| United States Army Lieutenant Colonel Edward F. Seiller (August 24, 1897 – January 3, 1990) of Louisville, Kentucky, and his translator, 1st Sergeant Max Beer (July 17, 1909 – February 10, 1971), stand amid a pile of Holocaust victims as he spoke to 250 German civilians who were forced to see the grim conditions at Kaufering Konzentrationslager (“Concentration Camp”) Number 4 in Landsberg, Germany. Seiller was G-5 Chief of Military Government Staff Section, on the General Staff of Major General Roderick R. Allen (January 29, 1894 – February 1, 1970), Commanding Officer of the 12th Armored Division. As the 12th Armored occupied towns in Germany, Seiller would set up a new government, appoint a new Burgermeister (“Mayor”), and post rules at city hall for the inhabitants to observe under General Allen’s direction. Seiller sought to remove Nazi Germans from the local governments. In Landsberg and other municipalities, Nazi officials sought to be quickly relieved of their posts before the Allies arrived, to avoid having to account for their actions during the 3rd Reich regime. So it was difficult at times for Seiller to locate Landsberg’s bureaucracy and determine who knew about Kaufering. The 12th Armored stayed in the victim of Landsberg for 3 days, as Allen straightened out the 12th Division’s lines. The 12th Armored Division reached Kaufering Number 4 on April 27, with the 101st Airborne Division arriving the next day. The 522nd Field Artillery Battalion, which consisted entirely of Japanese Americans, also participated in the liberation, as did the 36th Infantry Division from April 30. The liberators found 500 charred corpses, many of them naked, which they forced local German residents to bury. The remaining structures were “indescribably filthy” because dying prisoners had been left there. American soldiers documented the camps in photographs and newsreels. Seiller described the Americans’ entry into Kaufering Number 4: “I was one of the first officers to enter Kaufering Lager (Camp) Number Four near Landsberg, Germany. We were in the Landsberg area on April 27, 1945. My duties did not allow me to spend much time in either Kaufering or the other camps we (and the Fourth Infantry Division) liberated near Landsberg, Germany. My first assignment was to obtain the camp’s records. Unfortunately, I was unable to locate them.” “When one of our infantry battalions approached Kaufering Lager Number Four, someone at the camp (presumably the Schutzstaffel SS guards) herded the inmates into the barracks, nailed the doors shut, and set the barracks on fire, possibly to prevent them from telling what went on in the camps. One of my sergeants, Julius E. “Ed” Bernstein (August 3, 1922 – January 23, 1999), was assigned to accompany the battalion when it entered the camp. When he arrived at the battalion, it was preparing to attack, and the camp was on fire. A great volume of smoke was observed from the camp. The battalion attacked and took the camp.” United States Army Colonel Julian D. Saks (June 10, 1906 – March 16, 1993), Chemical Warfare Service, 12th Armored Division, later reported: “When Bernstein joined the battalion, the fires were still burning. The American soldiers attacked the camp, and most of the guards fled. When Bernstein entered the camp, the fires were almost out, but some of the bodies were still burning. He had his camera with him, and as he walked knee deep in bodies, he took pictures, about twenty-five or thirty of them. All of those locked in the barracks were dead, either from the fire or the smoke. Twelve inmates survived by hiding under a building behind the latrine. Julius captured a guard, who was hiding in the latrine. As he was walking his prisoner to the truck, which would carry prisoners to the rear for interrogation, one of the twelve inmates who had survived slipped up behind them and struck the guard a violent blow on the head with a two-inch by four-inch (thirty-eight millimeter by eighty-nine millimeter) board, killing him on the spot. Bernstein’s photographs are in the museum at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem. The director told Bernstein that he was happy to get the pictures, but they were so horrible that they would not be put on public display.” In his report, Seiller described the Americans’ approach to Kaufering Number 4: “About 1200 Hours on April 22, 1945, United States Army Lieutenant Colonel Clayton Wells’s (April 23, 1908 – November 5, 1977) task force seized the bridge over the Danube River. A few hours less than in five days, we had gone about fifty miles (eighty kilometers) and were liberating the concentration camps near Landsberg, satellites to Dachau.” Saks later related the 1st discovery of Kaufering Konzentrationslager: “Between 0900 and 0930 Hours, Captain [actually Lieutenant] John Paul Jones (January 27, 1920 – April 18, 2009) stopped by my office. His Company C, 134th Armored Ordinance Battalion, had recovered a disabled vehicle near a concentration camp, and he had come by to report what he had seen. Captain Jones and I had been good friends since his company had installed a flamethrower in each of three tanks in the snow at Dieuze, France. The town had been heavily shelled and bombed. We had a difficult time finding a building in which his men could work