| Original caption: “Major S. Scotti, left, of Brooklyn, N.Y., views the bodies of slain prisoners stacked like logs in a woodshed of Nazi concentration camp in Ohrdruf, nine miles south of Gotha, Germany. The officer at right is unidentified.” Colonel Hayden A. Sears (September 19, 1899 – January 6, 1984), Commander of Combat Command A of the 4th Armored Division, and Major John R. Scotti (September 1, 1911 – October 26, 1992) Chief Surgeon of Combat Command A of the 4th Armored Division, inspect a wooden shack filled with victims of the German Nazi Holocaust in the Ohrdruf Konzentrationslager (“Concentration Camp”). Harry Feinberg, 1 of the 4th Armored Division soldiers that were there, looking closely at all the bodies in the compound, found 1 of the few survivors: “I started walking around, and these bodies laying all over, some were clothed, some had just this striped thing. Their heads were all shaven and none are breathing. And I look, and I see one guy, his eyes back, and he’s laying. I don’t know if he was Jewish or what, but he had no face. And I see him just gasping for air, so I looked at him, so suddenly he looks up at me. I don’t know how he opened his eyes, and he says, ‘Amerikaner?’ I says, ‘Ja, Amerikaner.’” “The man acknowledged the information with a labored sigh.” Feinberg recalls looking at the other bodies surrounding him. “Nobody else is breathing, just this one guy. I ran over to the tank, got on the horn, I said, ‘Medics, medics, come out here, I’m in so-and-so area. Get Doc Scotti here.’ He was our battalion surgeon, an Italian guy, he was the greatest. He was the salt of the earth, had a heart as big as a whale. And he came over in his jeep, and I motioned to him.” “I said, ‘Doc, the guy’s still breathing. I see him gasping.’ So Doctor Scotti, he gets on his horn and says, ‘Ambulance, come here, we’re in this sector.’ ” While they were waiting, the doctor examined the prisoner. Feinberg recalls how gentle he was. “Somehow he just touched here, touched here, and he listened. Didn’t take his stethoscope out, he just touched. He says, ‘Get the litter carrier — it was just two oak poles and Olive Drab canvas stretched between them. “Then Doc Scotti said, ‘Very, very carefully, pick this guy up.’ This guy didn’t have any strength, just enough to say ‘Amerikaner. ‘ So evidently he was one of the guys who knew that we liberated him. But that’s the only one I saw.” After helping rescue the lone survivor, Feinberg and some other men from his unit began to walk through the camp. “All of us took our handkerchiefs out, and we had to cover ourselves. It was impossible to breathe because the odor was terrible. At one point, I even went over to one of the barracks. I opened the doors, and there’s bodies laying over these wood beds, two-decker beds. I had to close the door. Dead, dead. I didn’t go inside; I couldn’t go inside, They were just, all of them the same, heads shaven.” The shock silenced most of the present GIs, while some found their voice: “The Americans going through this camp are very quiet. They have already seen much death, but they stare at this death, which is uglier and harder to look at than the death of war, with impassive faces and big eyes.” Major Scotti of Brooklyn, New York, Combat Command A’s medical officer-in-charge, burst out in a loud voice, not speaking to anyone in particular. He just stood in the middle of the camp and shouted out what he felt and no 1 acted surprised to hear his voice booming out big like that. “I tell you,” he said, and his angry voice was shaking, “all that German medical science is nil. This is how they have progressed in the last four years. They have now found the cure – all for typhus and malnutrition. It’s a bullet through the head.” David Cohen (December 11, 1917 – April 10, 2020) radio operator with Headquarters Company, 46th Ambulance, 4th Armored Division, witnessed Major Scotti shouting these words and described him as being hysterical when he spoke these words. The Lewiston Daily Sun reported on June 5, 1945, that the shack was burned with kerosene. Photographer 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 | wwii0611.jpg |
| Image Size | 367.48 KB |
| Image Dimensions | 1451 x 1770 |
| 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 | Oklahoma Historical Society |
| Record Number | 2012.201.B1349.0773 |
| Status | Caption ©2026 MFA Productions LLC Please Do Not Duplicate or Distribute Without Permission; Image in the Public Domain |
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