April 4th — the 66th anniversary of the day that American troops discovered Ohrdruf

Col. Hayden Sears talks to Ohrdruf survivors

On April 4, 1945, American soldiers of the 4th Armored Division of General Patton’s US Third Army were moving through the city of Gotha in Germany, searching for a secret Nazi communications center when they unexpectedly came across the abandoned Ohrdruf forced labor camp, which was a sub-camp of the Buchenwald concentration camp.  Ohrdruf was the first Nazi prison camp that still had a few survivors there when the Americans arrived.

In September 1944, US troops had witnessed the abandoned Natzweiler camp in Alsace, which was then a part of the Greater German Reich, but is now in France.  But it was Ohrdruf where American soldiers first saw evidence of the atrocities committed in the Nazi camps.

“asocial” and “work-shy” prisoners at Dachau

Prisoners working in Dachau camp

The photo above was included in the original Dachau Museum that was set up in 1965, but it is not shown in the present Museum.  It shows two prisoners who had been put into the Dachau concentration camp because they were either homeless or didn’t have a job — or both.