Jewish inmates food from their rations but were ordered to stop because the food could overwhelm the digestive systems of the starved inmates and kill them. As they continued past the subcamp, by 2 May they discovered the eastward path along which Jewish inmates were approaching Waakirchen, as the concentration camp survivors had been driven on a death march to another camp from Dachau starting there on 24 April, headed south through Eurasburg, then eastwards for a total distance of nearly sixty kilometers (37 miles), originally numbering some 15,000 prisoners. No, my first encounter was these lumps in snow, and then I didn't know what they were, and so I went and investigated them and discovered that they were people, you know. Most of them were skeletons or people who had been beaten to death or just died of starvation or overworked or whatever. Most of them I think died from exposure because it was cold. They discovered more subcamps and former inmates wandering the countryside. Following the German surrender, from May to November, the 522nd was assigned to security around Donauwörth, which consisted of setting up roadblocks and sentry posts to apprehend Nazis who were trying to disappear. The 522nd returned to the United States in November 1945. A memorial to the rescue by the 522nd on 2 May 1945, exists at , just under two kilometers west of the Waakirchen town centre. Gothic Line On 23 March 1945 the 100/442 shipped out from Marseille and traveled to Leghorn, Italy, attached to the 92nd Division. The Fifth Army had been stalemated at the Gothic Line for the prior five months. The 442nd faced extremely tough terrain, where the saw-toothed Apennines rose up from the Ligurian Sea. Starting from the northeast, the peaks hugged the east coast of Italy and stretched diagonally southward across the Italian boot. To the west, on the other side of the mountains, was the wide flat Po River Valley that led to the Austrian Alps—the last barrier to Germany. For nine months German Field Marshal Albert Kesselring directed the construction of the Gothic Line along the top of the Apennines. The Todt Organization (known for its fortifications at Monte Cassino) used 15,000 Italian slave laborers. They drilled into solid rock to make gun pits and trenches, which they reinforced with concrete. They built 2,376 machine gun nests with interlocking fire. On the Italian Front, the