Discovery of the Death Camps

What did the US troops do when they came across their first death camp? I can't imagine the horror on their faces. I heard that they released any of the vengeful captives still alive, they had tied down the Nazi guards that were still around, and let them brutally torture and kill these guards (and rightfully so). Is this true? Or were the guards long gone by then. I hope to God it was true. Did anyone watch the History Channel special on Hitler friday nite? It was very moving.

Strictly speaking, the actual 'death camps' were in Poland and were liberated by the Red Army. The Allied forces in the west captured concentration and labour camps.

My vague recollection of press reports at the time was that, in most cases, the camp guards abandoned the camps before allied forces arrived. Thus, the immediate needs of the inmates were met by having the camps secured, emergency health care given, and the camps cleaned up to the extent that exposed dead bodies were buried by us as well as local German civilians who were drafted for the unpleasant job.

Among the many virtues of the Band of Brothers mini-series is that it shows Easy Company stumbling across a small work-camp of Jews. (I take it to be a work camp because it was too small to have been a concentration camp; perhaps this was merely cinematic necessity.)

I thought it did a very creditable job of depicting the reaction of the Americans, the prisoners (who were of course much fatter than the reality), and the German townspeople forced to clean up the corpses. You could do worse than check it out. (It's on the 5th disk or videotape, but you might as well watch them all, in order.)

all the best

I am just reading the excellent Brave Men, Gentle Heroes, which pairs recollections of WWII with those from Vietnam, generally fathers and sons.

One of these men is Al Tarbell of the 504th of the 82nd Airborne Division, who tells the story of coming across Woebbelin concentration camp, north of Ludwigslust (as he describes it). Though BOB deals with the 508th of the 101st, the depictions are very similar.

Tarbell however describes 'his' camp as containing political prisoners, not Jews as stated in the BOB script.

all the best

Dachau, Bergen-Belsen, Buchenwald, Mauthausen, and Mittelbau-Dora were among the camps liberated by the western Allies. As Mr. Clark wrote, these were sites for imprisonment, torture, 'experiments', slave labor exploitation, death by starvation or other neglect, and explicit murder of tens of thousands.

Sobibor, Treblinka, Maidanek, and worst of all, Auschwitz, were all these things, and also gigantic factories of death, where the techniques of industry were applied to the process of murder.

The vast majority of the victims of the Nazi murder machine lived in eastern Europe: Jews, Gypsies, Slavs. The Nazis located their death factories in the east where it was most convenient for them.

My father was with the 82nd and told me also of this camp. I don't recall that he said anything about what kind of prisoners it contained, but I talk to him weekly so I will ask. My father was in the headquarters company G2. Notice that Ludiglust was in the Soviet zone. The 82nd did not stop at the Elbe.

My father says that they asked the mayor to have the town's people bury the dead in the center of town in mass graves. I once suggested they thay had forced the mayor do this. He immediately corrected me. He said that I did not understand the position of the US Army in Germany or the organization of German society at the time. They had only to suggest something to the mayor and it was immediately done.

Before the graves were closed, all the people walked past the graves and looked at the dead. I saw film of this incident as my father described it about 15 years ago as part of a TV series on WWII. I believe the episode was named 'Liberation of the Camps'. I tried for some time to get a copy for my father to see but never succeeded and quit looking. If anyone could give me a source, I would surely appreciate it.

Regards,

The 'death camps' were places where the Jews were killed during hours after the arrival, not real camps. Only the 'service' lived some time. Auschwitz was untypical, consisted of several parts of different usage. Dachau wasn't literally a 'death camp'. A death camp would have been a field of ashes. The death camps were destroied before the liberation. The same the gas chamber in Auschwitz.

Jerzy

I guess it's a matter of semantics. To me those inmates who died at Dachau, Bergen-Belsen, Buchenwald, Mauthausen, and Mittelbau-Dora were just as dead as those who died at Sobibor, Treblinka, Maidanek, and Auschwitz, regardless of whether or not the 'techniques of industry' were applied in the latter camps in the east. I also believe the term 'death camps' is properly used when applied to all of the Nazi concentration camps where people died from execution, mass murder, starvation, abuse, or neglect. The term also applies to the POW and civilian internee camps operated by the Japanese in WWII.

Well, a matter of nomenclature, anyway. In Holocaust studies, the term 'death camps' is generally used to denote the 5 sites established for deliberate mass killing: Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka, Auschwitz, Maidanek. No-one's suggesting that the other camps weren't also places of death.

... : I guess it's a matter of semantics. To me those inmates who died at : Dachau, Bergen-Belsen, Buchenwald, Mauthausen, and Mittelbau-Dora : were just as dead as those who died at Sobibor, Treblinka, Maidanek, : and Auschwitz, regardless of whether or not the 'techniques of industry' : were applied in the latter camps in the east. I also believe the term 'death : camps' is properly used when applied to all of the Nazi concentration : camps where people died from execution, mass murder, starvation, : abuse, or neglect. The term also applies to the POW and civilian : internee camps operated by the Japanese in WWII.

It is semantics; the 'death camps' in the east were established for the purpose of mass executions, while the 'concentration camps' were established to hold prisoners such as political opponents of the Nazi regime, Jews, clergy who refused to knuckle under, etc. Many of these prisoners were executed, many died due to abuse and neglect, but the purpose of the camps was not their extermination. The semantics becomes significant because Holocaust deniers thrive on the differences. There were no gas chambers at Dachau or Bergen-Belsen, and if the distinction between 'death camps' and 'concentration camps' is lost, and 'the gas chambers at Dachau' become a topic of discussion, the deniers can prove that there were none, and thereby cast doubt on the existence of gas chambers at all, and therefore on the function of Auschwitz and the true death camps, and therefore on the Holocaust itself.