| Original Caption: “A pathetic scene of a young Polish boy whose grandmother was victim of the Nazis, one of twenty-five hundred found dead in the Nordhausen concentration camp by American forces who occupied the town. The boy refused to allow Germans to bury his kin. Grim faced Yanks look on in quiet sympathy. A Polish boy, Michael Kallaur (April 26, 1931 – August 5, 2017), weeps while his father Walter Kallaur (August 22, 1908 – July 14, 1981) prays over the body of the boy’s grandmother, Elizabeth Kallaur (circa 1880 – 1945), who died in the Nordhausen concentration camp. Walter and Michael (note his wounded hands), bury Elizabeth as American soldiers look on. Elizabeth’s head had been severed shortly before liberation. The Kallaur family was sent to Nordhausen as punishment for helping Jews in Staiki near Pinsk, Brest Oblast, Poland (today part of Belarus). The coat seen covering Elizabeth Kallaur was given to Michael by LIFE magazine John Florea (May 28, 1916 – August 25, 2000) the Signal Corps photographer. Walter and Michael would not allow German citizens to touch the body of Elizabeth, and she was the 1st to be buried (at a deeper level) in the 1st burial trench. These survivors would not allow the Germans to touch their dead, even after Colonel Dell B. Hardin (October 4, 1895 – October 5, 1976) ordered the civilian population of the town of Nordhausen to bury the corpses of prisoners found in the Nordhausen concentration camp. The barracks (Kaserne) in which the dead were found was named after a World War I fighter pilot, Oswald Boelcke (May 19, 1891 – October 28, 1916). The dead came from a number of forced labor camps and prison camps that had been established on the barracks grounds during the last year of the war. Boelcke-Kaserne Konzentrationslager (“Concentration Camp”) showed in microcosm the varied hierarchy of the National Socialist camp system: Schutzstaffel (SS) Arbeitslager (“labor camps”) directly adjoined Gestapo (abbreviation for Geheime Staatspolizei – “Secret State Police”), Sonderlager (“special camps”) and forced labor camps for local industry and relocated industries. Altogether, there were at the beginning of 1945 more than 10,000 forced laborers and prisoners of various categories held on the expansive barrack grounds. The gruesome kernel of this National Socialist camp system was the Mittelbau subcamp, a death zone. In a nationally syndicated article by Christopher R. Cunningham (October 12, 1910 – April 28, 1947), United Press War Correspondent, it was reported that “German Civilians Begin Paying For Country’s Sins – Nordhausen, Germany — It was a day of reckoning today for protesting German civilians, who began part payment for their country’s sins.” “The German civilians buried the dead — twenty-seven hundred allied political prisoners who had died after months of starvation and torture while imprisoned in this industrial city.” “It probably was the first time that the American military government had forced the German people to pay personally for their misdeeds.” “They didn’t like it. Some became violently ill, One husky young man collapsed with a heart attack.” “The Germans were compelled to pick up the bodies from the ruins of the concentration camp. They objected strenuously but futilely.” “They carried the bodies up a hill to a communal burial ground. Another group dug long, rows of six-foot trenches and covered the ravaged bodies. This city, the center of Germany’s largest underground manufacturing area, witnessed some of the most cruel acts of sadism ever committed by the Nazis.” “Storm troopers tortured to death batches of foreign slave laborers and prisoners by piercing their mouths with iron hooks and hanging them to a wall.” “When the Nordhausen camp was overrun early this week, American Third Armored Division officers found three thousand living skeletons and twenty-seven hundred unburied bodies. About six hundred had died of starvation during the past two weeks. The others had been killed during two allied ajr attacks. In the group were Russians, Poles, Belgians, Frenchmen and Czechs.” “But today was the payoff. Grim-faced American doughboys silently watched the Germans perform the service under the supervision of Major David W. Paulette of Farmville, Virginia, an Army, veteran of twenty-nine years.” “One Pole and his son spurned a German detail and burled their mother and grandmother. They had died of starvation and the men to were required to walk, along great lines of dead in order to find them. When they were found, the men became hysterical, clutching, the bodies as though they were alive. Paulette ordered a special grave for the two women.” Michael and Walter Kallur immigrated to Canada through Niagara Falls, New York, United States in 1949. Photographer Private 1st Class Gilbert E. Mjoen (January 30, 1925 – February 25, 2008) was assigned to F Company, 2nd Battalion, 414th Infantry, 104th Infantry Division, as a machine gunner. He did not enter the camp itself. He later recalled, “When the young ladies of the camp saw us, they came out and hugged and held on to us so that they would not have to go back to the camp which had been deserted by the German troops.” | |
| Image Filename | wwii0609.jpg |
| Image Size | 906.17 KB |
| Image Dimensions | 2418 x 2147 |
| Photographer | |
| Photographer Title | United States Army Signal Corps |
| Caption Author | Written or Adapted by Jason McDonald |
| Date Photographed | April 14, 1945 |
| Location | Konzentrationslager-Außenlager Boelcke-Kaserne |
| City | Nordhausen |
| State or Province | Thuringia |
| Country | Germany |
| Archive | United States Holocaust Memorial Museum |
| Record Number | 650 |
| Status | Caption ©2026 MFA Productions LLC Please Do Not Duplicate or Distribute Without Permission; Image in the Public Domain |
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