WARNING: This is a high volume ping list
Posted on 01/25/2005 4:17:53 AM PST by IAF ThunderPilot
When they were young, they fought the Nazis, and then bore witness to the extreme depravity of which human beings are capable.
Now in or nearing their 80s and 90s, the Allied soldiers who liberated the concentration camps of Europe are recounting their memories of the horrors. Approaching the January 27 anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, many of those still living feel an urgency to testify about what they encountered.
Anatoly Shapiro, 92, has never forgotten what he saw at Auschwitz on January 27, 1945. That was the day Shapiro, who says he was the first Russian officer to enter the infamous concentration camp, led his battalion to liberate it.
In an interview Saturday in his apartment in the Coney Island section of Brooklyn, he sits alongside his wife, Vita, his tall, thin form upright and his eyes are clear as he describes, through a translator, the things he still sees in nightmares 60 years later.
"We saw German soldiers, and when we opened the gate, we saw one barrack, then the next, on and on for a hundred barracks," he recalls.
"When I saw the people, it was skin and bones. They had no shoes, and it was freezing. They couldn't even turn their heads, they stood like dead people.
"I told them, 'The Russian army liberates you!' They couldn't understand. A few who could touched our arms and said, 'Is it true? Is it real?'"
As a commanding officer, his task was to direct his men. Half his battalion, originally 900 men, had died in battle. But nothing they had endured had prepared them for what they found inside Auschwitz.
His men pleaded with him to let them leave.
"The general told me, 'Have the soldiers go from barrack to barrack. Let them see what happened to the people,'" he says.
He ordered them to accompany him, and they went from barrack to barrack. He remembers, "In German, it said, 'damas,' – women. When I opened the barracks, I saw blood, dead people, and in between them, women still alive and naked.
"It stank; you couldn't stay a second. No one took the dead to a grave. It was unbelievable. The soldiers from my battalion asked me, 'Let us go. We can't stay. This is unbelievable.'
"We went to the barracks for men; it was the same as the barracks for the women. People... were naked, or [had] just thin clothes, no shoes, in the freezing cold; it was January. Only a few people could talk; they didn't have energy. But a few people were able to talk, so slowly. [They told us] once a day they got a little water, no bread, no anything. If someone died, they took the clothes, to get a little warmth, anywhere. They died from hunger and cold.
"I was shocked, devastated."
Shapiro remembers two barracks for children.
"Outside it said, 'kinder.' Inside one, there were only two children alive; all the others had been killed in gas chambers, or were in the 'hospital' where the Nazis performed medical experiments on them. When we went in, the children were screaming, 'We are not Jews!' It turned out that they really were Jewish children and were afraid they were about to be taken to the gas chambers."
He remembers the Russian Red Cross trying to feed the people.
"Immediately they started cooking chicken soup, vegetable soup, but the people couldn't eat because their stomachs were like" – instead of using words, he shows his clenched fist.
After the Red Cross had removed survivors, Shapiro continues, he directed his soldiers to begin cleaning the barracks to prevent disease from spreading.
Because of the repression of Judaism in the former Soviet Union, Shapiro says he did not know how many Jews the Nazis had killed until he learned that the figure was six million when he and his family immigrated to the United States in 1992.
Shapiro has been asked to speak after the president of Poland at the January 27 ceremony in Krakow commemorating the liberation. As it turns out, he cannot be at the ceremony, but he feels it is crucial to speak about what he saw so that future generations will remember. He is particularly gratified to be able to talk because he was not able to do so in the former Soviet Union.
"If I had spoken of what I saw, I would have been sent to jail," he says. "Today, I never forget what happened in Auschwitz and in the war to our six million, and to all [those who died at the hands of the Nazis]." Auschwitz was one of the first camps that the Allies reached, so the anniversary of its liberation prompts reflection by the liberators of other camps as well.
Marvin Josephs, 81, of Phoenix, helped liberate Ohrdruf and Buchenwald in Germany. As a master sergeant with Ace Corps headquarters, 3rd Army, Josephs's unit entered Buchenwald on April 12, 1945, with a military chaplain, Rabbi Herschel Schachter.
