Concentration Camp Liberators Oral History Project
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Interviewer
Michael Hirsh
Publication Date
March 2022
Date
July 2008
Abstract
Warren Emerson Priest was a surgical technician with the 120th Evacuation Hospital, which was one of the units sent to Buchenwald after it was liberated on April 12, 1945. They bivouacked at Ettersburg, the town nearest the camp, and started to smell burning flesh and decaying corpses. Priest decided to walk to the camp that night and went inside to the central plaza, where he saw a body, possibly that of a guard, that had been beaten to death. The 120th Evac spent two weeks at Buchenwald where one of Priest's jobs was to determine if people were still alive by listening for heartbeats. On one occasion, a little girl died in his arms while he was taking her to the aid station. On April 29, they were dispatched to Dachau, but Priest did not work at that camp, having caught typhus at Buchenwald. Priest runs a website, "Buchenwald and Beyond," about the 120th Evac and their work at the camp. Interviews conducted on July 18, 2008 and November 29, 2008.
Keywords
World War II (1939-1945), Holocaust (1939-1945), Concentration camps, Concentration camps--Liberation, Veterans, Genocide, Crimes against humanity, United States. Army. Evacuation Hospital 120th, Buchenwald (Concentration camp), Military medicine, Surgeons, Endemic flea-borne typhus
Extent
01:13:51; 26 page transcript
Subject: geographic
Weimar (Germany); Ettersburg (Germany)
Language
English
Digital Date
2022
Media Type
Oral histories
Format
Digital Only
Identifier
C65-00109
Recommended Citation
Priest, Warren E., "Warren Emerson Priest Oral History Interview" (2022). Concentration Camp Liberators Oral History Project. 97.
https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/concentration_OH/97
Rights Statement
