Buchenwald "beggars description"

12th April 1945: The full horrors of Nazi depravities are revealed, as Eisenhower and Patton visit one of the first concentration camps to be liberated

The emaciated condition of the inmates liberated at Buchenwald shocked American soldiers. This Hungarian Jew was starved to such an extent that his backbone is visible from the front of his body.

On 12th April General Eisenhower met with his senior US commanders Omar Bradley and George S. Patton, together they would visit some of their divisional commanders, and some of the locations recently overtaken American troops. In the morning they visited a salt mine where hoards of gold, silver and artworks stolen by the Nazis had been discovered. Alongside the conventional treasures were bags of gold teeth that and been taken from the mouths of concentration camp inmates.

In the afternoon, they visited one of the first 'horror' camps uncovered by the advancing armies in the west. The Allies were already aware of the Holocaust from evidence that had been brought to the West by escaped prisoners, and the issue had been given some publicity in the press. Nevertheless, the true scale and horror of what the Nazis had perpetrated had not yet been widely recognised.

Until now, there had been very few pictures. Even the stories of camps uncovered by the Red Army and visited by Western journalists had not been wholly believed. What was described seemed to be just too horrible to be true. Suddenly, the public in the West would be confronted with the stunning reality as the first pictures and the first authenticated stories reached them.

A former inmate points out one of the Nazi guards responsible for particular abuses.

Buchenwald, one of the largest concentration camps on German soil, was liberated on the morning of the 11th. Allied commanders visited the next day.

Eisenhower¹ describes Ohrdruf, a subcamp of the Buchenwald main camp:

.. the most interesting - although horrible - sight that I encountered during the trip was a visit to a German internment camp near Gotha. The things I saw beggar description. While I was touring the camp I encountered three men who had been inmates and by one ruse or another had made their escape. I interviewed them through an interpreter. The visual evidence and the verbal testimony of starvation, cruelty and bestiality were so overpowering as to leave me a bit sick.