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05-22-2009, 09:31 PM
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Mittelbau-Dora Liberation and Boelcke Kaserne, Nordhausen, Germany, 1945
Mittelbau-Dora, near Nordhausen in Thuringia, supplied prisoner labor to the underground Mittelwerk V-2 factory. About 60,000 prisoners passed through the camp system and about 20,000 died. U.S. troops liberated the camp on April 11, 1945, after most prisoners had been evacuated on death marches or trains. The RAF bombed Nordhausen on the afternoons of April 3 and April 4, hitting Boelcke-Kaserne heavily. About 1,300 bodies were later recovered there. The photographs show rows of corpses at the bombed barracks, German civilians carrying and burying the dead, mass graves and survivors encountered by American troops. They also include Walter Kallaur and his son, Michael, burying Walter's mother, a survivor dragging a former guard by the hair, a U.S. congressional committee inspecting a V-2 assembly line at Mittelwerk and a postwar image from the trial of 19 defendants accused of atrocities at Mittelbau-Dora. |