without being exposed to the intense cold. Both of us looked for one, and it was finally found.” “Captain Jones described what he had seen when he had accompanied a tank recovery vehicle to get a disabled tank near one of the camps. The camp was horrible, and he suggested that I see it. About 1200 Hours, I had the opportunity to go with three other jeeps. One of the drivers, who had been there before, warned us not to give food to the people, as they would stampede like they were crazy. But we didn’t pay too much attention to him.” “The first camp we came to had only dead people in it. The medics were putting it ‘off limits’ because of the risk of typhus, but allowed us to go inside, warning us not to enter any buildings. When I returned to Division Headquarters, I found that my typhus shot was about to expire, so I took another one. Along the first street we went down, I counted over sixty-five bodies of dead, mostly half-clothed or less. They had probably starved to death as they were terribly emaciated and probably did not weigh over fifty to seventy pounds each. They mostly lay in the ditches and had cracked skins or sores on their bodies, particularly their buttocks. It was quite cold in April 1945, but the smell of death hung in the air. The survivors had left the camp and were wandering about the countryside in striped suits. Many were so thin from starvation that they looked like walking skeletons.” “We looked into the buildings, which were mostly underground, as the roof started about two or three feet above the ground. There was a three- or four-foot shelf on which the inmates slept, but it was not wide enough to be comfortable. The interiors of the buildings were in a state of disarray.” “We walked down several streets and then returned to the gate where the medics were waiting to lock the gates. Near the gate was a hutment [sic] where the Nazis had locked in sixty-five or seventy persons and set it on fire. The bodies were still in the framework of the foundation — all practically naked. We were so shocked at the sights we saw that I do not think any of us spoke a word — and we were used to death. I was so shocked at the sight of the sixty-five or seventy bodies in the burned building that I didn’t see behind me a large pile of naked women, which I was told about later.” “In my mind’s eye I can see the sights we saw as if they were yesterday.” “The people in this camp were ideological dissenters, Jews and Poles. We were told that before the American tanks arrived, a group of prisoners was marched off. But I never heard what happened to them, as we never found their bodies. The people may have escaped their guards, as there were plenty of striped-clad people coming out of the woods.” “We then drove to a camp which housed criminal prisoners. There were many people in striped suits. The criminals evidently were treated more leniently than those differing ideologically or who were Jews or Poles.” “As we drove into the camp, we noted a wagon half-filled with corpses and corpses scattered around the ground. This was the wagon that picked up the corpses of persons who had died since the previous day. Our tanks were about five miles per hour faster than the Nazi German tanks. As the Nazi Germans calculated our speed as that of the German tanks, our tanks usually arrived before they were expected. The horse or mule was missing. We figured our tanks had approached as he was gathering up the bodies. The man had gotten on the horse or mule and fled.” Saks tried to feed the inmates: “There were a lot of weak people shuffling feebly around. One man shuffled over to us and pointed to his mouth, indicating he wanted some food. We kept at least a case of K rations under the tarp on the back of the jeep in case we had to miss a meal or got hungry. In the combat zone, the supply dumps would give almost any item, except watches, binoculars, etc., to anyone who would carry it. The problem was to get them to carry it, like the men would throw their gas masks away. Corporal Dwaine R. Sinkler (1922 – December 25, 2016), my driver, and I moved to get them the food.” “We were suddenly shoved away from the jeep and found ourselves on the outside of a mob of screaming, grabbing people looking for food in the back of the jeep. They picked up my German rifle and ammunition I carried to supplement my forty-five [caliber Colt pistol], then put it back. I grabbed a man on the outside of the group by the arm and pulled him. I could have pulled his arm off before he would let go, so I stopped. A woman got a bottle of wine from the back of the jeep. She had run about twenty feet (six meters) and stood there, holding the bottle and looking at me. I wasn’t about to take it away from her, and I hope her health was not impaired by drinking it on an empty stomach. I elbowed my way under the steering wheel and started the motor. That did not affect the group. So I stood up on the seat, pulled my forty-five automatic from its holster, and with the safety on and with my finger out of the trigger guard, so that if I were knocked over I wouldn’t accidentally shoot someone, I waved the gun in the air. Finally, one of them saw it, pointed to it, and they all dropped back. Sinkler jumped into the Jeep, and I drove several blocks away.” “When we stopped Winkler, and