Teaching the Holocaust and other Genocides

Created in collaboration with the Holocaust & Human Rights Center, the NYS Education Department, and the NYS Archives Partnership Trust.

Liberators

Captain J.D. Pletcher

On May 4, 1945, the 71st Infantry Division liberated Gunskirchen, one of the many subcamps of the Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria. An account by Captain J.D. Pletcher details the condition of the victims and the camp, as well as the actions taken by his unit to aid those who were imprisoned:

As we entered the camp, the living skeletons still able to walk crowded around us and, though we wanted to drive farther into the place, the milling, pressing crowd would not let us. It is not an exaggeration to say that almost every inmate was insane with hunger. Just the sight of an American brought cheers, groans and shrieks. People crowded around to touch an American, to touch the jeep, to kiss our arms--perhaps just to make sure that it was true. The people who couldn't walk crawled out toward our jeep. Those who couldn't even crawl propped themselves up on an elbow, and somehow, through all their pain and suffering, revealed through their eyes the gratitude, the joy they felt at the arrival of Americans.

American troops soon organized things. Water was hauled in German tank wagons. All horses and wagons in the vicinity were put on a food hauling detail. We found a German food warehouse three miles from Gunskirchen stocked with dried noodles, potatoes, soups, meats and other food. German civilians took it to Gunskirchen under the supervision of American military government personnel…I felt, the day I saw Gunskirchen Lager, that I finally knew what I was fighting for, what the war was all about.”

The 71st Infantry Division was recognized as a liberating unit by the U.S. Army’s Center of Military History and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 1988. Moreover, Captain Pletcher was one of many American soldiers who helped liberate victims of the Holocaust as World War II came to an end.

Harry J. Herder

Harry J. Herder was a member of the Fifth Ranger Battalion that liberated Buchenwald on April 11th, 1945. Herder’s reflection includes this encounter with an inmate:

He was young, very small, and he spoke no English. Dressed in bits and pieces of everything, ragged at best, and very dirty. Chattered up a storm and I could not understand one word. First, I got him to slow down the talk, then I tried to speak to him, but he could not understand a word I said. We were at a temporary stalemate. We started again from scratch, both of us deciding that names were the proper things with which to start, so we traded names.

As we progressed I reached over into my field jacket to pull things out of the pocket to name. I came across a chocolate bar and taught him the word “candy”. He repeated it, and I corrected him. He repeated it again, and he had the pronunciation close. I tore the wrapper off the chocolate bar and showed him the candy. He was mystified. It meant nothing to him. He had no idea what it was or what he was to do with it. I broke off a corner and put it in my mouth and chewed it. I broke off another corner and handed it to him and he mimicked my actions. His eyes opened wide. It struck me that he had never tasted chocolate. It was tough to imagine, but there it was. He took the rest of the candy bar slowly, piece by piece, chewed it, savored it. It took him a little while but he finished the candy bar, looking at me with wonderment the whole time. While he was eating the bar, I searched around for the old wrapper, found the word “chocolate” on it, pointed to the word, and pronounced the word “chocolate”. He worked on the correct pronunciation. I am sure that was the first candy the little fellow had ever had. He had no idea what candy was until then. We worked out words for those things close around us. He was learning a bit of English, but I was not learning a word of his language–I do not even know what language he spoke. This wasn’t something that happened consciously, it was just something that happened.

I spent the rest of my four-hour tour with him. I pretty well ignored what happened in the rest of the camp. There was nothing much going on down in my corner, so it was easy to ignore. My whole world shrank to the inside of the fourth floor of the tower and the young boy. Toward the end of the tour, I found one of those blocks of compressed cocoa that came in the K-Rations in a pocket of my field jacket, and the two of us constructed a hot cup of cocoa for ourselves. We used the same method I had used the night before to make a cup of coffee. A canteen cup is a rather large cup and the two of us shared it. On the first sip he looked at me with a large smile and said the word “chocolate”. We were starting to communicate. I gave him other things from the K-Ration packages, among them a small can with cheese and bits of bacon, which we opened with the can opener I wore on my dog tag chain. This meant he had to study the dog tags. His curiosity was immense. He ate the cheese mixture (which I ate only when I was very hungry), and sorted out the words “cheese” and “bacon”, and he loved the stuff. It did not even begin to enter my mind that he might have been Jewish and shouldn’t have been eating bacon. I made up my mind to really load up before I came to the tower the next day.

