majority of prisoners were French (mainly members of the French Resistance). work on longer, after which they were starved off or killed (4) The V2 was developed by Wernher von Braun, who after World War II went Eibelshausen appeared and were soon overrun. Certainly, the Nazi's saw the labor camp as an opportunity to "kill two birds with one stone". being eaten away by diarrhea and malnutrition. Men lay as they starved, discolored, and lying in indescribable They dug mass graves on a prominent hill near the camp and carried the corpses a sadder but wiser man. [18] The sector to the Mulde River was cleared by 21 April, and after vigorous patrolling, contacted the Red Army at Pretzsch on 26 April. skeletons wrapped in skin. TIMBERWOLF TRACKS is available through the National Timberwolf Pups Association. period they were coming down by the hundreds on London and killed more than Yet in a short period of two days I and many others of the [21] The division then crossed the Saale River and took Halle in a bitter five-day struggle from 15 to 19 April. (15) The men of the 104th certainly must have agreed. The figure of 3,000 does not include the 2,250 sick and dying prisoners who were sent on an "annihilation transport" to. (Accessed Oct. 22, 2009). (10) Mary Galione-Nahas, The Journey of Private Galione: How America Became a Super Power, (Washington: Pleasant Word Press 2004). According to some accounts, soldiers of the 104th Infantry Division killed German civilians in Nordhausen who denied knowledge of the atrocities, believing that . TTY: 202.488.0406, The Holocaust and World War II: Key Dates, Holocaust Survivors and Victims Resource Center. Washington: Pleasant Word Press 2004. She lay there where she The Journey of Private Galione: How America Became a Super Power. We went to the stairs and He recounted his experience in a 1995 article by Richard Murphy marking the fiftieth anniversary of the [7] Some were not concentration camp prisoners, but forced laborers who could no longer work. Nordhausen, home of the Mittelbau-Dora Staring at the human debris on the ground awaiting burial (at Mittelbau) http://www.104infdiv.org/concamp.htm (accessed Oct. 10, 2009). On April 11, 1945 our 104th Division, under command of General Terry Allen, took the fortified town of Nordhausen located some 60 miles southwest of Berlin. In December, the 104th was forced into defensive positions by German counterattacks, but in March 1945, the division entered the Rhineland and captured the city of Cologne. in the camp had been worked, beaten and forced at top speed until they could among those who can't forget: "Nordhausen was to provide a ghastly traumatic [14] It landed in France on 7 September 1944. On the grounds According to some accounts, soldiers of the 104th Infantry Division killed German civilians in Nordhausen who denied knowledge of the atrocities, believing that they were partially responsible. American personnel forced hundreds of German citizens from the nearby town of Nordhausen to bear witness to the atrocities, help evacuate the Their striped coats and prison numbers hung to their frames as a Time dulls In 1936, a Luftwaffe barracks complex, named after the World War I flying ace Oswald Boelcke, was constructed in the suburbs of the city of Nordhausen, Thuringia. His last step had taken him to the edge Under the supervision of the US First Army, German civilians from Nordhausen carry victims of the Dora-Mittelbau concentration camp to mass graves. [5][7] Some prisoners, weakened from their ordeal at other concentration camps, never recovered from the stress of transport, often in open railway cars, with inadequate food and water. The trial convicted fifteen Dora SS guards and Kapos (one was executed). He looked to be The temperature was eight or nine degrees Celsius (46 - 48 degrees Fahrenheit) Some female forced laborers deliberately had children in hopes of being sent home; other children were incidentally conceived from careless or violent sexual relationships in the forced labor camps. seventy-five but was only forty-five. After several decades, the division then expanded its role to conducting entry-level training for soldiers of all branches of the Army in the northwestern United States. here in production of V-1 and V-2 bombs*. The corpses We would like to thank Crown Family Philanthropies and the Abe and Ida Cooper Foundation for supporting the ongoing work to create content and resources for the Holocaust Encyclopedia. The 3rd Armored Division discovers the Dora-Mittelbau concentration camp. Working and living conditions at the camp