“They can hardly believe their eyes,” he wrote. He was the president of Harvard Apparatus, the major US manufacturer of specialized physiological research laboratory equipment, where he worked from 1953 until his retirement in 1994. The prisoners’ conditions were improving, Porter wrote. Harold Porter Describes Conditions in Dachau After Liberation. Even for those who had believed scattered earlier eyewitness reports, the actuality of the situation went far beyond any predictions. Americans like Porter struggled to explain what they saw to people back home. 1942-1945 - Idaho, Jerome County Historical Society, Minidoka Japanese Relocation Center Mixed Vital Records, 1942-1945 at FamilySearch — index 1942-1946 - United States, War Relocation Authority centers, final accountability rosters, 1942-1946 at FamilySearch — index and images Goldie Vica Porter 1898 - 1968 managed by Harold Cross. Click on the image, or on this link , to reach the scans of the other three pages. Yet, I know you will hesitate to believe me no matter how objective and focused I try to be. Grappling with a grisly reality that they knew defied belief, Porter's letter home acknowledged that "it is easy to read about atrocities, but they must be seen before they can be believed." The letters written, on Waffen SS stationery, are a bit difficult to read both in terms of legibility and content. More will follow later. But as we came to the center of the city, we met a train with a wrecked engine - about fifty cars long. Scenes From Hell Pfc. This was a shock of the first order, and the odor can best be immagined [sic]. Pfc. He said when he approached the crematorium, he saw corpses “piled up like kindling.” They were naked because the Germans did not want to waste their clothes by burning them. While this database contains information on the majority of the men and women who served in the Army during this war, it is not complete and does not represent the entirety of … All rights reserved. Letter from Harold Porter to his parents. Like us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter @slatevault, and find us on Tumblr. OSS Report on Dachau. Rhapsody in Blue (1945) cast and crew credits, including actors, actresses, directors, writers and more. By this time I have recovered from my first emotional shock and am able to write without seeming like a hysterical gibbering idiot. The letters written, on Waffen SS stationery, are a bit difficult to read both in terms of legibility and content. During the twelve years of the Third Reich (1933–45), the Nazi regime and its dreaded SS established and operated a system of concentration camps to imprison those groups of people whom its leaders perceived to represent a “racial” or political threat to Nazi authority. This 1945 letter, from Harold Porter to his mother and father in Michigan, describes the situation at the Dachau concentration camp after liberation. 4/1/1985- (Most Recent) From: Series: Personal Files, 1991 - … Burlesque star (Blaine) makes it in the big time. Porter describes in detail the horrors he saw entering the camp. To think that I once scoffed at Valtin’s book Out of the Night as being preposterous! These films were taken shortly after the liberation of Dachau concentration camp by Allied forces in April 1945. There was no celebration - it’s difficult to celebrate anything with the morbid state we’re in. Yet within view of his office window was the mound of corpses beside the crematory.”, Porter describes in his May 15 letter how German civilians were forced to help with the rotting corpses. It probably is - as much as it will ever be. Their faces purple, their eyes popping, and with a hideous grin on each one. Item: Letter to Rev. Porter joined the Royal Canadian Navy as an ordinary telegraphist in 1939 and underwent seamanship training before serving as communications officer in HMCS Kootenay during the Second World War. In his letter of May 10, Porter tells his parents that the thousands of corpses are not as ghastly as his patients – the living corpses.” They were so scrawny he found it “unbelievable that they could still be alive.” He said they “looked like weird beings from Mars.”, In addition to talking about the horrible odors, he mentions the sounds – “the weird wails, sobs, groans, rattles, gnashing of teeth, and above it all the chant of men praying.” He said he would never forget them “as long as I live.”. May 7, 1945, page 1 of 4. Today was a scorching hot day after several raining cold ones. When the 45th Division’s 157th Infantry Regiment arrived on April 29, 1945, the camp was full of prisoners, sick, dying, and dead. He said prisoners with tattoos were skinned and their skin was used to make “lamp shades, wallets, and other leather novelties.”. The Pacific theater will not come immediately for this unit; we have around 36,000 potential and eventual patients here. 27.02.1945: HMS Victory (additional; not to join) (as A/Capt.) The trip south from Ottengen was pleasant enough. Porter seems determined to make his parents understand what it was like at Dachau, though he sees the task as quasi-impossible: “The realness of the whole mess is just gradually dawning on me, and I doubt if it ever will on you.”. May 7, 1945, page 1 of 4. The end of the work for everyone else is going to be just the beginning for us. We knew a day or two before we moved that we were going to operate in Dachau, and that it was the location of one of the most notorious concentration camps, but while we expected things to be grizzly [sic], I’m sure none of us knew what was coming. Although I stood there looking at it, I couldn’t believe it. According to Pfc. In 1945 Harold was a serving member of His Majesty's Forces. Slate is published by The Slate Group, a Graham Holdings Company. There were furnaces for burning six bodies at once, and on each side of them was a room twenty feet square crammed to the ceiling with more bodies - one big stinking rotten mess. 116 Evacuation Hospital, stationed at Dachau. You have, by this time, received a letter mentioning that I am quartered in the concentration camp at Dachau. The National Archives describes Porter’s letter as “unsparing and graphic,” and it is indeed that. Again, a warning: The letter contains gruesome details that some may find disturbing. National Archives/Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library. These films contain graphic images and horrific scenes of the dead. 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