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Oral history interview with Richard Seibel

Oral History | Digitized | Accession Number: 1995.A.1269.19 | RG Number: RG-50.470.0019

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    Oral history interview with Richard Seibel
    Transcript
    Oh, dear.
    Is that me?
    It is.
    Something's happening here.
    Need a car?
    No, I'm fine.
    Can you tell me about the radio patrol that
    came to you when you first--
    what they said to you before you came to Mauthausen?
    Well, we sent the patrol out in an effort
    to maintain contact with the enemy, the Germans,
    or the Russians.
    And they ran across this concentration camp, Mauthausen.
    And they radioed in and said we've come across something
    we don't know what it is.
    It's like a big jail and there's people running all over.
    And I said, all right, you come back.
    And so patrol returned to our headquarters.
    I reinforced the patrol.
    You must remember the war is still on.
    And I went back.
    And I made a thorough inspection,
    the best I could, of Mauthausen, not knowing anything
    about a concentration camp.
    And I made the inspection.
    And I returned to our headquarters.
    And I reported to our commanding general, General Daiger
    and told him what it was.
    Along with that, there was two Americans in the camp.
    And one in particular, Lieutenant Jack Taylor,
    who is a member of the OSS.
    He told me what Mauthausen was.
    And then I told General Daiger what it was.
    And I went to get some lunch.
    And the telephone rang.
    It was General Daiger.
    He wanted to talk to me.
    And he said, Dick.
    He said, I want you to return to Mauthausen
    and take supreme command of the camp.
    He said, you've got a lousy job to do.
    And he said you cannot accept any orders from anybody.
    And he said I have enough confidence in you
    to know that you will do what is right.
    And therefore, you will take command
    and stay there and run it.
    And that's how it all came about.
    And that's how I wound up in Mauthausen with the capture
    and the occupation of the camp.
    OK, now let's go back to when you first came in,
    before you reported back.
    And tell me what happened when you came in?
    What you saw, how the people reacted to you.
    Well, actually and truly, it was unbelievable.
    I had never seen anything like this before in my life.
    I knew nothing of a concentration camp.
    We had heard of them, but that was the extent of it.
    And to see all of these bodies piled up
    and these starving, sick people in the camp,
    I just couldn't imagine it.
    We didn't know what--
    actually and truly, we didn't know what to do.
    And then, as I said, I returned.
    But my initial shock when we found about 700 bodies lying
    around and just piled up like wood, if you will, I couldn't--
    I couldn't believe it.
    I just couldn't believe it.
    That man's inhumanity to man actually
    existed between men and women and the starving, sick, dead
    people in that camp.
    Unbelievable.
    I stop and think about it, and I don't know how I ever
    managed to stay through it.
    In my opinion, it was that horrible.
    When you first came back, what did the people in the camp
    say to you?
    They were so happy that we were there.
    Of course, we felt that we had done a tremendous thing
    by capturing the place and turning it over
    to the Americans to solve the problem, if you will.
    But I can't describe to you exactly.
    We were there and it was the second day.
    One of my people came into the headquarters and said,
    you better come quick, out into the main compound.
    He said there's trouble.
    And so I went out.
    And there are four people on the pavement with their throats
    cut, which I had never seen before in my life.
    And the political unrest in the camp, I couldn't believe it.
    Because we were shocked, actually
    and truly, that those people would
    be fighting among themselves.
    And I think it was primarily in control of the camp.
    I just couldn't believe it.
    Because here they are, liberated people,
    and fighting among themselves.
    I don't know what they were fighting about.
    And of course, it's political.
    Let's put it that way.
    This was political.
