| Original caption: “A young survivor of the Hanover-Ahlem Konzentrationslager (“Concentration Camp”) poses in front of a group speaking to an American soldier.” United States Army 335th Infantry Regiment, 84th Infantry Division, liberate survivors of Ahlem Labor Camp. The photographer, Corporal Vernon Tott (December 22, 1924 – March 1, 2005), later located 10 survivors still alive over 50 years later. Benjamin L. Sieradzki (February 4, 1927 – July 1, 2011) is the former inmate closest to the camera. “There was a road,” recalled Sieradzki. “And we saw soldiers. One of them brought out a baseball.” Sieradzki said. “We started screaming, ‘Come on up here, come on up here,’ and some of them were just bewildered. They didn’t know it was a concentration camp.” At the end of November 1944, an advance commando consisting of around a 100 concentration camp prisoners from the Hannover-Stöcken satellite camp reached Ahlem, where they were forced to set up huts on property belonging to Continental Gummi-Werke AG, a tire manufacturer, and build washrooms and housing for the Schutzstaffel (SS). On November 30, 1944, most of the prisoners from the Stöcken satellite camp were transferred to Ahlem, bringing the total number of prisoners to about 840 men. The prisoners, most of whom were Jewish, were used to construct an underground tunnel to house the operations of the Continental Gummi-Werke rubber factory and the Maschinenfabrik Niedersachsen Hannover, a tank manufacturer. The project bore the cover name “A 12.” This difficult work and the terrible conditions underground led to a high death rate. In January 1945, a transport consisting mostly of Soviet prisoners from Neuengamme main camp reached the Ahlem satellite camp. These prisoners were meant to replace prisoners who had died or become “unable to work.” Preparations for the evacuation of the camp began in Hannover-Ahlem as early as April 5, 1945. A day later, the prisoners who were still able to walk left the concentration camp and set off in the direction of Bergen-Belsen. It is not known how many prisoners were murdered by the SS along the way. Around 200 sick prisoners were left to be liberated by American soldiers in Ahlem on April 10, 1945. In May 2007, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger (May 27, 1923 – November 29, 2023) spoke at New York City’s Lincoln Center at the premier of Angel of Ahlem, a documentary about Vernon Tott. Kissinger, who served with the 84th Infantry Division, described what he saw during the 1945 liberation of the Ahlem concentration camp outside Hanover, Germany. “It was the single most shocking experience I have ever had,” he said. In 1939, when Sieradzki was 12 years old, the Germans invaded Poland, and his father was among the prosperous Jews in town dragged from their homes, beaten and held for days in the basement of a local Catholic church. The family spent the next 5 years on dwindling rations in the Lodz Ghetto. In September 1942, his mother was beaten by Gestapo agents who had come to the ghetto during the night. Afterward, both his parents were loaded into a truck headed for the Chelmno extermination camp. “This scene will be forever indelible in my mind,” he recounted in 2007. Sieradzki and his sister Anna were deported to Auschwitz in August of 1944. There, Sieradzki stayed alert for opportunities to be put on labor teams. He succeeded in getting sent to Stoecken, Germany, to work in the Continental Rubber Factory, but a few months later, all the men working there were sent to the Ahlem concentration camp. In April 1945, when American soldiers liberated the camp, Sieradzki was 18 years old and weighed 80 pounds. After recuperating in a German hospital, he traveled to Sweden, where he lived for 8 years, training as a mechanical engineer. In 1953, he immigrated to the United States and became a citizen in 1957. | |
| Image Filename | wwii0559.jpg |
| Image Size | 554.03 KB |
| Image Dimensions | 3070 x 2079 |
| Photographer | Vernon Tott |
| Photographer Title | United States Army |
| Caption Author | Written or Adapted by Jason McDonald |
| Date Photographed | April 10, 1945 |
| Location | |
| City | Hanover |
| State or Province | Lower Saxony |
| Country | Germany |
| Archive | |
| Record Number | |
| Status | Caption ©2026 MFA Productions LLC Please Do Not Duplicate or Distribute Without Permission; Image in the Public Domain |
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