Albert Schwartz

Albert Schwartz, an officer who served with the 104th Infantry recalled:

In April of 1945, as we were advancing through Germany, our division stumbled onto the Dora-Nordhausen Concentration Camp. The camp was pretty much kept secret…

There had been rumors about concentration camps, which we dismissed as exaggerations, we were stunned by what we found-an absolute abomination. When I got there, I just couldn't believe my eyes. I got sick to my stomach because of what I saw and smelled. That traumatic experience is forever imprinted on my memory.
I arrived at the camp in Nordhausen several hours after elements of our Division discovered the indescribably horrible mess.

Our troops were trying to separate the dying from the dead scattered everywhere - Russian POWs, deportees from many European countries, some of whom were Jews. Regrettably, we speeded the death of a few of the starving survivors - we gave them food instead of water by the teaspoon.

Our Division medics were there, and later on, units from the Corps. Our medics did everything they could to make the few survivors more comfort, able, but most of them died… Many of my friends still don't feel as deeply about being Jewish as I have since this experience. It affected me deeply. Since then, I have been very active in Jewish causes.

Kalman Zitwer

Kalman Zitwer, a member of the 11th Armored Division, described how he worked to assist survivors following their rescue:

On the way to Linz, we passed through Mauthausen Concentration Camp. The gates were already open, the SS commanders had fled, people were milling around; they looked haggard, very emaciated. There was a section for women where medical experiments were done on them. We could smell the burning flesh; we could see the piles of bodies. And we could see the rockpile where people from the concentration camp were forced to jump, or were pushed, unclothed, into a pile of rocks covered with time…

I noticed a young fellow limping toward me. He was in bad shape. His right leg was bandaged, I think it had gangrene. He was dressed in the typical striped suit of the concentration camp inmate. However, his face was full. He was a young kid about fourteen. I said to him: 'Bist du a yid?' and he answered 'Yes, I come from Krakow, Poland, and I've been in a concentration camp since I was ten years old.’ I asked him: 'Where are you going? You know you cannot get past this point.' He said 'I am going to Switzerland where I will be free.' But I told him he could not walk even a half mile with that leg.

I had a feeling that I must help this boy (Adam Weinreb) at any cost, so I took him with me back to the house where I was staying. On the ground floor we had set up a surgical and medical unit and for four days we treated Adam; he made a great recovery. Shortly after, I took Adam to my outfit and asked if he could be used as a sort of mascot, or as a kitchen helper. My officers agreed, so I went out and got Adam a U.S. Army uniform and he looked like a typical Army soldier- only a short one!

My concern was for Adam and the other Jewish survivors at Mauthausen. I helped organize a group of 104 survivors to assist in restarting their lives. Most of the Jewish survivors that I talked to opted to go to Palestine; very few wanted to go to the United States.

Adam was very concerned about the whereabouts of his family. He had seen his sister die at the hands of the SS. He had seen the ashes of his father handed to him in Gestapo headquarters in Kraków. He was not sure his mother had died in Auschwitz: 'Maybe she wasn't at Auschwitz; maybe she was in another camp.' So I traveled with him from camp to camp, but we never found her.

The memories of the war, make me proud to have been where I was. Hopefully I was able to help someone.

Leon Bass

Meanwhile, Leon Bass, a member of the all-Black 183^rd Engineer Combat Battalion attached to General Patton's Third Army was involved in the liberation of Buchenwald:

I saw human beings there that had been beaten and starved and tortured and so mistreated that they were nothing but human skeletons. They were skin and bone and they had those skeletal faces with the deep-set eyes, and their heads had been clean-shaved. And they were standing there holding on to one another, and they were so thin. They had sores on their bodies that were brought on by malnutrition. And that man held out his hands, and his fingers had webbed together with the scabs that come from malnutrition. And I? I just said to myself, “My God, what is this? This is some kind of insanity! Who are the people? What did they do that was so wrong?” And that’s when I found out that they were Jews and gypsies, some were Jehovah Witnesses, they were trade unionists, they were Communists, they were homosexuals. He went on and told us. There were so many different groups placed in that camp by the Nazis. And what did the Nazis use as a yardstick as to who would be chosen to go there? They said those people who were not good enough, those people who were inferior, they could be segregated.

Leon Bass
Courtesy: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

So, you see what I mean? Segregation, racism, can lead to the ultimate, to what I saw at Buchenwald.

