Evening star., 1945-05-06
Continued From First Page)

places like it. Munich, scores O
other once beautiful cities through
out Germany and the German peo
I pie themselves are paying the pric
for what they did at Dachau
1t was a week ago this Sunda
afternoon about S O'Clock that pa
trolls of I Company, Sd Battalion
157th Infanry of the 45th Division
approached the Dachau concentra
ton camp. That morning the 45tl
and AID Divisions had taken the cit,
of Dachau and were hurrying on t.
Munich. About 500 yards from tn
entrance to the prison, soldiers o
1 Company came across a string o
cars standing on railroad spu
which runs into the camp. A mum
ber of these cars, box cars, ,opel
gondola cars and cattle cars, wer'
filled with corpses, clad in striped
prison uniforms. Several bodie
were sprawled outside as If they hat
fallen from the opened doors. TIL,
soldiers advanced on the camp ant
after a skirmish, which lasted int
that evening. had it under control
About $50 SIS troopers and guard!
were killed. Some prisoners wer'
taken The camp inmates killed &
number of guards with their bare
hands. then stamped on them. Tht
bodies of the German guards were
lying sprawled about the place
When we got there, investigation re-
vealed over 1000 corpses jammeo
into the incinerator plant.
The Germans had run out OF coaI
about an hour after the attack COM
menced on the camp. First 1t. Stu
art Novino of Boston, Mass, reached
the freight cars. A few hundred feet
away, in plain sight of the cars and
their cargo, children of German
civilians were playing, laughing and
shouting oblNious to occasional
bursts of fire, from the camp and
equally oblivious to the corpSes
Perhaps they have become accus-
toned to such sounds and sights.
The 45th moved on to take Munich
the next DAY and a battalion was
left at the camp until the 18th Corps
headquarters could send in military
government people.
Medical Men on Duty.
When our party arrived or Thurs
day afternoon Col. Kenneth E.
Worthing. G5 of the 18th Corps, was
in general supervision with medical
men from corps headquarters, try
ing to deal with some $4,000 of the
camp inmates. many of whom were
dying each hour.
A partial examination had already
diagnosed 300 cases of tuberculosis
and l30 suspected cases, 29l definite
typhus case with many others sus-
pected. 70 syphilis and lis cases OF
pneumonia. Those examined COW
cred only portion of tine camp
popula ton and every inmate of the
camp was suffering as well from
malnutritior.
Col. G. j. Hathaway, corps sur
geon OF the 18th, said that many of
the i'll could not be moved Most of the
stories about Dachau have empha-
sized the dead bodies. The living in
many portions of the camp were
even more shocking. I went into one
barracks filled entirely with Belgians
and Dutch. There were three tiers
of hunks. Each bunk was about 80
inches wide and 7 feet long.
Couldn't Sit Up.
The vertical distance between the
hunks was about two feet, so that
man lying in a lower bunk could
not sit up. There were 1l2 hunks
occupied by 400 men. There were
two, three and even four in one
bunk. Some were unconscious. All
seemed desperately i'll, barely able
to move. Many were suffering from
a form of diarrhea, associated with
malnutrition. There were three
toilets, no medicine, no food, unless
some stronger prisoner brought it,
These men were students, profess
Sional men, former officers, all from
The so-called intellectual groups, ac-
to Franz Snoek of Amster-
dam who took me through the place.
Starvation and disease had made
them lower than animals. Living in
.he semi darkness of the unlighted
barracks, in an overpowering stencil
together for warmth. Out
side this place in closed pen about
IS by 100 feet, the exercise" lot,
corpses of that days dead were lying.
Healthier men stood there in black
muck welcoming us with smiles and
ioarse cheers and lifting their caps
and bowling as We passed. The con-
ditions in that block" were dupli-
Gated in others Another was
crowded with Poles, lying on the
floor because there were no hunks.
Get No Food.
These men, like the corpses in
the freight cars, had been shipped
to Dachau from other concentra-
ton camps early in April. For ex-
ample, 4,800 were sent on a train
from Buchenwald camp, near
Weimar, to Dachau, of these 2,718
survived the trip, having been given
no food en- route. The figures may
not be accurate but were given me
by Polish priest, Casimir Mich
elaSki, at one time a director OF
Catholic action in Poland who had
them tabulated. The worst victims
were those recently
from other camps.
1t is mystery why the Germans
would go to the trouble to trans
port them at all, unless in some
frantic gesture to conceal the prod
ucts of the concentration camps
from the advancing Allied troops.
1t would have been simpler and
perhaps more humane to kill them
quickly and cremate them with the
excellent equipment available for
that purpose. There is some curious
twist of German mentality here
that no one has been able to clarity
A spokesman for relatively healthy
inmates of the camp was the Rev.
Peter van Orstel, Dutch Jesuit
prisoner since March, 1912. He
spoke excellent English, was man
of obvious culture and refinement
with a sanity expression which
hardship had not marred. Asked
why he had been sent to the camp