A Veteran's Journey

Trigger warning: This is not a happy post and… I do not intend it to be. While I usually try to keep a positive attitude when I write “A Veteran’s Journey,” I felt a need to share one of my father’s war experiences; one that happened years ago during World War II… one that stayed with him his entire life.

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I took these photos during our visit to the area in 2010. I purposefully chose NOT to show the black & white photos taken during the liberation. There are many other sources to view them, including my 80th Division Veterans Association website.

I write this not to shock the reader, but to help keep these memories (albeit not-so-good memories) alive so that we will Never Forget.

This week marks the 76th anniversary of the liberation of the Buchenwald Concentration Camp. It’s near Weimar, Germany, the birthplace of the German Republic in 1919. My father, Lt. A.Z. Adkins, Jr., had a close and personal look; he witnessed and was part of the camp’s liberation in mid-April 1945.

Back in 2010, Becky & I visited Weimar and Buchenwald (a personal tour by a good friend of the 80th Infantry Division Veterans Association). It is still a horrifying place, knowing what went on.

But to me, it’s imperative that we Never Forget.

This is my dad’s story, with excerpts from my book, You Can’t Get Much Closer Than This: Combat with the 80th “Blue Ridge” Division WWII Europe published by Casemate Publishers.

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Mid-April 1945

Lt. George McDonell, Company E’s CO, and one of Company H’s machine gun platoons were guarding and maintaining order at the Buchenwald concentration camp. Buchenwald was horrible beyond description. There were thousands of prisoners of every nationality, creed, and color in the world behind the fences. Prisoners there spoke twenty different languages.

I walked into a prisoner barracks with McDonell.

A hundred men could have arranged themselves comfortably in there, but the Krauts had crowded in a thousand men. Wooden bunks stacked on top of wooden bunks from the floor to the ceiling, just like shelves. Once a man got on his “shelf” he didn’t even have enough room to turn over.

Some prisoners had a thin, stinking blanket; others had none. Some were too weak to get up, and they looked at us with dull eyes, not realizing who we were or what was going on.

To say they were nothing but skin and bones is not enough. They had ugly looking sores, swollen ankles, and for many... deranged minds.

Everything stank beyond belief; I couldn’t even begin to describe it. Many of our troops held their hands over their noses and mouths, others used an oily rag normally kept for cleaning their weapons. Neither helped.

General Horace McBride, Commanding Officer of the 80th Infantry Division, came out to inspect Buchenwald. Not long after arriving, he ordered all the windows in the barracks to be broken out and said he would send several truckloads of blankets down.

Of course, higher echelons were already sending medical staffs and food.

More than 20,000 prisoners were still in Buchenwald by the time the 80th Division arrived. This was the first major German concentration camp to fall into Allied hands that still had a full population of prisoners.

Outside the barracks were thousands upon thousands of naked bundles of skin and bones, their torsos and faces twisted in all sorts of grotesque designs. Bodies were stacked on top of bodies, neatly arranged, and stacked like cords of wood. Each stack was about five or six feet high and extended for about fifty feet. All were dead… all were naked… and all were face up.

It was a sickening sight, because beyond this stack of bodies were more stacks of bodies.

I thought that was bad…

Then we discovered the crematorium. Set in the brick walls were small openings with iron doors about two feet wide and two feet high. There were several sets of these doors, most were closed, but we found one open. Inside we found heavy metal trays with partially burned bodies. It looked like each tray could hold three bodies at one time.

Toward the end of the war, Army intelligence estimated about 5,000 prisoners died each month at Buchenwald. We found one huge hole in the ground where the Nazi’s had dumped thousands of bodies. The Krauts had tried to burn the bodies to hide the evidence, but we had gotten there too soon.

The smell of death stayed in my nostrils for days. The images stayed with me… throughout my life.

From the beginning to the end of Buchenwald, a total of 32,887 prisoners died, not including those executed, those sent on death transports, and those in the worst condition who transferred to other camps.

Several days after the discovery of Buchenwald, the mayor of Weimar, his wife, and citizens of Weimar were brought to see the sights of Buchenwald. An interpreter met them at the gates of the concentration camp and gave them a tour of the camp. Because of a “problem” of several citizens returning to Weimar after the tour, they were brought back again and given another slower, more “detailed” tour of all the facilities at the camp.

When the mayor and his wife returned to town, they committed suicide.

The internees had safely stowed their former SS guards away in a cellar. We looked at them. They looked their part, animals with no souls and no hearts. Even the SS women who managed the women prisoners looked the evil part. Their arrogant attitude and their silence spoke volumes.

Everyone had the same question on their minds: “How could a human being do this to another human being; let alone, thousands?”

One man showed us something he had discovered. It seems the wife of the commandant of Buchenwald, Ilse Koch, was quite a collector.

She collected tattoos and had several boards of tattoos. Any prisoner who had tattoo marks on his body would have his skin peeled off for the lady’s collection. We later learned that she rode her horse through the camp, looking for prisoners with tattoos. When she found one, she tapped him with her riding whip and the Kraut guards would haul him away to the infirmary.

Because of her “experiments,” her earned nickname was the “Bitch of Buchenwald.” She had a beautiful, but grotesque, collection: works of art from tattoo artists all over the world.

Later, we visited the SS Officer’s quarters. There we found lamp shades made from human skin with tattoos on them. Some of the men took them for souvenirs. At the Nuremberg war crimes trial for Ilse Koch, exhibits included a piece of tattooed skin tanned at Buchenwald for her.

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It’s one thing to quickly gaze upon black & white photos of these horrific events. It’s another thing to read the descriptions (e.g., The Buchenwald Report, by David A Hackett). Still… B&W images and descriptions don’t even come close to witnessing these horrors, first hand, like my dad and thousands of other Allied troops. What the images don’t show you are the cries & sounds, the stench & smells, and the emotions these men experienced at the time and… what they carried with them throughout their lives.

May we NEVER FORGET.

Next week, I promise something a little lighter from “A Veteran’s Journey.”

Until we meet again,
Andy

Andy Adkins is a US Navy veteran (’73-77) and the author of several books. His newest novel, NEVER FORGET, is the story of A Vietnam Veteran’s Journey for Redemption & Forgiveness. NEVER FORGET is FREE (eBook, PDF) for all veterans. Download your FREE copy HERE.