We still had about an hour before leaving so we went back in. We wandered in to a barracks. What kept us from getting sick I’ll never know. On some of these wooden slabs were half alive, half dead men, lying on some dirty rags and clothes. It was the sick barracks, you might call it. These men were cut deep in the flesh with knives, infected of course. Some of them were not off of these beds for days. They were lying in their own body waste. Yes, for days.

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The Red Cross was there and were removing one of the men. They told him they were going to take him to a hospital and make him well again. He didn’t want to go. He thought they were going to take him out and kill him. I doubt if he even knew who they were.

Naturally, the Krauts had to benefit by these people for bothering with them at all; so they had a factory in which the men had to work 12 to 15 hours a day. If they refused to work or couldn’t work, Well—there was always more.

We were naturally interested in the six American pilots and crew men, so we inquired around. We couldn’t find out very much; only that these bomber crews were shot down from a bomb run over the town. The inmates said they were put in a barraks by them selves. If they were tortured or not they didn’t know, but they did know that they were dead in a few days. One man stated that their clothes were taken away from them so they couldn’t escape.

We found a Russian that could speak a little English and he told us some incidences that took place.

He said that if the guards were feeling good they would get soup, very greasy soup. He said that he survived because he would warm the soup by putting his hands in it and melt the grease. If things weren’t too good for the guards they wouldn’t eat anything for 8 days. The men naturally wouldn’t be able to walk so they put about 50 hungry dogs in the camp and let them gnaw on the dying men.

When the American tanks charged through the prison gates the guards naturally evacuated deeper into the father land, but the inmates caught one of them. I saw this SS guard among the dead bodys. When I saw him I though he was odd, because he had long blond hair. His head was all bruised, his neck was slashed with a knife. The inmate watched him kill himself just 48 hours ago. They drove him mad.

Our time was up so we boarded our truck and rode home, just thinking.

Enclosed you will find some pictures that I took while going through the camp.

All my love darling
Carroll

After returning to the United States, Jordan worked for insurance companies most of his life. He passed away in March 2008 at the age of 86.

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