were deplorable. (8) Richard Murphy, "Survivors of V2 Nazi Slave Camp Mark Liberation," Reuters, April 10, 1995, under "The Nizkor Project," http://nizkor.org/ftp.cgi/camps/buchenwald/press/reuters.040395 (Oct. 24, 2009). effective, the world's first medium-range ballistic missile. of Frenchmen had established a small colony in the large cellar of another 104th Division (Institutional Training), HQ (to include: Headquarters (less detachment), 1st Brigade, 104th Division, 1st Battalion, 414th Regiment, 2d Battalion, 414th Regiment, 1st Battalion, 415th Regiment, 2d Battalion, 415th Regiment, 3d Battalion, 415th Regiment, 1043d Training Detachment, Headquarters, 3d Brigade, 104th Division, 1st Battalion, 104th Regiment, 2d Battalion, 104th Regiment, 3d Battalion, 104th Regiment, 4th Battalion, 104th Regiment, 5th Battalion, 104th Regiment, 1041st Training Detachment, U.S. Army Regional Training Site, Sacramento, Headquarters 4th Brigade, 104th Division, 6th Battalion, 104th Regiment, 7th Battalion, 104th Regiment, 8th Battalion, 104th Regiment, Detachment, 9th Battalion, 104th Regiment, Headquarters, 6th Brigade, 104th Division, 10 Battalion, 104th Regiment, 11th Battalion, 104th Regiment, Headquarters, 7th Brigade, 104th Division, 1st Battalion, 413th Regiment, 2d Battalion, 413th Regiment, 3d Battalion, 413th Regiment, Detachment, Headquarters, 8th Brigade, 104th Division, 3d Battalion, 414th Regiment, 104th Army Band. [5] Daily trains shuttled between Dora and Boelcke-Kaserne, bringing incapacitated prisoners and removing the corpses for cremation at Dora. The Royal Navy took three weeks to sweep the estuary waters clear of mines, and in early December 1944, the port of Antwerp was open to Allied shipping. Liberated on: April 11, 1945 . Upon return, it continued the process of demobilization until 20 December of that year, when it was inactivated. camp. [28] Each of these brigades carried the history of other historic units which fought under the 104th Infantry Division in World War II. [1] The division was assigned to III Corps of the Ninth United States Army, part of the Twelfth United States Army Group. The Dora-Mittelbau (also known as Dora-Nordhausen or Nordhausen) camp was established in central Germany near the southern Harz Mountains, north of the town of Nordhausen. sanguine genocide in Turkey three decades earlier. TO ORDER CONTACT THE WEBMASTER he had been in camp only three months. The "Timberwolf" division advanced into Belgium by the end of the following month. The 104th repulsed heavy attacks near Medebach and captured Paderborn on 1 April 1945. (11) The U.S. Army rushed medical personnel, food, and equipment to the camp. Hitler's once mighty war machine was beginning to fail, but the 104th On the afternoon of 3 April and again the next day, the Royal Air Force bombed Nordhausen; the sick barracks was nearly destroyed. Visit . work possible at the labor camps; and "die of natural causes" while producing the V2 missiles which would win the war for Germany. The soldiers reacted in shock and disbelief to the evidence of Nazi atrocities. In one bomb crater lay about twenty Main telephone: 202.488.0400 with. With the Allies firmly on the north side of the Mark River, German resistance collapsed. (3) Camp Mittelbau Dora was established Speed would save lives, so we fell into a day of evacuation, Activated in 1921 and deployed during World War II, the division saw almost 200 days of fighting in northwestern Europe as it fought through France, Netherlands, Belgium, and western Germany, fighting back several fierce German counterattacks as it advanced through the theater throughout late 1944 and 1945. Montgomery and the Canadian commanders sent their congratulations, and General Allen disseminated copies of their letters to his regiments and wrote a personal letter of thanks to everyone in the division, concluding with his favorite motto, "Nothing in Hell must stop the Timberwolves!" In all, around 5,000 V2s were launched from sites along the English Channel, killing thousands of British civilians. Malnutrition and disease were rampant, and corpses lay unburied. The One Parisian business told Galione-Nahas, Mary. Nordhausen "became the defining image of National Socialist camp terror" in many parts of the world. We went downstairs into a filth indescribable, The first camp to be liberated was the concentration camp of Buchenwald, located near Weimar, Germany. he would honor me by the traditional kiss on either cheek. Was this also the fate of the grandparents, uncles and aunts I had never He lay dust-covered, where he had nearly [14] Leur and Etten fell as the division advanced to the Mark River, arriving there by 31 October. weight of the other bodies piled on them had been too much for their starved, There were many bodies strewn about. particularly sadistic attention from the SS Troopers. Note: The 104th . Email the Webmaster. 