DAYS OF REMEMBRANCE – U.S. ARMY LIBERATION OF OHRDRUF

“The most appalling sight imaginable.” --GEN Patton

Ohrdruf, the first camp encountered by the U.S. Army, was liberated by elements of the 602nd Tank Destroyers’ Battalion, the 4th Armored Division, and the 89th Infantry Division of the Third U.S. Army commanded by General George Patton on 6 April, 1945.

A small sub-camp of the much larger Buchenwald complex, the size of Ohrdruf belied the horrors within, and its discovery made an outsized impact on the American soldiers and commanders who witnessed the atrocities perpetrated there.

Within the walls of that run-down hilltop compound, the liberating units of the Third Army encountered what was described by Patton as “the most appalling sight imaginable.”

When the U.S. Army arrived, Ohrdruf was littered with corpses; the dead were victims of starvation, overwork, and brutal execution at the hands of recently-departed SS guards, who had liquidated the camp’s population rather than allow their victims to be liberated.

Despite this, a dozen prisoners survived, having hidden themselves in camp buildings and among the dead.

Supreme Allied Commander Dwight Eisenhower, General Omar Bradley, General Patton, and other commanders arrived on-site within a week of the camp’s liberation.

The experience deeply affected America’s war-hardened generals, and Eisenhower requested that Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General George C. Marshall have “leaders of Congress and a dozen prominent editors … conducted to one of these places where the evidence of bestiality and cruelty is so overpowering as to leave no doubt … about the normal practices of the Germans”.

In another message to Gen. Marshall, Eisenhower explains that he “made the visit deliberately, in order to be in a position to give first-hand evidence of these things if ever, in the future, there develops a tendency to charge these allegations merely to ‘propaganda.’”

The Army’s continuing mission and commitment to “never forget” began with Eisenhower’s actions after the discovery of Ohrdruf.

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