    And so from that time on, we become very strict.
    And we segregated that camp, 18,000 people.
    We segregated the camp by nationality
    and got all of the various nations living together
    rather than--
    the Poles hated the Russians.
    And so they were locked up separately.
    And the other nations, like the Yugoslavians.
    Anybody who was there-- and I learned this
    from the Yugoslavians.
    People in there who are the followers of King Peter
    and Mikhailovich, they were not accepted by the people
    who followed Tito.
    And therefore, there was great unrest among those people.
    And it was all political.
    And we were really shocked.
    We thought, here we are, the great white father
    had liberated these people from a concentration camp,
    and here they are fighting among themselves.
    And so we took some very severe action and put a stop to it
    real quick.
    What about the initial reaction of the people when you first
    came in with--
    did they speak to you?
    Did they cry?
    Did they laugh?
    Did they--
    Mixed emotions, really and truly.
    Some people I know would come up to me, wanted to touch me.
    Other people were are not particularly concerned.
    But after we were there a little while, that all changed.
    And they recognized us as their saviors, if you will.
    What about-- wasn't there one prisoner
    who had taken over an office?
    Tell me about that.
    Well, that's sort of one of the highlights.
    We came back-- [LAUGHS] when we came back to occupy the camp,
    take it over, we went in to the headquarters.
    And first of all, I must tell you,
    I speak only English and not too good at that.
    And here's all these different nationalities.
    And for me to correspond with them, no way.
    So there was a prisoner there and he still lives in London.
    His name is Premislav Dobius and I correspond with him.
    And in fact, I'll be seeing him in Austria in May.
    He volunteered to be my interpreter.
    He spoke six languages.
    And so he was with me.
    And this fellow that was sitting behind
    the desk, and, I don't know, three or four other people
    behind him.
    I said via an interpreter, I said, what's he doing there?
    And he asked him.
    Well, he was a Russian major who is a prisoner in the camp.
    And that they had taken over command of the camp.
    So I said, is that so?
    I said, will you please inform him
    that this is in the American zone
    and we are responsible for it.
    And therefore, we are in command of the camp.
    And he wouldn't budge.
    He wouldn't move.
    I said, please tell him again that we
    are responsible for this camp and that I am personally
    in command.
    Wouldn't move.
    So I reached down and pulled out my 45 pistol.
    And I cocked it.
    And I shoved it right across the desk in his face.
    I said, now you tell that S of a B to get out of here
    or I'm going to shoot him.
    Boy, they took off just like that.
    And that was one of the highlights of our occupation.
    But they wouldn't budge.
    They wouldn't move at all till I used some force.
    And that they understood.
    Did you know who the--
    we're just about out.
    We have to put another roll of--
    All right.
    Two.
    Tell me how they wanted to establish--
    tell me how bitter the inmates were
    and how much they wanted to bring
    their perpetrators to justice.
    Well, that was one thing that we had to calm all of the people
    down because.
    Under the stress and strain that they had been,
    and all of a sudden they're free people.
    And it was very difficult for them to accept that fact.
    And they had certain rivalries, I'll say, in the camp.
    And we had to stop that because so many people would be hurt.
    And the feelings-- we were so surprised that--
    we thought that they would just bow down and scrape, you know,
    because here we had saved their lives and such.
    And so we were trying to be "good guys," if you will.
    And then we had to stop being good guys
    and become quite severe, if that's the proper word,
    to get them to understand that it was still a concentration
    camp.
    And we were going to run it to the very best of our ability
    and take care of them.
    And we expected cooperation from all of the people in the camp.
