| Original caption: “United States troops stand amidst corpses after the liberation of Dachau.” United States 7th Army medics examine the bodies of the deportees, who died on the train that was evacuating them from Buchenwald, abandoned at the gates of Dachau Konzentrationslager (“Concentration Camp”). Éric Schwab (1910 – 1977) took about 10 photographs of this train and Lee Miller (April 23, 1907 – July 21, 1977) took more photos that horrified all those who were confronted with its sight. Others came to photograph the “death train.” This train, made up of about 40 wagons, left Buchenwald on April 7 and arrived at Dachau on the afternoon of April 28. The 7th Army Office of Strategic Services (OSS) Section wrote, “The 1st thing that was seen outside of the camp was a train of some 40 railway oars of all types – mostly flat cars, a few box cars and 2 or threr ancient 3rd class railway carriages. In each of the cars horribly thin corpses were lying in all postures, ouch clad in the pajama-1ike uniform of the concentration camps. They lay in their own refuse. Sone corpses lay on the gravel road-bed, exactly where they fell when they were ordered out of the cars. There were 2 or 3 by almost every car door or gate. These were the few who were left alive when this weird train with its ghastly cargo arrived outside the gate to the camp in the afternoon of April 28; for these unfortunates were alive when they were loaded on. They were expected to be dead by the time they reached Dachau, so that their corpses could be done away with in the famous crematory. 1 had always had – in the back of 1’s mind – the reservation “But surely it is impossible for human beings to do this to other people.” Sometime in the early to mid-afternoon on April 29, 1945, United States Army Lieutenant Colonel Donald E. Downard (February 11, 1914 – May 2, 1994), commander of the 2nd Battalion, 222nd Infantry Regiment, 42nd Infantry Division, arrived at the rail line that led into the camp. His unit, a mix of F Company carried by the 692nd Tank Destroyer Battalion, noticed a long, stationary train of some 39 cars spread out along the track. Some were boxcars; others were open gondolas. The Americans could see that something was heaped inside the cars, but initially they did not know what. They stopped and dismounted. As they stopped, Technical Sergeant Olin L. Hawkins (August 18, 1921 – October 20, 1917) was primarily concerned with securing their flanks. The Americans were in the open alongside the railroad tracks. As Hawkins peered anxiously around for places that might conceal enemy soldiers, 1 of his men called out to him, “Jesus Christ, Sarge! Look at this!” Hawkins turned from looking for the enemy and, for the 1st time, saw the contents of the train cars. Emaciated, traumatized, grotesque dead bodies were heaped in every conceivable position. “Their cadaverous arms and legs seem disproportionately long compared to their sunken abdomens, narrowed bony chests, visible ribs, protruding shoulder blades, and withered necks—all signs of starvation,” wrote 1 soldier. Some were clothed in blue-and-white-striped prison uniforms. Others wore shabby coats. Still others, in the recollection of 1 lieutenant, “were naked and all of them skin and bones. Their legs and arms were only a couple inches around and they had no buttocks at all. Many of the bodies had bullet holes in the back of the neck.” Trash, excrement, and abandoned clothes littered the cars and the surrounding area. Shriveled raw potatoes were tucked pitifully under and alongside some of the bodies. The corpses seemed to stare through half-closed eyes at the stunned Americans, most of whom were speechless. There were hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of bodies. Estimates vary from 500 to 2,300. There were men and women, children too. None of the soldiers had any idea who they were, where they came from, what had happened to them, and what they were doing there. But the troops did clearly understand that these were victims of Nazi savagery. A few of the soldiers later found out the full story of their horrible odyssey. This particular train, now known to history as the “death train,” originated at Weimar, near Buchenwald, on April 7. With American forces nearing that camp, the Schutzstaffel (SS) had rounded up 4,500 French, Italian, Russian, Polish, and Austrian prisoners and loaded them aboard 59 train cars for evacuation to Flossenbürg. Some of these prisoners might have come from the group that had been force-marched a few days earlier from Ohrdruf to Buchenwald. They received only a small amount of food — 15 small boiled potatoes, a few ounces of bread, and a bit of sausage — for what their captors expected would be only a short journey. People were packed tightly together, with each person having no more than a few feet of space. The prisoners were guarded by 130 SS non-commissioned officers and enlisted men under the command of SS-Obersturmführer (“Senior Storm Leader” or 1st Lieutenant) Hans Erich Mehrbach (October 10, 1910 – January 14, 1949). Pierre Verheye (born May 28, 1927), a Buchenwald survivor who spent decades researching the story of the death train, wrote: “Some inmates [were] drinking their own urine, others lapping water from rain puddles on the floor of railroad cars—floors which were the resting place of dead bodies, bodily wastes, and dirty clothes crawling with lice. Crowded conditions did of course change these railroad cars into human zones where the law of the jungle reigned at all times and most particularly during the night at which time fights to the death took place…not only over space but also over such personal belongings as blankets and shoes. By the time they reached Dachau on April 27, the majority had died. At most, only about 800 were still alive. The train was down to 39 cars. “I had become a skeleton,” recalled Joseph Knoll, a 20-year-old Hungarian Jew who somehow managed to survive. “I weighed seventy pounds. My mind was clear, but there was scarcely a glimmer of life within me. My hands and feet were frostbitten.” With their last reserves of strength, he and the others tramped from the railroad into the compound, where they were herded into the quarantine barracks. 