On April 10, 1945, the U.S. Army’s 84th Infantry Division stumbled upon Ahlem, a tiny  labor camp outside Hanover, Germany.  Twenty-year old Vernon Tott, a radio operator from Sioux City, Iowa, saw emaciated men barely able to stand, others racked with dysentery, still others stiff and cold -- dressed in tatters and dead for days. Shocked to the point of disbelief, Tott pulled out a Kodak pocket camera and recorded the horror and hope in the faces of those who had survived. He took 19 black and white pictures of the survivors - a small group of Polish Jews, including Joe Rozenberg who lives in St. Louis Park, Minnesota.

Rozenberg signed up to work at the Continental Gummiwerke Rubber Factory at Stöcken, near Hannover where he stayed for three months before being marched off to Ahlem.  There he worked 12-hour shits in an underground mine, and witnessed beatings and hangings.

"At Stöcken, only four or five people died, Rozenberg said.  "At Ahlem, it was like flies.  People died right and left."

For the past 10 years, Vernon Tott has been on a mission to identify all the men in his photographs, with many successes.  He has been honored at the USHMM and in Hanover, Germany.  He speaks with groups of school children, sharing his book of photos and letters, and his own historical research. 

The prisoners at the Ahlem Labor Camp were initially in the Lodz (Litzmannstadt) Ghetto in Poland.  From there, they were deported to the Auschwitz Concentration Camp for a short period of time, and finally sent to Hanover, Germany and the Ahlem Labor Camp. 

A documentary, "Angel of Ahlem" - Tott's story, was screened at the Sabes Foundation Minneapolis Jewish Film Festival on March 8, 2009.

If you know anyone who was in the Ahlem Labor Camp or their families, please contact The Documentary Institute, University of Florida, PO Box 118400,  Gainesville, FL 32611 Phone: (352) 392-1501, e-mail: cpilson@jou.ufl.edu
or contact Roni at phone: (914) 472-0667, e-mail: ahlem@optonline.net