As World War II came to an end, Liberation was only beginning.� There were many concentration camps.� Dachau, Auschwitz-Birkel, and Ohrdruf are a few examples of camps liberated.� The Dachau Concentration Camp was liberated on April 29, 1945.� At 6:00 Wwaffen SS- Obersturmfuhrer (Lt.) Heinrich Skodzensky, the person in charge of the camp, took roll call.� His roll call was 560 men,� many were injured though.� The real SS Commandant, Martin Gottfried Weiss, had run away the day before.� So did over a thousand of the Allgemeine and Death�s Head SS guards.� Skodzensky was ordered to surrender by U.S.(Dachau Archive).

Polish prisoners celebrate Liberation.

The events on April 29, 1945 happened in the following order:

7:35-3^rd Battalion, 157^th Infantry Regiment, of U.S. 45^th(Thunderbird) Division, that were a part of the Task Force Love, jumped off from Gross Inzemoos (village 10miles north of Augsburg) with armed company, that had guns and tanks with them.

8:30- After getting rid of sniper pockets, the 3^rd Battalion stopped for a little while, by a bridge near Ampermocking, around four miles from Dachau.

9:30- The tanks of the 101^st Tank Battalion enter Dachau, after they had found a river crossing that is turned opposite; alternated.

10:00-K and L, which are two rifle companies of 3^rd Battalion, are told to attack to Munich.���������� I. Company is held back.�

10:15-The 3^rd Battalion HQ gets orders to take over and capture the camp that�s at Dachau.

10:30-I. Company and parts of M. Company (3^rd Battalion) head to the concentration camp.� Tanks are held up by a bridge over Amper River, blown down when armor gets only 20 yards away. This killed a large amount of German soldiers, that couldn�t cross.

10:45- 1^st Lt, L.R. Stewart and 1^st Sgt. Robert Wilson of L. Company found a footbridge that was only guarded by a single German machine gunner.� The Germans fired and I. Company crossed.� Tanks and L. Company stayed back to clean out Dachau and they went to attack Munich.

10:55-An I. And R. patrol gets close to the concentration camp, and they get enemy fire.� Four men sent by HQ to accept Germany�s surrender. Obersturmfuhrer Skodzensky tries to surrender the camp to the Americans, but he gets shot in the mess of things.

11:00-I. Company gets to the concentration camp, the also found a train that held many dead prisoners. Pfc, John Degro from Burton, Ohio is thought to be the very first American liberator to go to the concentration camp and be out where inmates were able to see him.

11:20- The soldiers from America get to the inner compound, which is where the inmates are kept, locked up.

11:25-Crematorium and deadly gas chambers are found.� There id chaos as they see dead people all around.���

Liberation has taken place, and the prisoners would be freed.

Prisoners at Buchenwald.

Another account of Liberation took place at Buchenwald.� The following is how Liberation took place at Buchenwald: Germany�s line of defense crossed the Rhine river on March 22, 1945, the U.S. Third Army, commanded by General George S. Patton, was going through the middle of Germany to a place where they would stop and wait for the Russian army, too, that were coming from the east.

By April 1^st, which was Easter Sunday, the American soldiers were approaching the town, Eisenach.� On April 11, 1945, some of General Patton�s soldiers come to Weimar, from the northwest, also came upon Buchenwald, a huge concentration camp.� The first Americans would reach the Buchenwald camp in the late afternoon, to liberate their Communist allies who had already taken charge of the camp and put a white flag of surrender.� The Communists gained control at exactly 3:05 p.m.� At Buchenwald it was said that the Germans hung prisoners from meat hooks, and burned the victims in brick ovens, while they were still living.� Since Liberation, the epidemics and diseases had not stopped, and still the sick prisoners, which were now free, were dying each day, still.� On April 15,1945(four days after the Americans had arrived) there were exactly 550 dead bodies at the camp of Buchenwald.

Another camp, Auschwitz-Birkel, was liberated in 1944, when the Red offensive was coming up, Auschwitz officials began to cover up traces of the bad things they had done.� They got rid of documents, and some buildings.� The orders for the camp evacuation were set in January 1945.� Prisoners that could march were moved to the Third Reich in January 1945.� About 56,000 prisoners, men and women, from Auschwitz on January 17^th till he 21^st, marched behind SS guards. On January 27,1945, the Red Army soldiers liberated the other thousand prisoners the Germans had left back at the camp.

This is Camp Stutthof, which eventually got Liberated, and the gas chambers were destroyed.

Many other Nazi camps went through Liberation, the following describes how Liberation occurred at other concentration camps:

Allied troops went across Europe in a number of offensives of Germany; they began to come into contact with concentration camp prisoners.� The prisoners, had mostly all, survived the death marches into the middle of Germany. Soviet forces near Lubin, Poland, approached a large Nazi camp in July 1944.� Germans tried to hide the evidence of murders by destroying the camp.� They burned the crematorium, although the gas chambers were still standing. Summer of 1944, Soviets overran sites of Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka camps.� Germans got rid of there camps, in 1943, after most Jews had already died.� Soviets liberated Auschwitz, largest camp, January 1945.� The Nazi forced most Auschwitz prisoners on death marches, and Soviet soldiers found only several thousand prisoners still living there.� Retreating Germans ruined most warehouses in the camp, but in ones left Soviets found personal belongings of victims.� At Auschwitz, Soviets discovered hundreds of thousands of men�s suits.� More than 80,000 women�s outfits, and more than 14,000 pounds of human hair.

U.S. forces liberated the Buchenwald Concentration camp, near Weimar, Germany on April 11, 1945.� A little while after Nazis had began evacuating the camp.� The day of liberation, and underground prisoner resistance organization took over Buchenwald.� American forces liberated over 20,00 prisoners there.� They also Liberated- Dora-Mittelbau, Flossenbuerg, Dachau, and Mauthausen.� British forces liberated camps in northern Germany, including Neuengamme and Bergen-Belsen.� British went to the concentration camp, near Celle, in mid-April, 1945.� Around 60,000 prisoners, most very sick, were found alive.� Over 10,000 died from malnutrition, and diseases after a few weeks of Liberation.

Prisoners at Mauthausen liberated in 1945.

Liberators found horrible sights in camps.� After Liberation of Nazi camps the horrors were out in the open.� Prisoners that had survived looked like skeletons.� Many couldn�t move at all.� Disease was still a danger for them; many camps were burnt down to prevent spread of diseases.� Survivors faced a long and straining journey to recovery.

The camp, Ohrdruf, also liberated went through liberation this way.� April 4,1945, Bruce Nickolas describes Ohrdruf Liberation-

The camp, Ohrdruf, was the first to be �liberated� by the Allied armies in Germany.� Ohrdruf was

Was visited by Generals Eisenhower, Patton, and Bradley.� There are photos of them observing bodies of machine-gunned prisoners.� Patton had refused to visit the punishment shed because he was afraid he�d be sick and vomit.� Ohrdruf was associated with the camp Buchenwald, also.� Ohrdruf was named after the town of the same name, famous for its history of being the place where Johann Sebastian Bach wrote some of his works.� The inside of Ohrdruf had 100 yards square central area and all around it was one story barracks that housed 60 to 100 inmates.

It was a great thing Liberation happened, if not many things would not be as good as they are today, including America, would not be the same.