Ray J. Hermansen, Murray, Utah: an interview by Becky B. Lloyd, June 2, 2004: Saving the Legacy tape no. 653

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RAY J. HERMA E J 2 2004 BEC: o you w re heading back out of Germany when you cam int thi t wn? RAY: No we were just sitting there. This is, I don' t remember whether w w r ju t moving into this factory where we stayed or where it was. It was just three or four mil s away from it. After I found out what this was, I went up and looked at it. By the time I got up there, they'd gotten the people from town to come in and clean things up and bury them. IRE: Were they Germans? Who were they? RAY: They were political prisoners and some of our guys were in there too. BEC: What was this, a prison or a concentration camp? RAY: No, all it was was a big barn out in the middle of a field. [Editor ' note: This was probably the infamous massacre by the Germans of between one and two thousand mostly Polish POWs in and around a barn near the town ofGardelegen, Germany, east of Hanover. The prisoners, from labor camps in the east, were being marched west, away from the advancing Russians. As the prisoners approached the American lines under SS guard, they were herded the night of April 13, 1945 into a large, mostly stone barn, which had been prepared by the SS in advance by covering the floor knee-deep in gasoline-soaked straw. When the prisoners were all inside, the Germans blocked the doors shut with large rocks. They then threw white phosphorous grenades into the barn igniting the straw. The frantic prisoners eventually broke through the doors only to be machine-gunned by the SS. Others were shot as they partially emerged from tunneling under the walls. Witnesses also implicated Luftwaffe guards from the nearby air base with helping in the massacre. In the chaos, several survivors actually managed to escape. The barn itself did not burn. The next day Hitler Youth and others from the 30