Finds 'Best' Concentration Camp In Germany To Be Full of Horror
By Frank Miles
(Daily Times Herald War Correspondent)
In Germany (IDPA) -- Nazis kept both men and women in some concentration camps. Others were for women only, which their spokesperson would assure the uninformed were "ideal."
The "best" one was at Salzwedel. It contained 2,800 emaciated, disease-wracked women, many of whom were Hungarian Jewesses. They lived behind electrified barbed fences.
They slaved 12 hours a day in a nearby nazi munitions factory. They were fed a little bad food daily. They lived in unheated wooden shacks. Their clothes were rags. They were beaten often for minor offenses. Many were slain there for petty acts which guards called major offenses. The younger and more attractive had one way out -- prostitution.
From the Fifth army in North Italy I learned that Captain Dale D. Levis, Audubon, and Sgt. Harry E. Bloom, Burlington, and Pfc. Franklin A. Highley, Iowa Falls, got the bronze star. Levis was of the 339th field artillery battalion of the 88th "Blue Devil" division; Bloom was of the 339th "Polar Near" infantry regiment of the 85th "Custer" division and Highley was of the 346th field artillery battalion of the 91st "Power River" division .
Lt. Col. Richard T. Nichols, Des Moines, and Long Beach, Calif., commanded the 15th field artillery observation battalions, which in April had located more than 4,100 enemy gun positions leading to their destruction or withdrawal.
Cpl. Francis B. Tiffany, Grand Junction, and a comrade of the 6th armored infantry battalion, of the 1st armored division, left a forward outpost, slipped through nazi lines and returned without apprehension.
Cpl. John J. Streib, Jr., Fort Dodge, a chaplains assistant of II Corps, was a guest singer on the Fifth army mobile radio station, which broadcasts to front line Fifth army troops.
Source: Carroll Daily Times Herald, June 1, 1945
