Buchenwald: Barracks

Wile: The blocks where the prisoners slept on boards--the only thing I can liken it to is a broiler house like you might find here in Georgia. There were either two or three tiers of these shelving arrangements--just boards laying down that the prisoners slept on. There were details that each morning that took the dead to the end of the blocks and stripped the clothes off of them. Then they were moved out into this storage area here--at least this is where we found this pile of bodies--and then later they were burned in the crematorium.

Crawford: I notice that you also wrote on the back of this one.

Caption for "Corpses of prisoners near the crematorium oven"

"Corpses of prisoners near the crematorium oven"

Photo caption: "If you starve them, when they die you will have less to burn, and the more you burn the more healthy your workmen by replacement." This is just another pile of dead people, America! The Nazis have many more at this place--This is typical on a small scale--Burn!--6,000 one day, Jew!--Burn!--Dead men.

Wile: Yea. Now, I didn't dream that statement up; that had to be told to me. The guide was just telling it to me.

Crawford: Do you remember an odor about the place?

Wile: Well, I had a terrible revulsion which I feel stems to a great deal from odor--that being one of the senses that affect you. If there was an odor-- subconsciously I was thinking there should be, maybe, because of the condition of the prisoners that were still living, breathing, and sitting around the buildings.

The one building that I had that greatest abhorrence about going into and seeing was a building more or less in the center of the area that had a single pipe that ran around the outside wall. There was a trough in the center, a pit, and around this pit was a wall higher than this desk and maybe three or four inches wide. It was explained to me that this was the bathroom. They told me that in this particular part of the camp, this was the only building to which you could go to get water, that there was no other source of water. So, fifty thousand people got their water here. I was looking at this, and I couldn't even believe what I was hearing, knowing a little bit about how complex it is to feed 600 and whatever of a battalion of men.

Outside they had dug trenches between some of the buildings or off in one area in which bodies had been thrown. They were still in there; they hadn't cleaned that out yet. And there were evidences of the worst condition that you could believe a human could be in and still be alive. And, it sticks in my mind that there was an odor, but that part of it was not what your eyes were beholding. That was the impact of what was going on, and what the people were saying to you. The way they were saying it in a voice that was devoid of all energy whatsoever. The lowest possible voice--a healthy person couldn't possibly speak that low even he was whispering. He couldn't make that kind of a voice because it's not possible for a healthy person to speak in this fashion.