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05 - Mauthausen Camp

You mentioned what you saw when you went there, with the quarry. How long was that after the Germans had left?

Landsberg was very shortly—just a couple of days. By the time I got to Mauthausen, it was probably a matter of weeks that they were gone, but we saw enough of it. Mauthausen was one of the absolute worst places. I don't know how many thousands of prisoners died there.

Was that a much larger camp?

Yes. Larger than Landsberg.

And how much time did you spend at Mauthausen?

I was stationed in Linz, and Mauthausen was twenty or thirty miles outside of town. And I was in Linz probably for a couple of months before I was able to get discharged and come back to the States—at least two, three months. I got to Mauthausen itself a couple days after I got to Linz, and I got to Mauthausen, I think, three times before I left. Each time was cleaned up a little bit.

What was that camp like? You said it was much larger.

Yes. There were thousands of prisoners at Mauthausen. This was a much larger camp—covered acres. And these people came from all over Europe. All over Europe. Poland, some Russians, Lithuania, Latvia. There were some Dutch, some French.

Were those people the ones who ended up in the displaced persons camp you were involved with?

Yes. All sorts, and then we tried to repatriate them back to their home countries at that time. I remember the particular group I was with was headed by Major Gray. Super nice guy. He had been an economics professor at the University of Wisconsin, and he ran our particular unit. Wonderful, wonderful man. And he eventually got transferred to Vienna, which was the supreme headquarters for all of Austria. There was Russian, French, German, and British who were in Vienna. And he was being transferred there. He got a promotion to colonel, and he came to me, and he wanted me to go with him, I remember, to Vienna. And he promised me master sergeant's stripes if I would go, but I was married, and I was anxious to get back to my wife. If I wasn't married, I would have gone. I would have gone with him. I did spend one weekend in Vienna. It was interesting, but as I say, I would have gladly gone for the experience if I hadn't been married already.

What did Vienna look like at that time? Had it been heavily bombed?

Yes, you could tell that it had been a beautiful city. Some of it was damaged—a lot of it was damaged. The big church and all. It was a beautiful city at one time. I have an aside, if I can. I got a furlough right after the war ended for five days and was able to get to London, to England. I spent four days in London and three days in Scotland. But the thing I remember about London was St. Paul's Cathedral—this big beautiful cathedral In the center of the city. Everything for a mile around it, for blocks and blocks, everything around it was completely destroyed by V2 rockets. It was a miracle that St. Paul's Cathedral—I can never forget that. That stood, and everything else around it was destroyed. That was something I will never, ever forget. Just a miracle.

Are there other images that stick with you?

That one sticks in my mind probably more than anything.

Ebensee Camp

With the camps, you mentioned Ebensee as well. We've talked a little about Mauthausen and Landsberg, but you said you went through Ebensee.

Yes. Ebensee was a sub-camp of Dachau. Dachau was the major one, then there were a lot of sub-camps all around for fifty or a hundred miles.

Was that a work camp as well?

Yes.

And when did you get to see that?

Ebensee I just saw going through. That was, I spent a day, maybe. But it was the same as the others, you know. Bodies piled all over, survivors were skeletons themselves. Some of them were very strong individuals through it all. They were able to know what was going on and all. Others just were like zombies.

When you went through Ebensee, did you have a particular mission there, or were you just going through?

No, we were just on our way through. We spent probably a day there. You must have talked to somebody who had been there.

No.

I was just curious.

You had just mentioned the three camps.

Going back to Landsberg just for a minute. You said you were there for a couple of days. Do you remember what you did throughout the day?

We tried to help the survivors with food, medicine, make them comfortable, blankets and all. There wasn't a hell of a lot we could do. We were able to feed them where we could. We had the GI rations. We had to be very careful, because originally, when you first came across them, you just wanted to give them all the food you could, but that killed many of them, because they could not take it. And thousands of them died that way, you know, because we didn't know it at the time but now we do.

Did you stay right at the camp? Where were you staying?

Oh no, we were outside of camp about a mile. We had bivouacked there. We had set up some tents and stuff like that.

With the other soldiers, did you talk about what you had seen?

In Linz, for example, I was there for a couple of months, of course. We took over some housing. Outside of Linz there was a German cavalry camp and barracks that was pretty good conditions, and the Germans had—this was one of their elite places. And when we got there, we kicked the Germans out, killed some of them, and we were able to use the facilities there, which were some of the best we had ever had. Those were good facilities. Some of the GIs took advantage of the stables there, because this had been a cavalry barracks, and rode horses. I had never been on a horse before and I was talked into it. One of the guys in our group, I still remember, he had been a cowboy in Texas, and his job—he would break wild horses, so he knew what was going on. I can never forget this guy. So he insisted that we go riding. He said, "I'll pick out the best horse for you." So we went in the group, and I was on this horse, holding on, and off they went. And my horse wanted to follow. I was like, "Whoa! Whoa!" Couldn't stop him. I just held on for dear life. And he was following all the others. That was some day.