    That was our feeling and how we got them in line
    to be normal beings again.
    Tell me about how the Jews requested not
    to be put with their countries.
    Tell me about that request.
    All right.
    Of course, I came from a very small town in Ohio.
    The population at that time was somewhere
    in the neighborhood of 9,000 people.
    And we had two Jewish families.
    They weren't Jewish as far as we were concerned.
    They were members of a community,
    and didn't recognize them as Jews.
    So my education in that respect was nil.
    One day, one of the boys came in and said
    there's a prisoner out here that wants to see you.
    And I said, all right, bring him in.
    And he came in.
    And I said, what do you want?
    And he said, I'm a Jew.
    And he said, I want to know why all the Jews in the camp
    are not together?
    I said, that's a good question.
    I said, what's your nationality?
    He said, I'm a Hungarian.
    He spoke excellent English.
    I said, of all the hell that you people had been through before,
    wearing the Star of David on your clothing
    and being treated as Jews and to severe punishment
    and severe actions, that doesn't happen anymore.
    I said, you may be a Jew, but to me you are Hungarian.
    I said, Judaism is your religion.
    He said, yes.
    He said, I know.
    But I think all the Jews should be together.
    I said, not according to my book.
    I said, you are Hungarian.
    Therefore, you will live with the Hungarians.
    And so finally, he accepted it.
    And this is kind of odd.
    When he got ready to leave, he thanked me.
    And he said, sir.
    He said, could you give me a couple of Hershey bars?
    [LAUGHS]
    And from that time on, the Jewish Zionist Organization
    from Switzerland, the chief of the Zionist organization
    plus other members of the organization,
    came to Mauthausen and really put the steam on me
    to put the Jews all together.
    And I wouldn't do it.
    I said absolutely not.
    I said, I do not recognize these people as Jews.
    I said, I recognize them as their nationality.
    And that's the way it's going to be
    and nobody is going to change it.
    And so they accepted it but not willingly,
    I'll put it that way.
    So from that time on, we didn't have any problem.
    But I would not put the Jews together
    because they had been living under horrible conditions,
    isolated as Jews.
    And I wasn't going to stand for that,
    because I didn't believe in it.
    When you tried to bring order in that first month
    or so that you were there, what were your primary goals
    and problems?
    Well, I would say that the big problem that we had
    was the sickness among the prisoners, primarily
    typhus and tuberculosis.
    I had doctors with me who kept me very well posted.
    And we deloused every prisoner in the camp with DDT powder.
    And those people, we called in to clearing hospitals--
    big hospitals, army hospitals --and anybody who was ill,
    they were confined to a hospital.
    And so we hospitalized-- while we were there,
    we hospitalized thousands of people.
    And got them back on their feet and got
    and with the proper medical treatment and such
    got them to where they were normal beings again.
    We had about 1,300 people die while we were there
    because they were beyond help.
    And we were giving them the very best medical attention
    that we could.
    Everybody was in the huge clearing hospital tents.
    And they were all on cots so that we
    tried to give them the best.
    And the other thing that was so important was food.
    And upon the advice of my doctor friends
    told me what I could and couldn't do.
    And so we started out giving them the same type of food
    that they had been receiving--
    very watered potato soup.
    I mean, it was just colored water, that's all.
    And so we did that for, I don't know, two or three days.
    And then we thickened it up a bit,
    and made it a little thicker.
    And then we had found a warehouse
    in Linz, Austria of dehydrated vegetables.
    And so we brought those in.
    So then we started adding some vegetables
    to the potatoes soup.
    And that was lovely.
    They all liked it very much.
    And then as it progressed, they went on solid food,
    boiled potatoes and vegetables.
    These dehydrated vegetables, but not in soup.
