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Liberating A Death Camp

 

            
             I am a lieutenant from the American Liberation Force being sent into Treblinka, a Nazi Death Camp in northern Poland to liberate the Jewish and Catholic prisoners. I am in charge of my battalion and I am leading 180 troops into the depths of the camp to find out exactly how and why these people have been executed and worked to death for the last few years. Some of my troops feel uneasy about the mission but I must assure them that we have to secure the inhumane treatment of the prisoners. As we approach the gates to the camp, we smell a stench that is indescribable. Some Soviet liberators are already on the scene and some are outside the gates. They inform us that the smell is the remaining smoke from the crematorium smoke stacks; burned human flesh. As I lead the troops through the gates, we are shocked by the size of the camp. There could easily have been thousands of people in here, but the place seems empty. As we start approaching the bunker houses that the prisoners were occupying, I see a huge trench to my far left. I take a couple of my men to investigate and found the trenches filled with decaying bodies covered with lime to contain the odor. Tears filled my eyes as I saw children with bullet holes in the back of their heads. I would not wish this vision on anyone in my life. We counted the bodies and covered them with dirt while wondering how this could ever take place. What kind of sick people could do this to these people? We are interrupted to be informed that there are over a hundred people in the prison bunkers, barely alive. I call for food and medical supplies to be brought into the camp immediately. When I approached the prisoners, they were grateful that we were there, but to weak to show their appreciation. These people looked like skin covered skeletons and were lying in feces and vomit, to weak to move themselves. Some were collapsed on top of other corpses.


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