On April 12, 1945, a senior U.S. Army official inspected the recently liberated Oldolf concentration camp in Oldolf, Teuling, Germany. They stared at the bodies of prisoners and others incinerated on a section of the railway line by the SS, and at the burnt ruins.

 　On April 12, 1945, senior U.S. Army officials inspected the recently liberated Oldolf concentration camp in Oldolf, Teuling, Germany. General Dwight Eisenhower and a delegation of high-ranking U.S. Army officers, including Generals Bradley, Patton, and Eddy, were on their way to evacuate prisoners from the concentration camp by the SS and stared at the bodies of prisoners incinerated on a section of railroad track and the burnt ruins. Others in the picture included Jules Grad, a correspondent for the U.S. Army Newspaper Stars and Stripes, and Alois J. Lieutenanten of Appleton, Wisconsin, who served as interpreter.

　The Ohrdorf concentration camp was located near Ohrdorf, south of Gotha, Thuringia, Germany. It was part of the Buchenwald concentration camp affiliate. As American troops advanced toward Oldorf, the SS began evacuating almost all prisoners of war to Buchenwald in death marches. SS guards killed many of the remaining prisoners who were too sick to walk to the railroad cars. As American troops began to approach, the Germans removed evidence of war crimes. They had some prisoners exhume the bodies and place them on a huge steel plate made of railroad tracks laid on a brick foundation. The corpses were covered with pitch and a fire was built under them with pine wood and coal. Piles of human bones, skulls, and charred torsos were piled on and under the steel plates.

　In November 1944, a concentration camp was established near the town of Oldorf, south of Gotha in Thuringia, Germany. The Oldolf concentration camp was initially a separate forced labor camp directly administered by the SS Main Economic Administration. Later it became a subordinate camp of the Buchenwald concentration camp near Weimar, where huts were used for Wehrmacht units established in 1940. It was code-named Außenlager S III. The Außenlager Außenlager Außenlager S III consisted of the northern and southern camps, to which the tent camp at Espenfeld and the camp at Krawinkel were subsequently added. The Ohrdorf camp planned the construction of a railroad to build a huge communications center under the Mühlberg castle in Ohrdorf. A forced labor force was supplied by the concentration camp prisoners. The inmates dug tunnels in the nearby mountains to connect Mühlberg Castle to the main railroad line. They were forced to work to use it as an emergency shelter for trains, including the Führerplatz. The planned communications center was never completed due to the rapid advance of American troops.