Sick and starving inmates found at Wöbbelin concentration camp, Germany, 1945

Description: 

Photograph. Sick and starving inmates found at Wöbbelin concentration camp. Official Caption: "(Series of 16) (Page One) Rome. 6/5/45--New Nazi horror camp found--One of the worst Nazi concentration camps uncovered by Allied troops was liberated at Wobbelin, Germany, a small town five miles (eight KM.) north of Ludwigslust and 90 miles (144 KM.) northwest of Berlin. Soldiers of a U.S. Airborne Division, the U.S. Ninth Army and the Second British Army entered the camp and found sick, starving inmates barely surviving under indescribable conditions of filth and squalor. They found hundreds of dead prisoners in one of the buildings while outside, in a yard, hundreds more were found hastily buried in huge pits. One mass grave contained 300 emaciated, disfigured corpses. The dead included Poles, Russians, Frenchmen, Belgians, Dutchmen and Germans, all of whom had been working as slave laborers for the Nazis.--U.S. Signal Corps Photos--Serviced by Rome OWI (A List Out). Approved by appropriate military authority. [The following text appears to be for another picture] Sick and emaciated prisoners of the Wobbelin Camp are assisted into trucks which will carry them to a hospital. 6531 K -0-." Wöbbelin, Germany. 5 June 1945

Image Information

Donor: 
Accession Number: 
Date: 
06/05/1945
Location: 
Hometown: 
Branch: 
Theater of Service: 
Unit: 
Campaign / Event: 
POW / KIA: 
Collection Level: 
Items from the service of Isaac "Ike" Bethel Utley, who was born in Smith Mills, Kentucky on 3 March 1920. Ike enlisted in the Army Air Corps on 19 January 1942. He was shipped overseas to the European Theatre and worked with a supply division based out of the city of Naples with an office set up in a residential villa. Utley worked with the Office of War Information and used their photographs in news articles to inform soldiers of the progress of the war. At war's end, Utley returned stateside. A trunk full of over 800 photographs from the O.W.I. arrived on his doorstep from his office in Italy, sender unknown. This collection consists of those photographs.
Geography: 
Wöbbelin
Latitude: 
53.400
Longitude: 
11.500
Thesaurus for Graphic Materials: 
Prisoners--Germany
Concentration camps--Germany