The 504th near Ludwigslust found Wobbelin Concentration camp. The troopers were horrified and shocked by what they found. Wobblein, although not classified as a death camp, was a work camp where prisoners were neglected and starved to death. Unfortunately for the 504 the SS had left the area and the 504th met only Werhmacht forces in the vicinity. The people of Ludwigslust were forced to pass in review of the horrors of Wobbelin and what Hitler had done in their name. Later under American supervision, the citizens of Ludwigslust buried the victims in the city park where a monument was erected. The Burgermeister and his wife later committed suicide after knowing the full extent of the horror at Wobbelin.

Those pictures are absolutely incredible.

Where did you find them?

Actually the top one I believe is in the Division History. They are available at the National Archives online.

They are some of the best I have seen. My dad impressed upon me how sad it was that this happened and how barbaric the Germans were.

Pfc. Mike Pryor
82nd PAO
August 26, 2004

LIBERATORS

“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me.”
- The Bible, Psalm 23

Few people can claim to have walked as far or as deeply into the valley of the shadow of death as George L. Salton. Salton, a Polish Jew, spent three years in German concentration camps during WWII. His mother, father, brother and grandparents were murdered by the Nazis. Salton might have died, too, had his camp not been liberated by American soldiers.
Now in his 70s, Salton has spent much of his later life trying to say thank you to those soldiers. His liberators, the men who finally led him out of the valley of death, were paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne Division’s 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment.
Salton had a chance to thank some of them recently when he appeared as guest speaker at the 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment’s Association’s 27th Annual Devil Dinner August 19. The event was being held in conjunction with this year’s 82nd Airborne Association Convention at Circus Circus Hotel & Casino in Reno, NV, August 18 - 21.
In his speech, Salton described the horror of life in the concentration camps and the emotions he felt when he was finally freed. He drew from his autobiography, The 23rd Psalm: A Holocaust Memoir, to tell the story.
Born in 1928, Salton had an idyllic childhood in a small town in Poland. He had few experiences with anti-Semitism. That all changed when Germany invaded Poland in 1939. Almost immediately, the Nazis began imposing restrictions on where Jews could live, what jobs they could do, when they could travel, and how they should dress. Jewish people were attacked on the streets and their synagogues ransacked. By 1942, Salton’s previously well-to-do family was living in a one room apartment in the Jewish ghetto and slowly starving to death. The worst, however, was yet to come.
Salton’s family was soon split apart. He, his parents and his brother were all forced onto cattle cars and sent to different work camps. Salton found out later that his parents had been killed by poison gas as soon as they arrived at their camp. He never found out what happened to his brother. Salton himself spent time at ten different concentration camps over the next three years. He was only 14 years old.
Life at all the camps was uniformly brutal. Prisoners spent their days performing backbreaking manual labor. They were given almost nothing to eat, beaten constantly, and were often shot dead for little or no reason at all. Their lives were completely dependent on the whims of their sadistic guards.
One thing that helped Salton to survive were the rare glimpses of humanity he saw amid all the suffering: children playing in the ruins of the ghetto, an SS guard offering him an apple, a fellow prisoner sharing his last dregs of soup.
The other thing that kept him going was his knowledge that the allied forces were slowly advancing across Europe. Salton fantasized about the German army’s defeat, and about being rescued.
“At night I dreamed of American cowboys and British cavalry soldiers,” he said.
In the spring of 1945 Salton was moved to Wobbelin prison camp. It was his last camp. It was also the worst.
“I was weary of trying to fight death, and I felt that this camp would destroy me,” Salton said.
It almost did. On May 2, with American forces approaching, the Nazi guards began machine-gunning the remaining prisoners so that there would be no living witnesses. Salton tried to hide. He was certain that he’d be discovered and shot. Instead, he heard the sound of the guards running away, and of euphoric cries coming from the other prisoners.
He described what happened next in his speech to the veterans of the 504th.
“I stood up, and amid the death and the cries and the stench, I saw something I had dreamt about for years and years – I saw you. You, my American liberators.”
The men he saw were part of a small patrol element of the 504th PIR that had entered the camp. The German guards at Wobbelin had fled rather than face them. As the prisoners clustered joyfully around their rescuers, Salton realized he was finally a free man.
Almost 60 years later, Salton had journeyed across America to thank the veterans of the 504th for his freedom.
“You made a difference,” he told them. “You brought a light into my life, as you did for so many others, and as you still do today.”
Salton’s speech came at the end of a long day of remembrance for the veterans of the 504th. Many of them began their day by watching current 82nd troopers parachute onto Reno’s Stead Airport. For some, it was the first jump they had seen up close since their own WWII combat jumps.
Later that evening they lit candles and listened to Taps in memory of all their fallen comrades. As they dwelled on the sacrifices they had made as paratroopers, and on the ultimate sacrifice so many of their brothers-in-arms had made, some may have wondered why they did it. Salton had come there to tell them their sacrifices had not been made in vain.
“It hit me deeply,” said Leonhard Keck an association member who had served with Company A of the 504th in WWII.
After fighting their way across Europe, Keck and his comrades in Co. A arrived at Wobbelin on May 3, 1945, just one day after it was first liberated. Keck and Salton never met, but he did help distribute medicine and food to some of the other survivors.
“It was just indescribable, the kind of misery we saw,” he said.
Keck and his fellow paratroopers had been fighting for so long by the time they reached Salton’s camp, they were wondering what the point of it all was, he said.
But after hearing Salton speak about his liberation, “It made me feel like it was all worthwhile,” Keck said.

