Memories of Liberator Henry S. Allen, Sr.

Linz-Tran, VE Day - Victory in Europe - May 7, 1945.

The small reconnaissance units worked in deplorable conditions in the camps. Malnutrition and disease were rampant, and corpses lay unburied. The Allied forces buried many, but also brought help and comfort to the survivors. Henry Allen wanted to be specific about the camps. His forces moved on to Mauthausen, a concentration camp.

He noted the importance placed on the different camp types: POW camps were prison camps. Labor camps worked the prisoners. Concentration camps were death camps. Allen remembers coming into Ohrdruf death camp on April 12, 1945. He said he was precise because President F.D. Roosevelt died that day. Ohrdruf was liberated on April 4, 1945.

His armored task force was to prevent the POWs leaving the camp. Many were suffering from extreme malnutrition; medical personnel were coming from the front line to care of them. Some able POWs acquired wire cutters and went scouting for SS (Schutzstaffel) and others who committed atrocities. Mr. Allen said, “I never did get my wire cutters back.”

As the Allies advanced across Europe, they encountered and then liberated Nazi concentration camps and the inmates they found there. Despite the efforts by the Germans to hide or destroy evidence of mass murder, many camps remained intact and still held significant prisoner populations. Allen saw wagons filled with bodies that, due to haste, were not burned by the enemy. He saw bodies in the crematory, and bodies in trenches or other places of internment. The enemy did not have time to “hide or destroy” the bodies. He also explained a gas chamber rigged as showers and the “tooth shop” named by the allied soldiers. Teeth with gold were extracted.

The Soviet troops had freed the prisoners and occupied Majdanek concentration camp and proceeded to liberate camps throughout Eastern Europe, including Auschwitz in January 1945. Coming from the west, United States forces liberated Buchenwald and Dachau in April 1945 and the British liberated Bergen-Belsen that same month.

The small reconnaissance units worked in deplorable conditions in the camps, where malnutrition and disease were rampant, and corpses lay unburied. Allied troops reacted in shock and disbelief to the evidence of Nazi atrocities. In addition to burying the dead, the Allied forces attempted to help and comfort the survivors with food, clothing and medical assistance. ■

Born in 1924 in Horry County in South Carolina, Henry Allen grew up in America with some awareness of the enemy atrocities. His family moved to Fayetteville, North Carolina. Allen could have had a deferment working on ships in Wilmington for the Defense Department. Learning about classmates and friends who were wounded, or who had given the supreme sacrifice. Henry Allen entered WWII through the draft system.

He went from basic training at Fort Bragg, NC and then to Camp Shelby, Mississippi. Allen finished and was assigned to a reconnaissance unit. The reconnaissance units were small but performed a wide range of tasks to assist commanders and headquarters to make rational decisions. Allen and other reconnaissance units arrived in Europe in January 1945. United States forces came from the west liberating Buchenwald and Dachau. Allen crossed into Austria. His unit heard the last shots when they were near