    And meat, horse meat.
    See, in the German army, a mechanized division
    has got umpteen horses.
    And so in the combat action, you're
    driving all these horses ahead plus the ones that were there
    in Austria and on the farm.
    So we'd butcher horses.
    And we fed them meat, potatoes, and vegetables, and coffee,
    of course, and bread.
    Now, bread, that was something that
    presented a bit of a problem.
    We found a bakery and we got some people
    who were prisoners in the camp to do the baking.
    We didn't have any yeast.
    All we had was oats.
    And oats mixed with water turned into bread.
    I think maybe I'm responsible for the oat bread in the United
    States today.
    [LAUGHS]
    But we baked thousands and thousands of loaves.
    And we had to put--
    because when they're first baked and they come out,
    they're just nothing but squishy water, if you will.
    And so we put them in a warehouse to dry out.
    And after they got dry enough that we could slice them,
    every prisoner got one slice of bread.
    And then after a little while they got two slices.
    And bread-- prior to our occupation,
    bread was the most precious article of food
    that they had in the camp or ever had or ever will.
    And so then it got to where we could give them
    a quarter loaf of bread.
    And our stock of bread kept building and building.
    So finally I said, OK, give everybody
    a half a loaf of bread.
    And one day one of the prisoners came in and said, Colonel,
    we don't want any more bread.
    We got enough.
    [LAUGHS] Which was quite rare because bread-- as I say,
    you could get your head bashed in
    or your throat cut for a half a piece of bread.
    And they used to store it in their bunks
    and sleep on it if they hadn't eaten it.
    OK, we're just about out--
    Colonel Seibel, Camera 3 mark 3.
    Did you bring in German civilians
    to help you with the running of the camp?
    No, we didn't bring any civilians in.
    But we did bring in about 400 German wehrmacht soldiers.
    We had-- the SS, when they left, they disrupted everything.
    And they were going to burn the place down.
    But the prisoners said please don't, and they didn't do it.
    But they had disrupted all of the water supply, the sewage,
    the electricity-- everything.
    There wasn't anything in the camp.
    And so we found out that there was a prisoner of war camp
    where there had a lot of prisoners
    who were capable of doing special things.
    And so we got 400 German PWs and brought them
    in to do all of the things that were necessary,
    which helped us tremendously.
    And they were conducted as soldiers.
    And they were not treated as prisoners.
    And we got along very well.
    And they brought life back into the camp.
    How do you think they felt seeing the camp?
    Well, I remember the captain who was put
    in command of this detachment.
    His name is Von Broll and he was an Austrian.
    They couldn't believe it.
    They were combat soldiers.
    And they really and truly didn't believe
    that their own peoples and other peoples
    were being treated like that.
    It was an experience for them the same as for us.
    Tell me again about the sensory things
    like the smells and the sounds, and the women's barrack.
    Well, I'll tell you, to explain or describe
    the condition of the women in that barracks, words fail me.
    After we occupied the camp in force,
    when I brought more people in, we
    burned all of those buildings.
    Because they were so full of vermin, it was--
    oh, you couldn't believe it.
    It's beyond imagination.
    The women living under these horrible, horrible conditions,
    they were all gotten out of there.
    They were all cleaned up.
    They were all deloused.
    And we just burnt the buildings down, got rid of them.
    They were no good.
    It's-- I don't know.
    To see these women and why they were
    treated as they were and under the horrible conditions
    that they were living, I don't know.
    I have no answer for that, except the brutality
    and, again, man's inhumanity to man.
    That's the only way I can describe it.
    Are we almost done?
    We need to just record 30 seconds
    of the sound of the room.
    So just be very quiet for about 30 seconds.
    All right.

