Some Jewish prisoners worked there too, but they were only trusted with the menial jobs. The arms and legs were neatly arranged, but an occasional limb dangled oddly. This year I set those memories on paper, all of them, or at least all of them I recall. The press people were still there, joined by a lot of big shots from the army. I told the two professors about the young person who had been at my tower the past afternoon, and described him as best I could. Amongst other things, Sergeant Blowers was explaining our duties while we were here: we were to stand guard for four hours at a time, and then take eight hours off; there would be one of us in every other tower most of the way around the camp. The jeeps, our company commander’s and a few others, rolled forward very slowly toward these people, and, as they parted, drove slowly through them, to the brick building next to that tall chimney, and our officers disappeared inside. We saw the mountains ofdead bodies, etc., although it was not necessarily new to us as we were directlyinvolved in uncovering this sort of activity, but on a somewhat smaller scale. Our First Sergeant, Sergeant Blowers, our Company Commander, and the Leader of the TD group found the source of the fuel, and played around with one thing and another until they figured out how to turn the damned thing off. Then he got even quieter, looked at the ground for as moment, raised his eyes, and looking over our heads, began very softly, so softly we could barely hear him. The table was moved until he barely stood on its edge. It dawned on me much later–the number of bodies which could be burned at one time, three bodies to a tray, at least thirty trays–and the Germans still couldn’t keep up. He was dressed in bits and pieces of everything, ragged at best, and very dirty. No. I had never known Sergeant Blowers to be like this. It is enough for me that I feel what I do feel, and I am now attempting to thin those feelings out. The bodies on the stacks outside were growing at a faster rate than they could be burned. Those doors were a little more than two feet wide and about two and a half feet high; the tops of the doors had curved shapes much like the entrances to churches. I felt I knew why the prisoners of Buchenwald did what they did – so I did not stop them. I had with me my Garand rifle, the rifle belt with a full canteen hanging on it, a field jacket over my woolen shirt. Portland, OR: Areopagitica Press, 1990. The black liberators who helped defeat the Nazis and free the Dutch get their due. That was not what was bothering me, however. Bridgman, Jon. I didn’t understand. The German guard was corrected three or four times, and had to undo some of his work to re-do it correctly. The engineers were not to bury the dead until after the grand tour by the German townspeople. After the SS Colonel surrendered, the barn where thesepolitical prisoners were being roasted to death was discovered at the edge oftown. 95AD, remember.org. Our antennae were up. This time, on the march home to Weimar, there was no laughter. I thought of my German heritage, my Grandfather Hugo who had come from to the United States from Germany while he was still a teenager, my mother’s grandparents who had come over from Germany long before that, my mother who had grown up early in this century in a small town in Minnesota, where there were two catholic churches: one for the Germans, the other for the Irish. Patriot. Another story (to me the most gruesome): German doctors at the camp were doing research on some human diseases. An ugly horrible smell. The next time he stepped gently off the end, and the table was quickly slid away from him and out of his reach, and he dangled there. Four hours of education happened that night which could have happened no place else. Any prisoner could tell me anything he wished from now on, and I would believe. What would I be like? They entered the, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC, Liberation of Nazi Camps - ID Card/Oral History. (Ed.). Treatment of the prisoners varied also, depending on ethnic origin. It wouldbetantamount to arguing with someone who believed the earth is flat…Where do youeven start to debate such a premise? We were at a temporary stalemate. I no longer remember the name he taught me, and I wish so badly, so often, I could. My whole world shrank to the inside of the fourth floor of the tower and the young boy. There are still altogether too many things that flood my mind once a trigger is pulled. No one knew why they had been taken away, or where they had been taken. The one who appeared to be in charge also appeared to be one calm individual. We had been teased by bits of information, and we wanted to know more. 100 Raoul Wallenberg Place, SW The German was standing at attention in the middle of the room and was being peppered with questions that we did not understand. At least, as absolved as I was