| Original caption: “Russian and Polish prisoners shot by the Germans litter the ground of a camp located at Ohrdruf, Germany, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Allied Commander, and a party of high ranking officers including General Omar N. Bradley, Commanding General Twelfth Army Group and Lieutenant General George S. Patton, Commanding General Third United States Army, inspect this evidence of Nazi methods of treating prisoners.” United States Army General Dwight D. Eisenhower (October 14, 1890 – March 28, 1969), Supreme Commander Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF), and other high ranking United States Army officers including General Omar N. Bradley (February 12, 1893 – April 8, 1981), Commanding General 12th Army Group and Lieutenant General George S. Patton (November 11, 1885 – December 21, 1945), Commanding General 3rd United States Army, view the bodies of prisoners who were killed during the evacuation of Ohrdruf Konzentrationslager (KZ; “Concentration Camp”), while on a tour of the newly liberated. Trailing General Eisenhower is Ignaz Feldmann (January 23, 1901 – July 12, 1964), wearing a dark coat. He was a survivor of Westerbork, Terezin, Auschwitz, and Ohrdruf camps. He was also a player on the famed Hakoah Vienna soccer teams of the 1920s and 1930s. Jules B. Grad (February 26, 1915 – October 24, 1989), pool correspondent for the Stars and Stripes, is between Eisenhower and Feldman. After 2 hours some of his aides tried to get him to leave. Ike replied: “Don’t bother me. I have to get this. His party saw instruments of terror and the inmates told them that at least 3,000 people had died since January.24 After seeing Ohrdruf, Ike wrote his wife Mamie, that “I never dreamed that such cruelty, bestiality and savagery could really exist in this world!” Eisenhower, Bradley, and Patton’s reactions to the camp ran the gambit from shock to incomprehension. Bradley was overcome by the smell. Patton vomited because of what he saw. Eisenhower’s expression grew increasingly grimmer the longer he was at the camp. United States Navy Captain Harry C. Butcher (November 1, 1901 – April 20, 1985), Aide to General Eisenhower, noted that he felt “overpowered” by the stories he heard from the prisoners at Ohrdruf, but unlike Patton, Butcher noted in his diary, the Supreme Allied Commander did not “upchuck.” As 1 of Patton’s aides remembered it, Eisenhower was left in a state of contemplation after visiting the camp. “The evidence of inhuman treatment, starvation, beating, and killing of these prisoners…by the Germans was beyond the American mind to comprehend,” Eisenhower said. Ohrdruf’s prisoner population peaked at 11,700 people. As of March 25, 1945, there were 9,943 inmates remaining in the camp; 6,000 of them were Jews; the rest were non-Jewish Russian, Polish, French, Belgian, Romanian, Hungarian, and German prisoners. They labored arduously on the communications center, digging tunnels and laying railcar tracks, from 4 in the morning until 35 in the evening. Ohrdruf was liberated almost simultaneously by elements of the United States Army 89th Infantry Division and the 4th Armored Division on April 4, 1945. Ohrdruf reeked of death, from decomposing bodies, from the giant pyre where some of the dead had been burned, and from human excrement. Trenches were filled with partially burned corpses and human ash, dusted with lime, from which partially visible, emaciated, limbs protruded. There were also stacks of bodies that were waiting to be burned. The Americans found corpses in the camp’s buildings and scattered on the ground, including around 30 bodies of those killed that very day. United States Army Sergeant David Cohen (December 11, 1917 – April 10, 2020), with the 4th Armored Division, remembered that some of the dead were still warm when he arrived at the camp and the ground was stained red with blood. The Americans liberated over 3,000 prisoners who still clung to life. The prisoners mumbled Polski (“we are Poles”) to the Americans and asked for kartoffel zoop (“potato soup”). Lieutenant Colonel James Van Wagenen (December 23, 1903 – August 26, 1977), the military government and civil affairs officer of the 4th Armored Division, went into the town of Ohrdruf and found the Bürgermeister (“Mayor”), a Nazi party member named Albert Schneider (???? – April 4, 1945) and forced him and his wife to tour the camp. He and his wife went home and committed suicide by slashing their wrists. On April 15, Eisenhower wrote his famed note to General [George C.] Marshall [(December 31, 1880 – October 16, 1959)]: “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 verbal testimony of starvation, cruelty and bestiality were so overpowering as to leave me a bit sick. In one room, where they [there] were piled up twenty or thirty naked men, killed by starvation, George Patton would not even enter. He said 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.’” wrote on Sunday April 22, 1945, “Our troops continue to find German concentration camps for political prisoners. Conditions of indescribable horror are reported. It is probably true that the Nazis collected the liberal, or at least the non-Nazi, brains of Europe and methodically squeezed the life out of them by hard labor and inhuman treatment. General Ike has cabled General Marshall suggesting that about a dozen leaders of Congress and a dozen prominent editors and publishers might profit if they could see some of these camps. He has also suggested to the [United Kingdom] Prime Minister [Sir Winston S. Churchill (November 30, 1874 – January 24, 1965)] that British Ministers of Parliament and [newspaper] editors would be welcome. | |
| Image Filename | wwii0600.jpg |
| Image Size | 859.41 KB |
| Image Dimensions | 2317 x 1824 |
| Photographer | |
| Photographer Title | |
| Caption Author | Written or Adapted by Jason McDonald |
| Date Photographed | April 12, 1945 |
| Location | |
| City | Ohrdruf |
| State or Province | Thuringia |
| Country | Germany |
| Archive | National Archives and Records Administration |
| Record Number | 111-SC-203476 |
| Status | Caption ©2026 MFA Productions LLC Please Do Not Duplicate or Distribute Without Permission; Image in the Public Domain |
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