    Overview

    Interview Summary
    Colonel Richard R. Seibel, US Army veteran and participant in WWII, discusses being on a patrol when he came across the concentration camp Mauthausen; his lack of knowledge about concentration camps before seeing Mauthausen; reporting back to General Daiger who asked him to take supreme command of camp; the two Americans in the camp, one of whom was Lt Jack Taylor of the OSS; his memories of the camp; seeing corpses piled up; the unrest in the camp and division between the inmates; a former prisoner, Premislav Dobius, who was the interpreter for army; how the Jewish survivors wanted to be separated by their religion, not by nationality as the others were; members of a Swiss Zionist organization who arrived demanding the Jewish survivors be given their own space; the prevalence of typhus and TB; the deaths of hundreds of people after liberation; 400 Wehrmacht soldiers who were brought in to repair the sewage and water system; the conditions of women prisoners; the camp’s former SS commander Franz Ziereis who was absent from the camp before liberation; and the capture of Ziereis.
    Interviewee
    Richard R. Seibel
    Interviewer
    Sandra Bradley
    Date
    interview:  1995 February 23

    Physical Details

    Language
    English
    Extent
    1 videocassette (D2) : sound, color ; 3/4 in..

    Rights & Restrictions

    Conditions on Access
    There are no known restrictions on access to this material.
    Conditions on Use
    No restrictions on use

    Keywords & Subjects

    Administrative Notes

    Legal Status
    Permanent Collection
    Provenance
    Sandra Bradley, a film production consultant for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, conducted the interview with Richard Seibel on February 23, 1995, in preparation for the exhibition "Liberation 1945," which opened in June 1995. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archives received a copy of the interview on August 25, 1995.
    Funding Note
    The cataloging of this oral history interview has been supported by a grant from the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany.
    Record last modified:
    2023-11-16 08:41:36
    This page:
    https:​/​/collections.ushmm.org​/search​/catalog​/irn511064

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    Summary (English) Time Coded Notes (English)

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    Contains oral history interviews with 25 Holocaust survivors and concentration camp liberators recorded in preparation for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum's exhibition, "Liberation 1945," which opened in June 1995. The collection includes interviews with: Boleslaw Brodecki, Sonia Brodecki, Jim Cacioppo, Helen Fagin, Suzanne Foldes, Nesse Godin, Henny Gurko, Irving Heymont, John Holmes, Joseph Kahoe, Henry Kanner, Abraham Klausner, John Komski, Pat Lynch, William McWorkman, James Moncrief, Judah Nadich, George Salton, Richard Seibel, Milton Shurr, Alfred Sundquist, Fella Warshau, Nick White, and Alan Zimm

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    Oral history interview with Nesse Godin

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    Oral history interview with Irving Heymont

    Oral History

    Irving Heymont describes coming upon a sub-camp of Mauthausen, Gunskierken, in Austria with the United States Army 5th Infantry Regiment, K Company; visiting the camp and the conditions of the surviving inmates; not knowing about the concentration camps before seeing one; testifying to a board proceeding in Paris, France in September 1945; going to Landsberg, Germany where his unit was stationed; going to a German displaced persons camp, which was created for the survivors of Dachau’s sub-camps; the poor conditions in the camp; receiving orders from General Anslau Ralph to clean up the camp; his efforts to improve it; making the camp an all-Jewish DP camp; tensions between Jews and non-Jews; the survivors creating a camp committee, which established a hospital and schools; the nationalities of the camp’s Jews; the role of Dr. Jake Wallaisky who was part of the committee and worked for the Jewish Organization for Rehabilitation; the black market in and around the camp; preparing the camp for the winter; the crowding of the camp and the resistance of the residents to spread to another camp; his relations with the camp residents and the local Germans; holding elections in the camp; sanitation in the camp; the treatment of children in the camp; visitors to the camp, including Rabbi Abraham Klausner; the trouble caused by the camp’s truck drivers; and helping a man find his son.

    Oral history interview with John Holmes

    Oral history interview with John Holmes

    Oral History

    John Holmes, of Chicago, IL, describes coming upon a labor camp with his unit after fighting in the Hartz mountain sector; conditions of the surviving inmates; the German’s abandonment of the camp; his role as a tank commander; exchanging fire with German soldiers while saving the 14th Reconnaissance Platoon; hearing that German troops were scared of black American soldiers; delivering a letter for a woman he met in the camp to her sister in Illinois; being ordered not to feed the inmates; the impact of the experience on his life; and his combat experience.

    Oral history interview with Joseph Kahoe

    Oral history interview with Joseph Kahoe

    Oral History

    Joseph Kahoe describes being with the United States 761st Tank Battalion in Austria when he and his unit saw individuals coming out of a prison camp; being the liaison officer between his company and the regimental headquarters; the conditions of the inmates and being warned not to feed them by his superiors; only seeing male inmates; and being the commandant of the Polish displaced persons camp near Nuremberg, Germany.

