Survivors of Mauthausen cheer American soldiers as they pass through the main gate of the camp. The photograph was taken several days after the liberation of the camp. Mauthausen, Austria, May 9, 1945.
Members of a resistance organization in the camp meet with American soldiers in front of the entrance to the Buchenwald concentration camp. Buchenwald, Germany, after April 11, 1945.
In early April 1945, as US forces approached the camp, the Germans began to evacuate some 28,000 prisoners from the main camp and an additional several thousand prisoners from the subcamps of Buchenwald. About a third of these prisoners died from exhaustion en route or shortly after arrival, or were shot by the SS. The underground resistance organization in Buchenwald, whose members held key administrative posts in the camp, saved many lives. They obstructed Nazi orders and delayed the evacuation.
In 1939, Gerda's brother was deported for forced labor. In June 1942, Gerda's family was deported from the Bielsko ghetto. While her parents were transported to Auschwitz, Gerda was sent to the Gross-Rosen camp system, where for the remainder of the war she performed forced labor in textile factories. Gerda was liberated after a death march, wearing the ski boots her father insisted would help her to survive. She married her American liberator.
Bella was the oldest of four children born to a Jewish family in Sosnowiec. Her father owned a knitting factory. After the Germans invaded Poland in 1939, they took over the factory. The family's furniture was given to a German woman. Bella was forced to work in a factory in the Sosnowiec ghetto in 1941. At the end of 1942 the family was deported to the Bedzin ghetto. Bella was deported to the Graeben subcamp of Gross-Rosen in 1943 and to Bergen-Belsen in 1944. She was liberated in April 1945.
Thomas's family moved to Zilina in 1938. As the Slovak Hlinka Guard increased its harassment of Jews, the family decided to leave. Thomas and his family ultimately entered Poland, but the German invasion in September 1939 prevented them from leaving for Great Britain. The family ended up in Kielce, where a ghetto was established in April 1941. When the Kielce ghetto was liquidated in August 1942, Thomas and his family avoided the deportations to Treblinka that occurred in the same month. They were sent instead to a forced-labor camp. He and his parents were deported to Auschwitz in August 1944. As Soviet troops advanced in January 1945, Thomas and other prisoners were forced on a death march from Auschwitz. He was sent to the Sachsenhausen camp in Germany. After the Soviet liberation of Sachsenhausen in April 1945, Thomas was placed in an orphanage. Relatives located him, and he was reunited with his mother in Goettingen. He moved to the United States in 1951.
The younger of two children, Irene was born to Jewish parents in the industrial city of Mannheim. Her father, a wounded German army veteran of World War I, was an interior decorator. Her mother was a housewife. When the Nazis came to power in 1933, Irene's older brother, Berthold, was attending public school. Three-year-old Irene was at home with her mother.
1933-39: Celebrating Jewish holidays with all of Irene's aunts and uncles was really nice. One of her favorite places was the zoo; she especially liked the monkeys. When the Nazis forced Jewish children out of public school, she began attending a Jewish school. Irene was "a daddy's girl," and her father would take her home from school on his bike. After the Nazis burned their school, her older brother left for safety in Britain--she was too young to go with him.
1940-44: In 1940, when Irene was 10, her family was sent to Gurs and then Rivesaltes, terrible camps in southern France. The food was awful. The Jewish Children's Aid Society took Irene away and placed her in a Catholic convent along with 13 other Jewish girls. She became Irene Fanchet and studied under Sister Theresa. One day, the SS came to their convent looking for hidden German-Jewish children. One of the girls, who was fluent in French, did the talking for everyone else. It worked. The Germans left, and they were safe.
Thirteen-year-old Irene was freed by Allied troops in July 1944. After being transferred to several children's homes in France, she immigrated to the United States in 1947.
The younger of two daughters, Marta was raised by Hungarian-speaking Jewish parents in Kosice, a city in Slovakia. Marta attended a Jewish elementary school. Her father ran a small grocery store.
1933-39: After Marta finished elementary school, she began secondary school. The language of instruction was Slovak and Jews faced no discrimination until November 1938 when Hungarian troops marched into southern Slovakia. With Germany's blessing, Kosice became part of Hungary and was renamed Kassa. Their new Hungarian rulers introduced anti-Jewish laws, and as a result Marta's father was forced to give up his store.
1940-44: Marta's family had a difficult time making ends meet. To support them, her father kept his grocery business going in violation of Hungarian law. At the beginning of 1944 he was finally caught and arrested. A month after the Germans occupied Hungary, Marta and her mother were forced to assemble in a nearby brick factory; they were deported to Auschwitz in May 1944 along with most of the Jews of Kosice. When they arrived in Auschwitz, her mother was sent to the gas chambers and Marta was selected for slave labor.