William Scott

William Scott, of the 183rd Engineer Combat Battalion was one of the first Allied soldiers to enter and photograph survivors of Buchenwald. In his words:

Military Photographer William Scott.
Courtesy: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

"I took out my camera and began to take some photos, but that only lasted for a few pictures. As the scenes became more gruesome, I put my camera in its case and walked in a daze with the survivors as we viewed all forms of dismemberment of the human body. We learned that 31,000 of the 51,000 persons there had been killed in a two-week period prior to our arrival.

I began to realize why few, if any, people would believe the atrocities I had seen. HOLOCAUST was the word used to describe it, but one has to witness it to even begin to believe it. And finally, after going through several buildings with various displays — my mind closed the door on this horror.

And I don’t know what the answer is to what we ran into in Buchenwald. As a matter of fact, it gave me a different attitude, a perspective, I suspect, on some of the ideas that we had always heard, and that is that one of the best ways to get away from the -- this type of attitude or functioning by humans was to become more educated.And here we were in a country that we had always been lead to believe was one of the most educated and literate nations in the world, producing great scientists, far advanced in art, literature, having great names of music, classical music: And it came up -- well, after I saw what I saw, possibly the worst crimes that you could imagine humans committing and this was done, I don’t know in what -- in what was the conclusion of how they arrived at an idea that this should be done, but it just lead me to have a reevaluation of this whole notion of what we refer to as literate and education.

I was just sort of moving along with the tide and not really thinking a great deal about it at that time, but since I’ve been back I had been an interested observer, not necessarily a casual observer of the idea that would relate to education and how we use people.”

Ichiro Imamura & Clarence Matsumura

The 522^nd Field Artillery Battalion was a detachment of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, which consisted of second-generation Japanese Americans---many of whom enlisted directly from U.S. internment camps, where Japanese Americans were shamefully incarcerated. Ironically, the Japanese-American troops rescued and cared for Jewish victims of the Nazi death camps, even as their own families were still detained in U.S. internment camps.

These troops participated in the liberation of Dachau and provided aid to thousands of inmates. Technician Ichiro Imamura wrote in his diary:

When the gates swung open, we got our first good look at the prisoners. Many of them were Jews. They were wearing black and white striped prison suits and round caps. A few had blanket rags draped over their shoulders. It was cold and the snow was two feet deep in some places. There were no German guards. They had taken off before we reached the camp. The prisoners struggled to their feet after the gates were opened. They shuffled weakly out of the compound. They were like skeletons — all skin and bones.

Clarence Matsumura was in Headquarters communications and was responsible for radio repair and maintenance. He remembered, “We were patrolling around May 1 or 2. I remember those dates, because it was near my birthday. We were about forty or fifty miles south of Dachau, in a little town that I remember being called Waakirchen. In an open field, we found several hundred prisoners lying, in many cases unable to move. Some were shot, and some were dead from exposure. 

Several men from my radio section, including David Sugimoto, saw that these people were starving, and we tried to feed them. I didn’t know that they were Jews, or anything about them. Some were able to speak broken English. They asked who we were, and I told them we were Americans.  I told them, ‘You’re free, you’re liberated. The war is over. Even though they didn’t speak English, they seemed to understand what we were saying. They were obviously starving to death. We tried to feed them, and they couldn’t take the food. Some of them died in my arms, unable to swallow the food that we had given them. I cried. I still feel guilty to this day.”

The 442nd earned 21 Medals of Honor, more than 9,000 Purple Hearts, eight Presidential Unit Citations and more – totaling more than 18,000 awards – for its actions during World War II.

522^nd Field Artillery Battalion was a detachment of the 442^nd Regimental Combat Team, which consisted of second-generation Japanese Americans---many of whom enlisted directly from U.S. internment camps, where Japanese Americans were shamefully incarcerated.

These accounts serve as symbols of the bravery and dedication behind all who participated as liberators. They are reminders of all the best that humankind is capable of, especially when faced with the worst. The list of Holocaust Liberators, of course, does not end here.

Ernest Greenblatt

Perhaps one of the most extraordinary stories is that of Ernest Greenblatt, who was born in Czechoslovakia and immigrated to the United States as a child. He went on to serve with the 82nd Airborne Division which aided survivors in Mecklenburg in May 1945:

[We] found the road flooded with Hungarian women who had been captive in a concentration camp there. German troops abandoned the camp and fled before the advancing GIs.

So I started singing in Hungarian ... and immediately the women mobbed me. There were probably 150 women in this group. One woman started telling me about her relatives in New York. It turned out this woman was my cousin. It was an emotional experience ... she grabbed me and was hysterical.... She asked me to help find out where her husband and two daughters were. I provided her with food and clothing. That was the last I saw of her ... until I visited her in Israel in 1981-82. She never found her relatives; they never came back.

