|
|
|
 |
 | ||||
|
"We took wagonload after wagonload of bodies out to the grave site." | |||
|
Raymond Buch Born 1920 New York City 
|
|
From the German civilians nearby we started to get the...those people to come up by the truckload and we told them to dress in their Sunday best, and then we made them dig graves, and...uh...we wanted them to see what was going on and then we had them carry the bodies, load the bodies in the wagons. We took wagonload after wagonload of bodies out to the grave site, which was the soccer field or the sport...uh...they call it the sport Platz [place]. And...uh...we made the Germans handle, load them up in the wagons from inside the camp, take them down to the...the...um...graveyard, the grave site, and unload them, put them down in the graves, side by side, by the hundreds--there'd be hundred and fifty people or so in a row--and side, practically on top of each other. They were such, they were all skin and bones, and it was--I have pictures of them and movies, which you'll see later--but the...um...uh...bodies were...uh...were so emaciated that you...you...you...you couldn't possibly understand how those people were alive and walking around. And...uh...some of those walking around looked better than the dead, of course--a little better than the dead--and some of them looked worse, and they're still alive, depending on their resistance or whatever, I...I don't know. But it was incredible that they were still walking, in many cases. "The walking dead," we called them at that time. | ||
|
Colonel Richard R. Seibel Born 1907 Defiance, Ohio 
|
|
We gathered up about seven hundred bodies, which we had to bury. We had no identification of any kind, and we buried them in the old sports Platz [place], which was the recreational area for the...uh...SS, playing soccer and baseball, or whatever they played. Uh...the bodies were no...there were no identification on any of these people, and no one could identify any of them because some of them were in terrible...uh...condition. So we buried them, in a mass grave, about seven hundred. Uh...we put a cross up over each grave. Of course, they were buried without benefit of casket or anything because we had to get rid of those bodies. Uh...and from that time on, anyone who died in Mauthausen received a cross or a Star of David, with their names on it, and they were thoroughly and totally identified, but prior to that we couldn't do it. But I would guess that...uh...there was something like thir...thirteen hundred people died while we were there, and they were all identified properly so that...uh...all records...uh...maintained...uh...their nationality and their name. | ||
| Copyright © United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, D.C. | ||||