    Oral history interview with Henry Kanner

    Oral history interview with Henry Kanner

    Oral History

    Henry Kanner discusses being in Auschwitz working in the laundry when he was 15 or 16 years old; the death of his family members in the Belzec gas chambers; being taken in January 1945 on a death march; conditions during the march, including the extreme cold and the deaths of many of the prisoners; killing a pig on the second day and eating it raw with other prisoners; being put in an open-air train car; arriving at Mauthausen; encountering a prisoner who had once worked for Henry’s father; the man saving Henry’s life by changing his information in the registry and telling him to pose as a Polish Catholic; noticing the SS officers either disappearing or changing into regular Wehrmacht uniforms in May 1945; three American soldiers who were shot down, beaten, and thrown into the gas chambers; the day of liberation; the capture of many of the German guards; leaving the camp on foot with another boy; walking to Linz, Austria; going to Passau, Germany, where they were captured by German farmers and escaping before being shot by the farmers; staying in a displaced persons (DP) camp in Passau (possibly Pocking DP camp); going to a DP camp in Nurnberg, Germany; working in the office with a US Army captain, who was a representative of UNRRA; conditions in the DP camp; details on the emigration of people from the camp; immigrating to the US, where he had relative; getting married and having three sons; and feeling lucky as well as guilty to have survived.

    Oral history interview with Abraham Klausner

    Oral history interview with Abraham Klausner

    Oral History

    Rabbi Abraham J. Klausner discusses being attached to the 116 Evacuation Hospital during WWII; entering Dachau concentration camp in May 1945; arriving at night, and seeing the devastation in the morning; the efforts they all made to bring the survivors back to life; helping to organize lists to name survivors as well as their places and dates of birth; how people were helped to get to Italy where they could get on ships to Palestine; finding Hungarian women survivors in a displaced persons (DP) camp in the Alps; learning how former inmates hid prayer books while living in the camps; finding a Polish Hebrew library in Munich, Germany that had been confiscated by the Nazis and taking a few books at a time and distributing them to people; finding the Klausenburg rebbe in Dachau, nursing him back to health, and bringing him to Feldafing DP camp; seeing Jewish and non-Jewish survivors in the DP camps; the administration of the camps; the DP camps Feldafing and Landsberg am Lech; the issues with the mixed nationalities in the camps; segregation in the camps; the lack of freedom in the camps; the compulsion people felt to find their family members; a center that was set up in Munich where people could search for family on lists; the efforts to reconnect children with their parents; finding a printer in Landsberg and getting books published and distributed; helping to establish a newspaper in Feldafing along with journalist Shalatin Levy from Kovno (Kaunas, Lithuania); meeting with David Ben Gurion in Munich, and taking him to St. Ottilien hospital, Landsberg, and Feldafing; and working near Dachau for several years with the US Army.

    Oral history interview with John Komski

    Oral history interview with John Komski

    Oral History

    John Komski discusses being taken to Dachau concentration camp from camp Hersbruck and staying there for 20 days; being made to shower, but not being given anything to wear except a blanket; being in an area separated from the rest of the camp; finding on April 29, 1945 that the camp gates were open to the rest of the camp; finding clothes and standing for 2-3 hours for roll call, but no SS came; how the fighting began in the afternoon and then there was silence; some prisoners running to the gates, and some getting guns; a US soldier who came into the area and commanded that the guards surrender or be shot; how thousands of prisoners gathered and many had flags of different countries; seeing a glorious sunset with dark clouds in the east; some people lighting fires and cooking food; many of the former inmates dying from eating too much; being moved to a displaced persons (DP) camp; not being allowed to leave the DP camp; being very sick and moved to an American hospital; going to a DP camp outside of Munich in June 1945; UNRRA officials forcing people to be repatriated to their native countries; going to Garmisch, Germany; meeting an artist who was a former prisoner of Auschwitz, and receiving help from him; meeting his future wife; drawing and painting scenes from the concentration camps; and immigrating to the US.

    Oral history interview with Pat Lynch

    Oral history interview with Pat Lynch

    Oral History

    Pat Lynch discusses being an American nurse attached to the 123rd Field Evacuation Unit during WWII; being near a subcamp of Dachau; how the nurses did not go into Buchenwald because the conditions there were too terrible; going into the camp and being shocked by how horribly sick the survivors were, with typhus and TB; Germans from the area who were conscripted to work in the kitchens and laundries of the various DP camps; the young Hitler youth who marched in cemeteries; moving from tents to real buildings in the summer of 1945; praying often to St. Jude about the conditions; seeing a big difference in some of the survivors between March and August as they regained some strength and bodyweight; seeing a lot of Russian children in the summer; treating some pregnant women; being told that the women officers in the camps were often more cruel than the men; and her long working days during that time, which prevented her from speaking more with the patients.

    Oral history interview with William McWorkman

    Oral history interview with William McWorkman

    Oral History

    William McWorkman discusses being with the 12th Armored Division during WWII; going through Weilheim, Oberau, Innsbruck and south to Bringer Pass; entering into Landsberg concentration camp; seeing hundreds of dead prisoners; interacting with the former prisoners; the arrival of the 493rd Field Artillery Battalion; being told not to get too close to the prisoners because of typhus; giving the former prisoners clothing and food, but not too much food; the battalion surgeon who said not to overfeed them or they would die; the attempt to triage the survivors; General Allen, commander of the 12th division, entering the camp and later ordering all males in nearby village to walk through the camp; and his regret that they did not spend more time comforting the living.

    Oral history interview with James Moncrief

    Oral history interview with James Moncrief

    Oral History

    James Moncrief discusses being a Lt. Colonel during WWII; working as a staff officer in general headquarters when the 11th Army overran Buchenwald; leaving supplies and a medical company at the camp; being sent to the camp by Captain Bennett; conditions in the camp; the crematoria; and the US soldiers’ awareness of the camps.

    Oral history interview with Judah Nadich

    Oral history interview with Judah Nadich

    Oral History

    Rabbi Judah Nadich discusses being a chaplain in the US Army during WWII; being stationed in Paris, France, where among other activities, he helped 600 Jewish survivors go from Germany to illegal ships in Marseilles to get to Palestine; being asked to be the liaison officer to General Eisenhower to coordinate efforts to help the Jewish survivors in August 1945; being stationed in Frankfurt; the Jewish survivors in the American zone and the displaced persons camps (DP camps); differences between the DP camps; the unforeseen problems in the DP camps; inspecting the DP camps in August-September 1945; food and medicine in the DP camps; the running of the camps by UNRRA ,the Joint, and the military; immigration of the refugees; and visiting camps with David Ben Gurion.

    Oral history interview with George Salton

    Oral history interview with George Salton

    Oral History

    George Salton discusses being a prisoner of the Nazis; being liberated from camp Wöbbelin in the spring of 1945 and his memories of that day; the prisoners’ fears that the Germans would return; a soldier who shared his rations with George; his attempts to contact his relatives, including his brother; going to the British zone in Lübeck; staying in the Neustadt displaced persons camp (DP camp); the different refugees in the camp; being sponsored by his relatives for immigration to the United States; living in Deggendorf, Germany until his paper to the US came through in 1947; and seeing German teenagers in Deggendorf before he emigrated and his feelings envy, pain, and loneliness, knowing he would never have normal teenage years.

    Oral history interview with Milton Shurr

    Oral history interview with Milton Shurr

    Oral History

    Milton Shurr, US Army veteran and participant in WWII, discusses being part of a displaced persons team (DP2 unit) attached to the 1st Army beginning in the fall of 1944; being in Verviers, Belgium; his previous work as the head of a Jewish community counsel in Oklahoma City; the approximately 500 displaced persons; contracting hepatitis; rejoining the regiment in April 1945 in Wetzlar, Germany; going to Buchenwald; seeing barracks with two-story bunks and 6 people in each slot, buildings full of clothes and shoes, and piles of bodies; disinfecting survivors with DDT; the high rate of death for survivors; one of his colleagues who spoke German and acted as an interpreter, and how this affected the officer’s mental health; his work with administrative tasks; Allied prisoners being sent home; the desire for many survivors from eastern countries to not return home; the work of the Red Cross to reunite families; being told by the Joint to take care of about 2000 children; being in Buchenwald until the area of Thuringia was turned over to the Russians; and paying the Poles in the DP camp with cigarettes to run trucks.

