German Panzer totenkopf insignia taken from a guard at Dachau concentration camp

Curtis Whiteway was born in Newburypost, Mass., on November 3, 1925. In December 1943, he was drafted into the United States Army. He trained in the armed forces in Fort Knox, Ky. He was then sent to S.C. where he received intensive training with the Rangers. Then he went to Camp Maxie, Tex., and joined the 99th Division and he was immediately sent to England. From England, his division crossed into France and had several skirmishes with Germans. They fought the 3rd Panzer Division and pushed further into Germany through the Siegfried Line. He fought near Cologne, Germany, and the 99th Division encountered several concentration camps, including Hadamar. They then encountered and liberated the few surviving prisoners at Ohrdruf, a subcamp of Buchenwald in Germany. When Red Cross medics arrived, his division went south into combat. Later they reached Dachau 3-B, a concentration camp in Germany; liberated the Moosburg prison camp in Germany, which had about 30,000 prisoners; and found American POWs. Later, they went to the Landshut subcamp of Dachau which held English and Canadian troops. After World War II, he was assigned occupation temporarily in Cherbourg, France.

The insignia was donated to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 1991 by Curtis Whiteway.

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, Gift of Curtis Whiteway