Liberating the First Nazi Camp

Interview with Jim Martin

Jim Martin: He wants to surrender the town, and the soldiers won’t let him.

Phil Williams: So the man that came out was a civilian and not a —

Jim Martin: He was a civilian.

Phil Williams: Okay.

Jim Martin: He was a mayor.

Phil Williams: Okay.

Jim Martin: And he told me he wanted to surrender, but the Germans wouldn’t surrender, and he says, don’t tear up our city. He said, we’ll eventually get them to surrender, and he said, we’re talking to them now and if you men could just hold off on your artillery fire and give us time, and I told that to the colonel, and he said, well, we are not to group up after crossing that mountain. We’re scattered and, you know, give us time to get organized, so we didn’t fire at Langensalza at first, and then we got some fire from one side of the town, and we immediately blasted that side of the town, and I’d — I’d say we fired for three or four hours.

Phil Williams: Wow.

Jim Martin: Every shot that was fired at us, we returned it tenfold, and finally a white flag went up, and some scraggly soldiers came out, and we’d tell them, throw your rifle down. They would throw the rifle. Take your pistol, you know, don’t come to us with a rifle, so they’d all come up with this, and I don’t know how many there were. A long line of them. I’m then ordered for us to go on to Bamberg, but there’s a little town called Ohrdruf, rather small town, and we didn’t think anything about it because we’d been through so many towns by that time, and I’m sitting in the middle of the road trying to decide which road should we take. This road or that road? Well, the better road left our corps assignment. You know, we had lines on the map, which corps had —

Phil Williams: Right.

Jim Martin: And so I called the colonel, and I said, Colonel, I’m in a dilemma. The best road goes through the second corps, and you’d have to notify them and get permission for us to go through, so I sat there a few minutes, and I heard some German machine gun fire, and it was — first it was rapid, about 10 or 15 shots, and then the next another shots and more shots. Lasted about five minutes. Now, what is that, and I knew I was sitting in the middle of the road, and I didn’t want to get shot, so I told the driver, pull off on side of the road, and let me see what’s going on, and about that time, I heard an American voice. I said, there’s some Americans down there, another corps, another unit. Drive down there slowly and let’s see. They might need some help. I got there suddenly, and I saw this big enclosure. It was stone up to a certain period, but it was wire fence above it, and I looked through the wire fence, and I saw about 80 bodies lying on the ground, and I saw what was, I guess, a squad of infantrymen trying to open the gate.

Phil Williams: U.S. infantrymen?

Jim Martin: Huh?

Phil Williams: American infantrymen?

Jim Martin: American infantrymen. American infantrymen trying to open the gate and I went down, and my jeep had a big iron bar welded right in front of it with a hook on it because the Germans had been stretching wire across the road, and that was to protect us.

Phil Williams: We did that in Iraq.

Jim Martin: You did that in Iraq?

Phil Williams: Sure did.

Jim Martin: So we had that big piece of iron up there. I said, I could ram the gate, and the infantrymen said, no, we’ve got it, so they swung the gate open and they went in, and I followed them in my jeep, and I jumped out of my jeep, and I walked over to those bodies, and they were in the process of dying, those that weren’t dead, and one of them raised his head up and asked me for water, wasser. I knelt down, and I was trying to contemplate using my canteen of water, and all of a sudden I felt the warm blood of his body falling through my hand, and I looked at him, and I realized he was dying, and I looked at his body, and it didn’t weigh over 90 pounds. He was a skeleton and he smelled terrible, and I put his head down and he died and I looked around, and I saw the sergeants, and they were having the same experience with the others. They were all dying. They’d been shot numerous times, and, of course, their bodies were just skeletons. Where are we, I said to myself and I stood up and I looked around, and I saw all these buildings, and I said, wonder what’s in those buildings, so there was a big warehouse to my right, and a sergeant opened the door, and in it, was stacked dead bodies, all naked, head out, feet out, covered with lime in between. I looked at that, and I couldn’t believe men and women. They were just absolutely skeletons.

Phil Williams: How many do you think, Jim?

