$Unique_ID{bob01137} $Pretitle{} $Title{Liberation of the Nazi Concentration Camps 1945, The Chapter V: The Military - Part II} $Subtitle{} $Author{Various} $Affiliation{} $Subject{general camps war soviet camp eisenhower get saw time concentration} $Date{1987} $Log{} Title: Liberation of the Nazi Concentration Camps 1945, The Author: Various Date: 1987 Chapter V: The Military - Part II Pavel Danilovich Gudz Forty years ago the peoples of the world suffered a great tragedy. German fascism unleashed the Second World War which took tens of millions of human lives. The war inflicted enormous damages on productive forces in many countries, on the whole of world culture, and civilization as a whole. In carrying out their criminal designs, the German fascists resorted to barbaric methods of annihilating people. The death factories were a monstrous creation of fascism. There were concentration camps built on the territories of many European countries and in Germany itself. Contemporary data indicate that there were tens of such industrial factories of mass annihilations. They contained more than 18 million people, of whom approximately 11 million were exterminated. Mass atrocities were perpetrated by the Hitlerite invaders on Soviet land. On temporarily occupied Soviet territory, the fascists set up scores of temporary camps. When we came to the United States of America, we did a certain amount of calculation, and we calculated that there were 95 camps where the peaceful Soviet population and prisoners of war were executed en masse. Hitler's bandits in these camps killed and tortured to death six million Soviet citizens and approximately four million Soviet prisoners of war. Such is the scope of the appalling atrocities perpetrated by German fascists. Mankind, and first of all we Soviet people, cannot forget and forgive these crimes and atrocities perpetrated by the fascists. It was precisely the Soviet people that withstood the main thrust of the barbaric fascist invasions. The Great Patriotic War lasted almost four years. This was a gigantic battle which extended along the front line of up to 6,000 kilometers. Soviet forces threw off the Hitlerite invaders and achieved a radical change in the war and liberated their own territory. In the course of these victorious offensives, we liberated inmates of fascist concentration camps, at first on our territory and then on the territories of Poland, Czechoslovakia, Germany, and other countries. We consider it also to be our duty to stress here that in the Soviet Union we highly value the contribution of the Allied armies in the defeat of the fascist Germany - the armies of America, England, France, Canada, and other states. We will never forget the days of liberation - Soviet soldiers driving the enemy from our land and helping peoples of other countries to get rid of the fascist occupation, seeing pictures of terrible devastation, seeing the fascist machine of mass annihilation of people in action. The whole world became an eyewitness to these fascist mass atrocities and to these millions of victims of the camps. We revere the memories of millions of the victims of German fascism who died in concentration camps. We, the Soviet people, cannot forget that the great victory cost our country 20 million lives and the people of the world paid over 40 million. Paying tribute to the heroism of the fighters against Nazism and the victims of fascist concentration camps and those who gained victory, we are obliged to remember the lessons of the past war. The memory of the sufferings and horrors of the war calls on us to do everything to prevent their repetition. Taking account of the destructive, deathly effects of nuclear weapons and the scale of their production and stockpiling, we must all pool our efforts to achieve mutual understanding between peoples in order to prevent nuclear catastrophe. It is vitally important for mankind that the energy of the atom not be used against life but for life, for the progress of science, for raising the living standards of people, that is, exclusively for peaceful purposes. In the struggle for peace, for the prevention of a new, atomic war, we are solving as was noted by the Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, the General Secretary of the Central Committee, Leonid Brezhnev, "the problem of a truly global nature. For at present there is nothing more essential and more important for any nation than to preserve peace and ensure the paramount right of every human being the right to life." In the break between the preceding sessions, a correspondent of Associated Press came up to us. He asked us a few questions. Among them he asked what we were doing to guarantee the right of every man to life. We consider it to be our duty to report to you gentlemen that for the achievement of this great goal, the Soviet Union is making a number of new peace initiatives, among them: To continue negotiations with the United States without delay on limitation and reduction of strategic armaments, preserving all the positive elements that have so far been achieved in this area; to renounce the production of neutron weapons, if they do not appear in other countries; and to conclude an agreement banning them. The Soviet Union reaffirms once again that it wants normal relations with the USA. There is simply no other sensible way from the point of view of the interests of our two nations and of' humanity as a whole. We consider that there simply is no other sensible path. World civilization has achieved great progress in all spheres of human endeavor in the development of productive forces, sciences, culture, and the bringing of peoples closer together. We must not allow our planet to turn into a gigantic graveyard for mankind and for civilization. We are very concerned with the present situation. I repeat, we cannot allow our planet to turn into a gigantic graveyard. Peace is the precious asset of all people of all countries, of all nationalities on the earth. It is the precious asset of all people on the earth, an essential precondition