In a never-before-published letter from 1945, American soldier Leon Morin described the horrors of Nazi Germany’s Final Solution witnessed by U.S. forces who liberated the death camp, Dachau.
“The worst sight and the last place we visited were the cremation chambers at Dachau,” wrote American soldier Leon Morin on July 9, 1945, in a handwritten letter to his family, as first reported by Marina Medvin at Townhall. “… I think it is wors[e] than Buchenwald …”
Despite American troops arriving earlier than the Nazis expected, where the Germans were “caught with their pants down,” 9,000 prisoners were murdered in anticipation of the U.S. arrival.
“The S.S. were told to kill and cremate everybody before the Americans got there … they succeeded in killing 9 thousand and c[r]emated or rather half cremated more [than] half then they ran out of coal for the furnace …” Morin wrote.
“[I]t will take 12 pages like this one to just give an idea about the best organized butchery in the world,” Morin continued.
“The gruesome part of was how they killed those people. Either by torture by the firing squad, mutilation with starved bloodhounds of which each camp had about fifty or sixty, and by mass gas poisoning …” wrote Leon Morin, describing the crematoria and gas chambers in detail. “The unsuspecting prisoners were marched in formation to this room which was supposed to be a shower room. Inside, the ceiling was all fixed with sprinklers nicely polished which had never been used for water but nice jets of chlorine gas were forced through controlled by an S.S. guard who had a little window through which he could look over the victims without them seeing him … After five minutes there wasn’t one of them alive, or if there were it was just tough luck because all the bodies were thrown in the next room next to the crematory and a minutes they were all burned. That ‘Shower Room’ could hold 250 persons at one crack.”
Medvin explained that the letter was sent to her after Morin’s sister saved the letter from 1945.
“Leon Morin was 29 years in 1945 when he wrote this letter to his family,” Medvin said. “The 10-page letter has never before been published. Leon’s sister Lorraine McAleavy and her son Tim McAleavy sent this very special letter for me to share with our readers.”
On April 29, 1945, “The 42nd and 45th Infantry Divisions and the 20th Armored Division of the US Army liberate approximately 32,000 prisoners at Dachau,” The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum said.
Days prior, “the Germans forced more than 7,000 prisoners, mostly Jews, on a death march from Dachau to Tegernsee far to the south. During the death march, the Germans shot anyone who could no longer continue; many also died of hunger, cold, or exhaustion.”
“In early May 1945, American forces liberated the prisoners who had been sent on the death march,” the museum added.
Ian Haworth is an Editor and Writer for The Daily Wire. Follow him on Twitter at @ighaworth.