Liberation

   The Allied liberation of the concentration camps in late 1944 and 1945 resulted in an incidental and unexpected encounter with the victims of Nazi Germany. Units of both the American and British armies were therefore totally unprepared for what they found: piles of dead bodies, emaciated human beings, inmates near death because of typhus, and the most vile living conditions ever encountered by the Allied soldiers. Generals Dwight Eisenhower, George S. Patton, and Omar Bradley, the three most senior commanders, visited the Ohrdruf camp, and Patton became physically ill from the experience. Eisenhower insisted that the local Germans view the camps where the genocidal actions of the Nazis had been committed. The practice of exposing the local townsfolk to the horrors of the concentration camps was duplicated in almost all of the liberated camps.

   The films and photographs taken by the Allied liberators have become part of the evidence of the Nazi genocide. The following is a list of the camps that were liberated by the Allies.

   • Great Britain: Bergen-Belsen was liberated by the 63rd AntiTank Regiment of the Royal Artillery, accompanied by the British 2nd Army, with Canadian units, on 15 April 1945.

   • Soviet Union: Auschwitz was liberated by the Red Army on 27 January 1945.

   • United States: Ohrdruf was liberated by the U.S. 4th Armored Division on 4 April 1945; Buchenwald by the 9th Infantry Division on 11 April 1945; Nordhausen by the 104th Infantry and 3rd Armored Divisions also on 11 April; Dachau by the 42nd and 45th Infantry Division on 29 April; Woeblin by the 82nd Airborne Division on 2 May; Gunskirchen by the 71st Infantry Division on 4 May; and Mauthausen and Ebensee by the 11th Armored Division on 5 and 6 May 1945.