ever going to be. It turned out that we didn’t need any of that hardware. I do not expect a complete purging — that would be expecting too much — but if I can get these memories to crawl deeper into my mind, to reappear less vividly, and less frequently, it will be a help. Another division would “pass” through usto give us a breather. Enough. We had barely made the turn, and there it was. The first platoon, ours, had the midnight-to-four, and the noon-to-four shifts. During the Dachau liberation reprisals, German prisoners of war were killed by U.S. soldiers and concentration camp internees at the Dachau concentration camp on April 29, 1945, during World War II. It did not seem real. The things we found then were grotesque enough without knowing some of the other things we did learn later. We had nothing else with us they really wanted, but they stuck with us and guided us to another set of buildings, which had the look of large barns with wide doors in the middle of the front. I would follow the bazooka man: wherever he went I would go. The three of us at the gate stood there, looked, turned our backs, and walked away. We had done what we could for the wounded and then had got on with the job that had to be done. I could see nothing, but I heard the voice again, under me, down near the fence. The Holocaust History – A People's and Survivor History – Remember.org, Holocaust Picture Book – The Story of Granny Girl as a Child, Anne Frank: The Biography | 1998 Holocaust Book, Holocaust history and stories from Holocaust Photos, Survivors, Liberators, Books and Art, Introduction to “The Fight Against Hate” gopher site at Jerusalem One, Joseph Weismann – Remembering with After the Roundup, Holocaust Curriculum for Middle School and High School 7-12 (Part 2), The following is a series of concentration camp photos taken by Josh C, After the Roundup by Joseph Weismann – Part 1 of Chapter 3, Liberation of Auschwitz 75 years later – a poem, Forever Alert German Child Survivors in Action Before 1945 and Beyond by Philipp Sonntag. I didn’t know what a concentration camp was, or could be, but I was about to learn. I couldn’t take it any more. Not yet. Nothing had happened during my shift, and that was what I reported to him when he reached the top. The rules of the U.S. Army state that a liberator is a soldier who arrived at a concentration camp within 48 hours of the first soldier to enter the camp. It was tough to imagine, but there it was. I must purge these feelings on someone, and if I have readers, it is they I am using. Go to the Top of the Page || Return to Cybrary, Dunn, M. D. More than 32,000 prisoners were liberated, among them some Englishmen, Canadians, and Americans. There was an aisle, then another stack, and another aisle, and more stacks. His eyes opened wide. There were times when we lit Sterno cans and made ourselves some instant coffee, but the talk never ceased. Thayer Greene reflects on the wounds of war. It was not the display of the genitals that shook some of us up; it was that final indignity, the exhibition. The black and white film did not depict the dirty gray-green color of those bodies, and, what it could not possibly capture was the odor, the smell, the stink. When we got to Bill’s tower, Bill was waiting for us, and the three of us walked up the road together. They leveled it completely. There was the slightest of communication. I turned and walked away, the rest of our guys following me. He repeated it again, and he had the pronunciation close. Among these personal items were hundreds of thousands of men's suits, more than 800,000 women’s garments, and more than 14,000 pounds of human hair. Some of our guys had been disgusted by a bunch of nurses or WACs in their Class A uniforms taking pictures of the naked dead. A major reason I need a catharsis. It seemed that Patton had become so angry at what he had seen in the camp that he scooted into the nearest major town, Weimar, broke the mayor of the town out, and told him he wanted every citizen up the next morning, ready to march to through Buchenwald so as to see what the German people were responsible for. 1016 Jewish prisoners were being burned alive there in a barnon the edge of town by the SS troops who held the town. 1945: The Year of Liberation. He was out of sight for some minutes, appearing again with a very stiff back. The Jews who had been healthy, to any degree, had been marched away from the camp weeks before. We were starting to communicate. Where did the Germans get them all? I started by stacking my rifle in the corner, took off my belt and put it on the table, and, leaning on the table, I started thinking about all of the things that had happened during the day. TTY: 202.488.0406, The first major Nazi camp to be liberated was, Six months later, on January 27, 1945, Soviet troops liberated. If Scott and Bass arrived on the 12th, that means that they are officially considered