Victims of Death
Eisenhower had posters put up all over Germany
containing grisly scenes of work camp conditions with captions saying,
“You Are Guilty Of THIS!” and “German Culture 1945!” The concept of
German culture itself as “enemy” was a carry-over from World War One
anti-German propaganda.
The
women of defeated Germany, while already suffering enormously physically
and mentally, were now subjected to an intense psychological propaganda
campaign and forced to view traumatic staged exhibits of German “war
crimes” as part of the “re-education” policy put in place by the Allies.
Women, although not enemy soldiers, were subjected to degradation,
humiliation and abuse by both Soviet and Allied occupiers, especially in
German areas slated to be turned over to the communists.
During
“re-education,” the foreign dead found in work camps at the end of the
war were used as “learning tools” and German civilians (usually over 10
years old) were not only forced to view the dead in camps but in many
cases, to bury remaining dead, even when the deaths were a result of
Allied bombings or disease, sometimes at a risk to their own lives. In
some cases, they were actually forced to dig up the already buried dead
and rebury the corpses to “prove a point” or “teach them a lesson,” and
this grisly practice took place even in typhus contaminated locations.
Intentionally exposing civilians to disease is an international war
crime.
The soldiers supervising such operations knew of the hazards and appropriately protected themselves with masks and gloves.
April
4, 1945: Ohrdruf camp was “liberated” by US troops. On April 12th,
1945, after the citizens of Ohrdruf were forced to see the dead bodies
in a macabre ceremony, the town’s Mayor and his wife returned home and
purportedly killed themselves.
April 14, 1945: German civilians from Nordhausen dig mass graves for the dead prisoners from the Nordhausen work camp.
April 21, 1945: Civilians in Gardelegen are forced by the US Army 102nd Division to bury dead camp victims (see story).
April 22, 1945: U.S. troops of the 26th Infantry Division Third U.S.
Army ordered local German civilians in Schwarzenfeld to exhume bodies of
dead from a nearby work camp and provide coffins and a “civilized
burial” for the victims.
April 29, 1945: Civilians of Neuenberg forced to dig up and rebury dead labor camps prisoners.
April 30, 1945: US soldiers of the U.S. 7th Army forced little boys
“believed to be Hitler Youth” to examine boxcars at Dachau containing
the dead bodies of prisoners.
May 8, 1945: Under orders of the U.S. 8th Infantry, German civilians
from Schwerin attend funeral services for 80 dead prisoners from the
Wöbbelin work camp. The townspeople were ordered to bury the prisoners’
corpses in the town square.
May, 1945: On orders from the U.S. Army, Austrian citizens remove
corpses from the “Russian camp” section of Mauthausen for burial in a
mass grave.
May, 1945: Austrian civilians are forced to dig mass graves for corpses found in Gusen.
May, 1945: German women at Belsen forced to bury dead unprotected
May 7, 1945, the 82nd Airborne Division conducted funeral services for
200 inmates in the town of Ludwigslust. German civilians from the small
town are forced to file past the 200 some corpses they would have to
bury at gunpoint on the palace grounds of the Archduke of Mecklenburg.
Also attending the ceremony were captured German soldiers, and several
hundred members of the airborne division. The U.S. Army chaplain at the
service delivered a eulogy stating that:
“The
crimes here committed in the name of the German people and by their
acquiescence were minor compared to those to be found in concentration
camps elsewhere in Germany. Here, there were no gas chambers, no
crematoria; these men of Holland, Russia, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and
France were simply allowed to starve to death. Within four miles of your
comfortable homes, 4,000 men were forced to live like animals, deprived
even of the food you would give to your dogs. In three weeks, 1,000 of
these men were starved to death; 800 of them were buried in pits in the
nearby woods.
These 200 who lie before
us in these graves were found piled four and five high in one building
and lying with the sick and dying in other buildings.”
May 13, 1945:
Burial of the bodies began at Dachau, over two weeks after the camp was
“liberated,” and by then some of the bodies were so rotten they were
literally falling apart. It should be noted that the inmates at Dachau
continued to die of typhus for weeks after the camp was “liberated.” The
bodies had been left out in the open to photograph and to show US GIs.
When there was no more use for the corpses, the Americans forced women
of Dachau to disinfect the boxcars of the death train and the local
farmers to haul the corpses to Leitenberg hill near the camp where they
were buried in mass graves.
The US Army
demanded that the farmers “dress up” and parade their wagons through
the town of Dachau to humiliate them. After Dachau was liberated, the
camp was turned into a prison for German soldiers and then used to house
eastern German refugees who were driven from their homes.
May 17-19,
1945: In Namering, 800 work camp prisoners died during evacuation and
were buried in a mass grave by German soldiers. American soldiers forced
the people in the town to dig up the three week old corpses and bury
them in individual graves after they laid in the open for five more
days.
