In January 1944, Lauterbach was part of the delegation of Western correspondents who visited the graves in Katyn forest at the invitation of the Soviets. He believed the Soviet version that the Germans were the perpetrators. Lauterbach was one of the first American journalists to write about the liberation of Nazi concentration camps. After visiting the Majdanek camp near Lublin in 1944, Lauterbach described how the impact of the "full emotional shock came at a giant warehouse chock-full of people's shoes, more than 800,000 of all sizes, shapes, colors, and styles... In some places the shoes had burst out of the building like corn from a crib. It was monstrous. There is something about an old shoe as personal as a snapshot or a letter. I looked at them and saw their owners: skinny kids in soft, white, worn slippers; thin ladies in black highlaced shoes; sturdy soldiers in brown military shoes..."