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The Florida Holocaust Museum: History, Heritage and Hope Permanent Exhibition

Camp Liberations

On January 27, 1945, the Soviet army liberated approximately 7,000 sick and dying prisoners at Auschwitz I, Auschwitz-Birkenau, and Monowitz.  The majority of the prisoners had been previously evacuated.  The Soviets also liberated major Nazi camps at Majdanek, Stutthof, Sachsenhausen, and Ravensbrueck.

British forces mostly liberated camps in northern Germany including Neuengamme and Bergen-Belsen.  When they entered Bergen-Belsen, British troops found 60,000 prisoners still alive, though most were critically ill because of a typhus epidemic.  Despite the rescue efforts of the troops, more than 10,000 survivors died within a few weeks from the long-term effects of malnutrition and disease.

U.S. troops liberated Buchenwald, Dora-Mittelbau, Flossenbürg, and Dachau.  The first camp liberated by U.S. troops was Ohrdruf, a subcamp of Buchenwald, on April 4, 1945 by the 4th Armored Division.
We continue to uncover German concentration camps for political prisoners in which conditions of indescribable horror prevail.  I have visited one of these myself and I assure you that whatever has been printed on them to date has been an understatement.
     - General Dwight D. Eisenhower
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Here are 3 fragments of Fred Wysocki's testimony about his involvement in the liberation of Ebensee Concentration Camp in May 1945:


 

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This page references:

  1. Auschwitz liberation
  2. Mauthausen liberation
  3. Ebensee survivors
  4. Eisenhower at Orhdruf 1
  5. Eisenhower at Orhdruf 2
  6. Auschwitz-children survivors