Note: This blog entry contains images my grandfather took while at Buchenwald. While I believe it is important to show people the atrocities that happened during the war, the images may be inappropriate for younger readers.
Cologne city was very big. We were about a mile from it in a barn. About midnight, our bombers came over and started bombing the town. We went outside and watched the bombs come down. The next morning when we went past it, there wasn’t anything left of the big city no taller than two feet.
Buchenwald Concentration Camp
We were taken there by trucks as soon as they had run the Germans out. When we entered, there were about five loads of naked dead bodies being loaded to be burned in a long row of furnaces. Inside the buildings, there were a few people who were not dead, but almost. One I remember was skin and bones, could not move or talk. I felt awful sick to see all this. I took pictures of them to prove how bad the Germans were. I can still see all the dead piled there and the live ones that were almost dead. I have never been able to take the picture out of my mind. They had starved them to death before burning them. When we were told the war was over, and the Germans had surrendered, I was so glad, I picked up my rifle and shot the top out of a big tree.
In ways I am glad this is a short post.
But the power of it is no less. Such crimes were committed during that war.