"During 15 minutes I heard no complaint or plea for mercy. I watched a family, a man and woman both about fifty, their children about one, eight and ten, and two grown daughters, twenty to twenty-four.
"The old woman with snow-white hair was holding the year-old child in her arms, sighing to it and tickling it. The child was cooing with delight. A couple watched with tears in their eyes.
"The father was holding the hand of the boy about ten, speaking to him softly as the boy fought his tears. The father pointed to the sky, stroked the boy's head and explained something.
"In a tremendous grave other people were closely wedged together, lying on top of each other. Nearly all had blood running over their shoulders from their heads. Some were still moving. They lifted arms or turned heads to show that they were still alive. The pit was already two-thirds filled—I estimated it contained about 1,000 people.
"An SS man sat on the edge of the narrow end of the pit, his feet dangling into it. He had a tommy-gun on his knees and was smoking a cigarette.
"The naked people went down into the pit and climbed over the heads of people lying there to the place where the SS man directed them. Then I heard a series of shots ... the next batch was already approaching."
At Rowno, Graebe watched the liquidization of the ghetto: "I saw dozens of corpses of all ages and sexes in the streets," he said. "At the corner of a house lay a baby less than a year old with its skull crushed. Blood and brains were spattered over the house wall.
"I noticed a farm cart with two horses. Dead people with stiff limbs lay on the cart; their legs and arms projecting over the sideboard."[39]
Nevada State Journal, May 14, 1946. "We saw the notorious concentration camp at Dachau and we saw many of the others. It was like descending into a pit of inconceivable horror. There were the torture chambers and suffocation rooms. There were the great yawning furnaces, each bearing a neat sign in German giving its capacity of human bodies and working hours. There were the dog kennels and the execution blocks.
"Perhaps the grisliest sight of all was the long row of huge boxes piled to the top with gold fillings taken from the mouths of uncounted victims who met death at the hands of the Nazis. On each box was the official stamp of the Reich Bank.[40]