71st came-- to Gunskirchen Lager Pamphlet

Norman Nichols was from Detroit, Michigan, He was attending art school when he was inducted into the United States Army. He was assigned to Company "K", 5th regiment, 71st Infantry Division. On May 4, 1945, his unit liberated Gunskirchen concentration camp, a subcamp of Mauthausen, near Lambach in Upper Austria. Company "K", under the command of Captain Horace S. Berry, was tasked with the clean up of the camp. Nichols, because of his art background, was placed on a roving assignment by Major General Willard G. Wyman, commanding general of the 71st. His job was to record in paintings accurate depictions of the atrocities encountered at the camp. Many of his artworks were used to illustrate a pamphlet the soldiers of the unit created around this time, Seventy-first came -- to Gunskirchen Lager.

Horace S. Berry was born in 1920 in Greer, South Carolina. Captain Berry was the commanding officer of "K" company, 5th regiment, 71st Infantry Division, United States Army. On May 4, 1945, the 71st liberated Gunskirchen concentration camp, a subcamp of Mauthausen, near Lambach in Upper Austria. Company "K" was tasked with the clean up of the camp. Berry supervised the transfer of ill and dying inmates to hospitals. Captured German soldiers or guards were made to carry the inmates from the huts on the woods to trucks for transport. Berry also arranged for the burial of the dead inmates. One detail of German soldiers would carry and arrange the corpses in a clearing, while another detail dug the mass graves.

The pamphlet was donated to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 1988 by Horace S. Berry.

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, Gift of Horace S. Berry

Funding Note: The cataloging of this artifact has been supported by a grant from the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany.