View of a cell in the Gestapo prison in Koeln (Cologne), Germany, where a female inmate was flogged to death.

View of a cell in the Gestapo prison in Koeln (Cologne), Germany, where a female inmate was flogged to death.

Allied Military Government officials who liberated the prison report that this is the cot of a young woman prisoner who was stripped and flogged by Gestapo agents, then thrown on the cot to die. The woman's clothing lies in the center of the bed. The stain on the mattress in the shape of head, shoulders and torso is her blood. Of the 80 prisoners found by First U.S. Army troops who captured Cologne March 6, 1945, five were dead, three died the night the Americans arrived, and 31 were hospitalized for malnutrition, fleck fever and typhus. Most of the inmates had been accused by the Nazis of being members of the underground or of aiding or hiding Russians and Poles.