liberators of Buchenwald. The four of us emptied our pockets of the little goodies we were carrying, spread them out on the table top, and made them available to everyone. Groups of Jewish prisoners would be selected (which must have been some kind of an admission they were human beings) and inoculated with the diseases. Those field hospitals had requested some research on how to revive human beings who were very nearly frozen to death, but were still alive. The eyes on some were closed, on others open. I had barely reached the top floor when the young fellow came running up the steps. That is the way Abe Cheslow put it as he began to tell in detail of his hours at Dachau soon after his tank broke into the camp. All of them stripped. Those who were able began working with the American nurses or helping out in the kitchen. During these past forty-six years, these memories have been creeping out of my mind, leaving me with sleepless nights afterwards. They gave way and moved along with us. He took the photograph, but out of sight in the darkness of the building, behind the man, were the people propping him up. The tanker on our vehicle assigned to the machine gun was on that weapon and ready to use it, and those of us riding the top were ready to bail off and hit the ground on the run and do whatever it was that we were going to have to do. They came out of the buildings and just stood there, making me feel foolish with all of that firepower hanging on me. In the following months, Soviet units liberated additional camps in the Baltic states and Poland. We heard stories that night from two professors who had been non-Jewish prisoners at Buchenwald for over four years. Finishing that he was told to put all of his weight on the rope and lift his feet. I was an assistant bazooka man, and I had a sack with ten bazooka rounds hung over my shoulder; I had an M1 Garand, and some bandoleers of ammo for that; some grenades hanging one place and another; a fully loaded cartridge belt; and I was on my toes ready to scramble off that tank at the first sign of trouble. They had intended to kill us, which would have been easy and totheir advantage because they wanted to cover what was going on the edge of townat the time. The three of us looked, and we walked down the edge of those stacks. It took him a little while but he finished the candy bar, looking at me with wonderment the whole time. Retrieved February 28, 2018, from remember.org Remember.org shares art, discussion, photos, poems, and facts to preserve powerful memories, Remember.org - The Holocaust History - A People's and Survivors' History. The sergeant left us there with instructions that we were to let no one through that hole from either direction. There are so many things from that week I wish would go away, things I wish could be scrubbed from my memory. We worked out words for those things close around us. There were temporary lights strung around for the medics to do their work. Later that evening, a bunch of us from the company were sitting on the front steps of the barracks, talking. I set all my things down and surveyed the scene in front of me. In that building were rooms devoted to each of the organs: a kidney room, a liver room, a heart room, etc. The stack was about five feet high, maybe a little more; I could see over the top. No more. The ten-man combat team which I was a part of was directly involved in a placecalled Gardelegan. Sergeant Blowers told us some things about the Commandant of Buchenwald and his wife. Beyond the fence were two more layers of barbed wire fence not quite as tall. All of the German guards had packed up and moved out about three hours before our arrival. The tank which we were riding, along with two other tanks in our column, wheeled to the left so that the three of them made a front. In December 1987, as chief of the Their animal desires would revive them, or so the theory went. I salute the thousands andthousands of GIs and soldiers of other nations who gave their lives to put an endto this madness. Serving with the combat engineers under U.S. Gen. George S. Patton in World War II, his squad liberated the Buchenwald death camp. Chuck Ferree was the first to share his story on the Cybrary. About what they did with the women prisoners? Pictures of the formidable Hugo had always been around me as I was growing up. I fully intended to load up with candy bars, instant cocoa, and a bunch of other good things to stash away in one of the tower cupboards. Tears were coming down his cheeks. It was murder; there can be no doubt of that. There were packets of instant coffee (horrible stuff) in my pocket along with packets of sugar. It did not even begin to enter my mind that he might have been Jewish and shouldn’t have been eating bacon. More than 13,000 of them died from the effects of malnutrition or disease within a few weeks of liberation. The jeep sped back out the gate and on down