45 PatchThe 45th Infantry Division and the Care of Liberated Dachau Inmates45 Patch

On April 29, 1945, Task Force Sparks of the 45th Infantry Division engaged the SS troops at the SS training camp at Dachau and the SS guards at the adjoining concentration camp. They defeated both and secured both.

After the surrender of the Nazis on May 7, the 45th was on occupation duty in and around Dachau.

While on occupation duty the 45th was informed that were being redeployed to the Pacific and the war with Japan.

In early July prior to their redeployment, the men of the 45th transported an unknown number of Yugoslavian women who had been liberated from a Dachau slave labor subcamp to Ljubljana, 273 miles (479 kilometers) away in what was then Yugoslavia and is now Slovenia.

The convoy was commanded by an officer of the 700th Ordnance Light Maintenance Company, an infantry officer and two field artillery officers. It was an unusually large convoy of trucks.

One member of the 700th who was assigned to the convoy came down with appendicitis and had to be left behind for emergency treatment. That may have been Kenny Von Hoffman.  He may have been from the 700th's automotive section and may have been one of the convoy's drivers.

The convoy carried a document in Serbo-Croatian authorizing  the convoy's safe passage in Yugoslavia. The letter was issued under the authority of the 45th's commander Maj. Gen. Robert T. Frederick and signed by the 45th Adjutant General Lt. Col. Henry B. Roach.  

Sgts. Kenneth A. Billings and Sgt Charles Penoi of the 700th were typists in the office with the Adjutant General. Sgt. Billings may have typed the document.

Kenny Von Hoffman carried a copy of the document in his wallet for over 50 years wanting someone to translate it.

Through the reunions of the 700th, Kenny Von Hoffman met to Mrs. Olga Blevins, wife of Roy Blevins of the 700th

In 1998, Mrs. Olga Blevins sent it to Serb World USA and received an a letter of explanation for it.

In 2017, the late Sgt. Kenneth A. Billings’s son Mark donated his copy of the document and Serb World USA's explanation to the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center (IHMEC).

The IHMEC has created a high resolution scan which will be shared with the 45th Division Museum in Oklahoma City, the Dachau Archives, and Yad Vashem in Jerusalem.

More widely known and well documented is the care for the liberated inmates by U.S. Army medical and other units and refugee agencies.  But sources state that the liberating troops and troops on occupation duty assisted in the care of the liberated Dachau inmates.

This is the first artifact that documents a specific action by the Dachau liberators and occupiers of the 45th Division.

Their story of that care is almost unknown, undocumented, and almost lost to history.

As members of the WWII 45th Division family we have taken the first step in preserving that story. We hope this will lead to others finding oral histories, letters, and documents about the care the initial occupiers and occupation troops gave to inmates of the camps.

Sources for this are Mark Billings's recollections of his late father's oral history, oral histories of other veterans of the 700th Ordnance Light Maintenance Company, and  U.S. Army and other histories of the 45th Division.    
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Many volunteer researchers at their own expense obtained many of these public domain items from sources such as the National Archives.


Editing by Marshall Begel.

All items not in the public domain 15 2018

 The 45th Infantry Division in World War II: An Unofficial Guide to Resources

Administrators: Leonard H. Cizewski & Judy Erwin Branham

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January 11, 2018 Posted: January 10, 2018
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