Liberation of the Camps

"The [American G.I.'s] thought that any stories [about concentration camps] they had read in the paper, or that I had told them out of first-hand experience, were either not true or at least exaggerated. And it did not sink in, what this was all about, until we got into Nordhausen.

 ~ Fred Bohm (an Austrian-born American soldier)

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In July of 1944, when a victorious Soviet Union infantry marched into Majadanek they weren't prepared for what awaited them. Among the 408 men (mostly Soviet POWs and Polish) also remained the carnage of over three years of killing. At Nordhausen, Percy Knauth and his fellow soldiers found 1,000-1,200 dying men and women crammed into a room barely big enough for 450 people. Knauth would always remember the survivors of the camp, "emaciated beyond all imagination or description. Their legs and arms were sticks with huge bulging joints... Their eyes were sunk so deep that they looked blind. If they moved at all, it was with a crawling slowness that made them look like huge, lethargic spiders. Many just lay in their bunks as if dead."

 Over 800,000 pairs of shoes found at Majadanek

On April 29, 1945, Dauchau, the first concentration camp - the "model camp" - the hell where handicapped and Jew had been murdered, became the final German concentration camp to be liberated.

Liberated prisoners at Dachau

It had taken less than a year to liberate the camps of Europe. However, as survivor Eva Kor said [paraphrased] just because I was freed from the Nazis did not mean I was free from the memories or my pain.

Those who had been liberated were given immediate Medical Care and their testimonies were collected for the war tribunal. Upon recovery, most survivors began searching for surviving friends and family members - though few would find any. Finally, survivors were moved to Displaced Persons Camps. In 1947, the Jews were given their own country - Israel - many survivors flocked to the Middle East, where for the first time in over 2,000 years they became a nation. Out of their suffering had been born a new future.

Learn more:

Post World War II

Camp liberation

Hear a Liberator's Testimony

Read Liberator's Testimonies

Watch a Survivor's Story 

Books to check out:

Night

Eyewitness Auschwitz

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