The Western news. [volume] (Libby, Mont.) 1933-current, 1945-06-21
Lincoln Man
Saw Dd(hdu
Atrocities
Believes Residents of
County Should Know the
Truth of Conditions.
HORRORS ARE BEYOND
HUMAN CONCEPTION

We are in receipt of letter from
Pic. Jack Bolen, Eureka lad, who T.
now stationed in Austria. He says IN
part:
I've been in combat in France
and Germany for the past gtx
months with the And Division. Re-
Gently the Division liberated d.
chau concentration comp and l hap
pened to be one the first G. Is "a
reach the gates and view the hor-
rible atrocities. wish that l could
describe what was there, but ! am
not capable of it. T/3 James W.
Creasman Of the 62nd Division, han
done fair job in the article that
! am enclosing | should like for
all the people of Lincoln county to
read this article and maybe it win
more fully explain why we fought
war with Germany"
Excerpts from the article sent by
Pfc. Bolen, follow:
Dachau is no longer a name Of
terror for hunted men. $4,000 OF
them have been freed by the And
Rainbow Division. The crimes done
behind the walls of this worst Of
Nazi concentration camps now live
only to haunt the memories of the
RainboWmen who tore open its
gates and first saw its misery, and
to accuse its SIS keepers of one Of
the worst crimes in all history.
When infantrymen of the And
Division fought their way into
Dachau against fanatical SIS troops
who met deserved violent deaths
along the meats, behind the high
fences and in the railyards Uttered
with the bodies of SO carloads Of
their starved victims, these hard
ened soldiers expected to see hor-
rible sights.
But no human Imagination fed
with the fantastic of the tales that
have leaked out from the earliest
and most notorious Of all Nazi con-
eentration camps. could have been
prepared fer what they cid see
| there.
The keen descriptive powers Of a
score OF ace correspondents who en-
tered the camp while the battle of
liberation was still in progress, and
through whose eyes the whole
world looked upon that scene.
could not do justice to this story.
Seasoned as they were by long ac-
quaintanceship with stark reality,
these trained observers gazed at
freightcars full of piled cadavers no
more than bones covered with skin
and they could not believe what
they saw with their own eyes.
kiflemen accustomed to witness
ing death had no stomach for rooms
stacked almost ceiling high with
tangled human bodies adjoining the
cremation furnaces, looking like
some maniacs woodpile.
And when an officer pressed
through mobs of the forgotten man
of all nations inside the electric
barbed wire enclosure and entered
a room where lay the dying sur
vivors Of the horror train, he wept
unashamedly as limp ghosts under
filthy blankets lying in human ex-
creta, tried to salute him with
broom-stick arms, falling back in
deathly stupor from which most
would never rouse.
Ten days before the arrival of
the Rainbow Division SO carloads Of
prisoners arrived at Dachau from
the Buchenwald concentration camp
in starving condition after q days
without food. When BuchenWald
was threatened by advancing Amer
lean troops the Nazis hurriedly
crowded about 1000 of their prison
ers into open flat cars unfit even
for cattle. n days later-days of
exposure to freezing weather with
CONTINUED on page ~