90th & 97th Infantry Division’s Concentration Camp Liberation Plaques
Details:
Next to the Dietrich Bonheoffer Plaque on the upper wall.
Two brass inscribed plaques; one for each division.
From the US Holocaust Museum and Memorial Website:
The 90th "Tough 'Ombres" Infantry Division and the Liberation of Flossenbürg:
On April 23, 1945, the 90th overran the Flossenbürg concentration camp, finding about 1,500 prisoners who had not been evacuated on death marches. The unit's journal recorded that one of its motorized patrols entered the camp that day and found "a serious typhus epidemic" in "full swing." The troops interviewed the surviving inmates, who estimated that Flossenbürg had held some 16,000 prisoners before the SS guards evacuated the camp on April 20. The SS had forced the prisoners to work in a nearby stone quarry and in a Messerschmitt plane factory, making fighter craft for the German air force.
After liberating Flossenbürg, the 90th discovered more evidence of Nazi atrocities as they advanced farther. Just prior to the camp's liberation the SS guards had forced some 14,000 inmates to march southward. The 90th and other army divisions found some 6,000 of these prisoners alive. They also discovered the bodies of more than 5,000 inmates, who had died from exhaustion or starvation or had been killed by the SS guards because they failed to keep up with the pace of the march.
Units of the 303rd Infantry Regiments of the 97th “Trident” Infantry Division arrived close after the 90th Infantry Division units and assisted with the liberation of the camp and sub-camps.
The 90th Infantry Division was recognized as a liberating unit by the US Army's Center of Military History and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 1994.
Monument Text: