Bodies at Nordhausen

Bodies at Nordhausen 

At Nordhausen shortly after liberation in April 1945, pan across piles of dead victims, focusing on the body of a small child. Civilian men carry a body on a stretcher. Pan of destroyed buildings, as soldiers and Red Cross personnel oversee the camp. Personal effects and civilians preparing to bury bodies near the moat. Pan across bodies. Brief shot of a soldier taking a photograph with a still camera. 

Beatrice Wachter arrived at Nordhausen with the 51st. Later that night, at 1am, she wrote to her husband, “We are taking care of men from a German concentration camp – human wreckage, living skeletons, diseased, infested with lice and maggots, skin and bones…. I see these rows of bodies, some naked, some with a few clothes on, in front of me now. God, how can such conditions exist?” Detailed film condition and transfer report from Brodsky and Treadway in departmental files. 

Beatrice Wachter (1906-1979) from Philadelphia, PA married Harry Wachter, a circulation agent with the Philadelphia Daily News, in 1931. She enlisted with the Army Nurse Corps at the age of 37 on June 7, 1943 and arrived in Europe on March 11, 1944. She served with the 51st Field Hospital in the campaigns of Normandy, Northern France, Rhineland, Ardennes, and Central Europe, and returned home on November 29, 1945. She received a Certificate of Merit:"With unselfish disregard for her own comfort and safety, Lt. Wachter contributed immeasurably to the care and well being of the many seriously wounded patients of the 51st Field Hospital in France, Belgium and Germany"