 After the evacuation of Dachau, with a group of 380 other surviving prisoners he found himself in Kleinmuhlingen, where he was finally freed (a friend of his, stated in a eulogy that he was found barely clinging to life after being tossed for dead by the escaping Germans onto a pile of corpses) by the American Seventh Army on April 29, 1945.After a period of convalescence he began his pastoral work in the camps for displaced persons in Westphalia, Germany.In 1947 he was appointed chaplain in Allied prison in Werl near Soest.