| American soldiers view the bodies of prisoners that lie strewn on the ground in the newly liberated Ohrdruf concentration camp. 1st Lieutenant Earl J. Kelly (May 10, 1914 – August 18, 1979), with binoculars, commanding officer of A Company, 10th Armored Infantry Battalion, 4th Armored Division, is standing on the right. The Ohrdruf camp was created in November 1944 near the town of Gotha, Germany. Initially an independent site under the Schutzstaffel SS-Wirtschafts und Verwaltungshauptamt (SS-WVHA; “Main Economic and Administrative Office”), it eventually became a subcamp of Buchenwald. Ohrdruf supplied forced labor in the form of concentration camp prisoners for railway construction leading to a proposed communications center. Due to the rapid advance of United States forces, the communications center was, however, never completed. In late March 1945, the camp had a prisoner population of over 10,000 prisoners. In early April, the SS evacuated almost all the prisoners on death marches to Buchenwald. The SS guards killed many of the remaining prisoners who were too ill to walk to the railcars. On April 4, 1945, units of the United States Army 602nd Tank Destroyers’ Battalion, the 4th Armored “Breakthrough” Division, and 89th Infantry Division, entered the camp. It was the 1st Nazi camp liberated by United States troops. When American soldiers entered the camp, they discovered the decomposing remains of hundreds of murdered prisoners, some covered with lime and others partially incinerated. They also encountered the camp’s surviving prisoners, starving, emaciated, and in need of medical attention. The SS established the Ohrdruf subcamp in November 1944 near the town of Gotha. At its peak in late March 1945, the camp had a prisoner population around 11,700. The SS had forced laborers construct railway lines and dig large caverns inside a nearby mountain for the construction of a new communications center. This communications center, however, was never completed because of the rapid United States Army advance. Conditions at the work site were harsh, unsafe, and unhealthy. As the Allies approached in early April 1945, the SS moved thousands of prisoners from Ohrdruf on foot and in trucks to the Buchenwald main camp and toward Regensburg. Prisoners who were too ill to walk to the railway cars were killed by SS guards. The ghastly nature of their discovery led General Dwight D. Eisenhower (October 14, 1890 – March 28, 1969), Commander of the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF) in Europe, to visit the camp on April 12, with Generals George S. Patton Junior (November 11, 1885 – December 21, 1945), 3rd Army Commander, and Omar Bradley (February 12, 1893 – April 8, 1981), Commander of 12th United States Army Group. After his visit, Eisenhower cabled General George C. Marshall Junior (December 31, 1880 – October 16, 1959), the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in Washington, describing his trip to Ohrdruf: “…the most interesting—although horrible—sight that I encountered during the trip was a visit to a German internment camp near Gotha. The things I saw beggar description. While I was touring the camp I encountered three men who had been inmates and by one ruse or another had made their escape. I interviewed them through an interpreter. The visual evidence and the verbal testimony of starvation, cruelty and bestiality were so overpowering as to leave me a bit sick. In one room, where they were piled up twenty or thirty naked men, killed by starvation, George Patton would not even enter. He said that he would get sick if he did so. I 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.” Seeing the Nazi crimes committed at Ohrdruf made a powerful impact on Eisenhower, and he wanted the world to know what happened in the concentration camps. On April 19, 1945, he again cabled Marshall with a request to bring members of Congress and journalists to the newly liberated camps so that they could bring the horrible truth about Nazi atrocities to the American public. He wrote: “We continue to uncover German concentration camps for political prisoners in which conditions of indescribable horror prevail. I have visited one of these myself and I assure you that whatever has been printed on them to date has been understatement. If you could see any advantage in asking about a dozen leaders of Congress and a dozen prominent editors to make a short visit to this theater in a couple of C-54’s, I will arrange to have them conducted to one of these places where the evidence of bestiality and cruelty is so overpowering as to leave no doubt in their minds about the normal practices of the Germans in these camps. I am hopeful that some British individuals in similar categories will visit the northern area to witness similar evidence of atrocity.” That same day, Marshall received permission from the Secretary of War, Henry L. Stimson (September 21, 1867 – October 20, 1950), and United States President Harry S. Truman (May 8, 1884 – December 26, 1972) for these delegations to visit the liberated camps. Ohrdruf made a powerful impression on General Patton as well. He described it as “one of the most appalling sights that I have ever seen.” He recounted in his diary that “In a shed…was a pile of about forty completely naked human bodies in the last stages of emaciation. These bodies were lightly sprinkled with lime, not for the purposes of destroying them, but for the purpose of removing the stench.” “When the shed was full — I presume its capacity to be about two hundred, the bodies were taken to a pit a mile from the camp where they were buried. The inmates claimed that three thousand men, who had been either shot in the head or who had died of starvation, had been so buried since the 1st of January.” “When we began to approach with our troops, the Germans thought it expedient to remove the evidence of their crime. Therefore, they had some of the slaves exhume the bodies and place them on a mammoth griddle composed of 60-centimeter railway tracks laid on brick foundations. They poured pitch on the bodies and then built a fire of pinewood and coal under them. They were not very successful in their operations because there was a pile of human bones, skulls, charred torsos on or under the griddle which must have accounted for many hundreds.” Byron “Beano” Heywood Rollins (April 26, 1913 – January 8, 1988) worked for World Wide Photos before World War II and joined the Associated Press for the Normandy landings. In March 1945, he was assigned to the 3rd United States Army as pool photographer. He had photographed the Orhdruf subcamp when it was liberated and followed 3rd Army to Buchenwald. | |
| Image Filename | wwii0610.jpg |
| Image Size | 1,011.90 KB |
| Image Dimensions | 2385 x 1857 |
| Photographer | Byron H. Rollins |
| Photographer Title | World Wide Photos |
| Caption Author | Written or Adapted by Jason McDonald |
| Date Photographed | April 12, 1945 |
| Location | |
| City | Ohrdruf |
| State or Province | Thuringia |
| Country | Germany |
| Archive | United States Holocaust Memorial Museum |
| Record Number | 76891 |
| Status | Caption ©2026 MFA Productions LLC Please Do Not Duplicate or Distribute Without Permission; Image in the Public Domain |
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