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I know what I saw. I am a witness. Now that I have told you, you are witnesses, too.

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on May 10, 2013| 1 Comment »

I don’t know Leo but when I saw the headline I thought they were writing about my friends on this site. God Bless, Mr. Hymas.
By Julie Muhlstein, Herald Columnist

Students crowded around the speaker as his talk ended at Everett Community College. They lingered, asking if they could take pictures and posing with him to capture the moment.tudents crowded around the speaker as his talk ended at Everett Community College. They lingered, asking if they could take pictures and posing with him to capture the moment.

Leo Hymas is no hip-hop artist or reality TV star. At 87, the U.S. Army veteran is a keeper of history and a bearer of truth.

“Those who say it didn’t happen are wrong,” said Hymas, who spoke Wednesday as part of the college’s Holocaust Survivor Forums.

He lives on Whidbey Island with his wife, Amy, and is a speaker with the Washington State Holocaust Education Resource Center.

His audience was rapt, hanging on every word, as Hymas shared memories with Joyce Walker’s Humanities 150D class. This is the 14th year Walker has presented the Holocaust series, which is open to the public. Most speakers have been Holocaust survivors, or lost ancestors during Nazi Germany’s systematic murder of 6 million Jews.

Hymas is not Jewish. His Holocaust story is from the point of view of an American soldier during World War II, a 19-year-old fresh off his family’s Utah dairy farm.

He was with the 97th Infantry Division, H Company, part of Gen. George Patton’s Third Army. In the spring of 1945, they marched through a nearly defeated Germany. “We fought our way across Germany, village to village — sometimes man to man,” Hymas said.

They were preparing to attack Weimar, a picturesque German town, when they came upon a wire enclosure. Hymas recalls the fence, topped by barbed wire mounted on electric insulators. There was a brick building with a tall chimney, and a guard tower. The guards were gone.

The place was Buchenwald, a concentration camp near Weimar. What the liberation forces found there is seared in Hymas’ memory.

“I have seen hundreds and hundreds of naked, rotting bodies stacked like cord wood,” he said. “The smell, I cannot describe. It was burning human flesh.”

There was no fighting. “Suddenly, our fighting force became a humanitarian force,” Hymas said. “You’ve seen the pictures. The people were so emaciated, just skin and bones.

“An order came to touch nothing, but help if you can,” he said. Three generals came to the death camp with their staffs — Dwight Eisenhower, Omar Bradley and Patton. Hymas said troops had nicknamed Patton “Old Blood and Guts — his guts, our blood.”

From camp survivors, Hymas heard horror stories of torture, of subsisting on a half-cup of turnip soup mixed with sawdust each day, and of dogs trained to go for the throat.

The Allied forces made townspeople from Weimar carry bodies from the camp to a common grave. “They told us, ‘I’m not a Nazi,'” Hymas said.

Kathleen Bergin is the speakers bureau coordinator for the Seattle-based Washington State Holocaust Education Resource Center. While most speakers are Jewish, she said, “Leo offers another perspective. He is one of our most prolific speakers.”

He also is among a dwindling number of people still alive to tell what they saw of the Holocaust firsthand.

“The survivors are elderly, and the liberators tend to be even more so,” Bergin said. “We do have videotaped accounts, but a big part of Holocaust education is preparing for when there aren’t survivors. We have to make this real to kids. When there’s not proof of it standing right in front of them, it’s a challenge.”

Hymas was awarded a Bronze Star Medal for valor. He said he helped capture 91 Germans, “most sent to Nuremberg for war crimes.”

Near the end of his talk, he asked for volunteers. Audience members Terry Myer and Cory Palmieri came forward. First, they held up a Nazi banner, bright red with a huge swastika on it.

“It’s a symbol of the worst evil we have record of,” Hymas said, then asked the volunteers to “wad it up and throw it on the floor.” They then held up a 48-star American flag, “the flag I fought for, and my dear friends died for,” Hymas said. “I hope you love and respect it.”

Retired from an aerospace industry career, he makes time to tell as many people as he can about what hate can do.

“I know what I saw. I am a witness. Now that I have told you, you are witnesses, too,” he told the students. “I’m hoping to influence people like you, so that it can never, ever happen again.”

http://www.heraldnet.com/article/20130510/NEWS01/705109903/1056/comm0615

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Holocaust survivors, veterans gather at DC museum

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on April 29, 2013|

By BRETT ZONGKER, Associated Press
  Monday, April 29, 2013
Frank this morning at the Museum - P. Fredlake

Frank this morning at the Museum – P. Fredlake

Today is the anniversary of the liberation of Dachau. I also got this photo from Peter Fredlake, the director of National Outreach for Teacher Initiatives at the USHMM which he took this morning in Washington.  Big day for Frank!

WASHINGTON (AP) — Elderly survivors of the Holocaust and the veterans who helped liberate them are gathering for what could be their last big reunion at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Some 1,000 survivors and World War II vets are coming together with President Bill Clinton and Elie Wiesel, a Holocaust activist and writer, on Monday when the museum marks its 20th anniversary. Organizers chose not to wait for the 25th milestone because many survivors and vets may not be alive in another five years.

Clinton and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Wiesel, who both dedicated the museum at its opening in 1993, will deliver keynote speeches. On Sunday night, the museum presented its highest honor to World War II veterans who ended the Holocaust. Susan Eisenhower accepted the award on behalf of her grandfather, U.S. Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, and all veterans of the era.

The museum also launched a campaign to raise $540 million by 2018 to keep the memory of the Holocaust alive and to combat anti-Semitism, Holocaust denial and contemporary genocide. It has already secured gifts totaling $258.7 million. The campaign will double the size of the museum’s endowment by its 25th anniversary. Also, a $15 million gift from Holocaust survivors David and Fela Shapell will help build a new Collections and Conservation Center.

Museum Director Sara Bloomfield said organizers wanted to show Holocaust survivors, veterans and rescuers the effort will continue to honor the memory of 6 million murdered Jews, in part by saving lives and preventing genocide in the future.

“We felt it was important, while that generation is still with us in fairly substantial numbers, to bring them together,” Bloomfield said, “to not only honor them, but in their presence make a commitment to them that not only this institution but the people we reach will carry forward this legacy.”

The museum continues collecting objects, photographs and other evidence of the Holocaust from survivors, veterans and archives located as far away as China and Argentina. Curators expect the collection to double in size over the next decade.

This week, the museum is opening a special, long-term exhibit titled “Some Were Neighbors: Collaboration and Complicity During the Holocaust.” It includes interviews with perpetrators that have never been shown before, as well as details of mass killings in the former Soviet Union that were only uncovered in more recent years.

Curator Susan Bachrach said the exhibit and its research challenge the idea that the Holocaust was primarily about Hitler and other Nazi leaders. Surveys at the museum show that’s what most visitors believe.

“That’s very comforting to people, because it puts distance between the visitors and who was involved,” Bachrach said.

So, the museum set out to look at ordinary people who looked on and were complicit in the killing and persecution of millions of Jews through greed, a desire for career advancement, peer pressure or other factors. It examines influences “beyond hatred and anti-Semitism,” Bachrach said.

Focusing only on fanatical Nazis would be a serious misunderstanding of the Holocaust, Bloomfield said.

“The Holocaust wouldn’t have been possible, first of all, without enormous indifference throughout Germany and German-occupied Europe, but also thousands of people who were, say, just doing their jobs,” she said, such as a tax official who collected special taxes levied against Jews.

In an opening film, some survivors recall being turned over to Nazi authorities in front of witnesses who did nothing. “The whole town was assembled … looking at the Jews leaving,” one survivor recalls.

Steven Fenves was a boy at the time. He recalled how in 1944, Hungary, allied with Nazi Germany, forced his family out of their apartment. The family was deported to Auschwitz, where Fenves’ mother was gassed.

“One of the nastiest memories I have is going on that journey and people were lined up, up the stairs, up to the door of the apartment, waiting to ransack whatever we left behind, cursing at us, yelling at us, spitting at us as we left,” he said in an interview with the museum.

The museum located images of bystanders looking on as Jews were detained, humiliated and taken away.

Non-Jews were also punished for violating German policies against the mixing of ethnic groups. For the first time, the museum is showing striking, rare footage of a ritualistic shaming of a Polish girl and a German boy for having a relationship. They are marched through the streets of a town in Poland, where the film was located in an attic. Dozens of people look on as Nazi officers cut the hair of the two teenagers. They are forced to look at their nearly bald heads in a mirror before their hair is burned.

“It’s hard not to focus on the cruelty that’s being perpetrated on this young couple,” Bachrach said. “But what we really want people to look at … is all the other people who are standing around watching this.”

Other items displayed include dozens of bullets excavated from the site of a mass grave in former Soviet territory and registration cards from city offices in Western and Southern Europe labeling people with a “J” for Jew.

The federally funded museum’s theme for its 20th anniversary is “Never Again: What You Do Matters.” The museum devotes part of its work and research to stopping current and preventing future genocides. A study released by the museum last month found that the longer the current conflict in Syria continues, the greater the danger that mass sectarian violence results in genocide.

Much more is still being learned about the Holocaust, as well, Bloomfield said. The museum is compiling an encyclopedia of all incarceration sites throughout Europe. When the project began, scholars expected to list 10,000 such sites. Now the number stands at 42,000.

The museum opened in 1993 as a living memorial to the Holocaust to inspire people worldwide to prevent genocide. A presidential commission called for such a museum in 1979. Since opening, it has counted more than 30 million visitors. The museum also provides resources for survivors. It has partnered with Ancestry.com to begin making the museum’s 170 million documents searchable online through the World Memory Project.

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Survivors will help mark Holocaust museum anniversary.

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on April 28, 2013|

As the museum turns 20, officials understand that the demise of those who survived the prison camps as children means looking backward in a different way.

30th ID Colors, Capitol Rotunda, April 11, 2013

30th ID Colors, Capitol Rotunda, April 11, 2013

Tonight is the Nation Tribute Dinner. Frank, Leslie and Elisabeth are there- two survivors and their actual liberator. Tomorrow they get interviewed near the 30th Infantry Division Flag, recently installed in the main foyer of the Museum as a liberating division. About time. I nearly cried when I saw it paraded into the Capitol Rotunda for the Days of Remembrance  commemoration this year. First time! I really think the project helped get the 30th on the recognition radar screen…here is a good article, found on USA Today.

WASHINGTON — The adult survivors of the Holocaust are mostly gone now, and those who survived as children — and were old enough at the time to remember their ordeals — are now in their 70s and 80s.

It won’t be long before no eyewitnesses remain.

That’s why, as the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum marks its 20th anniversary Monday with more than 750 survivors, museum officials are calling it one of the last large gatherings of those who managed to escape Hitler’s death machine.

For those who have dedicated themselves to teaching future generations about the Holocaust and its victims, the demise of the survivors means looking backward in a different way — a way that no longer includes people looking others straight in the face and recounting what they saw and what they lived.

You can read all the documentation of the Holocaust in the world, said Diane Saltzman, director of survivor affairs at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, “but hearing somebody’s voice, sitting across the table or across the room from a human being, there’s no true substitute.”

Jonathan Sarna, professor of American Jewish history at Brandeis University, wants his classes to understand this.

“I tell my students annually that they have a special responsibility,” he said. “They are the last generation that will be able to say that they personally knew survivors of the Holocaust. It is a big change, just like it was when the last Civil War veteran passed from the scene.”

The Holocaust, now “perceived history,” will become “received” history, Sarna said. The challenge is that it doesn’t recede from memory.

Holocaust educators take heart in the many institutions and younger people committed to ensuring that future generations will know about the 6 million Jews who died; of the concentration camps, gas chambers and crematoria set up to carry out Hitler’s “Final Solution”; and of the 5 million Roma (Gypsies), gay people and others murdered because the Nazis deemed them, like the Jews, unworthy of life.

That’s the mission of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, said Saltzman, which has hosted some 35 million visitors since it opened just off the National Mall in 1993. The institution is full of audio and video testimony from survivors, artifacts from their lives before and after they were sent to concentration camps, and films and diaries that document the genocide.

“The museum stands as that eyewitness going forward,” Saltzman said. “We are the repository of all that evidence, and all of those memories.”

