Ep 16 Liberators of the Holocaust Part 2 - Dachau Concentration Camp

Adolph Hitler’s “Final Solution” was carried out in 42,400 concentration camps, ghettos, and forced labor camps spread out throughout Europe. An estimated 15 to 20 million people were murdered in these camps including six million Jews. For the young American GIs who liberated them, the horrors of the Nazi concentration camps far outweighed anything they had experienced in war. When Barney Zylka broke into Dachau, its crematoriums were still burning with hands and feet sticking out of them. Zylka wished he could see a Nazi so he could empty his rifle into the Nazi’s belly. Karl Mann recalled how American GIs. Angered by the pathetic condition of Dachau’s prisoners, and the bodies stacked around the camp like firewood, recalled his fellow GIs, lined up dozens of concentration camp guards against a wall and, for a few seconds, mowed them down with a machine gun until the battalion commander stopped them. Standing guard at Dachau, the liberated inmates seemed more like skeletons than men to Jim Dorris. The horrors he saw at Dachau made Dorris think he must be in hell. Dorris prayed, and a concentration camp prisoner soon answered his prayer making Dorris realized that goodness could still be found even at Dachau. Just outside Dachau, Dee Eberhart passed the death train filled with some 4,480 prisoners from Buchenwald, packed 80 men to a car. All but one of the death train’s occupants had perished from exposure, disease, starvation and SS bullets. Local townspeople claimed total ignorance of the camp, but GIs like David Israel didn’t believe them for a minute, as during the day many of Dachau’s prisoners were marched around town and forced to work in local industries while Dachau’s cruel prison guards boasted about their work at night in local bars. In the first few weeks following the camp’s liberation, Edward S. Weiss recalled how deaths at the rate of 20-30 men per day still occurred, the prisoners so weakened by disease and malnutrition. These stories and more in this 16th episode of Always Remember World War II Through Veterans Eyes.

Dachau Concentration Camp

Medical experiments were conducted on prisoners

Prisoners were brutalized by SS guards and starved

As GIs approached Dachau, they passed the Death Train from Buchenwald

Bodies were stacked like cordwood throughout Dachau

The ovens in the crematorium were still burning

Angered by the brutality of the SS, American GIs lined them up along the fence and began mowing them down with a machine gun before a ranking officer stopped them

Like at Buchenwald, German civilians were brought to the camp so they could bare witness to the cruelty

Bernard "Barney" Zylka was wishing he could see a Nazi guard so he could empty his rifle into their belly.

Barney and his wife Josie are pictured with the podcast host, John Ulferts, and his young family

Karl O. Mann recalled a tremendous roar from the prisoners as they were liberated

The terrible odor of burned bodies given off by the crematorium made Jim Dorris feel like he couldn't get his breath. He is pictured with his wife Charlotte.

Dachau taught Dee Eberhart that we must always be on guard against the hatred and vilification of others

Richard J. Tisch recalled the 32,000 prisoners liberated at Dachau were suffering so much from disease and malnutrition that another 4,000 died in the weeks following the camp's liberation. Richard is pictured with his wife Roseanne.

David Israel was assigned to a five man intelligence team whose mission was to interrogate the 15,000 SS officers who were imprisoned at Dachau after the war ended. He admitted to having "harbored brutal thoughts" to them knowing that they had tortured and killed so many innocent civilians in the very same camp where the SS were now imprisoned.

Edward S. Weiss stayed on at the camp in the weeks following its liberation. He had the grim job of bringing bodies to the crematorium. He wrote his parents a letter and informed them that there were now 3-4 American hospital units operating in the camp trying to save as many of the liberated prisoners as they could. At first, prisoners were still dying at the rate of 20-30 per day.