2 days later, incredulous at the terrible sight of the train and muttering in low voices to one another, the American soldiers patrolled along the cars, studying with morose introspection the mounds of corpses. As if in a daze, Lieutenant Colonel Downard began to walk the length of the train. “It was all I could do to believe it,” he said. About 15 yards [forteen meters] behind Downard, Technician 4th Grade Anthony C. Cardinale (May 29, 1920 – June 11, 2013), a radioman with Regimental Headquarters, was just as stunned as everyone else. He and Staff Sergeant Joseph L. Balaban (January 16, 1923 – September 10, 2009), the regiment’s radio chief, walked the length of the train, shaking their heads at the surreal scene. In Cardinale’s recollection, both men felt “deep disgust and horror at what we saw.” For Cardinale, the sight provoked something of an awakening about the purpose of the war. He kept thinking to himself, “We had to get in here and stop the wholesale slaughter of human beings. We have to be here.” Car by car, Cardinale stopped and peered inside to inspect the gruesome contents. As he gazed at 1 pile of bodies, his eyes detected movement. “I saw this hand weakly waving back and forth. It was poked up between some of the bodies on top of it. It was quite evident that its owner was alive.” Balaban remembers, “Tony spotted the feebly waving hand. He stopped and called out to Colonel Downard who was just ahead of us, “Hey, Colonel! Here’s a live one!” Then the Colonel and the TD officer handed the survivor down to Tony and me. The boy kept asking, ‘Frei.. ? Frei…..?’ Tony and I kept saying to him, ‘We are American soldiers, and you are frei…frei….’” Photos were staged of the rescue, but they were widely published of Downard and another American pulling him out of the train car. Balaban said, “Now, who, exactly placed that survivor in whose jeep, I cannot recall. I do remember that the jeep did get into an accident on the way to the Aid Station.” Downard and his driver drove the rescued boy to the aid station, but were shot at by a Nazi German sniper. Downard woke up in the aid station, with the boy next him. He remembered being shocked that a skeletal condition could produce so much blood from a head wound. The 42nd Infantry Division men lost track of the survivor, but it was Abraham D. Feffer (May 15, 1928 – September 1, 2005). Only 78 pounds (35 kilograms), he recovered and immigrated to the United States, where he studied at Rabbinical School and joined the United States Army, the organization that saved him. The United States Army 45th Infantry Division soldiers were also shocked and sickened when they came upon the death train. They probably reached it sometime shortly after Downard’s group, though they believed they were 1st on the scene, before the 42nd Infantry Division men. For many years, veterans from the 2 divisions engaged in something of a feud over which unit reached Dachau 1st as the supposed true liberators. “Let me be frank, we consider this dispute as childish and ridiculous,” Arthur Haulot (November 15, 1913 – May 24, 2005), a Dachau survivor, once wrote, expressing a nearly universal opinion among the former inmates. In fact, the 42nd and 45th Infantry Divisions converged on the Dachau complex at nearly the same time, albeit in different locations. Elements of the 20th Armored Division were also involved in the operation. When Lieutenant Colonel Felix L. Sparks (August 2, 1917 – September 25, 2007) and his soldiers arrived at the site of the train, they found it difficult to comprehend the terrible sights that greeted them. “The bodies were lying…hanging out the open doors,” said Staff Sergeant John “Jack” R. Hallowell (September 27, 1920 – March 10, 2012), 157th Infantry Regiment. “Some people had been able to get out and then had fallen in the field and died. They were just little skeletons within their prison clothing.” Among the bodies, there were even indications of cannibalism. 1 of the soldiers peered into a boxcar and “actually saw one person’s teeth … embedded into another person’s flesh.” There were bullet holes in some of the boxcars, indicating that the guards had turned their machine guns on them. Sparks could not help but stare sadly at several bodies lying alongside the tracks. These victims had either gotten out of the cars themselves or been dragged out by their tormentors. “Their heads had been crushed in, apparently with a rifle butt and their brains were scattered around on the pavement.” A few other bodies had bullet holes in their heads. They had never witnessed anything that compared with the sight of so many horribly mistreated human beings. Nor, in their ignorance, did they have any conception that something of this nature could even be possible. “This was the culmination of something that I had never been trained for,” a soldier commented. “Nobody had ever said this goes on.” No 1 was more hardened than Sparks, a man who had endured about 500 days of front-line action. Even he was stunned into silence. He recalled, “I couldn’t think of a thing to say and I’m not one who lacks for words. The scene there robbed the human mind of reason. It was such a horrible, terrible, unbelievable scene, that it was even difficult for me to think rationally. I was not prepared for what I saw in Dachau. Nothing could prepare you for that.” Almost like an electric current, a mood of revulsion and anger surged through the men. “Some turned their heads, white-faced and sick,” the 157th’s after action report stated. “Others with horrible fascination looked at the piles of dead.” 1 of the longest serving of these veteran infantrymen turned to a buddy and said, “I’ve been in the Army for thirty-nine months. I’ve been overseas in combat for twenty-three. I’d gladly go through it all again if I knew that things like this would be stopped.” Many felt a palpable sense of guilt that they had not gotten there sooner. | |
| Image Filename | wwii0590.jpg |
| Image Size | 556.38 KB |
| Image Dimensions | 2000 x 2651 |
| Photographer | |
| Photographer Title | |
| Caption Author | Written or Adapted by Jason McDonald |
| Date Photographed | April 30, 1945 |
| Location | Konzentrationslager Dachau |
| City | Dachau |
| 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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