One of the worst Nazi concentration camps uncovered by Allied troops during liberation was in Wobbelin, Germany.

Soldiers of three Allied units––the 82nd U.S. Airborne Division, the Eighth Infantry Division of the Ninth U.S. Army and airborne troops of the Second British Army––entered the camp on May 4, 1945 and found sick, starving inmates barely surviving under indescribable conditions of filth and squalor. 

It’s estimated that at least 150 of the original 4,000 prisoners succumbed daily, mostly from starvation and treatment at the hands of Nazi SS guards who operated the camp. The dead included Poles, Russians, Frenchmen, Belgians, Dutchmen and Germans, all of whom had been working as forced laborers for the Nazis. 

Military officers immediately ordered leading citizens of nearby towns to walk through the camp and witness the atrocities committed. Most of the civilians claimed they had no knowledge of the camp’s existence despite the fact that many of the prisoners worked in the area.

Later, local residents were made to exhume the bodies from the mass graves at the camp and provide proper burials of all dead prisoners. The original caption of this photo taken by the US Army Signal Corps reads, “New Nazi horror camp discovered.”

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