Monroe County Military Records & History

    

Saw Carloads of Dead at Dachau

�Cpl. Craig Holsheiser, just back from Europe, now visiting in Paris and Holliday, saw 50 to 60 carloads of piled corpses at the German horror camp at Dachau, and was in the crematory where bodies of slave laborers were piled to the roof above the furnaces, ready for burning. The sight was indescribable and the stench of the heaped bodies one which will never be forgotten.

Cpl. Holsheiser was a member of a reconnaissance unit of the 20th Armored Division of the Seventh Army. His outfit was one of those which captured Dachau and liberated the prisoners yet living in the camp. He has been overseas six months, in the army 30 months and will report back for duty on Sept. 8, at Jefferson Barracks.

Holsheiser is wearing two combat stars, one for the Rhineland battle, one for Central Germany. After going into action in the Aachen area just after the battle of the Bulge, Holsheiser was with the outfits spearheading the drive through the Ruhr pocket, across Germany into the Bavarian Alps and on into Austria. He visited Hitler�s Bavarian hideout and Queen Elizabeth�s palace. Mrs. Holsheiser, who has been working in New Your, is here with him.�

Source: Undated newspaper article from the Monroe County Appeal; submitted by Judy Baker Barklage.