of progressive development of countries and nations. It has been achieved at a high cost. We war veterans know the cost of peace. And we must do everything for the future of mankind to be bright and peaceful, for people to never experience the horrors of war. To insure further prosperity of humanity, culture, and civilization, preservation of life on our planet through strengthening peace this is our historic goal. Lewis Weinstein I was asked specifically to talk about the first camp liberated by the American Army. It was actually in Ohrdruf, right near Gotha, and it was the first camp that we liberated on April 4, 1945. It wasn't until about April 1, maybe March 31, that I saw war maps in our situation room with the words "death camp" stated there. We had heard all kinds of rumors and stories, but they were so horrible they were incredible; we just couldn't believe them. I had a great guilt feeling when I actually found out about what happened in these camps. I had talked in terms of possibly a few thousand having been murdered, but thinking in terms of six million, 20 million murdered I was obviously very much taken aback. I remember when I saw this first announcement. The 4th American Armored Division was heading towards it. I remembered that I knew a medical officer in that division, a Major Levy. I called him and I told him that I was attaching myself to his division because we had to have information firsthand. I was then a lieutenant colonel. I was chief of the liaison section of the European Theater of Operations of the United States Army. I was then 40 years old, having enlisted in the Army at the age of 38. I then approached General Walter Bedell Smith who was chief of staff to General Eisenhower. I said, "It's terribly important that as soon as we learn what it's all about, you and the General head toward this camp (Ohrdruf) and see with your eyes, smell with your own nose, and hear with your own ears exactly what has transpired there, because it will be so horrible." By this time, I was getting more and more information every moment as to what was happening there. He said he doubted very much whether General Eisenhower could come. This was the beginning of the last month of the war; you know how fast the movement was at that time, and every moment was precious. Then, Eisenhower eventually saw me, and he said to me, "I know how important it is to you, but I just can't make it because of my activity." I said, "It's not that it's important to me, General. The issue is the world must know the atrocities; the world won't believe them if they come secondhand, but if General Eisenhower and others like him are there on the scene and can relate exactly what happened, that will make a great deal of difference. In any event, he just could not make it on the fourth of April when Gotha was liberated. I am not going to repeat what I saw then. You have heard similar stories. You have heard them told very effectively, and it is very moving for me to have lived through what I lived through. But, from the field I called General Bedell Smith and General Eisenhower. When I called General Eisenhower, he told me again that he could not come but would try to arrange something for the 12th, and we did arrange it. Only when I got here yesterday did 1 see, a photograph on page 28 of the book that was issued especially for this meeting, a picture of General Eisenhower, General Patton, and General Bradley looking at what was left from eight days earlier - bodies lying in the middle of the camp right next to the gallows, right next to the whipping table. I did not know such a photograph existed. But, the important thing is this: I saw General Patton so moved physically that he vomited. I asked General Eisenhower if he could not get word so that members of Parliament in Great Britain, members of the Chambre de Deputes in France, members of Congress in America, and high-ranking journalists taken at random, representing really the media of America and the media of these other countries, would be able to come there. He told me later, that very night he had been staying at General Patton's headquarters of the Third Army he had sent messages suggesting what I had previously said to him, but which did not need to be said to him because he felt the same way. There is one quotation in this book, a letter that I had not seen before, a letter to General Marshall that General Eisenhower wrote: "The things I saw beggar description. The visual evidence and the verbal testimony of starvation, cruelty, and bestiality were so overpowering as to leave me a bit sick. In one room where there were piled up 20 or 30 naked men, killed by starvation, George Patton would not even enter. He said he would get sick if he did so. I made the visit deliberately, in order to be in a position to give firsthand evidence of these things if ever, in the future, there develops a tendency to charge these allegations merely to 'propaganda."' Now that's the story of Ohrdruf. In your opening remarks, Mr. Chairman, you referred to other events and how much soldiers knew and what we were doing about preparing for what we would be confronted with. A school of military government was established in Charlottesville, Virginia. We didn't get very much information from Europe, but we saw information that came from Japan. We had captured Japanese documents relating to how they treated civilians, and we were beginning to learn more and more or beginning to fear more and more that there was a much worse situation in Europe. We did write many articles and books and leaflets to give to enlisted men and to a G-5, which was first established at that time. We always had our four Gs: personnel, intelligence, operations and training, and supplies. But this was a G-5 to deal with military government and civil affairs. A big part of civil affairs dealt with what to do with displaced persons, what to do with people we found in the camps, and how to organize for that. There was material, but the trouble was in disseminating that material down through the ranks. It did not