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The Smell I Can Never Forget
31
Mar
Mar
By Marc Liebman Captain, (USN retired)
It was the summer of 1949, and I went with my parents, not that I had a choice since I was four, to a place called Dachau. We were there because my father had been recalled for the Berlin Air Lift and offered a regular commission (as opposed to his one in the New York Air National Guard) in the new United States Air Force.
Back then, dependents of U.S. servicemen were just starting to trickle into Germany, and there were no facilities – schools, hospitals, commissaries, exchanges, or housing – for the dependents. We, that is, my family, was on our own.
In major cities like Frankfurt and Munich, I remember seeing rubble-filled streets, and the German men who survived the war were put to work clearing the rubble for a few Deutsche Marks. In the train station, the glass roof was a mix of shattered glass and steel frames. Almost every building standing was pockmarked with either bullet or shrapnel holes.
From where we were living in Fürstenfeldbruck, this place called Dachau was a short, 25 minute drive away. By then, my father, who had been in German since the winter of 1948 when the Russians started making noise about blockading Berlin, had been to Flossenberg, Buchenwald, and Bergen-Belsen.
History tells us that in 1949, Dachau was still used by the Allies. In the area where
the inmates existed, SS and Nazi party members were kept prisoner while the Allies
determined if they were to be tried for war crimes. The barracks for the camp guards
were now an internment center for Russians who either defected from the Soviet Army
and fought for the Germans or Russian POWs who were being sent back to Mother
Russia. There were, on several occasions, riots by the Russians who didn’t want to go
back to the Soviet Union.
Here’s just some of what I remember. One, there was no formal gate. We just walked in. The camp was still littered with the detritus of being a concentration camp, and the area itself had a funny smell which today I can’t describe but attribute it to a mix of those emanating from where the Germans and Russians were being kept in primitive conditions and a hangover from the privations and death when it was a concentration camp.
The two rows of wire, the guard shacks, and the rail hub were just as it was found when the camp was liberated by the 42nd, 45th Infantry, and the 20th Armored Divisions. Also, there were several huts where Jews were incarcerated that had been, for whatever reason, not included in the area keeping the Nazis.
There were no guards or guides on the death camp side. We walked through the building used as offices by the SS guards and then down along into the gas chambers. To a four-year-old boy, they looked like what they were supposed to be, public showers. But then outside, we walked past the ovens. You could reach up and close the doors. I remember they were all closed, and curious, I asked one of my parents to open one so I could see inside.
Thankfully, there was nothing inside the oven, but the strong, pungent smell of burnt flesh came out. It is a smell that is still with me. And each time I have visited Dachau, even when I visited Auschwitz in 2015 for the first time, when I walked down the row of ovens, the smell from that day at Dachau filled my brain.
And it causes my eyes to water in anger. For I will never forget and will gladly die to help ensure that this never happens again.
© Marc Liebman, March 2025
About the author:
Marc Liebman is a combat veteran of Vietnam, the Tanker Wars of the 1980s and Desert Shield/Storm who retired from the Navy as a Captain after 26 years of service. He is a Naval Aviator with over 6,000 hours of flight time in helicopters and fixed wing aircraft and has been the CEO of a $50M aerospace and defense contractor as well as a partner in a boutique consulting firm. Now Marc is an award-winning novelist and public speaker. Six of his 18 novels have become Amazon #1 Best Sellers. Marc speaks on American history from the American Revolution to the War of 1812 as well as selected topics on aviation foreign affairs, anti-Semitism, and leadership. The Liebmans live in Aubrey, TX.