were around 11 million displaced persons in Germany, i.e. people who had been deported by the National Socialists from their home countries for forced labor or imprisonment in concentration camps. Criminal prosecution began in the midst of this scenario. Tens of thousands of accused war criminals were tried in international, national and military courts. At the same time, numerous perpetrators of the Nazi regime sought and found ways to evade accountability.
Perspectives on liberation
Our dossier marking 80 years of liberation presents a range of perspectives on the end of Nazi rule and its aftermath.
