Documenting the horrors of Mauthausen concentration camp

In late April 1945, as World War II neared its end in Europe, three newborn babies and their mothers arrived at the notorious Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria. The women, Jewish prisoners who had endured months of forced labor, had hidden their pregnancies from their Nazi captors. Their survival to that point was extraordinary; what happened next was something closer to miraculous. Less than a week after their arrival, a small American unit of roughly two dozen soldiers liberated the camp. Among the liberating soldiers was 22-year-old Army medic LeRoy "Pete" Petersohn of Illinois. Petersohn had worked at a newspaper before the war. When he entered Mauthausen, he found himself confronting horrors that he felt were almost beyond comprehension. He also understood that what he was seeing needed to be documented to be believed. "This is a story as I witnessed upon arriving here about two weeks ago," he wrote in a letter dated May 20, 1945. His son, Brian Petersohn, recently read those words aloud to 60 Minutes correspondent Lesley Stahl. The letter was not just a message home; it was testimony. "It was a terrible sight upon arriving here," Petersohn wrote, describing "piles after piles of dead bodies." He recounted how starving prisoners, once the gates were opened, ran to patches of grass and began eating it. "The sights were horrible," he wrote. "The camp was almost beyond a human being to stand." He described prisoners lying against the walls. …