Posted on 03/14/2021 4:23:48 PM PDT by ransomnote
Very moving 2 minute video.
My screen is blurry... again.
Thanks for sharing. Very touching, brought tears to my eyes.
Marking.
Same here. Great story!
C-SPAN 3 yesterday ran a talk by Stephen Hess, a Holocaust survivor, from 2019. His family were German Jews who had moved to the Netherlands about 1936 where they thought they were safe—until Germany invaded the Netherlands in 1940. He must have been about 6 at the end of the war. His family was sent to Bergen Belsen where they just barely survived until the camp was liberated—horrendous conditions and the prisoners there were dying in large numbers but at least it wasn’t like Auschwitz where the Germans were killing people as fast as possible.
Same here.
Remarkable.
Here’s a photo of them when young...https://kurt-klein.de/wp-content/uploads/1946/06/1946-Paris-Eifelturm.jpg
—”they just barely survived until the camp was liberated—horrendous conditions and the prisoners there were dying in large numbers “
After I returned to the world and finished school, my favorite uncle hired me, I worked for him for a few years.
We often rode to work together.
One evening he mentions that at the very end of the war his unit went into a “camp”, then he said, “I wish I had never been there, I wish I had never looked”!
Camp, I asked? He mumbled a word and I let it drop.
I’m hearing impaired since RVN, happens often.
In the years we only discussed the usual complaints about military life.
After he died, I ask his daughter about “the camp”?
She and her mother had NEVER heard of it?
Occasionally I stayed overnight at his house if we worked late.
Some nights I could hear him screaming from the guest room on the other end of the house and my ears are bad.
They said he had “war dreams”???
Asked to look at his Army stuff and maybe explain some of it?
A very interesting map of where his unit the 42nd Infantry Division had been.
Soon as I saw it, I knew.
DACHAU !!!
A copy of the map.
On the right side about mid-page, “war dreams”.
https://historyshots.com/products/42nd-infantry-division-campaign-map
There are reports of GI’s so distraught at the time they were shooting any German guards they could find.
Bookmark
There was some initial out cry about it being a ''war crime'' but as the full horror of Dachau and the other camps were revealed no one really cared a wit that a bunch of SS thugs got theirs.
Years ago I was waiting in a doctor’s office and there was a coffee table book about medics at war. There was an article about a bunch of medics that were at a concentration camp treating the Jews. The regular army guys had secured it and took the Germans out and then went elsewhere.
The Jews let the medics know that many of the Germans were still there pretending to be prisoners. The medics rounded the Germans up - stood them against a wall and shot them, then went back to treating the Jews.
I think that was the first time I had heard of such a thing and it surprised me. It made sense of course, but I found in interesting that it was admitted to in writing. And it particularly struck me that it was medics shooting them. (I watched too many liberal M*A*S*H epsiodes as a kid.)
As I got older I understand it was fairly common in the Pacific to shoot any Jap prisoners we might have taken. Like those medics, no time to secure them or resources to guard them.
When it comes to the SS though it never bothers me in the least to read accounts of them getting whacked.
Every SS bastard should have been shot. They were thugs who deliberately and purposefully fought outside of any and all accepted rules of war fare.
Wonderful!!
Thanks for posting
I think it was Dachau where Eisenhower, right after the camp was liberated, made the civilians living in the area come see the camp so they could never deny the horrors that had taken place there later.
I’ve never heard an account of US Army medics ever doing anything like that.
= = =
I might call it ‘preventative medicine.’
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
