Adolph Hitler’s “Final Solution” was carried out in an estimated 44,000 concentration camps, ghettos, and forced labor camps spread out throughout Europe. An estimated 15 to 20 million people were murdered in these camps including six million Jews. For the young American GIs who liberated them, the horrors of the Nazi concentration camps far outweighed anything they had experienced in war. Alex Bourdas liberated an auxiliary camp that had housed 20,000 POWs. Their bodies were now stacked on carts and covered with lime to cut down the odor. Tom Carr entered a small camp, the name of which he could not remember. But he could never forget the emaciated prisoners still housed in the cells or the bodies stacked in piles outside. General Patton himself sent down orders for his personnel to see what they were fighting for and against by visiting a small concentration camp near Erfurt, Germany. Mark Wilson recalled the few survivors they found there walked around in a daze, looking more like living skeletons. In 1997, more than 50 years after the war had ended, Charles Savage returned to Marienbad, Czechoslovakia. Accompanied by a local historian, Savage searched for the remains of Flashenhutten, the small camp that Savage had helped liberate and the mass burial site that had shocked him. These stories and more in this 17th episode of Always Remember World War II Through Veterans Eyes.

General Dwight D. Eisenhower himself visited the first concentration camp liberated by GIs - Ohrdruf

General Eisenhower cabled General Marshall requesting that a Congressional delegation and reporters be sent to the camp so that the atrocities committed there would not be forgotten.

Fewer than 75 prisoners were found alive at Ohrdruf

Alex Bourdas liberated an auxiliary camp near Ranshofen, Austria

Tom Carr may not have recalled the name of the camp he liberated, but could never forget the horrors he witnessed there

Charles Savage liberated a small concentration camp near Pilsen, Czech Republic. The camp was largely forgotten until he returned to the Czech Republic and, along with a local historian, found its remains. Savage donated all of his photographs of the camp to the local museum.

Adolph Hitler’s “Final Solution” was carried out in 42,400 concentration camps, ghettos, and forced labor camps spread out throughout Europe. An estimated 15 to 20 million people were murdered in these camps including six million Jews. For the young American GIs who liberated them, the horrors of the Nazi concentration camps far outweighed anything they had experienced in war. When Barney Zylka broke into Dachau, its crematoriums were still burning with hands and feet sticking out of them. Zylka wished he could see a Nazi so he could empty his rifle into the Nazi’s belly. Karl Mann recalled how American GIs. Angered by the pathetic condition of Dachau’s prisoners, and the bodies stacked around the camp like firewood, recalled his fellow GIs, lined up dozens of concentration camp guards against a wall and, for a few seconds, mowed them down with a machine gun until the battalion commander stopped them. Standing guard at Dachau, the liberated inmates seemed more like skeletons than men to Jim Dorris. The horrors he saw at Dachau made Dorris think he must be in hell. Dorris prayed, and a concentration camp prisoner soon answered his prayer making Dorris realized that goodness could still be found even at Dachau. Just outside Dachau, Dee Eberhart passed the death train filled with some 4,480 prisoners from Buchenwald, packed 80 men to a car. All but one of the death train’s occupants had perished from exposure, disease, starvation and SS bullets. Local townspeople claimed total ignorance of the camp, but GIs like David Israel didn’t believe them for a minute, as during the day many of Dachau’s prisoners were marched around town and forced to work in local industries while Dachau’s cruel prison guards boasted about their work at night in local bars. In the first few weeks following the camp’s liberation, Edward S. Weiss recalled how deaths at the rate of 20-30 men per day still occurred, the prisoners so weakened by disease and malnutrition. These stories and more in this 16th episode of Always Remember World War II Through Veterans Eyes.

Dachau Concentration Camp

Medical experiments were conducted on prisoners

Prisoners were brutalized by SS guards and starved

As GIs approached Dachau, they passed the Death Train from Buchenwald

Bodies were stacked like cordwood throughout Dachau

The ovens in the crematorium were still burning

Angered by the brutality of the SS, American GIs lined them up along the fence and began mowing them down with a machine gun before a ranking officer stopped them

Like at Buchenwald, German civilians were brought to the camp so they could bare witness to the cruelty

Bernard "Barney" Zylka was wishing he could see a Nazi guard so he could empty his rifle into their belly.

Barney and his wife Josie are pictured with the podcast host, John Ulferts, and his young family

Karl O. Mann recalled a tremendous roar from the prisoners as they were liberated

The terrible odor of burned bodies given off by the crematorium made Jim Dorris feel like he couldn't get his breath. He is pictured with his wife Charlotte.

