Horace Evers saw Hitler's path of destruction up close. In this letter home, he writes about his thoughts on the horrors of the Dachau concentration camp.
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Letter from Horace Evers

2 May 1945

Dearest Mom and Lou,

A year ago today I was sweating out shells on Anzio Beachhead ; today I am sitting in Hitler's luxuriously furnished apartment in Munich writing a few lines home. What a contrast.A still greater contrast is that between his quarters here and the living hell of DACHAU Concentration Camp only 10 miles from here. I had the misfortune of seeing the camp yesterday and I still find it hard to believe what my eyes told me.

A railroad runs alongside the camp and as we walked toward the box cars on the track I thought of some of the stories I previously had read about DACHAU and was glad of the chance to see for myself just to prove once and for all that what I had heard was propaganda. But no it wasn’t propaganda at all if anything some of the truth had been held back. In two years of combat you can imagine I have seen a lot of death, furious deaths mostly. But nothing has ever stirred me as much as this.

The first box car I came to had about 30 what were once humans in it. All were just bone with a layer of skin over them. Most of the eyes were open and had an undescribable look about them. They had that beaten "what did I do to deserve this" look. Twenty to thirty other box cars were the same. Bodies on top of each other no telling how many. No identification as far as I could see. And then into the camp itself. Filthy barracks suitable for about 200 persons held 1500. 160,000 persons were originally in the camp and 32,000 were alive (or almost alive) when we arrived.

There is a gas chamber and furnace room in one barracks.; Two rooms were full of bodies waiting to be cremated. In one room they were all nude -in the other they had prison clothes on. As filthy as dirt itself.

How can people do things like that? I never believed they could until now.

Well enough for now-

Miss you all very much.

Your son,

Horace

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