On 11 April 1945, United States forces liberated the Buchenwald Concentration Camp which was established in 1937 and caused the death of at least 56,545 people.

General Eisenhower left rotting corpses unburied so a visiting group of US legislators could truly understand the horror of the atrocities.

This group was visiting Buchenwald to inspect the camp and learn firsthand about the enormity of the Nazi Final Solution and treatment of other prisoners.

The legislators who visited included Alben W. Barkley, Ed Izac, John M. Vorys, Dewey Short, C. Wayland Brooks, and Kenneth S. Wherry along with General Omar N. Bradley and journalists Joseph Pulitzer, Norman Chandler, William I. Nichols and Julius Ochs Adler.

[4][5] Brooks returned to Chicago and died at age 59 at Passavant Hospital in early 1957, after a massive heart attack.