Ohrdruf concentration camp Ohrdruf concentration camp was a Nazi forced labor and concentration camp located near Weimar , Germany . It was part of the Buchenwald concentration camp network and the first Nazi concentration camp liberated by U . S . troops . History . Created in November 1944 near the town of Gotha , Germany , Ohrdruf supplied forced labor in the form of concentration camp prisoners for railway construction leading to a proposed communications center , which was never completed due to the rapid American advance . In late March 1945 , the camp had a prisoner population of some 11 , 700 , but in early April the SS evacuated almost all the prisoners on death marches to Buchenwald . The SS guards killed many of the remaining prisoners who were too ill to walk to the railcars . Liberation . Ohrdruf was liberated on April 4 , 1945 , by the 4th Armored Division and the 89th Infantry Division . It was the first Nazi concentration camp liberated by the U . S . Army . When the soldiers of the 4th Armored Division entered the camp , they discovered piles of bodies , some covered with lime , and others partially incinerated on pyres . The ghastly nature of their discovery led General Dwight D . Eisenhower , Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in Europe , to visit the camp on April 12 , with Generals George S . Patton and Omar Bradley . After his visit , Eisenhower cabled General George C . Marshall , the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in Washington , describing his trip to Ohrdruf : . . . the most interesting - - although horrible - - sight that I encountered during the trip was a visit to a German internment camp near Gotha . The things I saw beggar description . While I was touring the camp I encountered three men who had been inmates and by one ruse or another had made their escape . I interviewed them through an interpreter . The visual evidence and the verbal testimony of starvation , cruelty and bestiality were so overpowering as to leave me a bit sick . In one room , where they were piled up twenty or thirty naked men , killed by starvation , George Patton would not even enter . He said that he would get sick if he did so . I made the visit deliberately , in order to be in a position to give first - hand evidence of these things if ever , in the future , there develops a tendency to charge these allegations merely to ' propaganda . ' Impact on Allies . Seeing the Nazi crimes committed at Ohrdruf made a powerful impact on Eisenhower , and he wanted the world to know what happened in the concentration camps . On April 19 , 1945 , he again cabled Marshall with a request to bring members of Congress and journalists to the newly liberated camps so that they could bring the horrible truth about Nazi atrocities to the American public . That same day , Marshall received permission from the Secretary of War , Henry Lewis Stimson , and President Harry S . Truman for these delegations to visit the liberated camps . Ohrdruf made a powerful impression on General George S . Patton as well . He described it as " one of the most appalling sights that I have ever seen . " He recounted in his diary that In a shed . . . was a pile of about 40 completely naked human bodies in the last stages of emaciation . These bodies were lightly sprinkled with lime , not for the purposes of destroying them , but for the purpose of removing the stench . When the shed was full - - I presume its capacity to be about 200 , the bodies were taken to a pit a mile from the camp where they were buried . The inmates claimed that 3 , 000 men , who had been either shot in the head or who had died of starvation , had been so buried since the 1st of January . When we began to approach with our troops , the Germans thought it expedient to remove the evidence of their crime . Therefore , they had some of the slaves exhume the bodies and place them on a mammoth griddle composed of 60 - centimeter railway tracks laid on brick foundations . They poured pitch on the bodies and then built a fire of pinewood and coal under them . They were not very successful in their operations because there was a pile of human bones , skulls , charred torsos on or under the griddle which must have accounted for many hundreds .