761st Tank Battalion

Among the liberators of Gunskirchen were the members of the 761st Tank Battalion, an all-African American unit that included William McBurney, Preston McNeil, and Leonard Smith. Smith recalled:

To see these people treated like that…I didn’t think something like that would happen to them. I didn’t know that the Germans were that evil, to want to do this to people.

Discussion Questions

What was the 71st Infantry Division’s role in liberating Gunskirchen, and how did those imprisoned react upon their arrival?
How did American troops provide immediate aid to the survivors at Gunskirchen?
Describe Harry J. Herder’s interaction with the young boy at Buchenwald. Why was the chocolate bar significant?
What were Albert Schwartz’s initial reactions upon discovering the Dora-Nordhausen concentration camp?
How does Kalman Zitwer’s effort to personally care for Adam Weinreb reflect the broader theme of individual responsibility in times of crisis?
Ernest Greenblatt’s story highlights the personal connections made in the midst of war. How does his experience reflect the randomness of fate during the Holocaust and its aftermath?
Who were the members of the 761st Tank Battalion, and what was their role in the liberation of Gunskirchen?
Leon Bass connects the racism of the Nazi regime to broader issues of segregation and discrimination. How does his reflection challenge the idea that such atrocities are isolated historical events?
What impact did the liberation of Buchenwald have on William Scott’s perspective on education and human behavior?
What was ironic about the role of the 522nd Field Artillery Battalion in liberating Jewish prisoners from Nazi concentration camps?
Many of the liberators describe feelings of shock and disbelief upon encountering the camps. Why do you think the reality of the Holocaust was so difficult to comprehend, even for those who had heard rumors about it?
In several accounts, soldiers mention unintentionally harming survivors by giving them food too quickly. What does this reveal about the complexity of providing aid in extreme humanitarian crises?
Why might the experience of liberating a concentration camp have had such a profound and lasting impact on the soldiers involved?
How do the accounts of African American and Japanese American soldiers add complexity to the story of liberation and justice in World War II?
What do these accounts reveal about the psychological and emotional effects of witnessing mass suffering and genocide?

Sources

African Americans in Nazi Germany. (n.d.). United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Retrieved February 15, 2025
https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/african-americans-in-nazi-germany

Article providing an overview of the involvement of African American soldiers in WWII and as liberators. Includes a short video and photograph of Leon Bass, as well as a brief summary of Bass’s contributions.

Allach Liberation. (1945, April). United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Retrieved February 15, 2025. https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn1004600#rights-restrictions

Film reel containing various shots of the liberation of Allach, a subcamp of Dachau.

At Attention. (1944, November 12). U.S. Department of Defense. Retrieved February 15, 2025. https://www.defense.gov/Multimedia/Photos/igphoto/2002109638/

Photograph of The Color Guard of the Army's 442nd Regimental Combat Team.

Blau, Sidney. Survivors in Allach, a Sub-camp of Dachau, Greet Arriving U.S. Troops. (1945, April 30). United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/pa27167

Photograph of survivors in Allach, a sub-camp of Dachau, greeting U.S. troops.

Buchenwald Liberation by Harry Herder. (n.d.). Remember.org. Retrieved February 15, 2025.
https://remember.org/witness/buchenwald-liberation#Lib

Account of Harry Herder who participated in the liberation of Buchenwald.

Dachau and Liberation – Personal account by Felix L. Sparks Brigadier General, US (Retired). (n.d.). Remember.org. Retrieved February 15, 2025.
https://remember.org/witness/sparks2

Excerpts from the account of General Sparks who participated in the liberation of Dachau.

Forney, Ralph. Sick Survivors are Evacuated from the Woebbelin Concentration Camp to an American Field Hospital Where They Will Receive Medical Attention. (1945, May 4). United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Retrieved February 15, 2025. https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/pa8938

Photograph of survivors being rescued.

GIs Remember - Albert Schwartz – Nordhausen. (n.d.). Jewish Virtual Library. Retrieved February 15, 2025, from URL https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/gis-remember-albert-schwartz-nordhausen

Account of Albert Schwartz who participated in the liberation of Nordhausen.

GIs Remember - Ernest Greenblatt. (n.d.). Jewish Virtual Library. Retrieved February 15, 2025.
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/gis-remember-ernest-greenblatt

Account of Ernest Greenblatt who aided survivors in Mecklenburg.

