A U.S. Army sergeant, an illustrator for the Sixth Army Group Headquarters, described the camp [Dachau] when he visited in on 3 May:
The air […] was filled with the smell of lime and the unforgettable smell of the dead. Facing us was a big grey building with a grey wall, about 10 feet high, all around it. To the left of this building and wall were fifty rail cars. […] In at least 40 of the cars including the four open ones, there were dead, starved, emaciated bodies lying in every conceivable position. They wore striped suits (prisoner’s uniform) parts of which seem to have been torn from their bodies in their death throes, thus revealing that wax-like skin of the dead. In a plot of grass, opposite the train, were three dead SS guards, evidently beaten to death, because there were terrific bruises all over their bodies. They were dressed in civilian clothes which were partly ripped from their bodies. One of the bodies had part of its skull ripped open but in general they looked very well fed compared to the starved dead bodies of their victims opposite them in the train. […]
We left the open space and entered one of the houses and then one of the rooms. The room we saw was approximately 11 feet square and 10 feet high. In it were four triple decker bunks […]. This meant that there were 12 bunks in this room. Each bunk was occupied by no less than up to 4 persons, meaning that there was an average of 45 to 48 underfed, sick, and diseased people in one room. There was one small window. The room was occupied by these people when we looked in. They looked beyond any help and were dying. The stench was horrible and we had to leave very quickly to keep from vomiting. […]
We walked into a fenced-in portion of ground which housed the crematorium.
The rooms where the bodies were kept were about 10 feet high and 17 feet square filled ¾ full with layer upon layer of human bodies. They were piled as you would pile cord wood ready for burning. The stench was horrible. In back of this crematorium were pile upon pile of clothes all neatly arranged in bales. The coats were separate, the pants separate, and so on. We could see little children’s clothes and shoes, girls and women’s dresses, shoes and hats. The piles of clothing (less shoes) were put side by side to occupy a space approximately 200 feet long, 10 feet high and 4 feet wide. The place where people were shot was right next to the crematorium. We saw a big blood spot on each side of the earth bank.
Source:
Bessel, Richard. “Revenge.” Germany 1945: From War to Peace. New York, NY, HarperCollins, 2009. 162-63. Print.
Original Source Listed:
Report by Master Sergeant Jack Bessel, Sixth Army Group History, Section I, Narrative, S. 350.
(United States) National Archives, RG 332, ETO, Historical Division Program Files, Sixth Army Group 1944-45. See also Henke, Die amerikanische Besetzung Deutschlands, pp, 869-870.
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