Multimedia Mania/abacus-multimedia-mania.iso/dp/0113/01137.txt

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$Title{Liberation of the Nazi Concentration Camps 1945, The
Chapter V: The Military - Part II}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Various}
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$Subject{general
camps
war
soviet
camp
eisenhower
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saw
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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.