The Unbelievable and the Believer

Liberation troops trekking across Europe in the final days of World War II thought they had seen it all. Then they followed their noses and stumbled on camp Dachau and realized that, until that moment, they hadn't seen much of anything.

As they neared the camp, the U.S. Army 42nd Infantry Division, known as Rainbow, found a line of boxcars. What they discovered inside the cars had them doubting their eyes: more than two thousand bodies in various stages of decomposition, emaciated and skeletal. Many had been cannibalized. The stench was so odious it muddled the brain. The Americans shared the same eerie thought: these people are not victims of war. Something worse has done this.

The GIs, most of them young kids away from home for the first time, wept openly, not understanding what they were confronting. A few soldiers cursed. The rest stood frozen in stunned silence.

Soldiers watched as Dachau prisoners staggered forward. The healthier prisoners ran at them waving and screaming. The others limped and crawled, reaching out to their liberators' feet, crying, touching. Inside a brick crematorium, the Americans discovered piles of human ashes and bones. In a separate building in the woods, they found a torture chamber filled with 1,200 contorted corpses, some hanging from meat hooks that lined the walls. Near the crematorium, they stared at a six-foot-high wall pockmarked with bullet holes. The ground beneath their feet was stained deep red.

Inside the officers' kitchen, soldiers found a lone German Storm Trooper eating a plate of beans.

"How could you do these things?" an American whispered, pointing out the window to the camp.

The German shrugged. "Those human swine."

He was holding a spoonful of beans when they shot him.

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