"Rabbi Schachter announced with a bullhorn, 'You're free,' and the survivors came and tried to kiss his boots," Josephs says. "They were emaciated, starving."
One man in particular, who said he had been a professor at the University of Prague, showed the camp to Josephs, the rabbi, and several other American soldiers. The tour included the crematoria and the home of the commandant and his wife, Ilse Koch, whose brutality earned her the nickname "Beast of Buchenwald."
"It was so terrible; it was hard for the mind to absorb it."
Shortly after Josephs's unit arrived, Gen. Dwight Eisenhower ordered the entire US 4th Armored Division to tour Buchenwald so they could see the Nazis' brutality.
"He didn't want people to ever deny what happened," Josephs says.
Eugene Cohen, 89, of Pittsburgh served under Gen. George Patton as chief investigating officer of Mauthausen, a conglomeration of concentration camps including Gusen, in Austria.
He supervised an investigating team of 13 men, including six interpreters and several photographers whose documentation was later used to convict Nazi war criminals, including Franz Ziereis, at the Nuremberg Trials.
He was among the first officers to enter Mauthausen in May 1945.
Cohen recalls that he and his men posted signs that read, "Maj. Eugene Cohen is here to investigate crimes against humanity."
"When the Jewish people saw the name Cohen, they came rushing to me," he recalls, tears in his voice.
Day after day, he and his men took depositions. His many indelible memories include the time, several days after he had begun his work, when his chief interpreter, Jack Nowitz, summoned him to hear a man's deposition.
"I saw a man sitting there and Jackie said, 'This man sitting before you was to die two weeks after we came to liberate the camp.' The Germans kept these things called tote books, in which it was marked down, who was to die on such and such a day. Here was a man who was to die, and he was living because we were there. This man came crying to me, and I cried with him."
Cohen says he felt a kinship with the survivors as fellow Jews, and a unique sense of purpose as a Jewish soldier documenting the atrocities.
"Of course, being of the Jewish faith, we did the best we could to get as much evidence as we could," he says.
At the Nuremberg trials, there were more war criminals charged from Mauthausen – based at least in part on the depositions he and his men gathered – than there were from some of the larger concentration camps. As recently as 2001, the FBI gained access to Cohen's personal records to gather evidence to support the deportation of a Nazi war criminal.
"We looked him up, and sure enough, he was there in my report," Cohen says.
"We're dying off now; there are only a few who witnessed what took place," he says. "The most important thing is never to forget."
Forwarding this to all other homeschooling families around us so they will hopefully put other studies aside for the day and read things like this and study with it being anniversary.
He was referring to the Gulags.
Who can read of these things without shedding tears? There are no words...
Hey Catonsville-
I'm in Baltimore. The Holocasut Museum is a must see for anyone in the area. Friends of mine who had to visit for school or otherwise often told me they were shaken/moved to tears before leaving.
I guess it's a hard concept to grip until you're put face to face with it.
"Fifty years ago we entered Buchenwald, the concentration camp, the day after its liberation. Though it is not on our itinerary today, we make the decision to go to this place, a haunting and powerful reminder of what we fought against. Trevor, our guide, thanks me for directing our tour to Buchenwald. He has heard of it, but never thought he would ever see it. It is quite different from what it was half a century ago, but the memories are impressed forever.
You can still see the railroad siding that brought the victims here. Two lookout towers, the dispensary and the crematorium are preserved. Inside the fence all else has been destroyed, except for the numbers of the cell blocks carved in granite markers. Outside the camp a few buildings remain that were used for operations and officer barracks
When the war ended, we were in Bad Berka. Buchenwald was about l3 miles away. We rounded up all the citizens of Bad Berka and took them to see the concentration camp. Not one person admits to knowing it was there. Roosevelt, Stalin and Churchill, at one of those famous conferences, divided up Germany. Bad Berka and surrounding areas were turned over to the Russians. The 296th went to Berlin. When the Russians took over, they took three months to empty the concentration camp of the those who had been imprisoned by the Germans. Then they used the camp to put their German prisoners in. Remember. The Germans almost reached Moscow. After about 40 years, they tore the camp down."