the road and George just sat. It was a warm afternoon so I took my jacket off, dropped it on the table and leaned on the ledge of the opening for a while. I relive that night sitting on that machine gun bench, smoking a cigar, staring at the darkness. A canteen cup is a rather large cup and the two of us shared it. The three of us headed through the gate, through the twenty or thirty feet to the other side of the building. From them came these human beings, timidly, slowly, deliberately showing their hands, all in a sort of uniform, or bits and pieces of a uniform, made from horribly coarse cloth with stripes running vertically. I would not have wanted to cross that man right then. Another story? I made up my mind to really load up before I came to the tower the next day. Death camp liberators to be honored 50 years after end ... - IT HAS BEEN 50 years since William Roberts stared into the hollow eyes of a starving Polish prisoner at the Nordhausen concentration camp. Holocaust victims and liberators of concentration camps are gathered in Washington, D.C., for a 60th anniversary commemoration. I reviewed in my mind the multiple things the Buchenwald prisoners had gone through, the length of time they had been living through hell, and I didn’t have to rationalize their actions. As I stood on the top floor looking out, I saw nothing. ... Thousands of Dutch Jews had been rounded up and sent to concentration camps. Some only had one piece of the uniform, others had two, many had all three parts. All of the wagons were filled entirely with emaciated human corpses. The next day we heard that after returning to their town, the mayor of Weimar and his wife both committed suicide. They told us the story of one prisoner who was so close to death that even thinned chicken broth was too rich for his stomach. I just can’t conceive of anyone not believing that these things happened. As the first presence from the outside world, the Allied liberators presented a dual reality for detainees in concentration camps. My relief arrived, but I didn’t notice him until he was on the way up the stairs, turning the lights on as he came. The lower bunks served as rungs of a ladder to the upper ones. A vicious smell. In the days before the camp's liberation, SS guards at the camp had forced 7,000 … He told us this story about her: Once, she ordered all of the Jewish prisoners in the camp stripped and lined up; she then marched down the rows of them, and, as she saw a tattoo she liked, she would touch that tattoo with her riding crop; the guards would take the man away immediately to the camp hospital where the doctors would remove the patch of skin with the tattoo, have it tanned, and patch it together with others to make lamp shades. This meant he had to study the dog tags. I hadn’t seen him out in the field on the other side of the fence, but there he had been watching, waiting for me. Less than a half an hour later I saw a fire in Bill’s tower and guessed that he had seen what I was up to and done the same thing. How did leaders, diplomats, and citizens around the world respond to the events of the Holocaust? Washington, DC: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 1995. Only after the liberation of these camps was the full scope of Nazi horrors exposed to the world. In no way is it the same. 2020 marked the 75th anniversary of the liberation of prisoners from Nazi concentration camps and the end of Nazi tyranny in Europe. Now we could bury the bodies. Just looking at these bodies made one believe they had been starved to death. Eventually Sergeant Blowers came down the hall, out the door, and onto the front steps with the rest of us. My mother had attended the German school, and the only language spoken through the fourth grade had been German. If you'd like to share your story on Remember.org, let us know, all we ask is that you give permission to students and teachers to use the materials in a non-commercial setting. I certainly would not attempt to debate the reality of those times. His helmet was gleaming and elaborately decorated, his uniform spic and span, his pistol highly polished and oddly shaped, and, by God, there he was: it was George Patton himself touring this place. The evacuated prisoners were sent to concentration camps further west, such as Gross-Rosen, Auschwitz, and Mauthausen. It goes without saying the experiment failed–again. Much of what I had seen ran counter to everything my mother had brought me up believing. On one tray was a skull partially burned through, with a hole in the top; other trays held partially disintegrated arms and legs. On the eve of the American liberation of Dachau, there were 67,665 registered prisoners at the concentration camp and roughly a third of them were Jewish. The doctors were doing everything they could, trying mightily; but in too many cases they had no chance at all and would lose in spite of their best efforts.