“The blood bath here in Gardelegen was one of the last,” Steinmeier said in the presence of two survivors. “American troops were only a few miles away. “
He said those who suffered “were among the thousands of tortured people who think they had escaped from the hell of the camps. Many of them were sent to a new hell, the hell of the marches of death. “
“The authors will have to have listened to the others in the barn asking for help, in Russian, Polish, French, Dutch, Hungarian, Italian,” he said.
“That’s what we remember. Let us maintain the reminiscence of crimes that many Germans, even today, know nothing of,” Steinmeier said, noting that the Nazis “killed until the last minute” of the war.
– Sachsen-Anhalt (@sachsenanhalt) September 15, 2020
He lamented that so few people were prosecuted for crimes committed in the latter phase of the war, and claimed that it was “disgraceful” that the main culprit had escaped justice.
Gerhard Thiele, local leader of the Nazi party, accused several witnesses of giving the order to set the barn on fire.
He was arrested through the Americans in 1945, but was released for unknown reasons and lived for decades under an alias.