Posted by Allan Wilford Howerton on February 23, 2005, 4:11 pm, in reply to "NY TIMES" "The most horrible part of the drive (to Hannover) was the liberation of one of the worst concentration camps at Ahlem, a few miles west of Hannover. Conditions were so frightful that battle-hardened soldiers sickened at the sights. All the victims were Jewish. Few were left." My memoir, "Dear Captain, et al.: the Agonies and the Ecstasies of War and Memory, a Memoir from World War II" notes: "It was here (at Hannover) that we heard the first stories of lamp shades made of human skin, the cache of whips used to keep order, from soldiers who went into the concentration camp at Ahlem, a few miles west of Hannover. Here we learned of old men, the few that were left, reduced almost to skeletons. Children, frail and anxious. Jews. The conditions which prompted Morris Birnbaum to volunteer for Company K. At another camp, at Salzwedel to the east, nearly thirty thousand Jewish women from eastern Europe and others from Allied countries were imprisoned. For them our division band played and the GIs moved them into the plush living quarters of the Luftwaffe's Adolph Hitler barracks." For a wartime photo of Vernon Tott and more information go to the site below:
152.163.100.198
T/5 Vernon W. Tott of Sioux City, Iowa, the subject of the NY Times story, was a member of Headquarters Company, 335th Infantry. There are two photographs pertaining to the infamous Ahlem camp in the 84th Division history, "The 84th Infantry Division in the Battle of Germany" by Lt. Theodore Draper, with this caption:
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