Dachau taught Dee Eberhart that we must always be on guard against the hatred and vilification of others

Richard J. Tisch recalled the 32,000 prisoners liberated at Dachau were suffering so much from disease and malnutrition that another 4,000 died in the weeks following the camp's liberation. Richard is pictured with his wife Roseanne.

David Israel was assigned to a five man intelligence team whose mission was to interrogate the 15,000 SS officers who were imprisoned at Dachau after the war ended. He admitted to having "harbored brutal thoughts" to them knowing that they had tortured and killed so many innocent civilians in the very same camp where the SS were now imprisoned.

Edward S. Weiss stayed on at the camp in the weeks following its liberation. He had the grim job of bringing bodies to the crematorium. He wrote his parents a letter and informed them that there were now 3-4 American hospital units operating in the camp trying to save as many of the liberated prisoners as they could. At first, prisoners were still dying at the rate of 20-30 per day.

Adolph Hitler’s “Final Solution” was carried out in 42,400 concentration camps, ghettos, and forced labor camps spread out throughout Europe. An estimated 15 to 20 million people were murdered in these camps including six million Jews. For the young American GIs who liberated them, the horrors of the Nazi concentration camps far outweighed anything they had experienced in war. Tasked with the welfare, James S. Moncrief was one of the first GIs to arrive at Buchenwald. He quickly reported back to Major General Robert W. Grow, that the horrors he saw at Buchenwald were worse than anything he could have imagined. Robert Muhler stayed at Buchenwald about one week, restoring order and standing guard. He found himself drawn to the skeleton men walking around, and yet repelled. He had never seen such emaciated people. John M. Williams was given a ghastly tour of Buchenwald by one of the inmates, Mr. Bernstein, who showed Williams the various methods the Nazis used to murder Buchenwald’s inmates including inoculating them with disease, crushing their skulls, the gassing method, shooting, and the nail method. Seeing a dead soldier didn’t bother Williams, but the walking dead at Buchenwald were ghastly. After the B-24 bomber he navigated was shot down over France, Art Zander spent seven weeks in hiding, until he was double-crossed by a Frenchman and turned over to the Gestapo. Zander was horrified to learn that instead of being sent to a prisoner of war camp, he was one of an unlucky 870 American soldiers deemed terror fliers by Hitler himself and ordered to concentration camps. At Buchenwald, Zander and his fellow GIs avoided the wife of the camp’s commandant. Nicknamed the Bitch of Buchenwald, she walked around the camp admiring the men’s tattoos. If she saw one she liked, she had them murdered and skinned. Those stories and more in Part 1 of a 3 part episode on Liberators of the Holocaust, the most important podcasts yet in the Always Remember - World War II Through Veterans' Eyes series.

Liberation of Buchenwald

Buchenwald Barracks - Elie Wiesel, Nobel laureate and author of NIGHT is highlighted.

The Nazis experimented on prisoners inoculating them with toxins and disease germs to provide serums for German soldiers

Wooden shoot where prisoners had their heads crushed and their bodies flung down to the basement. Notice the meat hooks where bodies were hung until they stiffened.

Nail Method - Prisoners were lined up next to the wall as an executioner pushed a lever shooting a nail like object out of the wall into the prisoners head killing them

Crematorium - 10 ovens were installed at Buchenwald. The same type were later installed at Auschwitz-Birkenau.

The ashes of the dead were spread in the surrounding area like garbage.

Prisoners were often forced to watch executions

Ilse Koch, the Buchenwald commandant's wife, was a sadist who would wander through the camp searching for prisoners with interesting tattoos. If she saw one she liked, she had the bearer shot and skinned. She made book covers, lampshades, pocketbooks, and bags from the human tattooed skin. After the camp's liberation, her macabre collection was put on display by the GIs so that local residents could see the depths of her depravity.

Ilse Koch, the BITCH of Buchenwald, on trial for war crimes

James S. Moncrief and his wife Jerry. Moncrief arrived at Buchenwald just hours after Captain Keffer found the camp to assess what was needed to care for the liberated prisoners.

Robert Muhler spent a week at Buchenwald caring for the prisoners. He found himself "...drawn to those skeleton men walking around, and yet repelled." He considered what happened at Buchenwald to be a "demonic evil." After the war Muhler became a pacifist and a Presbyterian minister.

In 1946, just one year after he helped liberate Buchenwald, John M. Williams wrote a brilliant, unpublished essay called "Concentration Camp Chaos" for a class he took at Texas Christian University. Williams described the macabre tour of the camp that Mr. Bernstein, an English speaking Jewish survivor of the camp, gave him. Williams is pictured with his wife Phyllis.