8 September, 1944.). [40] Bernard Moore was a member of the 104th Timberwolves and went on to be the manager at the Waldorf Astoria Towers in New York, later promoted to the Washington Hilton in Washington, DC.[41]. In this manner, about one The SS was in charge of the gruesome sights at Nordhausen upon the men of the 104th: "For days and weeks, even months afterwards, the Malnutrition and disease were rampant, and corpses lay unburied. with the 3rd Armored Division for a rapid advance of an eventual 375-mile environment of a clean American ambulance. The columnist regales the Timberwolves in the following manner: They had been engaged in six months and eighteen days of unceasing front-line combat, during which they had spearheaded five major offensive operations. Nordhausen was a sub-camp of the concentration camp Dora-Mittelbau. Prisoners at Dora-Mittelbau had been forced to construct massive tunnels and work in underground factories producing V-2 rockets for the German military. "Survivors of V2 Nazi Slave Camp Mark Liberation." Search the Holocaust Encyclopedia. Buchenwald concentration camp; and The 104th Timberwolf Division received two Medals of Honor, 24 Distinguished Service Crosses, one Distinguished Service Medal, 786 Silver Star Medals, six Legion of Merits, . As part of an army-wide initiative known as the Reorganization Objective Army Division plan, the division's regiments were disbanded and replaced with larger and more versatile brigades. 107 prisoners from Buchenwald began work on the tunnels with the intent of expanding the existing storage depot into a secret underground missile In closing, a quote from Leon Karalokian of the 104th Signal (13) "United States of America v. Kurt Andrae et al. Main telephone: 202.488.0400 Private Caggiano, Robert . In the final six months of World War II, the 104th Division "The Frontier Division" launched a series of night attacks against German troops while equipped with only empty rifles, bayonets, and grenades, slicing and exploding their way through enemy lines on the drive to Berlin. The 5th Brigade, 104th Division was activated at Salt Lake City, Utah. [17] The 3rd Armored Division continued eastward and was replaced on the morning of 12 April by the 104th Infantry Division. (14) Kenneth T. Downs, "Nothing Stopped the Timberwolves," The Saturday Evening Post (August 17, 1946): 20-43. building, and would I please bring aid to them. Find topics of interest and explore encyclopedia content related to those topics, Find articles, photos, maps, films, and more listed alphabetically, Recommended resources and topics if you have limited time to teach about the Holocaust, Explore the ID Cards to learn more about personal experiences during the Holocaust. experience never to be forgotten by those who passed through it. Explore a timeline of events that occurred before, during, and after the Holocaust. flesh and bones into the cement floor. [14], The division was reactivated on 1 December 1946 in the organized reserves in Portland, Oregon. French survivor Jean Mialet is quoted as stating "This is what hell must be like" when speaking of Mittelbau Dora. The 104th Infantry Division was an infantry division of the United States Army. In a caravan of trucks we rushed into a job which proved More Breaking out of the Remagen Bridgehead on 25 March, 1945, the 104th Infantry Division, as part of the U.S. VII Corps, was teamed with the 3rd Armored Division for a rapid advance of an eventual 375-mile penetration deep into the heart of central Germany. The 104th Infantry Division during World War II As Allied troops moved across Europe in a series of offensives against Nazi Germany, they found tens of thousands of concentration camp prisoners in deplorable conditions. They were either sent by train or forced on death marches to Bergen-Belsen. The 10th Armored Division during World War II. The 104th Infantry Division was an infantry division of the United States Army. http://www.archives.gov/research/captured-german-records/microfilm/m1079.pdf. There was also a Gestapo-run Sonderlager ("special camp"), and other forced labor camps nearby, but these were not part of the Mittelbau-Dora complex. Now we approached the cellar stairs leading to the French group.
104th infantry division concentration camp