CAMP OHRDRUF, GERMANY…..APRIL 1945
The first thing you noticed was the smell, putrid and nauseating, rising in waves with each step we took down the gravel walkway until it lodged in our heads with the force of a tension migraine. It reminded me of the receiving tent at the Army’s 86th Field Evacuation Hospital we had been to weeks earlier in Aachen, hoping it might have given me the stomach for this newest adventure. Horrid as that was, it was soon clear this was going to be magnitudes worse.
Truth is, the military had amply warned us. We were told we would see things no American civilians had ever witnessed. That we would have the privilege, if you could call it that, of giving the Free World its first, no-holds-barred look at what had gone on inside the sealed gates of this German forced labor camp. And many others like it.
Beside me was Ivy, my rock-steady partner over the past four months of our European tour as sketch artists for the USO. We had become close as sisters, and when she stole a sideways glance my eyes obediently followed. On the ground were shapeless bundles that appeared to be clothing, as casually discarded as a rattler sheds its skin. As we inched closer, I could see human arms, legs, necks and heads protruding from these heaps. I blinked several times in disbelief. As an artist, I was used to observing, even obsessing over, all types and sizes of bodily parts before committing them to canvas or paper. Now I found myself staring at the unimaginable: lifeless torsos whose paper-like skin had been drawn so tight under a blazing sun they seemed on the verge of splitting. The faces, at least ones visible to us, had become waxen masks bleached of all color and features. Flies swarmed around each and dark maroon patches stained the earth around them.
I could feel a slight tug on my arm. It was Ivy, mouthing the words “Are you okay?”
I gave her a reassuring nod, even if I wasn’t. At 22, a naif fresh out of Brooklyn, I was anything but okay.
As we made our way deeper inside the camp, surrounded by twin barbed wire fences inches apart and boxy, wooden guard towers resting on stork-like legs, we could see other small groups that had come to observe, each tagging along behind a military guide, like some historical building tour back in the States. In this case, the U.S. Army was the orchestrator, and it had obviously done its homework, the goal being maximum exposure. In addition to journalists, photographers and other civilian observers like Ivy and me, there were knots of platoon leaders and military brass from the front lines, their chests bristling with medals and ribbons. As the day wore on, the face of every officer you saw told the story better than any words or pictures could have. Dazed, slack-jawed, as if they just learned they had six months to live.
Our group’s guide was Sergeant Bryan Crockett, a tall, broad-shouldered man who was part of the 4th Armored Division that had stumbled upon this ghastly scene while searching for a secret Nazi communications center rumored to be south of the city of Gotha. “Single shot to the back of the head—everyone of ‘em,” the sergeant said in a voice with the texture of loose gravel, as he turned to face us. “When we got here, the gate was wide open -- and this is what greeted us. Hard to believe. In some ways worse than D-Day or Bastogne.”
He went on to tell us that Ohrdruf had housed around 12,000 prisoners earlier in the year, mostly Jews, who were treated no better than caged animals, forced to work until they dropped. The turning point came when the Nazis got wind the Allies were closing in, and knew they had to get out. Pronto! Rather than leave anyone behind who could tell the gruesome story he was now reciting to us, they decided to execute on the spot anyone judged physically incapable of the tortuous evacuation to Buchenwald. That left the 70 or 80 bodies splayed before us.
“Any questions?” the sergeant half-barked, before gesturing us forward, past the parched and desolate central courtyard with its empty flagpole, down a narrow rutted pathway fronted by low-slung, bile-green buildings, until we stopped at a clearing dominated by a simple, square-shaped frame jutting up unexpectedly from clumps of weeds. Taking in the three loops of gleaming steel cable encircling a taut line stretched between opposite wooden poles, I didn’t need the sergeant to give this contraption a name. The gallows.
Around the time this horrifying truth hit me, I felt Ivy’s elbow in my side. When I looked over, she motioned with dancing eyes across the way, to the other side of the makeshift scaffold.
I recognized them instantly from the newsreels and photographs plastered on the front page of every newspaper in the world. Eisenhower. Bradley. Patton. A Mount Rushmore of military brass standing side-by-side. Larger than life. Fixed in time. Immutable. Soldiers, some in dress uniform, others in plain khakis, stood in obedient, half-moon formation around them. Years later, I haven’t forgot a solitary detail. A slight, angular man in denim overalls and a badly worn black jacket with lapels four sizes too big for his frame was addressing them, pointing to the structure with an upraised arm. His appearance – concave cheeks, thin lips, eyes that looked like two dark smudges – left little doubt about his qualifications for the job at hand.