GIs Remember - Kalman Zitwer. (n.d.). Jewish Virtual Library. Retrieved February 15, 2025.
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/gis-remember-kalman-zitwer

Account of Kalman Zitwer who participated in the liberation of Mauthausen.

Gunskirchen Lager Pamphlet - The Americans Have Come At Last. (n.d.). Remember.org. Retrieved February 15, 2025. https://remember.org/section1.html

Account of Captain J.D. Pletcher who participated in the liberation of Gunskirchen.

Holocaust Liberator Charles Ferree | Jewish-American Heritage Month | USC Shoah Foundation. (2023, May 29). YouTube. Retrieved February 15, 2025. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMKrEY8Dp6g

Four-hour video interview of liberator Charles Ferree.

“I Saw The Walking Dead”: A Black Sergeant Remembers Buchenwald. (n.d.). History Matters. Retrieved February 15, 2025.
https://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/142/

Four-minute audio clip and transcript from an interview with Leon Bass.

Lengel, E. (2020, July 17). The Black Panthers Drive into Germany: The 761st Tank Battalion, 1945. The National WWII Museum. https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/black-panthers-germany-1945

Article providing a descriptive overview, as well as photographs of the contributions of the 761st Tank Battalion.

Liberating the Concentration Camps GIs Remember Table of Contents. (n.d.). Jewish Virtual Library. Retrieved February 15, 2025. https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/liberating-the-concentration-camps-gis-remember-table-of-contents#google_vignette

List containing links to numerous accounts of various liberators, including all those cited in this work under “GIs Remember.”

Liberators: My Holocaust Experiences by Charles V. Ferree. (n.d.). Remember.org. Retrieved February 15, 2025, from URL https://remember.org/witness/chuckf

Account of Charles Ferree, lieutenant in the 9th Airforce who participated in the liberation of Bergen-Belsen, Buchenwald, Dachau, and Mauthausen.

Oral History with Leon Bass. (1988, March 16). United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Retrieved February 15, 2025. https://perspectives.ushmm.org/item/oral-history-with-leon-bass

Link to 18-minute video interview of Leon Bass with text summary.

The Liberators. (n.d.) JewishGen. Retrieved February 15, 2025.
https://www.jewishgen.org/forgottencamps/witnesses/liberatorseng.html

The website serves as the Genealogical Research Division of the Museum of Jewish Heritage and contains links to a series of primary source accounts of Holocaust Liberators.

Military Photographer William Scott. (1943, March). United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Retrieved February 15, 2025.
https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/photo/military-photographer-william-scott

Photograph of William Scott in uniform.

Rudolph, Hana. (2021, April 28). The Japanese Americans Who Helped Liberate Dachau Knew the Shared History of Anti-Jewish and Anti-Asian Hate. Jewish Telegraphic Agency. https://www.jta.org/2021/04/28/ideas/japanese-americans-helped-liberate-dachau-they-deserve-our-support-in-the-fight-against-hate

Article highlighting the involvement of the 522nd Field Artillery Battalion in the liberation of Dachau. Contains an excerpt of Ichiro Imamura’s account.

Scott, W.A. (n.d.). Liberation of Buchenwald. Georgia Journeys. Retrieved February 15, 2025.
 https://georgiajourneys.kennesaw.edu/items/show/341

Contains excerpts of William Scott’s account of his involvement in the liberation of Buchenwald.

Unlikely Liberators. https://www.japaneseamericanpatriotism.com/unlikely-liberators-exhibit

United We Stand: Black Soldiers Liberating Hitler’s Camps/Jewish Activists in Civil Rights Movement. (2022, May 16). International March of the Living. Retrieved February 15, 2025. https://www.motl.org/united-we-stand-black-soldiers-liberating-hitlers-camps-jewish-activists-in-civil-rights-movement/

Video containing clips from interviews of William McBurney, Preston McNeil, and Leonard Smith.

Women and Children Survivors in Mauthausen Speak to an American Liberator Through a Barbed Wire Fence. (1945, May 5-7). United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Retrieved February 15, 2025. https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/pa12980

Photograph of survivors speaking to an American liberator.

WWII Veteran & Concentration Camp Liberator | Leon Bass | Black History Month | USC Shoah Foundation. (2023, February 9). YouTube. Retrieved February 15, 2025. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQIXfBt4gN4

Two-hour video interview of liberator Leon Bass.