2010~The Year of the Liberator~Mid April 1945: First American reports to folks back home.

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2010~The Year of the Liberator~Mid April 1945: First American reports to folks back home.

April 26, 2010 by Matthew Rozell

{As part of the conclusion to my USHMM Teacher Fellowship project, I am posting the unfolding nature of the discovery of the camps as Allied troops closed in from the East and the West, sixty-five years to the day that the discovery/event occurred.}

April 15, 1945: Soviet forces are 35 miles east of Berlin and 60 miles east of Dresden, Germany. British troops close on Bremen and Hamburg, Germany.

April 15, 1945: At Ravensbrück and Sachsenhausen, Germany, 57,000 inmates–17,000 of them women–are marched westward by the SS. Once under way, many will be shot and/or die of exhaustion, and others, including 21-year-old Mila Racine, will be killed during Allied bomb attacks aimed at nearby targets.

April 15-17, 1945: A small contingent of British troops at the Bergen-Belsen, Germany, camp is unable to prevent Hungarian SS guards from murdering 72 Jewish and 11 non-Jewish prisoners.

April 16, 1945: The Red Army launches its final assault on Berlin.

April 18, 1945: Nazis initiate a death march of prisoners from Schwarzheide, Germany, to Theresienstadt, Czechoslovakia.

April 19, 1945: Leipzig, Germany, is captured by American forces.