Events such as the supposed “Massacre at Gardelegen” were exploited to punish German civilians:
In 1945, as Allied troops penetrated Germany, prisoners from work camps
in outlying areas were evacuated and sent to the interior of the Reich,
at times by foot since the rail lines were destroyed by bombing. By this
point, many were malnourished and weak from typhus. Some 4,000
prisoners from distant camps arrived in the Gardelegen area and
according to witnesses, over a thousand of them soon died and their
bodies were burned in a large barn. However, one man supposedly told the
US Army he “witnessed them being burned alive.” The U.S. Army Signal
Corps liked his version and photographers arrived to “document the
crime.” By April 19, 1945, the story of the “Gardelegen Massacre”
dutifully and sensationally appeared in the New York Times and the
Washington Post.
On April 21, 1945, the
local US Army commander of the 102nd Division ordered between 200 and
300 civilians from the nearby town of Gardelegen, mostly old or very
young men, to exhumed 1,016 dead bodies and bury them each in an
individual grave. On April 25, the US Army carried out a dramatic and
photographed ceremony to “honor the dead” and they erected a memorial
tablet demanding that the townspeople of Gardelegen forever keep the
graves green “as the memory of these unfortunates will be kept in the
hearts of freedom-loving men everywhere.” On that day, Colonel George
Lynch addressed German civilians at Gardelegen (who had nothing at all
to do with the deaths) with the following statement:
“The German people have been told that
stories of German atrocites were Allied propaganda. Here, you can see
for yourself. Some will say that the Nazis were responsible for this
crime. Others will point to the Gestapo. The responsibility rests with
neither – it is the responsibility of the German people.... Your
so-called Master Race has demonstrated that it is master only of crime,
cruelty and sadism, you have lost the respect of the civilized world.”
The
process was especially cruel for female German military personnel who,
at the insistence of the Allies, were labelled “disarmed enemy forces”
(DEF) rather that “prisoners of war” and as such were not afforded
protection from the Hague Land Warfare Convention which mandated humane
treatment of prisoners. Many such women were merely clerical workers and
office personnel, yet this slip in semantics offered their captors the
freedom to degrade and abuse them at will.
On
April 15, 1945, the Belsen prison camp was occupied by British troops
who found thousands of decaying corpses scattered about the grounds. In
the final, chaotic months of the war, trains had brought to Belsen
thousands of new inmates from other camps in the east which had
experienced catastrophic conditions during the final months of the war
when food and medical transports were being destroyed on the roads and
railways by Allied bombers. This made the conditions at Belsen even
worse, and the ensuing shortage of food, water and medicines together
with overcrowding and an uncontrollable outbreak of typhus had caused
the deaths of thousands of inmates.
A
few weeks after the British takeover, another 13,000 died, some 2,000 of
them after eating the rich food given to them by the British. On May 2,
some 95 medical students from London’s teaching hospitals were flown to
Belsen to help treat the sick prisoners. It was acknowledged that there
was no deliberate intention by the Germans to starve the prisoners to
death at Belsen. There were no gas chambers and the “crematorium”
consisted of only one furnace in which to dispose of the dead.
All the same, the British executed the
camp’s commandant and his chief physician at the ‘Belsen War Crimes
Trial’ in spite of valiant efforts they had made to remedy the horrible
situation. They had quarantined the camp and done everything in their
power to prevent the catastrophe, even begging the surrounding
population to donate vegetables and food. Of a total of 86 staff members
captured at Belsen, 28 were women, most in clerical positions. By June
17, at least twenty had died, most from digging graves to bury the dead
inmates which the British forced them to do. By the end of the month the
whole camp had to be burned down.
Wire service photos of how the “civilized world” treated innocent civilians in post-war Germany
1.
Top: Female civilians being forced, without protective gloves or masks,
to view dead bodies under the watchful, paternal eyes of male Allied
soldiers, a process which amounted to a public spanking. Bottom: US Dept
of Defense photo of Civilians in Nordhausen forced to rebury the camp
dead without the masks, glove or protective gear which the GIs present
are wearing (Nordhausen was destroyed in one 15 minute bombing attack
that killed 20% of its civilian population and then occupied by the US
just long enough to “reeducated” the citizens before handing it over to
the communists and slavery).
2. Civilians forced to bury dead in Gardelegen, Ohrdruf and Gusen.
3.
Civilians being forced to bury or handle the dead at Dachau,
Mauthausen, Namering and children in Dachau forced to view corpses.
4. Civilians forced to watch staged “atrocity” exhibits in Weimar.
5. More civilians forced to watch staged “atrocity” exhibits in Weimar.
6. Women being forced to view another exhibit.
7.
German civilians in Schwarzenfeld carry a casket containing a body past
rows of other victims awaiting burial; forced to dig graves for the
victims under U.S. Army supervision; 500 German civilians forced to
attend burial services for the victims. (U.S. Signal Corps Photos).
8. Women at Belsen forced to dig graves and bury dead (story above).
9.
(2 photos) Civilians of Neunburg forced to exhume and bury bodies from
nearby work camp by U.S. Third Army; U.S. Third Army conducting a forced
civilian burial service for the dead of war.
10. Civilians of Namering re-bury 800 three-week-old corpses after they had laid in the open for 5 more days.
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