Liberation of Ohrdruf

The Ohrdruf camp was a subcamp of the Buchenwald concentration camp, and the first Nazi camp liberated by US troops.

The 4th Armored Division and the 89th Infantry of the Third US Army liberated Ohrdruf on April 4, 1945. After visiting Ohrdruf a week later, General Dwight D. Eisenhower ordered careful documentation of the atrocities perpetrated in the Nazi concentration camps, so that no one in the future could deny that they had committed these atrocities. The discovery of the Ohrdruf camp opened the eyes of many US soldiers to the horrors perpetrated by the Nazis during the Holocaust.