Egling, Germany
June 25, 1945
Dear Mother, Dad, &
Girls:
How are you all at home? We are still in this same little
town as when I last wrote. We are officially in the army of occupation now.
They told us the other day so I guess we will be over here for a spell. I don’t
like it but I guess it won’t be too bad. I had a letter from Kenneth da before
yesterday and it was an old one form the 6th of June, it sure took a
long time to get here, he was in Wetzlar, Germany, at that time and I think he
is still over here. And if he is still over here, he is most likely in this
occupational army too. I hope so.
I was on a little tour yesterday afternoon and went
through the biggest concentration camp that the Germans had in Germany. It is
about ten or fifteen miles out of Munich and is about forty miles from where we
are. We went through this crematorium that they ha there too. I guess you read
all about it in the papers. Well the place is just like it was in the papers -
- like it said it was. We went through the whole thing and as we would come into
each room of the crematorium, someone was there to tell us all about it. We
walked through the torture chambers, the gas chamber, and looked at the big
furnaces where the bodies were burned in. There were still lots of bones and
ashes in them. Right next to the big furnaces, they had a room where they
stacked the dead bodies ready to burn. There was dried blood, hair, and
everything in there and it really did smell.
One of the officers that helped capture the camp said the room was full
of dead bodies when they got there and there were a lot of men in the torture
rooms hanging up by the arms and on hooks that had been hanging there for forty
eight hours or so and they had one little tiny room there that they had crowded
fifty women into and left there for seventy two hours, half of them were dead
and the other half insane. The officer said that they had killed every last SS
trooper on the place when they took it. Then just outside of the crematorium,
was a little lot screened off by grass curtains and dirt piled up around it
where they shot the people. Then in a big hole a little ways from the
crematorium they put the ashes and bones and whatever was left. Around the
whole works was hundreds of dog cages where they had kept these mean dogs I
suppose to torment their victims or else to keep any of them from running away.
I took some pictures of the things but I don’t know how they will turn out, I
will have them in a few days and send them to you. The place was big enough to
hold thousands of prisoners and there were still a lot of them there that
hadn’t been taken home yet. They just took only the ones out so far that was in
the worst shape and the rest later. It was all a very interesting place to go
through.
What I was going to say about Kenneth being near here was
that the trucks that was stationed there at that camp had Kenneth’s outfit
markings on them the 127th AAA so I think that he is near, if so I
will get to see him. There will also be other tours that we will get to go on
if we stay here. There are several places up in the Elp Mountains that they are
going to try and take the ones that would like to go. There would be skiing and
all up there. It will be interesting to see all these places and they try to do
everything that they can for us to keep us occupied. We have picture shows in
now that we can see two or three times weekly and then we play a lot of ball.
We don’t have nothing to do but pull a little guard at different guard posts.
Later on, there will be schools that we will be able to go to and take whatever
subjects that we want to that we think that will help up when we get back in
civilian life which is a pretty good thing to the ones that are interested. If
I get a chance, I think that I will take up a little learning on radio repair and
mechanics cause that might help me some time or other. Did you know that there
are some darn good jobs in some of these bigger cities where they have police
stations that have radios and a feller could know something about radios and
get in something like that, he would sure have an easy job and they pay good
money too? The pay for the radio operators are about a hundred and eighty per
month.
Here is a picture of myself and some of the boys as we
were swimming down in Czechoslovakia. We all go in swimming in our shorts and I
am in mine as you can see. We do the same thing here, just walk up to the
swimming hole and start taking off our clothes until we get to our shorts then
we are all ready to go. Ha. Hell they would jail you for that back there
wouldn’t they? I will have a lot of pictures to send you next week some time.
If you will can get me anymore 120 film send them to me cause there will be a
lot of things that I can take pictures of since we are staying over here.
I have got to stop and write to Rosalie and I owe a
letter to the girl where I stayed in Holland - - Annie. She writes once in a
while. I get quite a kick out of her writing. In her last letter, she had a
P.S. and it read like this: “I hope you will me soon write a letter back.”
Love to all,
Your son,
Max
No comments:
Post a Comment