After her transfer to the Muehldorf subcamp of Dachau, Marta was freed in Tutzing by U.S. troops on May 1, 1945, and quickly returned home. She immigrated to the United States in 1968.
Soviet forces liberated the Sachsenhausen concentration camp in April 1945. In the camp, Soviet soldiers found this German edition of the Old and New Testaments on a dead prisoner, a Jehovah's Witness. The bible was sent to the prisoner's surviving family members.
As Allied troops moved across Europe in a series of offensives on Germany, they began to encounter and liberate concentration camp prisoners, many of whom had survived death marches into the interior of Germany. Soviet forces were the first to approach a major Nazi camp, reaching the Majdanek camp near Lublin, Poland, in July 1944. Surprised by the rapid Soviet advance, the Germans attempted to demolish the camp in an effort to hide the evidence of mass murder. The Soviets also liberated major Nazi camps at Auschwitz, Stutthof, Sachsenhausen, and Ravensbrück. US forces liberated the Buchenwald, Dora-Mittelbau, Flossenbürg, Dachau, and Mauthausen camps. British forces liberated camps in northern Germany, including Neuengamme and Bergen-Belsen.
Soviet soldiers were the first to liberate concentration camp prisoners in the final stages of the war. On July 23, 1944, they entered the Majdanek camp in Poland, and later overran several other killing centers. On January 27, 1945, they entered Auschwitz and there found hundreds of sick and exhausted prisoners. The Germans had been forced to leave these prisoners behind in their hasty retreat from the camp. Also left behind were victims' belongings: 348,820 men's suits, 836,255 women's coats, and tens of thousands of pairs of shoes.
British, Canadian, American, and French troops also freed prisoners from the camps. The Americans were responsible for liberating Buchenwald and Dachau, while British forces entered Bergen-Belsen. Although the Germans had attempted to empty the camps of surviving prisoners and hide all evidence of their crimes, the Allied soldiers came upon thousands of dead bodies "stacked up like cordwood," according to one American soldier. The prisoners who were still alive were living skeletons.
Bill Barrett, an American army journalist, described what he saw at Dachau: "There were about a dozen bodies in the dirty boxcar, men and women alike. They had gone without food so long that their dead wrists were broomsticks tipped with claws. These were the victims of a deliberate starvation diet..."
Allied troops, physicians, and relief workers tried to provide nourishment for the surviving prisoners, but many of them were too weak to digest food and could not be saved. In spite of the liberators' efforts, many camp survivors died. Half of the prisoners discovered alive in Auschwitz died within a few days of being freed.
Survivors had mixed reactions to their newfound freedom. While a few looked forward to being reunited with other family members, some felt guilty for surviving when so many of their relatives and friends had died. Some felt overwhelmed, as one survivor, Viktor Frankl, a psychiatrist, expressed:
"Timidly, we looked around and glanced at each other questioningly. Then we ventured a few steps out of the camp. This time no orders were shouted at us, nor was there any need to duck quickly to avoid a blow or a kick. 'Freedom,' we repeated to ourselves, and yet we could not grasp it."
Key Dates
July 23, 1944 Soviet forces liberate Majdanek camp Soviet forces are the first to approach a major Nazi camp, reaching the Majdanek camp near Lublin, Poland. Surprised by the rapid Soviet advance, the Germans attempt to demolish the camp in an effort to hide the evidence of mass murder. The camp staff sets fire to the large crematorium at Majdanek, but because of the hasty evacuation the gas chambers are left standing. Soviet forces later liberate Auschwitz (January 1945), Gross-Rosen (February 1945), Sachsenhausen (April 1945), Ravensbrueck (April 1945), and Stutthof (May 1945).
April 11, 1945 American forces liberate Buchenwald camp US forces liberate the Buchenwald concentration camp near Weimar, Germany, in April 1945, a few days after the Nazis began evacuating the camp. On the day of liberation, an underground prisoner resistance organization seizes control of Buchenwald to prevent atrocities by the retreating camp guards. American forces liberate more than 20,000 prisoners at Buchenwald. American forces also liberate the main camps of Dora-Mittelbau (April 1945), Flossenbuerg (April 1945), Dachau (April 1945), and Mauthausen (May 1945).
April 15, 1945 British forces liberate Bergen-Belsen camp British forces enter the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, near Celle, Germany. Some 55,000 prisoners, many in critical condition because of a typhus epidemic, are found alive. More than 13,000 people die of malnutrition or disease within three months of liberation.
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