Out of focus and behind the burnt barn of the Gardelegen massacre, civilians dig bodies out of the shallow mass grave for a proper burial under supervision of US soldiers.

August 19, 2012, 1:11am / 36

Our division overran a concentration camp located in the path of our advance. The last town I visited before this location was Augsburg in southern Germany. It has been several days since its capture when I visited it.

The camp is located about 300 yards off a main road. It’s not hidden or out of the way. The shacks resembled the OCS barracks which you saw at Aberdeen — the tar paper ones. But for sleeping quarters the prisoners lived on the dirt floor with nothing but some dirty straw.

But how can I describe the actual inhuman, unbelievable sights: I saw dead men lying inside of these shacks. I saw them lying in the fields and on the ground.

They were naked. How had they died? They were starved and tortured to death. They were skeletons with skin. Their hideous faces appalled me, but I wandered about almost refusing to believe that I was not dreaming. I saw men with their arms broken into all shapes; men with arms and legs cut off; men with their throats slit; men with their heads cut off; men with their legs twisted and misshapen. I personally saw 50 or 60 of these creatures which once were Human beings. There were some shacks which the Nazis had burned and I saw the charred bodies.

When I had seen all my mind and stomach and heart stand, I left. Others of the company who explored the area found long ditches for graves which were littered with dead bodies which had not even been filled with dirt.

First Lieutenant Albert Gaynes, April 30 1945

March 06, 2011, 3:00pm / 83

A Dutch aristocrat who survived the concentration camp in Gardelegen, Germany photographed after his liberation.

March 06, 2011, 11:00am / 28

Camp survivor Georges Cretin St. Claude, a former prisoner at the concentration camp at Gardelegen, photographed April 1945 after liberation.

March 04, 2011, 11:45pm / 51

On April 4th, 1945 transport trains carrying 2000 religious, political and military prisoners were pulled out of Nordhausen, Rottleberode, Wieda and Ilfeld concentration camps and sent to the Northwest. All these camps occupants were slave laborers in airplane parts and V-weapons productions, the knowledge of these laborers possessed would have been detrimental if they fell into Allied hands. The SS, therefore, had to move their prisoners away from the advancing Allied Army.

The trains however were forced to stop on Wednesday, April 11th. Allied bombings had destroyed the railway lines ahead and the trains could travel no further than Letzlingen. The prisoners were unloaded and forced to march toward Gardelegen and when the sick and crippled couldn’t walk, they were shot were they fell. The remaining prisoners that reached Gardelegen found themselves temporarily housed in the stables of the Remonteschool Garrison. Upon learning the American Army was quickly advancing from the west, the SS began to implement the recognized Nazi policy for disposing of their human freight.

On Friday, the 13th, the SS guards, with help of some Luftwaffe troops, marched the prisoners to a masonry barn on a nearby estate where they herded them into the hay storage shed. They ordered them to sit down on gasoline soaked straw that had been scattered on the floor, knee deep. Nazi policy stated that the prisoners were to be killed to prevent any possibility of having them turn on their guards in the event of liberation. By order of the Gardelegen Nazi Party leader, Kreisleiter Thiele, the policy was carried out. Shortly thereafter, an SS corporal set fire to the straw with incendiary bombs while Luftwaffe guards encircled the building and shot down any prisoner that tried to escape. Those remaining prisoners were burned alive. Despite this, seven prisoners successfully escaped. One man, a Pole named Eugene Sczwincz, lay buried under a mass of charred bodies for three days.

“I stumbled, and others coming behind me were mowed down. Some of the Germans firing the machine guns were Luftwaffe troops. I could see their uniforms. I lay under a pile of dead from Friday until Sunday morning without moving, because on Saturday the Germans came in and asked who needed medical attention. When someone moved and asked for help, the Germans shot them. I got out when the Germans left and the Americans arrived.”

Local civilians heard the machine gun fire; they saw the flames and smoke rising from the barn and heard the screams of the dying. The next morning, April 14th, the SS gathered together some civilians to dig trenches behind the building to bury the dead where the SS, SA, Volksstrum and Hitlerjugend successfully buried some 700 bodies before the garrison surrendered. If the American Army had been one day later, all evidence of one of the most overwhelming Nazi crimes yet discovered in Western Europe would have disappeared entirely.

On Monday, April 15th, members of the 405th Regiment F Company of the 102nd Infantry Division were searching the area around the airfield when they came upon a nearby wheat field littered with bodies, clad in prison striped clothing. A little further along, they came upon the large masonry storage shed where the ground was scattered with bullet-riddled bodies. Opening one of the large wooden doors, the men were greeted with a cloud of smoke and the stench of burned flesh and the vision of some 300 charred, smoking bodies inside.

Behind the barn were six trenches, eight feet deep and eight feet wide and varying in length from 15 to 65 feet. Some of the trenches were covered over; others only partially, but they all entombed some 700 burned bodies. Later Allied investigations would disclose 1016 religious, political and military prisoners lost their lives in the building at the hands of the SS. One military prisoner was American, the rest were Russian. Ed Motsko, of the 2nd Battalion 548AAA witnessed the atrocity’s aftermath firsthand.

“I saw these people charred black from the smoke and fire. Most had the Star of David on their clothes. Some seemed very young, fourteen or sixteen years old. There were piles of bodies in front of the doors, still smoldering. The barn floor was dirt and some prisoners tried so hard to dig under the barn doors that they wore down the flesh and bone on their fingers up to the second joint.”

General Frank Keating, Commander of the 102nd Infantry Division, ordered all residents of Gardelegen taken to the barn to view the crime committed by their German Army. He then ordered the townspeople to create a military style cemetery, forcing them to unearth the bodies from their mass graves and dig a separate grave for each victim. A cross or a Star of David was constructed for each grave and a white fence enclosed the site. At the entrance to the cemetery a large sign was erected immortalizing the dead and ordering the residents of Gardelegen to forever maintain the cemetery under penalty of Military Law.

January 02, 2011, 3:10pm / 23