Richard Seibel (American Liberator): We had this patrol, and the patrol leader called in by radio and said, “We have come across something and we’re not sure what it is – it’s a big prison of some kind. And there are people running all over. Sick people. Dying people. Starved people.”
Narrator: Beginning in 1933, and during World War II, Nazi Germany and its collaborators imprisoned millions of people throughout Nazi-occupied Europe in camps. As Allied troops moved through Europe in 1944 and 1945, they liberated tens of thousands of surviving prisoners in horrific conditions inside the camps.
Narrator: Soviet soldiers were the first to enter two of the largest camps: Majdanek in July 1944 and Auschwitz in January 1945. Along with the survivors, they found bodies, bones and ashes of human remains. American and British troops encountered more concentration camps in April 1945, including Dachau and Bergen-Belsen.
George Salton (Holocaust Survivor): There were seven or eight American soldiers standing inside the camp. Apparently, they cut the wire and came into the camp. They were bewildered by us, wild and unkempt and dirty and, I'm sure, smelly people, jumping and dancing and trying to embrace them and kiss them. And I did, too. I also joined the crowd and yelled and screamed and somehow knew that day of liberation had come.
Narrator: Many prisoners inside the camps needed immediate medical help. Allied soldiers set up hospitals in tents and evacuated the camps that were riddled with disease. Ten of thousands of prisoners died after liberation, despite receiving care.
Narrator: When American General Dwight D. Eisenhower heard what the Allied troops were finding, he went to see for himself. He also sent American soldiers, journalists and members of Congress to document and collect evidence in the camps. Allied soldiers recovered files detailing the hundreds of thousands of prisoner names and causes of death at the camps. This evidence was later used to help convict Nazi perpetrators in post-war trials.
Richard Seibel (American Liberator): I had seen dead people but never anything like that. It was absolutely and totally unbelievable that people could treat people like that.
