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Oral History


Frank Hamburger
Born: USA

Describes the Ohrdruf camp [Interview: 2004]

Transcript:

Well we were what is now, was East Germany, and word came down that a camp had been opened up in a place called Ohrdruf, and that Eisenhower and several of the other generals had been there and suggested that every soldier who could possibly see the camp should go. And a day or two later we were within a few miles of the camp and I went over. Well, I guess as we came up the dirt road along the railroad track, there were bodies along in the ditch and the edge of the road, evidently people that been fleeing the camp and had died or been killed on the way. And then we went in the camp, there were bodies lying all around. There was a small building where they had burned bodies, and walking around the camp there was a burning pyre, which is the first picture you have as you come into this Museum, where they had burned bodies of the prisoners, and I remember that there was a German ploughing in his field up the hill from the crematorium.

Well we were what is now, was East Germany, and word came down that a camp had been opened up in a place called Ohrdruf, and that Eisenhower and several of the other generals had been there and suggested that every soldier who could possibly see the camp should go. And a day or two later we were within a few miles of the camp and I went over. Well, I guess as we came up the dirt road along the railroad track, there were bodies along in the ditch and the edge of the road, evidently people that been fleeing the camp and had died or been killed on the way. And then we went in the camp, there were bodies lying all around. There was a small building where they had burned bodies, and walking around the camp there was a burning pyre, which is the first picture you have as you come into this Museum, where they had burned bodies of the prisoners, and I remember that there was a German ploughing in his field up the hill from the crematorium.

Frank F. Hamburger, Jr., of Columbus, Georgia, was with the 65h Infantry Division.

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