By John Joseph Arenz
On March 27, 1945 my Dad, Sergeant Herbert Arenz, was assigned to A Battery, 493rd Armored Field Artillery, 12th Armored Division. The Battery was part of a Combat Command racing across Germany trying to reach the Alps before Nazi Paratrooper leader Otto Skorzeny could establish a resistance movement from mountain bases.
The Combat Command was stopped on a road and Dad had just finished setting up his guns so the Battery could shoot a fire support mission. At that point, Dad noticed smoke coming from the woods across a field. Upon further examination, he observed some kind of camp surrounded by fences and guard towers.
Believing the complex to be a prisoner of war camp, Dad and his Lieutenant drove through the woods, reached an open pedestrian gate, dismounted, and entered the camp.
Though Dad had experienced hard combat for the last five months, he could not believe what he found. His brain could not comprehend what he was seeing. The grounds of the camp were covered with some kind of strange “birdlike” creatures laying in the dirt. As he advanced further into the camp, the claw-like hand of one the “creatures” grabbed his boot, licked it, and said “Amerikan.”
Dad suddenly understood that the creatures covering the ground were humans who had been so starved and tortured that they no longer resembled people. The Soldiers of the 12th and Dad proceeded to clear the camp. Behind the camp, they found large piles of bodies stacked up like wood.
The smoke he had observed were the camp’s barracks. Apparently, when the camp commander realized how close the American Combat Command was, he ordered all surviving prisoners locked in their barracks and had the guards set the barracks on fire. Somehow, some of the prisoners had broken out of the burning barracks and dragged themselves outside.
The Soldiers of the 12th then searched the surrounding woods and captured many of the camp guards.
When Dad later described the situation, he always took great pride in saying that the Soldiers of the 12th did not shoot the guards when they found them. Although A Battery clearly despised the SS guards and could not believe how evil they were, Dad was proud that he and his fellow service members had acted like true American Soldiers. They served with honor and did not kill people who were surrendering no matter how much the G.I.s hated them.
What Dad had stumbled into was Landsberg Concentration Camp #4, which turned out to be part of a massive genocide that became known as the Holocaust. His experience was not unusual among American Soldiers fighting through Germany in 1945. In Bavaria alone there were 140 of these concentration camps. It is believed that at least six million people were murdered during the Holocaust, although it was probably a much higher number since the Nazis attempted to cover up the magnitude of the event.
As World War II wound down, the Allies were very concerned about the strength of the Nazi resistance movement. Fortunately by then, the Nazi threat to the American Army was never the problem the Allies had feared. One reason is because the Germans had strict gun control laws. Upon an Allied capture of a German city, it was a simple matter of going to the City Hall, finding the list of all registered firearms in the community, and seizing them.
The German population had been programmed by the one-party state to fight for the Nazi cause. For decades, the main objective of the “news” had been to further the goals of the Nazi Party, and the educational system was used to indoctrinate the youth. Yet without firearms, it did not matter how unpopular a government was—people were powerless to stop it.
Even the Nazi fanatic Otto Skorzeny, upon finding the arsenals of the mountain fortress empty, surrendered to the American Army and called off the guerrilla war he had planned.
But it was this same gun control in Germany that had allowed the Nazis to commit the Holocaust. When the Nazis seized control, the Jewish people in Germany were very well organized, with approximately 50,000 military veterans in its population. The Nazis made no effort to conceal their plan to commit genocide against the Jewish people, and at least a quarter of Jewish population managed to flee Germany despite the restrictions placed on Jewish migration. Yet without firearms, no matter how evil and destructive a government is, the population had no means to resist.
Recently, my wife and I visited Germany. I wanted to see the concentration camp that my father had liberated decades earlier. A nice lady from the local Holocaust Committee escorted us there. Tellingly, the Holocaust Committee members are all Christian because the area no longer has a Jewish population. The local committee preserves the camp to ensure the world remembers the atrocities that happened there.
The camp was still partly hidden by woods from the road. The only remaining elements of the camp is a simple waist-high stone wall surrounding the mass grave of the camp’s dead and two metal signs describing the camp’s history.
Not everyone is as committed to preserving this critical piece of history though. Our guide explained that a tourist company that provided bus trips of historical World War II sites for American Veterans, from England to Hitler’s Eagle Nest home, used to stop at the camp. But the city’s mayor eventually decided that the buses of elderly veterans were too disruptive and barred them from visiting. Yet every summer, a pond next to the camp becomes a gathering place where local teens swim and hang out.
The guide also took us past Landsberg Prison, where Hitler wrote Mein Kampf while imprisoned, and Nazi rallies are regularly held on April 20.
Interestingly, the camp has a connection to the well-known mini series “Band of Brothers.” The committee supplied photos, plans, and blueprints of Camp #9 to the production company, which helped them create the most realistic looking version of the camp possible. In the end, the production company built their own version of the camp in England for filming.
Most of the concentration camps in Landsberg have been built over, but Camp #9 remains to this day. At one point, the local government decided to bulldoze Camp #9 and put a highway over it. The Holocaust Committee explained that they had purchased the land and wanted the camp to remain intact to preserve this piece of history. Local government officials responded that they would take the land through condemnation and people “need to forget and move on.”
The committee refused to accept this. To protect Landsberg Concentration Camp #9, the Holocaust Committee then contacted governments whose citizens were murdered at the camp. Representatives from 17 nations gathered and placed monuments at Camp #9 to protect the hallowed ground from local bureaucrats.
One monument was sponsored by American Veterans. The monument simply says “NEVER AGAIN.”
The author, John Joseph Arenz, retired after 31 years as a city police officer in Texas. Arenz earned an Advance Peace Officer License, Emergency Medical Technician (EMT) Certification, Mental Health Peace Officer License, and Basic Peace Officer Instructor License. Experience includes Patrol, Field Training Officer, Gang Detective, and SWAT.
Originally published in the Shavous/Three Weeks 2024 issue of The Jewish American Warrior.
