Dachau Liberated

Chilling details from the American Seventh Army report about the liberation of prisoners from Dachau's death camps, with diary entries and eyewitness accounts.

Members of the Rainbow Division, 42nd Infantry discuss what it was like to participate in the liberation of the Dachau concentration camp in April of 1945.

The life-altering experiences of the American soldiers who liberated three Nazi concentration camps. On April 4, 1945, United States Army units from the 89th Infantry Division and the 4th Armored Division seized Ohrdruf, the first of many Nazi concentration camps to be liberated in Germany. In the weeks that followed, as more camps were discovered, thousands of soldiers came face to face with the monstrous reality of Hitler’s Germany. These men discovered the very depths of human-imposed cruelty and depravity: railroad cars stacked with emaciated, lifeless bodies; ovens full of incinerated human remains; warehouses filled with stolen shoes, clothes, luggage, and even eyeglasses; prison yards littered with implements of torture and dead bodies; and—perhaps most disturbing of all—the half-dead survivors of the camps. For the American soldiers of all ranks who witnessed such powerful evidence of Nazi crimes, the experience was life altering. Almost all were haunted for the rest of their lives by what they had seen, horrified that humans from ostensibly civilized societies were capable of such crimes. Military historian John C. McManus sheds new light on this often-overlooked aspect of the Holocaust. Drawing on a rich blend of archival sources and thousands of firsthand accounts—including unit journals, interviews, oral histories, memoirs, diaries, letters, and published recollections—Hell Before Their Very Eyes focuses on the experiences of the soldiers who liberated Ohrdruf, Buchenwald, and Dachau and their determination to bear witness to this horrific history.

This is the official U.S. Army report of the terrible conditions at the Dachau concentration camp in Nazi Germany and of the camp's liberation on April 29, 1945. It was written within days of that liberation and contains valuable photographs, sketches and first-person accounts. It includes an interview with a woman who claimed to have been Rudof Hoess's mistress at the Auschwitz concentration camp. Copies of the original report are hard to obtain. This is the first time it has been published as a book.

Well known historian, Pierre Moulin, published successively "US Samourais en Lorraine", "Chronicle of Bruyeres-in-Vosges" in French, "50th anniversary of the liberation of Vosges", "US Samurais in Bruyeres" in French and English and many others. He was made honorary citizen of Hawaii, San Antonio Texas and Fresno California. On the summary of this historical and pictorial book (295 pictures), you will find the true story of Dachau from 1933 to nowadays. For the first time, the real role played in the liberation of the death camp's prisoners by the Japanese American Unit, the 522nd Field Artillery. The Holocaust with all its horror shows the "Jewish Final Solution". The survivors of the Shoa, the Righteous Among the nations and for the first time published, the story of the diplomats saving Jews in Visas for Life. More than 60 years ago, on April 29th, 1945, Dachau was liberated and the entire world was in shock in front of this unbelievable reality. Today, the young generation doesn't even known the name of Hitler! This book is for them and their parents to keep the story alive. Their world is bristling with traps and we would be responsible if we don't prepare them as best as we could. To inform our children is our duty. We have to remain vigilant and prove again and again those facts happened. This bloody page of "inhumanity" should not be forgotten. Wishing the men took the lesson of the History, the last words of this book, were "Never Again", but. Dachau, Holocaust and U.S. Samurais is a non-fiction telling the story of the Holocaust (the Final Solution of the Jewish question) and especially the history of the first Nazi concentration camp (Dachau) from 1933 to 1945 222 pages in pictures. The role played at the liberation by the Samurais of the 522nd Field Artillery battalion of the US Army composed exclusively by Americans of Japanese Ancestry who came from Concentration camps in the USA. The statistics of the Holocaust but also the story of the Righteous Among the Nations (the non Jewish people who saved Jews during the war) and for the first time printed the story of Visas for life (the Diplomats of who saved thousands of Jews) More than 400 pictures recall the atrocities committed by the Nazis. This story must be told ever and ever to be never forgotten.

A moving, deeply researched account of survivors’ experiences of liberation from Nazi death camps and the long, difficult years that followed When tortured inmates of Hitler’s concentration and extermination camps were liberated in 1944 and 1945, the horror of the atrocities came fully to light. It was easy for others to imagine the joyful relief of freed prisoners, yet for those who had survived the unimaginable, the experience of liberation was a slow, grueling journey back to life. In this unprecedented inquiry into the days, months, and years following the arrival of Allied forces at the Nazi camps, a foremost historian of the Holocaust draws on archival sources and especially on eyewitness testimonies to reveal the complex challenges liberated victims faced and the daunting tasks their liberators undertook to help them reclaim their shattered lives. Historian Dan Stone focuses on the survivors—their feelings of guilt, exhaustion, fear, shame for having survived, and devastating grief for lost family members; their immense medical problems; and their later demands to be released from Displaced Persons camps and resettled in countries of their own choosing. Stone also tracks the efforts of British, American, Canadian, and Russian liberators as they contended with survivors’ immediate needs, then grappled with longer-term issues that shaped the postwar world and ushered in the first chill of the Cold War years ahead.

Marcus Smith was the sole medical officer attached to a small displaced person (DP) team that was sent to the Dachau concentration camp the day after it was liberated by Allied troops and several days before the shocking conditions of the camp were publicized throughout the world. Several years after his experience at Dachau, believing that we must never forget what happened, Smith unearthed his notes and the daily letters he wrote to his wife and used them as source materials for Dachau: The Harrowing of Hell. From the perspective of a young physician, Smith describes his experiences, shedding light on the immense difficulties and complexities of the large-scale tasks the small DP team completed, against great odds, to combat epidemic diseases and starvation and repatriate the former prisoners. Smith also describes some of the people the team tried to help—men, women, and children from all walks of life, of many nationalities and religions. Smith tells his moving story objectively, with simplicity and grace. While this book is the story of man's inhumanity to man, it is more than an account of Nazi persecution. It is about how Smith, whose previous experience had not prepared him for the immense horror of what he encountered at Dachau, quickly became a public health expert; how a small team improvised relief and combated a typhus epidemic; and how the soldiers of different countries had to get along with each other while dealing with the prejudices of some of the displaced people they were trying to help. Dachau contains six drawings by noted European artist Zoran Music, who was arrested by the Gestapo in Venice in 1944 and incarcerated at Dachau. The drawings were given to Smith when he left Dachau.