    Oral history interview with Alfred Sundquist

    Oral history interview with Alfred Sundquist

    Oral History

    Dr. Alfred B. Sundquist, a major and physician with the XVIII Airborne during WWII, discusses being stationed a few miles from Ludwigslust, Germany; being instructed to go to a small concentration camp (Wöbbelin) and report back; arriving in a jeep, and seeing that the Germans had already left; conditions at the camp, which took up a few acres and had no crematoria and a couple of barracks; seeing corpses piled up and prisoners with striped uniforms who were too weak to get up; seeing the physical results of starvation in the former prisoners, including the loss of teeth and swollen legs; seeing evidence of cannibalism; writing a report recommending survivors be sent to apartments in Ludwigslust; many survivors dying from complications from starvation; the 82nd Airborne connecting to the 18th Airborne; the civilian Germans from the town being made to dig graves and attend funerals for the camp’s victims; taking pictures of the camp (he donated these pictures to USHMM); his thoughts on the local Germans of Ludwigslust; and his thoughts on Hitler’s mental health.

    Oral history interview with Fela Warschau

    Oral history interview with Fela Warschau

    Oral History

    Fela Warschau discusses being in a labor camp outside Hamburg at end of March 1945; being forced to clean streets after the city was bombed; being taken by train to Bergen-Belsen; the conditions in the camp; staying together with two friends and her sister; sharing a single potato amongst themselves for several days; liberation; survivors being disinfected and given different clothes; staying in Bergen-Belsen for two months; German doctors and nurses who were brought to the camp to work; her feelings of satisfaction seeing Germans being forced to help bury the dead; finding two of their cousins; hearing that her father had died at Auschwitz; going to Feldafing displaced persons camp; life in the DP camp; signing up for ORT courses; the tendency for survivors to marry each other; getting married in 1946; the differences between the American and British leaders of the DP camps; the children in the DP camp; and her thoughts on emigration.

    Oral history interview with Irene Weber

    Oral history interview with Irene Weber

    Oral History

    Irene Weber discusses being liberated from a prison in Czechoslovakia at the end of WWII; the Russians who liberated the prison; being deloused and sent to a hospital; being given a change of clothes and a little money; her decision to not return to Poland; staying in an apartment with a friend; registering as a Czech citizen; going to Prague in an attempt to leave the country after the communists took over; going to the American Zone of Germany; staying in Landsberg am Lech displaced persons camp; the crowded conditions in the DP camp; living in Rosenheim, Germany; working on a farm to pay rent; attending an ORT school for nursing in Föhrenwald; graduating and then working in a hospital in the DP camp in Pokcing where she cared for survivors; continuing to live in Rosenheim and taking the train to get to her job; and receiving assistance from UNRRA and the Joint even while she was working as a nurse.

    Oral history interview with Nick White

    Oral history interview with Nick White

    Oral History

    Nick White discusses being with the VI Corps, part of 7th Army, when he saw Dachau for the first time on April 29, 1945; going to the camp with his colleague Englehardt, who was a photographer and took pictures of the camp; seeing a trench in the camp filled with dead SS soldiers killed by American infantry which had been in the camp before them; being overrun by the survivors who were joyous to see them; giving out caramels and k-rations to the survivors; conditions in the barracks; a large room that led from the gas chambers where several thousand bodies were stacked up; the high rate of mortality for the survivors after liberation; finding 39 boxcars with corpses inside; and his incomprehension of the inhumanity they found.

    Oral history interview with Alan Zimm

    Oral history interview with Alan Zimm

    Oral History

    Alan Zinn discusses being sent from Buchenwald in January 1945 to Dora concentration camp; conditions in the camp; seeing American planes at end of March going to bomb Nordhausen; being taken by train for six days to Bergen-Belsen; the Russian POWs who set up a tribunal in the camp after liberation and executed about 50 SS guards; being liberated on March 29, 1945; the delousing of the inmates; the deaths of many survivors from typhus and other diseases; returning to Łódź, Poland in June 1945; meeting his future wife in Łódź; going with his wife and her two sisters to the displaced persons camp in Landsburg, Germany; reuniting with his brother; and immigrating to the United States.

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