Col. Edmund M. was a First Lieutenant in the 65th Infantry Division of Patton's Third
    Army during World War II. He had fought through most of Germany into Austria when
    his unit, with the 11th Armored Division, stopped to wait for Soviet troops coming
    east from Vienna. Tanks of the 11th Armored Division were probing for German
    forces.

        "Two or three tanks then stumbled upon Mauthausen concentration camp.
        ...There was no prior knowledge. ...I think it was pure chance that our
        American tanks found these. ...Almost immediately more and more tanks of
        the 11th Armored Division ...were the first to liberate the camp."

    Colonel M. arrived shortly after the tanks.

        "The thing that, I think, impressed all of us immediately was the horrible
        physical condition of most of the inmates. ...most of them in very, very bad
        shape. Some of them actually looked almost like living skeletons. ...I would
        estimate their average weight might have been probably eighty-five, ninety
        pounds...."

        "I walked in then into one of the barracks, and the first thing, that almost
        literally startled me, was the terrific stench of the barracks. It was just
        unbelievable - the odor of excretions, etcetera, that were in there, that the
        inmates could not help over a period of time. It was just so much so that I
        first just wanted to grab my breath and maybe walk out immediately without
        going any further. But I took a deep breath, and went indeed further, and
        looked around, and... those that were in the, in the bunks in there were in
        very, very pitiful shape. The bunks were in a sense unbelievable. The bunks
        were roughly about, I'd say about six feet long, probably about three and a
        half or four feet wide. And they were triple-tiered, sort of like young
        children would be having, except one would be sleeping in them. Here we
        had three to four inmates sleeping in each of these bunks just squeezed
        together, literally like almost sardines."

    Colonel M. was able to communicate with the prisoners through soldiers in his unit
    who spoke German and Yiddish. He was shown the quarry where many of the
    prisoners were slave laborers. He describes a two hundred foot drop from a
    precipice at the bottom of which were jagged stones strewn with broken and
    decomposing bodies.

        "One hundred eighty-six steps of death that led from the bottom of this
        quarry up to the top of this precipice. ...This particular work detail...was
        one of the worst tortures. ...Inmates would carry these heavy stones up the
        one hundred and eight-six steps of death. ...Weighing only eighty,
        eighty-five, ninety pounds, were carrying stones weighing perhaps
        thirty-five, forty, forty-five pounds, up these steps...all day long. ...If they
        fell or stumbled...or dropped the rocks, very often they were beaten to death
        right on these one hundred eighty-six steps...[or] pushed from the precipice
        down to the jagged rocks below, to their deaths. ...Happened very
        often...went on constantly. The atrocity of the one hundred eight-six steps of
        death, which left such a vivid memory in my mind, that I have never, never
        forgotten these many years."

    The liberators quickly learned from the prisoners the names of the camp officials and
    the atrocities they committed. Colonel M. visited the nearby town in which the
    civilians denied any knowledge of the camp. He believed "they just basically lied to
    us," since he learned inmates frequently were marched through the town. Colonel M.
    later arrested many SS and he participated in the Dachau war crime trials from
    January to June in 1946. He expresses his belief that justice was not served by the
    trials, since so few of the perpetrators were ever tried and, of those sentenced to
    death, few executed. Their prison sentences were appreciably shortened. During this
    time, Colonel M. never met an SS soldier or camp official who expressed any
    remorse for the atrocities committed.

    Col. Edmund M. Holocaust Testimony (HVT-1219). Fortunoff Video Archive for
    Holocaust Testimonies, Yale University Library. The length of the complete
    testimony is 2 hours. A catalog record is available for this testimony in Orbis, the
    Yale University Library online public access catalog. The Video Archive provides
    instructions to help you conduct your own Orbis searches.