I opened the case of K rations and returned to the camp where we distributed them. As we got to the last of the K rations, Sinkler started the motor, and as we pulled away, I dropped a can into a man’s hand. It rolled to the ground and the man into whose hand I had dropped it. And another man struggled for it. Finally, one of them got it and pulled a few feet from the other, who gave up the struggle.” Saks left Kaufering Konzentrationslager to report: “We returned to headquarters where I ran into Captain Moses Wurm (April 16, 1913 – December 24, 1993), a Jewish boy from New York City, who was Chief of the ‘Order of Battle’ Section of the Division Intelligence Section. He had captured one of the high officials’ camps. Captain Wurm told me he had had great difficulty getting the prisoner back to headquarters alive for Interrogation as the soldiers, who were so incensed at what they had seen, wanted to kill him.” “Captain Wurm also told me about an inmate with whom he had talked. This inmate was the middle generation of three generations of his family in the camp. One day, the guards built a large fire and told him to push his father into it. He refused to do it. But his father told him to go ahead, as at least the son could survive. So he pushed his father into the fire, and the father perished. Some days later, the guards built another fire and told him to push his son into it. He refused. The guards led him away. They were deciding what to do with him. Meanwhile, our tanks arrived, and the father was liberated. Captain Wurm said the man was crazy with hatred and probably would kill Germans until the man himself was killed.” Seiller related his entry into the camp: “The fires were almost out, but some of the buildings and bodies were still smoldering. The SS guards had fled. Because the wood was damp, the fires burned only partially in some buildings and produced heavy smoke. Many of the inmates were burned to death. The smoke was lethal to most of those locked in and not burned. One of the first acts of the American troops was to open the doors of the unburned buildings to see if anyone inside was alive. Twelve inmates escaped a fiery death by hiding under a building behind the latrine. Sergeant Bernstein reported that two medical officers who had performed experiments on the inmates were captured. These medical officers were rushed back to the rear. Later, they were tried by the War Crimes Commission and hanged. Our troops did not expect to find such a situation and were terribly shocked by it.” “At Kaufering Lager Number Four, the wooden bunkhouses or barracks were set in the ground four or five feet. The barracks had two wooden shelves, about five feet wide, on either side of a central aisle. The inmates slept on these shelves without mattresses or blankets. Each building had a wood stove, but there was little or no fuel to use. The inmates’ clothing consisted of vertical-striped pajama-style garments made of a duck-like cloth. They had no underclothing. The German winters were frigid. With inadequate clothing and fuel, virtually no food, the inmates suffered callous treatment.” “When I entered Kaufering Lager Number Four early the next morning, the camp was in a terrible mess. Bodies were lying around everywhere. I secured a detail of trucks and personnel to go into Landsberg and the surrounding countryside to gather up civilians to view the condition of the camp and the bodies.” “The trucks rounded up about two hundred and fifty German civilians. They were lined up facing the bodies of the dead inmates. It was at this time that I spoke with the German civilians. First Sergeant Max Beer spoke excellent German and translated my remarks into German. He translated my words very impressively. I wanted the German civilians to understand the enormity of the criminal and vile acts committed on these people who had been burned, shot, bludgeoned, and starved to death. I wanted them to understand that they must bear a share of the blame because they had allowed Hitler to come to power. Max’s father had been a German soldier during World War I before migrating to the United States. When he saw what Hitler was doing, Max’s father wanted Max to become fluent in German and to know German history. Max graduated from New York University and spoke better German than the average German citizen. His knowledge of the German language and history was of great assistance to me in dealing efficiently with German civilians. He was used frequently to interrogate German prisoners, particularly officers, and was the best and fastest translator of captured German orders and documents in the division.” “In addition to the Kaufering Lager Number Four, which had mostly male inmates, I inspected other camps that were almost as bad. One I remember had women and children. It was a horrible sight to view — many lying dead in the streets. In such cases, contacts were made with Corps and Army Headquarters to send in medical and food detachments to provide for the care of these unfortunates. Headquarters had learned that such camps were being liberated and had begun training detachments to take care of them if they were encountered. Our mission was combat, and we had to leave it to the troops behind us to take care of these camps. When I was discharged, I turned