In front of us, a battery of photographers was working furiously, the non-stop click, click, click of camera shutters adding to the incalculable drama of the moment -- and it suddenly dawned on me why Ivy and I were even here. I reached into the brown canvas bag slung over my shoulder to withdraw a sketch pad and graphite pencil I had honed to a fine point the night before, just as Ivy was going through the same drill. The emaciated figure lecturing the three most powerful generals on the face of the planet was intense and animated. The staccato bursts of his voice – German, Polish, Czech? I couldn’t tell – rang out, followed by the muted rounds of translation from a U.S. soldier hovering over his shoulder.
We moved closer to the group, and began to hear the grisly details of how prisoners would be dragged here by ruthless guards, beaten, then hanged with piano wire for infractions as miniscule as missing morning roll call because of dysentery. And how hundreds of other Jews were forced to stand in place and watch the spectacle. Watch until the pleading and the screaming stopped and the twisting body went limp.
As the three generals listened intently, their faces grew ever darker. Eisenhower – who would acknowledge years later as President that he was more shocked and outraged by what he saw at Ohrdruf than any other theater of the war – appeared especially perturbed. My eyes kept darting between the trio of iconic figures and the sketch pad cradled in my left arm. Pushing my emotions aside, I worked feverishly to capture the rough outlines of the generals and the chorus of soldiers that formed a sweeping arc around them. I was drawing quickly and a bit unconsciously at first to summarize the scene, adding strokes and varying pressure on my soft lead stick to accentuate and bring forward the silhouettes of the generals. I knew that facial detail, along with shading and tonal quality, would have to wait, and prayed that my memory cells wouldn’t desert me. That I’d be able at some later time to regurgitate all the fine detail.
I can still recall like yesterday the bespectacled Lieutenant General Bradley. He wore a wrinkled, loosely buckled trench coat and his military helmet was snapped smartly around his lantern jaw. His four stars radiated great power and authority. Unlike the others, General Patton didn’t have to do much to look pissed. His puffy eyelids hung at half-mast and his perpetual scowl was a perfect fit with his pearl-handled revolver that hung menacingly, gunslinger style, from his belt.
Eisenhower was the easiest, though, to wrap my mind around. Even here, paired with generals who were themselves household names, he was the Wedgewood centerpiece, the gold candelabra, to their decorative trim. My eyes were drawn magnetically to his genial, lightly creased face, and the five-star tabs on each shoulder of his dark-olive Army field jacket that fit him like a French-tailored suit. The totemic commander of U.S. occupation forces in Germany, the front-line leader of the world’s massive war effort against the mighty German war machine, was standing before me now, looking like a taxadermied head on the gray paneled wall of a local VFW hall. His hands were planted firmly on each hip and his wide-brimmed military hat cast a half-shadow over his eyes. He looked outraged, incredulous, exasperated, at what he was witnessing.
“Imagine if your art teacher could see you now,” Ivy murmured to me, her eyes never straying from her work. I looked over and could see her busy hand dancing nimbly around but never quite touching her sketch pad; it bore the emerging, compositional lines of her famous subjects. Her strokes were quick, fluid, expressive, like calligraphy, her pencil never leaving the paper. For a moment I was filled with admiration for this clearly accomplished artist, 15 years my senior.
Before I could mull over Ivy’s thought, we were moving on, falling in line behind the generals’ entourage. We didn’t get far before we stopped at a small woodshed, visible to my eyes as a slightly slanted shake roof with an open front. Before I could see what was inside, I was again hit with a revolting stench. Another early warning sign, perhaps? We positioned ourselves to the side of the group, until the generals and the contents of the shed came into soft focus. Inside, there must have been 30 or 40 bodies, stacked like cordwood for a brick fireplace in alternate directions, one atop the other, from ground to roof. All were naked, in various stages of decomposition. Just as harrowing were the massive sores, wounds and scabs blanketing their bodies. I forced myself to take a closer look. That’s when I noticed the white powder that had been sprinkled liberally over each layer of corpses.
The wiry guide was soon telling the generals this tiny enclosure was the punishment shed, the place where lifeless bodies of prisoners bludgeoned on-the-spot by guards with shovels, clubs and rifle butts were carted away, like construction waste, and dumped. And in case they were wondering about the white power? Quicklime. “We’re told the Germans poured it over the bodies to try and keep the smell down,” the guide said, making no effort to hide his revulsion. “There were apparently things that proved too much even for their taste.”
Bringing my sketchpad down to my side, I glanced over at the faces of the generals. Eisenhower’s was red and puckered. Bradley’s and Patton’s looked ashen and depleted. As their guide motioned them forward for an even closer inspection, a curious thing happened which I’ve never been able to forget. General Patton bolted from the group, as if remembering a luncheon appointment he was late for, and disappeared behind a nearby barracks. I would learn later from one of the officers on our trip back to base in the rear of a canvas-covered Army truck that the general -- fearless leader of the Third Army, celebrated hero of the Battle of the Bulge -- had ducked behind the building to throw up his lunch.
