Liberation of the Concentration Camps
As Allied Forces closed in on Germany and Poland toward the end of the war in Europe, leaders of the Nazi concentration camps tried to conceal the evidence of the atrocities that had been occurring in them by attempting to destroy the camps. The Nazi workers fled the camps, leaving behind famished prisoners, rotting corpses, and crumbling buildings that were discovered by the Americans and the Soviets. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum does an excellent job summarizing the unfathomable experience faced by Allied Forces who encountered and liberated these camps, although words are an insufficient means to describe the horrors that troops witnessed:
"Liberators confronted unspeakable conditions in the Nazi camps, where piles of corpses lay unburied. Only after the liberation of these camps was the full scope of Nazi horrors exposed to the world. The small percentage of inmates who survived resembled skeletons because of the demands of forced labor and the lack of food, compounded by months and years of maltreatment. Many were so weak that they could hardly move. Disease remained an ever-present danger, and many of the camps had to be burned down to prevent the spread of epidemics. Survivors of the camps faced a long and difficult road to recovery."
My grandfather, Ralph Edwin Merkley, prematurely enlisted in the United States Army by lying about his age. He saw action in the Battle of the Bulge and was on the beaches of Normandy on the third day of battle. More relevant to The Complete Maus, he was also involved in liberating the concentration camps when he was just barely 18 years old. I never heard him speak about what he saw in the camps, and my father tells me that he never heard my grandfather discuss the camps at any length during his whole life. I can only imagine the horrors that he encountered upon entering the camps, especially at such a young age. My grandfather has a photo album from the war consisting of pictures taken by him and his fellow soldiers; below are four photographs that he took of an unknown concentration camp somewhere in Germany or Poland.
These photos may be slightly disturbing, as they depict scenes of death and disaster. Please view them with caution.
Please view these photos with respect for the deceased that appear in them. Let us never forget the inhumanity of the Holocaust, let us fight against those who deny its existence, and let us pledge as a world to work to eradicate all genocide from this Earth.
"Liberators confronted unspeakable conditions in the Nazi camps, where piles of corpses lay unburied. Only after the liberation of these camps was the full scope of Nazi horrors exposed to the world. The small percentage of inmates who survived resembled skeletons because of the demands of forced labor and the lack of food, compounded by months and years of maltreatment. Many were so weak that they could hardly move. Disease remained an ever-present danger, and many of the camps had to be burned down to prevent the spread of epidemics. Survivors of the camps faced a long and difficult road to recovery."
My grandfather, Ralph Edwin Merkley, prematurely enlisted in the United States Army by lying about his age. He saw action in the Battle of the Bulge and was on the beaches of Normandy on the third day of battle. More relevant to The Complete Maus, he was also involved in liberating the concentration camps when he was just barely 18 years old. I never heard him speak about what he saw in the camps, and my father tells me that he never heard my grandfather discuss the camps at any length during his whole life. I can only imagine the horrors that he encountered upon entering the camps, especially at such a young age. My grandfather has a photo album from the war consisting of pictures taken by him and his fellow soldiers; below are four photographs that he took of an unknown concentration camp somewhere in Germany or Poland.
These photos may be slightly disturbing, as they depict scenes of death and disaster. Please view them with caution.
Please view these photos with respect for the deceased that appear in them. Let us never forget the inhumanity of the Holocaust, let us fight against those who deny its existence, and let us pledge as a world to work to eradicate all genocide from this Earth.