Band of Brothers

pp. 262 - 263

E Company liberated a work camp, part of the Dachau complex, near Landsberg. The prisoners were “in their striped pajamas, three-quarters starved, by the thousands; corpses, little more than skeletons, by the hundreds.” General Taylor was so indignant at the condition of the people in the camp that he declared martial law, and forced the citizens of Landsberg to march to the camp with their shovels, rakes, and brooms—everyone in town “from fourteen to eighty years of age” had to go—and then made them bury the corpses and clean up the camp. That night they returned to Landsberg, many of them still vomiting. One of the liberating soldiers later remarked how, when the GIs would look at the emaciated prisoners, they “dropped their eyes and heads . . .in the same manner that a beaten, mistreated dog would cringe.” The soldier said to himself, “’Now I know why I am here.’”