The daily monitor leader. [volume] (Mount Clemens, Mich.) 1942-19??, 1945-04-10
BY HAL BOYLE

LIMBURG, Germany, April
10-R)- American troops have
discovered German murder
factory" rivalling any house of
horror dreamed up by fiction
writer's, where il is estimated
10000 persons viewed by the
Nazis as "undesirables," were
Systematically slain.
Located in an insane asylum
near Limburg, the terror-filled
establishment was in charge Of
tall, scar-faced 70year-old
Nazi surgeon, assisted by a
husky 45-year-old chief wom-
ans nurse and middle-aged
chief warden, Allied officers
from Berlin.
Tales told by German resi-
dents of the village of Hadamar,
four miles north of Limberg.
led US. First Army officers
1t. George Walker of Deshler,
Ohio, and Capt. Alton H. Jung
of San Antonio, Texas, to ques-
ton officials in the village, and
resulted in locating the asylum.
ARREST THREE
Major Harvey M. Coverly,
I Sausalito, Calf, ordered the ar
rest of the three in charge Of
the factory" said by the Of
ficers to be one of six set up by
the Nazis inside Germany to dis
pose scientifically of unruly
slave laborers or those who had
outlived their usefulness.
German civil authorities esti-
mated $4,000 victims were gass-
ed and cremated and another S.
600 killed by drugs or poison
and buried in communal graves.
The stencil Of burning bodies
caused Hadamar residents to
complain, and the Bishop Of
Muenster lodged protests with
the asylum officials. That caus-
ed the Nazis TO switch from gas
to hypodermic injections and
from cremation 10 mass burial.
The slayings were described
as mercy killings" authorized
by a 1889 Nazi statute.
CHASTITY SCENE
Two investiga tors, Capt.
Brinkley Hamilton, British of
ficer attached to an American
Infantry Division, and Lit. w.
R. Johnson, Loveland, Colo,
told a macabre story of death
and torture and ghoulish feasts
by drunken executioners in the
asylum, where 800 crazed in
mates were permitted TO run
free in underground dungeons.
Nobody would believe it,"
said Johnson. 1T had under
ground chambers with dripping
water, bats flying around and
little crazy men who jumped out
at you at every step"
OF the Nazi surgeon in charge
johnson said: Il never saw
tougher looking man in my
life"
The job of the chief nurse, he
added, was TO put the death
needle into women patients. She
was about six feet tall, built
like football player and as
ugly as a WITCH"
THE TIP-OFF
Tn ehead keeper, "a mousey-
looking middle-aged man who
had been promoted from driv-
ir5 victims to the asylum to the
actual job Of doing away with
them" gave the officers the
first indication of how the asy-
lum operated, johnson declared
"He told us the asylum never
held more than 500 patients and
showed us that there we're only
48l graves in the cemetery
There were fresh, empty graves.
and when we asked him about
them he said we always keep
three graves ahead
The officers learned that from
six to 20 bodies were dumped
into each grave.
Capt. Hamilton, a veteran OF
20 years at London's Bow street
police station, said that on one
day 500 Russians were taken
into the asylum and not one
came out alive.
when we first walked
through the asylum the insane
inmates. laughing and scream
ing. followed us around in
packs" Hamilton added. There
were dwarfs and stupid giants
but all seemed harmless. Only