The Holocaust Journal (Lest We Forget) - Germany 1945 (II)

As the Allies marched across Germany, the Nazis fled the concentration camps. Often they gathered the prisoners and marched them toward other camps. Most prisoners were too weak to walk, were denied adequate food and water, and they died on the road. Anyone who slowed up or stumbled was shot.

In many cases, the Nazis did not have time to hide their horrors. Allied soldiers entered the camps to find piles of rotting corpses lying strewn about. It was too much even for the most battle-hardened. One American G.I. said the first thing they noticed ... was the stench. "Oh, the odors. Well, there is no way to describe the odors....Many of the boys I am talking about now--these were tough soldiers, they're combat men who had been all the way through the invasion--were ill and vomiting, throwing up, just [at] the sight of this..."

* April 1945 - Henrich Himmler told a representative of the World Jewish Congress that the Jews and the Nazis should "bury the hatchet."

* April 4 - The U.S. 4th Armored Division liberated the concentration camp at Ohrdruf, Germany.

* April 8 - Jewish inmates are marched out of the Buchenwald camp. Non-Jewish prisoners are left to meet the Americans.

* April 9 - The U.S. Army liberates Dora-Mittelbau. A few inmates are still allive.

* April 10 - Adolf Eichmann visits Theresienstadt to revel with joy at all the Jews that were killed there.

* April 11 - Buchenwald is liberated by the Americans; 21,000 inmates are still living. GI's discover tanned and tattooed human skin. Also on this date the Americans liberate the concentration/slave-labor camps at Nordhausen.

* April 12 - Generals Dwight Eisenhower, George Patton, and Omar Bradley visit the Ohrdruf camp, where the look at corpses and other Nazi horrors.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt dies. Vice President Harry S. Truman occupies the White House.

* April 13 - Soviet forces move into Vienna, Austria.

* April 14 - A Swedish diplomat, Count Folke Bernadotte, arranges the freedom of 423 Danish Jews held at Theresienstadt. Altogether Count Bernadotte saved 30,000 Jews, mostly from Ravensbruck.

* April 15 - The British arrive at Bergen-Belsen and find 60,000 survivors, and 27,000 unburied corpses. British forces close in on Bremen and Hamburg, Germany. Soviet forces are 35 miles east of Berlin.

* April 15 - 17 - A small group of British solders at Bergen-Belsen is unable to stop Hungarian SS guards from killing 72 Jewish and 11 non-Jewish prisoners.

* April 16 - The Soviet Army sets in motion its final assault on Berlin. French forces enter Nuremberg, the site of the mammoth Nazi rallies.

* April 19 - The Americans capture Leipzig, Germany.

* April 20 - Himmler meets with a Swedish diplomat to arrange for 7000 women (about 1/2 Jewish) from Ravensbruck to Sweden. Himmler is trying to burnish his image.

* April 22 - At Jasenovac, Croatia, 600 Jewish and Serbian prisoners revolt; All are machine-gunned to death except for about 80 (including 20 Jews) who escape.

* April 23 - The American Army liberates the camp at Flossenburg, Germany. Two thousand inmates are still living.

* April 25 - Soviet troops moving in from the east and American troops moving in from the west meet at Torgau, Germany.

* April 26 - The Soviets capture Brno, Czechoslovakia, freeing Oskar Schindler's Jews.

* April 27 - The Red Army liberates the camp at Sachsenhausen, Germany. About 2,000 inmates are still alive.

* April 28 - At Dongo, Italy, former Italian dictator Benito Mussolini is captured and executed by Italian partisans.

* April 29 - Hitler names Admiral Karl Donitz to succeed him as Fuhrer and president of the Reich. Joseph Goebbels is promoted to Reich chanchellor. Trapped in his Berlin bunker, Hitler dictates his final political testament which blames the Jews and their collaborators for the all of Germany's problems, including the war.

Mussolini's corpse along with that of his mistress, Clara Petacci, are hung upside down in Milan's Piazza Loreto and mutilated by a mob of angry citizens. The U.S. Army liberates Dachau, and discover 32,000 inmates still alive; they also find 50 railroad cars piled high with corpses. American troops, outraged by what they see, execute 123 SS guards.

At Allach, Germany, a number of Jewish refugees die after eating too much of the food brought by American soldiers.

* April 30 - Hitler and Eva Braun commit suicide in their Berlin bunker. Hitler's valet and others carry their bodies to the Chancellery garden and set them on fire.

Allied troops capture Munich, Germany.

The Soviet Army captures the Reichstag building in Berlin. As the Red Army sweeps into the city, many citizens, frightened, tried to flee.

The Red Army liberates the Ravensbruck camp. Only about 2,000 inmates are still living.

To be continued...