When you took over this housing area, were there other food supplies or liquor supplies—were there things there that you hadn't had access to over the last few months, besides horses?

In Linz?

Yes.

We had our own warehouse there because we were administering these other camps, so we had a big warehouse with food and clothing. We would get word, I think I mentioned, that there was a train load in box cars of refugees coming in to Linz. They were coming from different kinds of camps, and we would sort them out. But the first thing we did, we would get word—and I was one of only two people there that had the authority to open up the warehouse and take anything out that we needed. And the first thing we did, we'd go to the warehouse—we'd find out how many people were there and what we needed—and we'd take clothing and everything else. If there were children—occasionally there were children—we had powdered milk, and we'd be sure to get that. And then we had DDT spray. The first thing we did when we took these people off the box cars, we'd line them up and we'd spray them with DDT to kill lice and anything else they had. It was the very first thing we did. And then we started— we tried to feed them, give them clothing, get them into better conditions. But we had a lot of these trains coming through. It was interesting. I'd get a call on a Sunday night that a train was coming. As I say, I was one of the two non-coms that had the authority to open the warehouse, and we'd load up our trucks with what we thought we needed. It was interesting.

Is there any one image that really sticks out in your mind about the concentration camps?

The camps all began to look alike. There were a great many camps. Many of them were not in our area. The British freed some, the French, the Russians, and we just had part of them. And there must have been a hundred slave labor camps in Germany and Austria, I'm guessing.

In this process of liberating camps and witnessing, did you interact with any Russian soldiers that were there doing the same thing?

Very seldom. When we were in Linz, the other side of the river was Russian territory, and we would meet a few at different events. Most of them [us] did not speak Russian. We had one or two interpreters who did speak Russian. They were friendly. But it was interesting. When I compare the Russians and how they reacted to the Germans, compared to us, we were angels compared to them.

Can you give an example?

They did not hesitate to shoot any of them that they saw, regardless, at all. Every German was fair game.

Citizens?

And we would try to separate them, though. But you couldn't blame the Russians for what the Germans did. As I say, when I came back from—came out of service and went back to the States, I couldn't talk about it for years before I said anything. Couldn't tell my wife or the family or anybody the things I saw.

So even while you were going through it, you'd go back to sleep at night, you weren't talking about it with the other soldiers? How did you get through that?

Oh yes, we talked among ourselves about what was going on,obviously, because we were all going through the same thing.

Do you remember any of those conversations? How did they go?

It was just general kinds of things, you know. Everybody, by that time, the guys were talking more about what they were going to do when they got home, that sort of thing. It was an interesting bunch. There were all kinds of guys. I remember one guy in particular in the outfit, he was a professional gambler in St. Louis. I can remember that. He made his living as a gambler. I remember—he was on our transport going overseas in the boat and I remember that he was older than I was, we became friendly—there was a card game going on, and dice, all night long in the latrines on the ships. And he made thousands of dollars in these things going over there. He and I became good friends. He was maybe ten, twelve years older than me, and he was trying to take care of me, and he used to tell me, he said, "I don't ever want to see you with a card in your hand or dice. Don't ever, ever gamble." And he made sure I didn't. And I was not a gambler anyhow, but I remember how he wanted to be sure I didn't gamble. But he probably made thousands of dollars, because he was a professional. Nice guy, though.

I guess at this point you've talked a little bit about the displaced persons camp, but we'd like to go into that in more detail. When you were involved with the series of camps....

We went through and saw a couple of them, we didn't stay long. Where we spent the most time at was Mauthausen in Linz, because it was right outside, and I was stationed there for a couple of months probably. That's the one that we got to know best of all. And as I say, we'd try to repatriate the various prisoners from the different camps that came in by train from those, and we'd try to send them back to Russia, France, Belgium, Holland, wherever they were from. Some of those prisoners did not—particularly those from the Russian area—a lot of those prisoners were mistreated by the Russians, also, before that, and some of them did not want to go back to their areas if it was under Russian domination. And some of them gave us a very difficult time. They refused to go back. But the agreement we had among the four countries was that we had to send the survivors back to their home countries. There were times when we forced them at gunpoint to go back to where they came from—particularly Russia.

Were there other areas people did not want to return to?

No. Russia was the only one that we found that they did not want to go back to. Some of them were very, very adamant about that. Just incredible.

Did they tell you specifically why did they not want to go back? About what happened to them?

Because they think the Russians were not treating them well anyway particularly if they were among the minorities. They thought they were treated better than the Germans treated them, but they were not treated real well by a lot of the Russians. So some of them did not want to go back. But we had to force them.