Transcript of Letter from Katherine Fite to Mr. and Mrs. Emerson Fite

12 Nurembery, Monday evening, Sept. 17 Dearest Mother and Daddy, No letter yesterday because I went to Munich and the Dachau concentration camp and we didn't get back until after 10.30. Munich is about 100 miles to the south - and we went down in auto trucks, over one of Hit- ler's famous autobahns which cuts across country like any of our parkways. Most " it's twoQlanes separated by a broad grass strip, but from time to time it's lid concrete, to provide runways for aimplanes. The Germans systematically blew up every bridge, big and little, which the Army has in most cases replaced in at least one lane. They have also, i.e. the Army, strung wites, which so through, they say, to Plymouth, England. The countryside is lovely - fertile and rolling - many pine forests and other kinds of forests, all methodically planted. The gardens - truck gardens - look well cared for. You see some cows, some geese and no chickens. Munich is less badly hit than the other cities I have seen; though it has some bad spots, the core remains. It must have been a lovely city. We saw the famous beer hall of the putsch, the remains of the Brown House, and other Nazi party buildings and monuments. We lunched on dough- nuts and coffee at a Red Cross canteen (free) and dined at the Transient Mess for 30c. Packed, German orchestra playing. Talked with two South African nurs- es just in from Vienna which added a cosmopolitan touch. Dachau is about 10 miles out of Munich- beautiful fertile gardens, and on the horizon the foot- hills of the Alps. The gardens might well look fertile - human ashes were read- ily available for fertilizer. The camp has, I believe, still some former inmates, in the hospital, and DP's (displaced persons). And behind their own barbed wire the former SS guards looking entirely too well fed as they sunned themselves. Our guide was af ormer inmate- Polish, and also Jewish, I should judge, tho he made no reference to it. He spoke very easily and with great dignity and objectivity. A group of low buildings constituted the horrible part of the camp - the torure chambers - the crematoria - the gas chamber and a place where they piled the unburned corpses. The last two were the worst - for after all, once you've killed a man, it's not so bad to burn his body, except that they did it inter alia to dispose of the evidence. The gas chamber was a small room, which was labelled a shower room they actually did have showers in it which they turned on before the gas. The prisoners were told they were going to a shower. Outside the room was a sign stressing the importance of cleanliness, and telling people to wash their hands! They killed the weak and feeble no longer fit for work. Also the prisoners who worked around there and knew too much. The prisoners were brought into Dachau from other camps to be killed and those at Dachau sent elsewhere to be killed, presumably to keep the prisoners in the dark a.s to what went on. However, the guide said the prisoners did know what went on in the buildings and there must have been some local selections because he said the SS men would come through and pick them out at random, but I suppose that could be picking out to be sent away And he said, scornfully and emphatically of course the Germans on the outside knew what was going on. The prisoners worked round about in their + fields and factories. It is. really impossible to believe that the neighbor- hood didn't know about it. The room where they stored undisposed of corpses, as things crowded up toward the end, still had blood on the walls and even the ceitlings. And the most awful stench - I couldn't stand it but made for the outside door. Oudoors were banks against which the prisoners kneeled to be shot in the back. Another trick seems to have been to hang men in the trees and set the dogs on them - a GI told us there were corpses still hanging when the Amer- icans came in. Carloads of prisoners were brought down from Buchenwald a.s the Americans advanced - many just died in the freight trains. Dachau, so help me, was not one of the worst. I can't decide whether I think it should be razed or left a.s a monument. There is an atrocity exhibit which we didn't see at the Judge Advocate's office in Munich - One of our officers has been there. He says whenever he feels sorry for the Germans he remembers a photo of a man bonging by his. testicles and a woman by her breasts. He also saw the famous unken heads they made, like the headhunters in the Pacific, and the human skin lampshades. RUMAI No wonder the Germans look hard and drawn. Curiously they all Hook alike of c ARCHIVES "NATIONAL ADMIN. RECORDS AND