Edward R. Murrow Reports From the Liberation of Buchenwald

“

I asked to see one of the barracks. It happened to be occupied by Czechoslovaks. When I entered, men crowded around, tried to lift me to their shoulders. They were too weak. Many of them could not get out of bed. I was told that this building had once stabled 80 horses. There were 1,200 men in it, five to a bunk. The stink was beyond all description.
They called the doctor. We inspected his records. There were only names in the little black book, nothing more. Nothing about who these men were, what they had done, or hoped. Behind the names of those who had died, there was a cross. I counted them. They totalled 242. 242 out of 1,200, in one month.
As we walked out into the courtyard, a man fell dead. Two others, they must have been over 60, were crawling toward the latrine. I saw it, but will not describe it.”

— Edward R. Murrow
Source: Added by: Colin Harris

On Sunday, April 15, 1945, in Studio B-4 of the British Broadcasting Company, CBS radio news reporter Edward R. Murrow broadcast his first-hand account of what he had seen at Buchenwald on April 12th, the day after the concentration camp was liberated by American troops.

The title of Edward R. Murrow's radio broadcast was They Died 900 a Day in "the Best" Nazi Death Camp. One of the prisoners in the camp had told him that in 1939 when Polish prisoners arrived in the camp without winter clothing, they died at the rate of 900 per day. Five different men in the camp, who had had experience in other Nazi camps, asserted that Buchenwald was the best of all the camps.

Source: Scrapbook Pages Added by: Colin Harris