Supposedly, the 296th was the first American unit to enter Berlin, arriving there three days before any other Americans. Just thought you all might find this interesting.
WARNING: This is a high volume ping list
Precisely.
" No, she told me, most are just grateful to God they were never caught and punished."
Not caught and punished while on earth. When they die they will go before One who will ensure they pay for their criminal evil for eternity.
Did Ike ever admit anything about "Operation Keelhaul"?
> Never again.
If only that were so. How many times has the same sort of thing happened just in the 1990's?
I have no idea, but this anecdote involves Ike's son, young General Eisenhower.
My uncle helped liberate the Dachau concentration camp on 29 April 1945 with the US 45th Infantry Division. They were there for a short time, and then pushed through when another unit relieved them. It had a definite effect on his life.
When we were small children, he drug every kid in our family into the living room and told us the story of the liberation. The reason he did it was 'I dont want you to ever forget how bad people can be to each other. I also dont want you to ever participate in this type of thing. Death is preferable to being a barbarian. In this family, we fight for liberty, not death camps."
Then he told us the entire story, from the beginning to end.
He ended the speech by telling us that the children of people who helped liberate the camps were responsible for making sure nothing like that ever happened again after his generation was gone.
After that one time of speaking about it, he never said another word about it as long as he lived.
My father was among the troops who liberated Buchenwald. He said that only constant vigilance and a well armed Israel would prevent such recurrences.
But "all" people are not capable of doing this. We in the US, as a people, would never do this. Nor could most individuals in a "civilized" society be swept up into this. At that time, I was looking at people who may or may not have been directly or indirectly involved in the systematic elimination of a people because of their religious belief. It wasn't an esoteric question of all humanity, it was a question of personal responsibility.
BTTT
Mother Theresa said that she decided to begin her service in Calcutta when she looked into herself and found a Hitler lurking there.
No one knows what is in his own heart of darkness unless he is put to the test.
I love the United States. It is the greatest nation ever to grace the earth. It is God's gift to the world and to all of us.
However, less than a century and a half ago, slavery was legal in the U.S., and at the time of the writing of the Constitution, slavery was legal is every state.
It was possible to buy a man, woman, or child and do whatever you wished with him or her--and, until the Civil War, this had the approval of the American people. Imagination is all one needs to know what some people would do with them; however, historical sources spell it out.
Until the 1880's, a bounty of $5.00 was paid, in some counties of California, for the head of any Indian. This was done with the approval of the people of California.
Then there was Wounded Knee.
Knowing that people are capable of such does not diminish our ability to love and respect people.
For every Hitler, there are many more Todd Beamers and Rachel Scotts.
Goodness and heroism are as inherent in human nature as is the ability to commit atrocities. In fact, it's stronger and more powerful. But the other side of human nature also exists, and we must not forget it. Awareness of it is the only way to prevent ourselves from allowing it to overtake us.
People are beautiful, wonderful, and heroic and to be loved. I do not mean to take away from this.
I was told by a close friend who was a young officer on the staff of General Eisenhower during the war before D-Day and after... that Stalin demanded that all his soldiers be returned after the war and both Churchill and Roosevelt had agreed to it before the D-Day invasion. My friend said, It was ALL about politics.
The lesson of the death camps is that All people are capable of it. Germany was the arts capitol of the world, and one of the most Christian ones. They put secular leaders in charge of the country and it turned into a death camp. All you have to do is listen to the cries of the looney left to realize that under the face paint is a little Nazi that is dying to get into power.
Hilter was put into power on a platform of peace, prosperity and liberal freedom. He use the platform as a gallows. Hitler was a total liberal, gay rights, the works. And Hitler is alive and amoung us today, and rapidly gaining power in the United States.
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