By Arthur Sheridan as told to Abby Weingarten

Arthur Sheridan was just a recent high school graduate when he was sent overseas during World War II with the U.S. Army’s 20th Armored Division. He served throughout France, Belgium and Germany, and was among the liberators of Dachau concentration camp. After being discharged from the military in 1946, Sheridan worked in the recording and real estate development industries. Now 91, he lives in Sarasota with his wife of 32 years, Barbara, and is a frequent speaker about his wartime experiences.

‘I enlisted in the Army in 1943, was assigned to the 20th Armored Division, and was trained as a sniper and scout. Then we went to Europe. We landed in Le Havre. I was in a half-track. We moved through France, Belgium and into Germany. We had some combat along the way. We went across the Rhine River and into a number of villages.

We were tasked to help the 45th and 42nd Infantry Divisions take Munich. On the way to a village, we passed about 39 railcars on the tracks. We stopped to look at the cars and they were all full of dead people from different concentration camps being sent to Dachau. We got back in our vehicles, went a little further and then came up to the camp of Dachau.

I was 18 at the time. We had not been trained or told anything about concentration camps. We had seen prisoner of war camps, some we liberated and others that had already been liberated, but none were concentration camps.

When we got to Dachau, we didn’t know what it was, but there was a terrible odor. We went through the gates of the camp and we were greeted by thousands of concentration camp prisoners: Russians, Hungarians, Jews and gypsies. They had apparently gotten some idea that the Americans were coming but they didn’t know for sure. They finally got the idea of who we were and then they were happy.

We tried to minister to these people. We couldn’t feed them because they couldn’t eat anything we had and all we had were field rations. Our medics did what they could but they weren’t equipped for that. That wasn’t our job. Our job was to keep moving.

Walking into the camp, I was frightened because I had no idea what was happening. I didn’t know if the people there were enemies. I finally began to understand what the camp was because there was nobody attacking us and there were no arms or anything like that. I could speak a little bit of Yiddish so I could make some conversation and explain that we were Americans. A couple of guys talked to me in Yiddish. But other than that, we didn’t know what to do. We had no orders.

We were eventually relieved by troops that were better equipped to feed the people and medicate them and take care of them. We then moved on to help take Munich. The war was over shortly after Munich. We moved on to the south of France. We moved near Salzburg.

Ultimately, we put our vehicles together and were told to blow up all of our ammunition because the war was over. Then, we were loaded in forty-and-eights and shipped to Le Havre and then to the West Coast to prepare to invade Japan. Fortunately, the bomb was dropped and we didn’t have to do that. I was discharged in 1946.

It took many years for me to understand the experience I had at Dachau. I hadn’t spoken about it until about eight years ago. There is a plaque at Dachau commemorating the 20th Armored Division that says ‘Liberators.’ Something about that word, I don’t know. It’s not that we knew what we were doing. We were a bunch of GIs just doing our jobs.’

Abby Weingarten may be contacted via email at Abby_Weingarten@Yahoo.com.