The liberation of hell

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.

"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.

"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."

"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."

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.

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.

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're dying off now; there are only a few who witnessed what took place," he says. "The most important thing is never to forget."

<< Hitler was a total liberal, [And a faggot, who supported sodomists'] 'rights,' the works .... >>

He was also, lest we forget -- as was and/or became every every-bit-as-evil member of his gang -- a Mohummid-admiring, death-worshipping, pagan-heathen/panthiest, Christian-hating Satanist.

And to say that as a state, Germany was "one of the most Christian ones" projects more of insidious prejudice than you deserve.

And to describe the Nazis power grab by saying "one of the most Christian" states "put secular leaders in charge of the country" makes your remarks add up to being about the equivilent of saying -- and about as honest as it would be to say -- that "Israel is one of the most Jewish of Nations and puts terrorist bombers on its buses to commit murders."

Closer to the TRuth is that the only truly [Judeo-]Christian Nation there has ever been on G-d's Green Earth is the United States of America and, thank G-d, there has never been a better nor a safer nor more secure place than among this Christian Nation in which to be Jewish.

Shalom Shalom

Blessings -- Brian

You mean the program that sent thousands of Russian prisoners of war.... those held by the nazis.... back to certain death in the USSR death camps or gulags created by stalin?

It was my belief that every Russian who was a POW of the Germans was sent to the Gulag. However, my Russian wife said that was not true. I asked, "How do you know that?" She replied, "My father was a POW and captured in the Battle of Stalingrad. He was released by the Americans, and never had any problem when he returned home." I thought maybe he was a communist, but my wife said not one. He often told his children that Stalin was evil, and read the Bible to the kids every night. I was shocked, and asked where he got his Bible. She said it was very old, and from that I deduced it must have been pre-Revolution.

One of the strange tragedies is that the Germans wiped out some of the death camps before the Allies got to them. They were razed to the ground and the inmates transferred to other camps. The only thing left was the roads, concrete foundations and unmarked graves.

I do know America good friend many persons do not know what is evil this is evil total evil!!!! today this evil is life again Izrael is atack again atack again for Izrael is good country I do want that persons come and look what is evil that evil devil hamas,hezbollah,Iran "Dictator" Syria "Dictator" I do not see persons Middle East come see this why persons do not want know what is evil Thank you be strong G-D will help Izrael!!!

Dear FRiend,
I know how you feel about this.

One thing that God showed me, was that HE is aware of the depravity of evil men. He says in 2 Cor. 4:4 that the eyes of the hearts of men are blinded by the evil one personified. That is the devil himself. Eyes are blinded to Truth by lucifer, the devil!

The evil men wanting to take down Israel will not be fighting mere men. They fight the Holy God of Abraham,
Isaac and Jacob!

Most times people don't listen when we shout words they don't want to hear.
They go on their merry way and go straight into tradgedy.
All the while we are knowing this will happen.

God loves His people and in the end we will all be blessed beyond measure.

You are a lover of truth and so am I. I thank you as a sister for being so faithful to God's people, Israel.

In the meantime......we post on FR, work, pray, witness, write, phone and do all we can to further the Truth of Righteousness.

God Bless you and yours, anonymoussierra!!!
Keep up the good fight! I am with you!

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