Posted on 10/13/2020 4:04:21 AM PDT by Kaslin
“The worst sight and the last place we visited were the cremation chambers at Dachau,” wrote American soldier Leon Morin on July 9, 1945, in a handwritten letter to his family.
“… I think it is wors[e] than Buchenwald …”
U.S. soldiers liberated the Nazi concentration camp Dachau on April 29, 1945. What the Americans discovered shocked their conscience. Some U.S. troops were so overwhelmed and enraged by the horrors of this death camp that they executed dozens of Nazi camp guards.
Dachau was hell on earth.
“Nothing you can put in words would adequately describe what I saw there … All the stories of Nazi horrors are underestimated rather than exaggerated,” division assistant Chaplain (Maj.) Eli Bohnen, present at the liberation of Dachau, described in a letter to his family dated May 1, 1945.
American troops arrived earlier than the Germans expected them, writes Leon Morin, “they were caught with their pants down.” Nonetheless, Morin laments that the Nazis succeeded in killing 9,000 prisoners in anticipation of the U.S. arrival. “The S.S. were told to kill and cremate everybody before the Americans got there … they succeeded in killing 9 thousand and c[r]emated or rather half cremated more [than] half then they ran out of coal for the furnace …”
According to an official report on Dachau by Lt. Col. Walter Fellenz, commander of the 1st Battalion, 222nd Infantry, “There were over 4,000 bodies, men, women and children in a warehouse in the crematorium. There were over 1,000 dead bodies in the barracks within the enclosure.” Tech. Sgt. James Creasman, a division public affairs NCO in the 42nd Division World News, wrote on May 1, 1945: “Riflemen, accustomed to witnessing death, had no stomach for rooms stacked almost ceiling high with tangled human bodies adjoining the cremation furnaces, looking like some maniac’s woodpile.”
The gruesome reality of the scene at Dachau was described by Leon Morin like this: “… it will take 12 pages like this one to just give an idea about the best organized butchery in the world.”
“I shall never forget what I saw, and in my nightmares the scenes recur. No possible punishment would ever repay the ones who were responsible,” wrote Chaplain Bohnen. “The Jews were the worst off. Many of them looked worse than the dead. They cried as they saw us. They were emaciated, diseased, beaten, miserable caricatures of human beings. I don't know how they didn't all go mad. Even the other prisoners who suffered miseries themselves couldn't get over the horrible treatment meted out to the Jews.”
Leon Morin does not identify the plight of the Jews and their children individually in his letter. He refers to all Dachau victims as “prisoners,” “people,” and “victims.”
“The gruesome part of was how they killed those people. Either by torture by the firing squad, mutilation with starved bloodhounds of which each camp had about fifty or sixty, and by mass gas poisoning …” wrote Leon Morin. He described the crematoria and gas chambers in detail. “The unsuspecting prisoners were marched in formation to this room which was supposed to be a shower room. Inside, the ceiling was all fixed with sprinklers nicely polished which had never beem used for water but nice jets of chlorine gas were forced through controlled by an S.S. guard who had a little window through which he could look over the victims without them seeing him … After five minutes there wasn’t one of them alive, or if there were it was just tough luck because all the bodies were thrown in the next room next to the crematory and a minutes they were all burned. That ‘Shower Room’ could hold 250 persons at one crack.”
Leon Morin was 29 years in 1945 when he wrote this letter to his family. The 10-page letter has never before been published. Leon’s sister Lorraine McAleavy and her son Tim McAleavy sent this very special letter for me to share with our readers. I will be dedicating the next few columns to Leon Morin’s historic letter.
Socialist Workers Party of Germany. The German Press thought they were pretty awesome.
I had the opportunity to visit it again a few months later. I went somewhere else instead.
State Regents Looking To Keep Lessons From The Holocaust, WWII Relevant For New York Students
“The unsuspecting prisoners were marched in formation to this room which was supposed to be a shower room. Inside, the ceiling was all fixed with sprinklers nicely polished which had never beem used for water but nice jets of chlorine gas were forced through controlled by an S.S. guard who had a little window through which he could look over the victims without them seeing him … After five minutes there wasn’t one of them alive, or if there were it was just tough luck because all the bodies were thrown in the next room next to the crematory and a minutes they were all burned. That ‘Shower Room’ could hold 250 persons at one crack.”
Except the Dachaua gas chambers were never used....
I visited Dachau back in 2018 during my two week Band of Brothers Tour, Dachau was one of the stops...
It is a very eerie place, the crematorium especially....one interesting thing I saw during my visit....I would guess a couple of dozen groups of German school kids were visiting..I would say they were about Junior HS age children....
bmp
Was there as a kid sometime around ‘90. I didn’t fully grasp what was around me at the time. I need to go back at some point now that I can appreciate it.
Unspeakable horrors what man can do to other humans - not unlike the millions of little baby girls and little baby boys that have their arms and legs ripped off by "doctors" while they are still alive.
Right here in America. God help us.
Mass Murder
Hitler and Stalin considered it all collateral damage.
Leon Morin was there and says they were used.
If these Marxist bastards ever get in total charge here in this beautiful country they’ll do the same as the Nazis. Remember that FBI undercover agent that infiltrated the Bill Ayers group? He heard the leaders say they would have to kill 25 million of the refusenicks. Sick,Godless subhumans.
And Kieth Olbermann would lead the charge.
Which, sadly, in this day of cancel culture and political correctness, encompasses far too many Americans.
If the communists ever gain power here, that will happen to people like us.
Reason why the rats make sure our children are not taught this in school.
How did the Nazis get sane German citizens to participate in the insane inhumane horrible murder of 6,000,000 human beings? The same way you get people to take part in Antifa and Black Lives Matter riots for the purpose of wrecking, looting and burning a American city.
I’ve been saying something similar for years now... I used to wonder how Hitler found people willing to kill for him.
Today’s Antifa seem like they would be gleefully willing. They have even started actually killing people.
Bingo!
My husband visited there in the 70’s.......
...words cannot express
We’re planning to take our teenage granddaughter to DC.....we will go to the Holocaust Museum.....( I have been.....it is hard)
But thankfully my Granddaughter is the kindest, most compassionate with a keen interest in history and an understanding and maturity to appreciate this solemn learning experience.
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