With only weeks left before the surrender, GIs were unexpectedly coming across the concentration camps. When the Soviet Army's 322nd Rifle Division entered the concentration camp at Auschwitz on Jan. 27, 1945, they found a desolation. bit I did to help overcome that terrible, awful wickedness, as difficult as it was, was the best thing I have ever done in my life." American army units were the first to discover such camps, when on 4 April 1945 they liberated the recently-abandoned slave labour camp at Ohrdruf, in Thuringia, Germany. The dead and starving at Dachau, Buchenwald, and other camps uncovered by American, British, Dutch, and French soldiers actually represented a statistical pittance tens of thousands-compared to the millions murdered at Auschwitz, Treblinka, Maidanek, and the other Nazi extermination camps in Poland. Wikimedia Commons American soldiers execute SS camp guards who have been lined up against a wall during the liberation of Dachau concentration camp. The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of the European Jews during World War II.Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe, around two-thirds of Europe's Jewish population. At the same time, American troops were learning why they had to fight this war firsthand. The camp was liberated by American forces on April 4, 1945 (Image: Public Domain / mediadrumworld.c) "There surged around me an evil-smelling stink, men and boys reached out to touch me. Soon after liberation, camp survivors from Buchenwald's "Children's Block 66"—a special barracks for children. But there are … Germany, after April 11, 1945. Website Number 3: When American soldiers came across the concentration camps there was about 10,000 slaved prisoners occupying the Buchenwald Concentration Camp. There was a railway siding en route to the entrance of Dachau, along which there were 40 railway wagons. Paul Golz was a 19-year-old German private when he was captured by the Americans in a Normandy field, three days after the D-Day invasion. Possibly, some American GIs were revolted by the look and smell of the survivors, and may have viewed them as less than human. Buchenwald became the first concentration camp discovered by American Soldiers, and Hymas, then 19 years old, was dubbed "Leo the Liberator." One such revelation took place three days prior to the Germans’ surrender, when U.S. Army soldiers stumbled upon the Gunskirchen Concentration Camp, a sub-camp of the death camp … Robert Abzug, in his book Inside the Vicious Heart: Americans and the Liberation of Nazi Concentration Camps, emphasizes the negative reactions of American soldiers confronted with camp survivors. Soldiers from the 6th Armored Division, part of the Third Army, found more than 21,000 people in the camp.