Liberation of the Camps

 

   The Soviets liberated Auschwitz, the largest killing center and concentration camp, in January 1945. The Nazis had forced the majority of Auschwitz prisoners to march westward in "death marches". Soviet soldiers found several thousand emaciated prisoners alive when they entered the camp. There was a lot of evidence of mass murder in Auschwitz. They discovered, for example, hundreds of thousands of men's suits, more than 800,000 women's outfits, and more than 14,000 pounds of human hair.

A pile of clothes from the concentration camps

   In the following months, the Soviets liberated additional camps in the Baltic states and in Poland. Shortly before Germany's surrender, Soviet forces liberated the Stutthof, Sachsenhausen, and Ravensbrueck concentration camps.

   US forces liberated the Buchenwald concentration camp near Weimar, Germany, on April 11, 1945, a few days after the Nazis began evacuating the camp. American forces liberated more than 20,000 prisoners at Buchenwald. They also liberated Dora-Mittelbau, Flossenbürg,Dachau, and Mauthausen.

American military officials view corpses in the Buchenwald concentration camp. This photograph was taken after the liberation of the camp. Germany, April 18, 1945.

British forces liberated concentration camps in northern Germany, including Neuengamme and Bergen-Belsen. They entered the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, near Celle, in mid-April 1945. 60,000 prisoners were found alive. More than 10,000 of them died from the effects of malnutrition or disease within a few weeks of liberation.

 



Two men deprived of food

   Liberators confronted unspeakable conditions in the Nazi camps, where piles of corpses lay unburied. Only after the liberation of these camps was the full scope of Nazi horrors exposed to the world. The small percentage of inmates who survived resembled skeletons because of the demands of forced labor and the lack of food, compounded by months and years of maltreatment. Many were so weak that they could hardly move. Disease remained a danger, and many of the camps had to be burned down to prevent the spread of epidemics. Survivors of the camps faced a long and difficult road to recovery.

Prisoners inside the camp

dachau prisoners (from the sub-camp called Allach) cheer the liberating US Army.

 

 

Liberated prisoners demonstrate the overcrowded conditions at the Buchenwald concentration camp, Germany, April 23, 1945.

 

 A mass grave soon after camp liberation. Bergen-Belsen, Germany, May 1945.

 

 

Piles of corpses, soon after the liberation of the mauthausen camp. Austria, after May 5, 1945.

 

1. What was the date the US liberated  the Buchenwald camp?

2. How do you think the people who came to free the prisoners reacted to what they saw at the camps?