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Testimony Excerpts :: Edmund M.
An American officer describes the liberation of Mauthausen
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Excerpts copyright © 1996, Yale University Library.
Col. Edmund M. was a First Lieutenant in the 65th Infantry Division
of Patton's Third Army during World War II. He had fought through most
of Germany into Austria when his unit, with the 11th Armored Division,
stopped to wait for Soviet troops coming east from Vienna. Tanks of the
11th Armored Division were probing for German forces.
"Two or three tanks then stumbled upon Mauthausen concentration camp.
...There was no prior knowledge. ...I think it was pure chance that our
American tanks found these. ...Almost immediately more and more tanks
of the 11th Armored Division ...were the first to liberate the camp."
Colonel M. arrived shortly after the tanks.
"The thing that, I think, impressed all of us immediately was the horrible
physical condition of most of the inmates. ...most of them in very, very
bad shape. Some of them actually looked almost like living skeletons.
...I would estimate their average weight might have been probably eighty-five,
ninety pounds....
I walked in then into one of the
barracks, and the first thing, that almost literally startled me, was
the terrific stench of the barracks. It was just unbelievable - the odor
of excretions, etcetera, that were in there, that the inmates could not
help over a period of time. It was just so much so that I first just wanted
to grab my breath and maybe walk out immediately without going any further.
But I took a deep breath, and went indeed further, and looked around,
and... those that were in the, in the bunks in there were in very, very
pitiful shape. The bunks were in a sense unbelievable. The bunks were
roughly about, I'd say about six feet long, probably about three and a
half or four feet wide. And they were triple-tiered, sort of like young
children would be having, except one would be sleeping in them. Here we
had three to four inmates sleeping in each of these bunks just squeezed
together, literally like almost sardines."
Colonel M. was able to communicate with the prisoners through soldiers
in his unit who spoke German and Yiddish. He was shown the quarry where
many of the prisoners were slave laborers. He describes a two hundred
foot drop from a precipice at the bottom of which were jagged stones strewn
with broken and decomposing bodies.
"One hundred eighty-six steps of death that led from the bottom of this
quarry up to the top of this precipice. ...This particular work detail...was
one of the worst tortures. ...Inmates would carry these heavy stones up
the one hundred and eight-six steps of death. ...Weighing only eighty,
eighty-five, ninety pounds, were carrying stones weighing perhaps thirty-five,
forty, forty-five pounds, up these steps...all day long. ...If they fell
or stumbled...or dropped the rocks, very often they were beaten to death
right on these one hundred eighty-six steps...[or] pushed from the precipice
down to the jagged rocks below, to their deaths. ...Happened very often...went
on constantly. The atrocity of the one hundred eight-six steps of death,
which left such a vivid memory in my mind, that I have never, never forgotten
these many years."
The liberators quickly learned from the prisoners the names of the camp
officials and the atrocities they committed. Colonel M. visited the nearby
town in which the civilians denied any knowledge of the camp. He believed
"they just basically lied to us," since he learned inmates frequently
were marched through the town. Colonel M. later arrested many SS and he
participated in the Dachau war crime trials from January to June in 1946.
He expresses his belief that justice was not served by the trials, since
so few of the perpetrators were ever tried and, of those sentenced to
death, few were executed. During this time, Colonel M. never met an SS
soldier or camp official who expressed any remorse for the atrocities
committed.
Col. Edmund M. Holocaust Testimony (HVT-1219). Fortunoff Video
Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, Yale University Library.
The length of the complete testimony is 2 hours. A catalog
record is available for this testimony in Orbis, the Yale University
Library online public access catalog. Please see the Catalog
and research guide section of this site for more information.
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