trickle down as quickly as we wanted to. When I first came to the 4th Armored Division, I talked practically that whole night with people about how they were going to prepare for this. They had not even heard of the manuals that we had prepared and the suggestions that we had made. I must close with one other story, the liberation of another place Paris. You referred to it, Mr. Chairman, in the opening. This was not the liberation of a death camp, but the liberation of a huge city which the Nazis had occupied for a long time. There was an immediate need to feed the people, to cheer the people, to get them out of their feeling of apathy into a feeling that they could help the war efforts as well. I tell you that these experiences cannot be concentrated into 10 minutes. James Collins Really I feel that I am here on somewhat false pretenses because I was not the first liberator of Nordhausen. I did not arrive there until several hours after the event. But let me back up just a little. At that time, I was a lieutenant colonel commanding a battalion of 155-millimeter howitzer field artillery. We had come from across France and Belgium through Remagen into Germany, and after we got into the upper end of the Ruhr, we started to uncover small labor camps, mainly agricultural. In other words, there would be four or five people who were working on a farm. Normally, these were prisoners of war, but, in effect, they had volunteered to work on the farms so they could get out of the POW camps. As a matter of fact, their life was not all that hard. They worked hard and their diet was not all that good, but it was still better than the diet they got in the POW camps. Having seen these people, who really were not so badly off, I thought, well, these camps are not so bad. In fact, I remember one little camp of about six or eight people who were mainly New Zealand prisoners of war who were engaged in refining sugar from the local sugar beet fields. I talked to the corporal who was in charge, and he was telling me what they were doing and so forth. I was directing him to move on back down this road where he would find a collecting point and get taken care of. Just as I was about to leave, he said, "Colonel, don't eat any of that sugar." I asked why, because we were a little short of sugar and other things during the war, and I was about to scarf up a 100-pound bag for the battalion. He said, "No sir, don't eat it. I always had my men 'schack' in it before we finished it." So, coming up to Nordhausen, which was just south of the Harz Mountains, we were completely unprepared for what we found. I had a forward observer with the leading elements of infantry of the 104th Infantry Division at that time who, in conjunction with the 3rd Armored, uncovered the camp after a slight fight in Nordhausen. My forward observer called me on the radio. This was getting towards the afternoon. And he said my code name was Jealous 6 "Jealous 6, this is Jealous 23. You gotta get up here right away." I asked, "What are you talking about, and besides, you're breaking radio silence and security." He said, "Sir, I don't care. You just gotta get up here. You won't believe it." Still not really understanding what was going on, I said, "Well, what's the matter'?" He said, "We found a death camp." I got in my jeep and went forward and got there about 6:00 or 7:00 in the evening. I will not bore you with the description because you've heard many descriptions today; but it was really mind-boggling. This had such an effect on me that I made arrangements with some of the troops there the 104th Division to start taking care of these people feeding them. There already was a medical detachment on hand. The next morning, before we left in pursuit of the Germans, I had my whole battalion go through that camp to see what it was like. This made a tremendous impression on these young farm boys from North Dakota because it was a North Dakota National Guard Unit I was commanding. Each year - or I should say every other year - the battalion has a reunion, and at that reunion are displayed the scrapbooks, the pictures, the albums, the photographs of our wartime service, of which a large part is made up of photographs of what we found at Nordhausen. So, I can assure you that the fact of the Holocaust is being kept alive. Discussion Julian Kulas: General Collins, did the fact that your troops saw the slaughterhouse and you went through it in any way change their feeling or your feeling towards the local civilian population? James Collins: Yes, it did. As a matter of fact, the 104th Division organized most of the males - or a goodly number of the males - left in Nordhausen to come out and dig trenches and carry the dead and bury the dead in these trenches. My unit, when it went through there, saw these Germans, and they had to almost be physically restrained from attacking them; it certainly made them, shall I say, less friendly towards the populace. Of course, this was the 11th of April, and the war was over less than a month after that. But it certainly altered their view of the Germans' because my men felt the Germans could not live in practically the same town with all that was going on without knowing it; and if they knew about it in Nordhausen, other Germans in other parts of the country must have known about it. Therefore, they were pretty hard on them. Julian Kulas: We've heard from General Skibinski, of course, that the camps came as a complete surprise, and you indicated that as well. I would like to ask General Gudz of the Soviet Union: Had you had any prior knowledge of the actual location of these camps and were you prepared to cope with the findings'? Pavel Danilovitch Gudz: About certain concentration camps, we had certain preliminary information. Our intelligence, our operatives, spies, and our military spies produced this sort of information, but in each large concentration camp - as we know now - there were certain branches. Such branches numbered 50 or 70 or 75 in certain camps but we did not know about all of them. But as far as the mass annihilation