ABSTRACT
Concentration camps, mass graves, and sick, dehydrated and starving prisoners were evidence of Nazi atrocities. While liberation of the camps had not been a primary mission, American, British, French, Soviet and Canadian forces freed inmates, provided food and medical help, and collected evidence of Nazi brutality upon encountering these prisons. American General Dwight D. Eisenhower, after encountering the camp at Ohrdruf, urged Congress and journalists to document the horrors of the camps for both the public to see and to serve as evidence in future war crimes trials. American troops liberated Buchenwald on April 11, 1945. There they freed more than 20,000 prisoners. The concentration and slave-labor camps freed by Americans could best be described as living hells. In Dachau, for example, they found dead bodies piled like wood, one atop the other, and survivors who looked like skeletons.