my diaries and journal over to go into the War Department Archives.” “Thinking about my experiences during World War II still depresses me. I still dream about the events and my experiences with the Twelfth Armored Division.” Louis P. Lochner of the Associated Press (February 22, 1887 – January 8, 1975), who was present at the liberation of Kaufering Konzentrationslager Number 4, wrote in a nationally syndicated article on April 30, 1945: “Thousands Slain in Camp Near Jail Which Once Held Hitler — Landsberg, Germany — Nearly four thousand Jews from various parts of Europe were killed at Concentration Camp Number Four, which is located only a few miles from the jail cell where Adolf Hitler wrote his ‘Mein Kampf (‘My Struggle ‘).” “I saw scores of charred bodies, hundreds of virtual skeletons, lying on the ground with unforgettable grimaces of extreme pain. I also saw and smelled the filthy hovels where they were herded until the fleeing SS guards set fire to them, burning several hundred Jews alive.” “Digging Mass Graves” “Some two hundred and fifty Germans, including ministers, priests, farmers, businessmen, and common laborers from the surrounding country, were brought to the camp today on the orders of Colonel Edward F. Seiller of Louisville, Kentucky, head of the Twelfth Armored Division’s military government section.” “German civilians were digging mass graves.” “Colonel Seiller seized a heavy-set, stocky, bullet-headed man whose shaven head was smeared with iodine and stood him amidst the gruesome corpses and said: ‘I now produce for you the man who was commandant of this vile camp. Here’s the man who was chiefly responsible for the tortures you see here with your own eyes, which were inflicted on the unfortunates lying here.’” “The gravediggers angrily cried, ‘Throw the wretch down here, we’ll finish and bury him.’ From among the two hundred and fifty German visitors came shouts of ‘swine, beast, criminal.’ Some spat.” “Concentration camp number was but one of eleven in this immediate area, near Landsberg prison, where Adolf Hitler wrote Mein Kampf in 1923-24. All were said to be an overflow from Dachau, twelve miles (nineteen kilometers) northeast of Munich.” “‘Just Worked There’” “At Camp Number Two, a half mile distant, we saw emaciated fifteen and sixteen-year-old boys. They said they worked superhumanly for five years.” “Practically all of the survivors of this camp of three thousand were mental cases. Most of them were Jews.” “All bore the marks of malnutrition and torture. The camp’s Captain [Johann Baptist Eichelsdörfer (January 20, 1896 – May 29, 1946)] insisted defiantly when I asked him what he had to say about the corpses lying at his feet, ‘I was the mere overseer on the outside. I didn’t know what was going on inside. Whatever happened was the responsibility of [SS-Hauptsturmführer] Doctor [Max] Blancke [(March 23, 1909 – April 27, 1945)] and his two assistants.’ GIs standing around me gave him the Bronx cheer when I translated his statement.” The appalling living conditions under which the prisoners had to live did not allow for the development of a cultural life or for any resistance. Nevertheless, survivors from the Lithuanian ghettos were successful in maintaining a certain continuity in the Kaufering camps: the Jewish elder from the ghetto at Kovno (Kauen), Doctor Elkhanan Elkes (1879 – October 17, 1944), was a camp elder in 1 of the Kaufering camps. He died there. The handwritten illegal newspaper Nitsots (“Spark”), which had circulated in the ghettos, was also continued in Kaufering. The leadership in the Displaced Persons (DP) camp in Landsberg am Lech, which came into being in a former military barracks after May 1945, came from the Lithuanian survivors of Kaufering. In the Dachau Trial, 40 SS members were tried before a United States Army military court. Many were sentenced to death. Among them were 9 members of the SS leadership of the Kaufering camps, including Otto Förschner (November 4, 1902 – May 28, 1946) and Otto Moll (March 4, 1915 – May 28, 1946). In several succeeding trials, members of the SS guards were sentenced to various periods of imprisonment. The German Judicial Authorities held 3 trials against individuals, 2 of whom were prisoner-functionaries and themselves victims of the camps. Investigation by the Central Office of State Justice Administrations (ZdL) in Ludwigsburg in the middle of the 1970s did not result in any trials. In 2001, the liberation of Kaufering Konzentrationslager Number 4 was portrayed in episode 9 of the Home Box Office miniseries Band of Brothers. In that presentation, the camp was liberated by the 101st Airborne Infantry Division. While the depiction of camp conditions was realistic, the actual liberation was affected by elements of the 12th Armored Division. | |
| Image Filename | wwii0602.jpg |
| Image Size | 1.31 MB |
| Image Dimensions | 2046 x 1608 |
| Photographer | Julis E. Bernstein |
| Photographer Title | United States Army Signal Corps |
| Caption Author | Written or Adapted by Jason McDonald |
| Date Photographed | April 27, 1945 |
| Location | Konzentrationslager Kaufering IV |
| City | Landsberg am Lech |
| State or Province | Bavaria |
| 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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