- Headline
-
Ohrdruf Mayor And Wife Hang Selves After Touring Camp
- Publication Date
- Wednesday, April 11, 1945
- Historical Event
-
Eisenhower Asks Congress and Press to Witness Nazi Horrors
This database includes 1,688 articles about this event - Article Type
- Newspaper
- Page Section and Number
- 5
- Author/Byline
- Alvin Steinkopf (AP)
- Article Text
- Ohrdruf, Germany, April 11.—(AP)—Col. Hayden A. Searl, whose armored forces discovered the scenes of horror at the Ohrdruf concentration camp, thought it would be a good idea for the German citizens of this town to see what SS (Elite Guard) brutality had done in their midst.
The Chestnut Hill, Mass., officer rounded up 40 leading citizens for a tour of the camp, where several hundred bodies of slain foreign workers are still In evidence.
They saw bodles sprawling in the open space between the barracks, piled like timber in one building, and heaped in a tangled mass in a wide pit in still another place where apparently some effort had been made to burn them.
At first the Germans expressed disbelief, insisting "the SS isn't like that." Later they volced disgust, with one doctor saying it's the work of beasts."
The next morning the Nazi mayor of Ohrdruf and his wife were found hanged. The army said it was suicide.
Germans Change Attitude
Ohrdruf, said by foreign workers to have the reputation of being a fanatically Nazi community, got a different slant on their former rulers. Allied military government officials who found it difficult to get Ohrdruf citizens to co-operate said that now there are plenty of volunteers.
News of the camp's discovery has spread down the front, and many hundreds of American soldiers who can get away from their war chores are visiting it. They leave in a grim mood.
Col. Scarl says the army is too busy to clean up the mess and that it may serve a good purpose if as many American soldiers as possible see the unmistakable evidence of Nazi concentration camp management.
One Russian survivor asserted that 4,700 internees were killed or died of maltreatment in the camp, most of them in recent weeks. American officers regarded that figure as high, but estimated that 1,400 to 1,700 was conservative. - History Unfolded Contributor
- Lael F.
- Location of Research
- Newspapers.com (https://www.newspapers.com)
Learn More about this Historical Event: Eisenhower Asks Congress and Press to Witness Nazi Horrors
- Ohrdruf (Encyclopedia Article)
- Liberation of Nazi Camps (Encyclopedia Article)
- 4th Armored Division (Encyclopedia Article)
Bibliography
Abzug, Robert H. GIs Remember: Liberating the Concentration Camps. Washington, DC: National Museum of American Jewish History, 1994.
Abzug, Robert H. Inside the Vicious Heart: Americans and the Liberation of Nazi Concentration Camps. New York: Oxford University Press, 1985.
Bridgman, Jon. End of the Holocaust: The Liberation of the Camps. Portland, OR: Areopagitica Press, 1990.
Chamberlin, Brewster S., and Marcia Feldman, editors. The Liberation of the Nazi Concentration Camps 1945: Eyewitness Accounts of the Liberators. Washington, DC: United States Holocaust Memorial Council, 1987.
Goodell, Stephen, and Kevin Mahoney. 1945: The Year of Liberation. Washington, DC: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 1995.
Goodell, Stephen, and Susan D. Bachrach. Liberation 1945. Washington, DC: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 1995.
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