"On the last Sunday of April 1945, the first
Allied soldier, an American scout of Polish descent, came through
the gate of the main Dachau camp. The few Nazis in the tower watched
apprehensively. They were no longer there as guards; they had been
ordered to stay on merely to complete the formalities of surrender.
The upper ranks had already fled, to blend in among the German civilian
population. The young American's first impression, later detailed
in an interview, was one of `glaring chaos,' thousands of ragged skeletons,
in the yard, in the trees, waving little rags, climbing over one another,
hysterical, completely out of control*. The scout
went back for support and returned with a small detatchment. The flags
of many Allied nations had suddenly appeared. Apparently the prisoners
had been secretly piecing them together over the months, from tatters
and patches and strips of cloth. One prisoner, a Polish priest, exuberantly
kissed an officer, learning later to his glee that she was Marguerite
Higgins, of the New York `Herald Tribune,' the first American war
correspondent to report on Dachau. A military chaplain came forward
and asked that all who could do so join him in a prayer of thanksgiving.
...
"Soon the advance scouts were joined by other
Allied soldiers and one of the German guards came forward to surrender
with what he believed would be the usual military protocol. He emerged
in full regalia, wearing all his decorations. He had only recently
been billeted to Dachau from the Russian front. He saluted and barked
`Heil Hitler.' An American officer looked down and around at mounds
of rotting corpses, at thousands of prisoners shrouded in their own
filth. He hesitated only a moment, then spat in the Nazi's face, snapping
`Schweinehund,' before ordering him taken away. Moments later a shot
rang out and the American officer was informed that there was no further
need for protocol.
"Some of the Nazis were rounded up and summarily
executed along with the guard dogs. Two of the most notorious prison
guards had been stripped naked before the Americans arrived to prevent
them from slipping away unnoticed. They, too, were cut down. General
Eisenhower sent a laconic communique from headquarters: `Our forces
liberated and mopped up the infamous concentration camp at Dachau.
Approximately 32,000 prisoners were liberated; 300 SS camp guards
were quickly neutralized.'
"During the next few days as the burials went
forward, the sick and the dying were transferred to hospital facilities,
makeshift as they had to be, and food was carefully distributed. `Prescribed'
might be the better word, for the starving had to adjust their food
intake with medical discipline. Only then did the American command
turn to review the files that the Germans, with characteristic meticulousness,
had maintained.
"The full record of the pseudo-medical experimentations
came to light. Prisoners had been used as laboratory animals, without
the humane restrictions placed on vivisection. Hannah Arendt suggested
that `the camp was itself a vast laboratory in which the Nazis proved
that there is no limit to human depravity.' For it was remembered
that these experiments were not planned or conducted by identifiable
psychopaths. They were performed or supervised by professional scientists,
trained in what had been once considered peerless universities and
medical schools. Reverend Franklin Littell called them `technically
competent barbarians.' Indeed the procedures had the full approval
and cooperation of Berlin's Institute of Hygiene." (Sachar,
8-10)
