80: 1st Camp

80 years ago today (April 4, 1945) the US Military liberated their first Concentration Camp: Ohrdruf (south of Gotha, in Thuringia, Germany.)

It was a sub-camp of Buchenwald.

It housed 20,000 Russians, Poles, Hungarians, Jews, French, Czechs, Italians, Belgians, Greeks, Yugoslavians and Germans.

From November 1944 until April 1945 7,000 people were murdered by the Germans here.

The Camp was liberated by the 4th Armored Division, led by Brigadier General Joseph Cutrona, and the 89th Infantry Division.

When the soldiers of the 4th Armored Division entered the camp, they discovered piles of bodies, some covered with lime, and others partially incinerated on pyres.

The ghastly nature of their discovery led General Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in Europe, to visit the camp on April 12th, with Generals George S. Patton and Omar Bradley (pictured.)

 After his visit, Eisenhower cabled General George C. Marshall, the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in Washington saying “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.'”

On April 19, 1945, Eisenhower again cabled Marshall with a request to bring members of Congress and Journalists to the newly liberated Camps so that they could bring the horrible truth about German Nazi atrocities to the American public.

That same day, Marshall received permission from the Secretary of War, Henry Lewis Stimson, and President Harry S. Truman for these delegations to visit the liberated Camps.