November 13, 2009
Othmar ‘Ottie’ Mathias
Jasper army veteran recalls horrors of Dachau Concentration Camp
Othmar “Ottie” Mathias draws a sketch of Dachau, a Nazi concentration camp in Bavaria, Germany, that his army unit liberated in April of 1945. (Message photo by Mary Ann Hughes) Click for a larger version.
By MARY ANN HUGHES (Message staff writer)
It’s been nearly 65 years, but Othmar “Ottie” Mathias still can’t stop the memories of Dachau Concentration Camp from flooding back — especially at bedtime when he closes his eyes.
“I think about it every night,” he said. “I can’t forget it.”
He was a young man of 23 when his infantry division arrived at Dachau, the first Nazi concentration camp opened in Germany; it was located near the medieval town of Dachau in Bavaria.
In total, over 200,000 prisoners from more than 30 countries were housed in Dachau; over 25,613 prisoners are believed to have died there.
Ottie was raised on a farm near Loogootee, one of the nine children born to Joseph and Barbara (Prechtel) Mathias. The family attended St. Mary Church in Barr Township.
The Mathias children attended a nearby one-room school house, and during the planting season Ottie couldn’t leave for school until his father gave the OK. “He would say, ‘I think we can plow another round before you leave.’”
He’d then give Ottie permission to leave and the young man would run all the way to school. “Many mornings my feet would touch the porch at school at 8 a.m.!”
He was the first man from Martin County to be called up for military service after the attack on Pearl Harbor, and he left for the army on May 14, 1942.
He remembers that the military training was tough, but life on the farm had prepared him for it. The soldiers would often hike 25 miles carrying 50 pounds on their backs. When they returned to their barracks, many would collapse onto their cots. Not Ottie. He and a buddy would take a shower and head for the USO Club.
When he was sailing to Europe on the Queen Mary, he got perhaps his happiest surprise during the war years. He was playing ball to pass the time when someone tapped him on the shoulder. When he turned to look, he saw his younger brother Robert standing there. “We hadn’t seen each other in quite a while, so it was so great to see each other — especially anticipating what we would be doing and where we were headed. It was just heartwarming to see him again.”
Ottie’s unit received additional training in England, then crossed the English Channel landing in France a few days after D-Day. “It was rough — and I mean rough,” he remembers. “We were in Utah Beach,” he said of the westernmost of the Allied landing beaches during the invasion of Normandy.
“There were dead soldiers and animals everywhere — both on the beach and inland.”
As his group moved through France and into Germany, he carried a prayer book that his mother had given him. It gave him comfort as he said his prayers, and it also saved his life — as it once stopped a bullet.
It’s been almost 65 years since his unit liberated Dachau, and he still considers it the “most defining moment” of his life. He knew “quite a bit” about the Nazi concentration camps from newspaper articles, but nothing prepared him for what he saw on April 29, 1945.
“I remember everything that went on,” he said. “We were met at the gate by a Frenchman who could speak English. He opened the gate, and up on the hill there were about 1,200 people left in the camp.”
The Frenchman told the soldiers that he weighed about 165 pounds when he arrived in the camp. “I’m lucky if I weigh 65 pounds now,” he said.
One man was sitting by a tree, and “he didn’t have enough strength to raise his hand to say hello.”
Ottie said the camp had 19 barracks and was located alongside a railroad tracks. “They brought them in at night, so the city people wouldn’t see them. The barracks were all wood, and they laid 10 inches apart, three in one bed. All they had on was pajamas.”
Before the Americans arrived, there were SS guards with machine guns stationed around the perimeter of the camp, and the fences were electric. “There was no way you could get out alive.”
The camp had a crematorium and Ottie was told that 500 prisoners a day were killed there. “They were told to take their pajamas off, that ‘we are going to give you a shower,’ but they were gassed.” Other prisoners were given the job of putting the bodies into the furnace, he learned.
When his unit arrived, the survivors “looked like skeletons. They had eaten ants, grasshoppers, the bark off the trees and grass. Many continued to die after they were liberated because they were too starved to recover.”
He added, “Helping liberate Dachau as a member of the 80th Infantry Division was certainly the most defining moment of my life.”
He carries a small photograph in his wallet that shows corpses being loaded onto a farm wagon. “Whenever someone is complaining about high prices on fuel, food or clothing, this photo always puts everything into perspective.”
After the war ended, he returned to southern Indiana and married Florentine Seger from Dubois. They settled in Jasper, and began their family. Today they are parishioners at Precious Blood Church.
Charlene Sermersheim of Ireland is one of their five children. She said it took her dad “a while” to talk about his war experiences. “When we were kids, there was a desk drawer with a booklet about five inches by seven inches. It explained a lot about Dachau — but he never talked about it.”
Then in the late 1980s, he started visiting area schools and talking to students about the concentration camp. “I wanted to talk about what happened. I started contacting teachers and asking if I could share my experiences with the children. Lots of them had never heard of Dachau.”
When he talks with students, he encourages them to “be thankful for what they have, and to always pray so this never happens again.” He says he enjoys talking with junior high students the most, Charlene said, “because they still ask questions.”
“The pain is still there,” she said. “It’s like a death. You don’t get over it. Several of his friends do not talk about it at all.”
Ottie said his memories of Dachau are still strong, and they are strongest at night when he closes his eyes to go to sleep.
He continues to tell his story because “nobody has it any better than we have it here. People don’t appreciate what we’ve got. I want people to know that we have such a good country. It’s the best country in the world.”