- 30 -

I thought I would add one of my dad's pal’s observations of Wobbelin Work Camp. As I have said, one of the proudest moments of my life was to see the 82nd Airborne Flag at the Holocaust Memorial and to know that my dad was one of the ones to help liberate this camp.

More photos from the Presidential Library of Harry S. Truman





13
German citizens digging graves.
Description: Citizens of Ludwigslust, Germany, under order of 82nd Airborne Division troops dig graves in the town square for victims found unburied in nearby Wobbelin concentration camp. From: album entitled "Nazi War Atrocities."
Subjects (ARC): Concentration camps Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945); World War, 1939-1945
14



Wobbelin concentration camp in Germany.
Description: Troops of the American 82nd Airborne Division view bodies of inmates at Wobbelin, a subcamp of the Neuengamme concentration camp. Germany, May 6, 1945. From: album entitled "Nazi War Atrocities."
Subjects (ARC): Concentration camps Holocaust victims; Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945); Soldiers; World War, 1939-1945
Subjects (HST):
People:
Places:
Accession number: 72-3250
Date: April 6, 1945
Restrictions: Unrestricted
Physical Size: 6.5x4.5 inches
Color: Black & White
Cropped: no
Photographer:
Relation:
Origin:
Institutional Creator: United States Army Signal Corps




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thanks for posting these interesting articles and photo's Jim! Staff Sergeant Keck was in the 3rd Platoon of A Company and is the same man as the one that is quoted below each of my messages on this forum.

Frank

Hello,

I am trying to identify the troopers in this sad photo taken at Wobbelin Camp in 1945. I believe my father Pfc. James McNamara is one of the troopers in the photo (second from the left with a helmet on). I would appreciate any help in confirming this and identifying any of the troopers in this photo. I call to your attention that one of the last troopers in the photo has Captain's Bars on. To see the photo better click on the link and then go down to the right corner to enlarge the photo. I requested the photo from the Truman Presidential Library and it is the best pixel value they could send. Thank you in advance for any help/comments you can offer as to the identity of the troopers in the photo.


http://www.Strikehold504th.com/jim/72_3250.jpg

Click on link above.

Regards,

Jim McNamara

Here is some of the observations Walt Hughes made upon looking at this photo.

"none of them are from I/Co, and the ones with the goggles suggest dispatch riders or drivers. Also the carbines, even though there were plenty of carbines in the line companies, also suggest a Headquarters group."

I was wondering about those goggles. Thanks Walt!