Posted on 05/31/2021 11:43:18 AM PDT by DFG
Last week Tablet published Professor Patrick Henry’s remembrance of Roddie Edmonds, the former Army master sergeant who saved the Jews in his ranks from plans the Nazis had in store for them as prisoners of war. Professor Henry takes the title of his column from Edmonds’s memorable assertion to the unhappy Nazi commandant of the prison camp: “We are all Jews here.” It is a moving and inspirational story.
In anticipation of the holiday today, Professor Henry writes: “On Memorial Day 2021, 76 years after the liberation of Auschwitz, let’s remember the heroics of Master Sgt. Roddie Edmonds, the fifth American Righteous Gentile and the only one to have saved the lives of American Jews.” Edmonds never got around to telling his own story:
Edmonds, who was named “Righteous” in 2015, did not speak much about his experiences. His family only knew that he had been taken prisoner by the Germans during the Battle of the Bulge and that he had survived 100 days of captivity before returning home. His son, Baptist Rev. Chris Edmonds, mentioned that when he would ask his father about the war, he often told him only that “Some things were too difficult to talk about.”
Please read the whole thing, and don’t miss the excellent Vimeo video below (also posted here, via reader C.M.).
(Excerpt) Read more at powerlineblog.com ...
Welcome to the tribe, FRiends!
Not me pal. I voted GOP.
Is that suppose to be some sort of passive aggressive dig? Man up and say your thing.
There are many conservative Jews and many here on FreeRepublic. Do not demean them with a silly comment.
There are tons of conservative Jew—my girlfriend is one. You paint with too broad a brush.
I am Jewish, and given my family’s many murders suffered and loss of freedom at the hands of Russian and German socialists over the past 100 years, I promise you that I am further to the political right than you are. My Mexican-born wife, also Jewish, proudly voted for Trump twice, after having voted somewhat reluctantly (like me) for McStain and Mittens, but only because Obama was worse.
We also own lots of firearms, and some of the largest collections that I have ever seen belong to Jews determined to never be jammed into cattle cars by American socialists.
Take your stereotypes somewhere else.
Hearty thanks to the soul of Roddie Edmonds, a true hero and saintly man by any measure.
I have often wondered if when the chips were down, life on the line like they were for Master Sgt. Roddie Edmonds, would I have the courage to do what he did? He was certainly raised with the “right stuff”.
You paint with too broad a brush.
Take your stereotypes somewhere else.
75% of the Jewish voters out there vote for people that hate them. Let me take it a step further. American Christians care more about Israel than American Jews. Since I voted for Trump twice I’m like the rest of you. I should be entitled to my stereotypes.
In 2015 Yad Vashem listed Master Sgt Roddie Edmonds as “Righteous Among the Nations”, one of only five Americans to be so honored and the only one who was an active service member in WW2.
If memory serves correct a tree should have been planted on The Avenue of the Righteous in Israel in his honor.
Not sure if its still done.
God bless this man and God bless the Jewish people, who are under attack yet again...and thank you for posting his story. I did play the Vimeo video and was touched by the stories of the survivors of the concentration camp. During my career, I was asked, on occasion, if I was part of the Tribe because of my last name. I was flattered...
Good story. And a reminder to those who have resentments out there over other folks. My experience is that I need to clean up my own side of the street.
I know what it was like to be an Anti-Semite. I was young but I was openly alcoholic and even experimented with inhalants.
Based on my own experience a message to those who have a beef with Jews out there get sober.
L’chaim-To Life
https://youtube.com/watch?v=S6FCHUYBX_U
BUMP! Excellent.
I’m happy to be there with you my FRiend! My aunt escaped Nazi Germany, many in her family weren’t so lucky.
The fate of other POWs at Stalag IX-B, one of the worst POW camps. Berga am Elster: American POWs at Berga. Berga was a subcamp of Buchenwald, a forced labor camp.
Years ago I had the honor of knowing a Jewish American WW2 veteran who served with the US Army’s 30th. Infantry Division in Europe. He was a first generation American who had extended family in Poland. When war broke out in 1939 they were never heard from again. They simply vanished.
In a conversation once he told me “We had this one guy , a Jew like me, boy he always bumped off some German prisoner when no one was looking. Especially those SS bastards’’.
Whether he was really talking about some one else or himself I don’t know.
Hey, who am I to judge?. If he was indeed talking about himself in the third person, good for him.
I’d have pinned a medal on the guy.
“I’d have pinned a medal on the guy.”
Absolutely.
Whacking SS under any circumstance was an honorable act.
There's an excellent series of video from WW2 on You Tube called “Critical Past’’. It's video shot by US Signal Corps cameramen, much of it from late March and April of 1945.
In one video a bunch of German civilians, Wehrmacht and SS are streaming across a damaged train trestle somewhere near Tangermude , running from the Russians, literally under shell fire and scrambling for their worthless lives in the process. There are some Royal Army MPs present who are whacking these bastards in the heads with Sten guns and kicks in the ass. One big SS lout, an officer has his insignia tucked into his great coat. An American MP see's this and pulls it out so the camera can record it. Man, you ought to see the look on this Kraut bastard's puss. I'd have smashed his teeth with a rifle butt.
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