of people, we also knew something. Julian Kulas: And also were these matters communicated to the general population of the Soviet Union at that time? Pavel Danilovich Gudz: We immediately, as we discovered such terrible phenomena to which we had not been accustomed, broadly discussed this in the press. Much was published. Many photographs were printed and published, and there were also oral instructions, particularly among the attacking troops and later among the population. We not only made photographs, but we also made many films. Today, we have brought several films. At approximately 8:00 p.m., we with great pleasure will present these films to your organization as a gift. Julian Kulas: If ally member of the panel would like to pose any questions, feel free to do so, please. Unidentified Speaker: I'd like to ask the American delegates, at what stage was it actually known that such death camps existed? To this very day. discussion goes on whether anything could have been done militarily about it. Lewis Weinstein: I had access to Top Secret materials. In England, I was even given a security clearance for access to material on target areas and target dates, and yet I never saw anything until on or about April 1, 1945, indicating that there was such a thing as a death camp. If I had access even to newspapers of the world, I might have known it because, later on, I learned of newspaper stories, but whenever the question - and I can only talk of myself personally - was put to me, I said it was incredible. I might tell you that one time, in the situation room, General Eisenhower and General Bedell Smith were there, I pointed out to General Eisenhower that there was a small railroad and that if it were bombed, maybe the death camp wouldn't receive its supply of people or other supplies. He said our orders from, above were that we were never to deviate one bit from victory, that we would destroy the Nazis with our Allies, and until then we could not deviate for any purpose whatsoever. He then put his finger up to his lips and nose and made a gesture, meaning not to talk about that any more. That is when I became very suspicious as to how much was known and was not told. I was not very high-ranking was a lieutenant colonel but I did have access to information. I often went to the G-2, the intelligence files, and we did not know it. You may know that a special commission has been appointed, of which Justice Arthur Goldberg is the chairman for the purpose of determining what the American Jewish community might have done and didn't do within the capacity of knowledge. Unidentified Speaker: Mr. Weinstein, were you personally able to relate to the survivors? Lewis Weinstein: Well, when you see a man talking to you, his mouth swollen and with sores and pus, and he says, in broken Yiddish and German, that yesterday his brother had been shot, and then a medical officer, a captain, comes over and says he has to feed this man some glucose intravenously, and the man dies just as the medic is about to insert the needle, you can't help relating to an incident like that. With many of the people, there wasn't much time, but you could get into conversations with some of them. Their liberation came to them as a shock. They did not expect it to happen, that is, those to whom I spoke I did not speak to everybody obviously. It was a combination of both terror and joy that is indescribable. Julian Kulas: Professor Crawford, I know you have done an extensive oral history, taking statements from our military personnel and also some of the survivors. What was the feeling of the survivors towards their liberators in general? Fred Crawford: Those who had the physical ability to even move would try to crawl out of whatever so-called barracks they were in just to see these liberators coming in. There were no tears. The tears had been cried out years before. It was the shock of suddenly realizing that they might live another day, because one of the things that was so very hard for many of us to understand was that the Nazi murders did not stop even as the war was being won. Even after Hitler committed suicide, for those next eight days the inmates in concentration camps were still being murdered every day. One of the things that our liberators had told us in a sense, a feeling of real accomplishment was their getting to the camp when they did. It kept some more from being murdered the next day just maybe an hour or five hours. If they had been delayed another short period of time, there would have been other murders in those same camps. Our men understood how important that was. Certainly, someone knew. There is also in this booklet that has been prepared for this conference on page 22 an aerial photograph of Auschwitz. We have them of Dachau. We have them of Buchenwald. So, aerial reconnaissance certainly had adequate information about the location of these concentration camps and about what was going on in them. The break came only a month ago when, finally, the writers who are now revealing what the British intelligence system had done with the German code - ULTRA - are admitting that from about 1942 on they were receiving over the German radio the actual counts of people being moved into concentration camps every day. This has never been revealed before. So, there are two facets to this question: The one, what we knew as soldiers, what the men on the battle line knew; and then secondly, what was known up at a very high level. James Collins: May I add that the very day before Ohrdruf was liberated, 3,000 Jews were killed and were so-called buried in a shallow trench; and that's where most of the stench came from when we arrived there. Julian Kulas: I would like to ask General Gudz, if I may, other than the Jewish populace in Treblinka and Auschwitz, what other national groups did you find in those camps? Pavel Danilovich Gudz: This question, we believe, still has to be clarified since there are various data. According to these data which we have, there were almost all nationalities there who were taken there by the Hitlerites.