When American Soldiers Entered Mittelbau-Dora, di They Found Survivors Who Were Barely Alive

The US Holocaust Memorial Museum describes the camp system as one of the clearest examples of the Nazi concentration-camp system’s exploitation of prisoners for the wartime economy.

By the final months of the war, the situation had become catastrophic.

The prisoners were disappearing before liberation arrived

The Nazis knew the war was approaching its end.

Instead of simply abandoning the prisoners, SS authorities began evacuating camps across Germany.

At Mittelbau-Dora, thousands of prisoners were forced onto trains and death marches.

Many never reached their destinations.

Thousands died during the evacuations.

At the nearby Boelcke-Kaserne subcamp, the situation became particularly horrific.

The facility had increasingly become a place where prisoners who were too sick and weak to work were concentrated.

There was little food.

There was almost no meaningful medical care.

There were not enough beds.

Some prisoners were forced to lie on concrete floors.