Jim Martin: A thousand. The warehouse was full. I looked at it, and I couldn’t believe it. Then a sergeant hollered at me — got to remember I was the only officer there — and he says, I’m going to open this gate because I hear some noise in there, so we went over and we opened the door, and it was a barracks. Double barracks in the middle and bunk beds on the side. I’ve forgotten how many barracks that there were. Whether — I think they were four high.

Phil Williams: Four high?

Jim Martin: Four bunks high.

Phil Williams: Okay.

Jim Martin: In each bunk, was either a live body or a dead body, but I found one that could speak English, and he could just barely talk, and I was trying to hear what he said, and he was really telling me they’d had no food and water for days. The smell inside there was horrible, and I had hollered that we were Americans, and so they were all joyous that the Americans were there, so I come back outside, and my radio operator spoke excellent German. I said, Sergeant Kerr, take the jeep and go back to Ohrdruf, and you get that mayor, and you tell him to get every man, woman, and child in that town with a bucket and a dipper and come here immediately. In about 30 minutes, here they come, and there was a big faucet there, and I assumed the water was good, and we had them all fill up their cans, and we assigned them to both barracks, and the one sight I can remember was how anxious they were to grab that water, just trembling hands, drink it down, and I realized that was the only thing we could do for them, and when I called my colonel on the radio and described it, his first remarks were, I can’t believe it. No. I wouldn’t either but I’m here and it’s factual, and he said, I’ll notify division immediately. And in about an hour, I got a message that’s, don’t give them any K-rations. Don’t give them any food. Their bodies won’t handle it. We’re going to have to find something that they can eat. I guess they’re thinking, like, oatmeal or something. Of course, our K-rations, you know, had cheese and bacon and beans and —

Phil Williams: A lot of sugar.

Jim Martin: Yeah. Candy bar. And I went back, and I found the gas ovens, and fortunately the Germans had left the door open. I often thought, what if when I open all those doors, we’d open that door because they had just gassed those Germans. Those people that were inside, they were Jews, and the gas people inside the gas chamber were piled like a pyramid, and I thought, well, in their dying moments that the remaining air must have been in the center of the room because the gas jets were in each corner of the building, and I stood there and looked at that and just hard to conceive, the agony those people went through as they died with that gas, and then I heard my name called, and sergeant took me over, and he said, look at this, Captain, and it was the gas chamber, and when they left, they turned the heat off, so there were half-burned bodies on it and they smelled terrible. Then we found what had been like a Caterpillar tractor — but it was, of course, German — outside with the motor still running, and they were pushing dirt over the dead bodies that they were trying to cover up, and you could see an arm or a leg or a head sticking up through the dirt in the ditch. We knew that, you know, they tried to make some desperate moves as they heard us coming, but I don’t know why they did it. Why would you try to cover that up, and then we found railroad rails that had at least 15 or 20 half-burned bodies where they’d been putting in there and throwing fuel on the bodies and setting them on fire, so I said — the colonel told me, said, well, you’ll have to stay there until the others come. Well, it wasn’t long before there was a crowd of officers and men from the corps and the division there, and they were told — we were told that Eisenhower was coming, so I went to Ohrdruf and picked out a house and moved in it, spent the night, got me a little rest, and got up the next morning, and Eisenhower, Bradley, Beetle Smith, and Patton and their staff all arrived.

Phil Williams: How about that?

Jim Martin: And I’m standing at the gate saluting. They asked me a lot of questions since I was the first one there. You know, what’s in that building, what — I answered all the questions that I could. Eisenhower turned around and said, go into that town and get every man, woman, and child with a pick and a shovel, and we want a deep, good grave dug for each individual, and if their name can be found, the prisoner, put it on a wooden cross, and if their name can’t be found, put the number of their — on their arms. Well, we found out there wasn’t enough men because the men were all in the Army, and we went to two or three other towns, brought truckloads of civilians and let them dig in graves, and all of a sudden the colonel called and said, we’re leaving. We’re going to take the city of Bamberg, so I left and —

Phil Williams: Can I ask you something?

Jim Martin: Uh-huh.

Phil Williams: Did I hear you say one time that there’s a — you saw a video of yourself meeting Eisenhower at the gate? Was there a — was there a —

Jim Martin: Well, there is a picture of a bunch of soldiers, but I couldn’t recognize myself.