From the Washington museum to Jerusalem’s Yad Vashem to smaller museums around the world, these institutions preserve history that will soon no longer be passed on firsthand. So, too, does Holocaust literature, from Anne Frank’s famous diary to Night, by survivor and Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel, who will give the keynote speech at the Washington museum’s anniversary Monday, alongside former president Bill Clinton.

The Shoah Foundation, based at the University of Southern California, has videotaped testimony from more than 51,000 survivors since film director Steven Spielberg started the project in 1994, when there were about 350,000 Holocaust survivors worldwide.

Curriculum programs in schools introduce children in the U.S. and elsewhere to the Holocaust, and these programs will continue, even when survivors aren’t part of them anymore.

Norman Frajman, 83, thinks of that day. He was 10 years old when World War II began, and has sharp memories of life in the Warsaw Ghetto and of the Majdanek death camp in eastern Poland, where his mother and younger sister died. All told, he lost 126 members of his immediate and extended family.

“I probably wouldn’t remember what I had for breakfast, but I remember all that happened to me during the carnage,” said Frajman, who now lives in Boynton Beach, Fla., and has been sharing his testimony with schoolchildren for more than 30 years.

But not with young children. “The atrocities are indescribable. I can’t address anyone at the elementary school level,” he said. “It’s too graphic.”

For all the graphic details available from survivors, and primary and secondary texts and film, Holocaust denial still thrives on the Internet and in many parts of the world where anti-Semitism has strong roots.

Even in the presence of Holocaust survivors, there are people who insist the genocide never happened, Sarna said. The hope, when there are no more survivors, is that the museums and the video archives will make it “impossible for most people to accept the word of the deniers.”

In the meantime, as long as he is able, Frajman will tell his story and teach about the Holocaust in hopes of preventing another one. “Yesterday it was directed against the Jews. Tomorrow it could be against Christians, the next day against Muslims — unless people heed and listen,” he said.

But he is optimistic that his words and those of other survivors will resonate long after he is gone.

“Judging by today’s young people that I encounter when I go to schools to speak, we are in for a better tomorrow,” Frajman said. “They listen. They are very perceptive. They take it to heart.”

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Soldiers, survivors converge in Louisville.

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on April 23, 2013| 1 Comment »

Thanks to Alan Smason for a nice article. I have added some clarifying remarks in brackets for posterity and additional accuracy.

Soldiers, survivors converge in Louisville

April 19, 2013

By ALAN SMASON, Exclusive to the CCJN

Frank Towers remembers the day through the haze of 68 years, a footnote at the end of World War II. Matt Rozell was never there, but through his efforts and those of his students, he can dictate with amazing accuracy what happened in Farsleben, Germany those many years ago. Yet to the five Holocaust survivors who met with Towers and Rozell at a World War II reunion this past weekend in Louisville, KY, it was a day they will never forget. It was the day American forces gave them something they thought they would never see again: freedom!

30th Division U.S. Army Infantry Veterans executive secretary Frank Towers, center, welcomes Gideon Kornblum, left, and Kurt Bronner. (Photo by Alan Smason)

At 95 years, Towers is the last of the 30th Division of the United States Army Infantry members who can say he was there and had personal contact with this almost forgotten chapter of history. His testimony shows he was assigned the duty of dealing with what the Nazis regarded as human refuge on April 14, the day after the survivors, crammed into tiny freight cars, starving and in some cases dying, had been freed from their captors by members of the Tank Destroyer Batallion 743 [note: 743rd Tank Battalion. 823rd Tank Destroyer battalion assisted later in the day.]assigned to Tower’s 30th Division named for Andrew Jackson and fondly referred to as “Old Hickory.”

Rozell, a high school teacher in Hudson Falls, NY, is the conduit by which Towers and the remaining 30th Division members have connected to the Holocaust survivors, all now septgenarians or octogenarians, from the first of three trains sent out from Bergen-Belsen concentration camp on April 6. It is through his “Teaching History Matters” website set up decades ago and fueled as part of his commitment to teaching his students the lessons of World War II that he has become heralded as an authority on an event that took place years before he was born.

It is through his efforts and the resources he and his students have placed on the Internet that reunions where veterans can meet with survivors have been possible. More than 200 survivors of what Towers calls “the death train” have been identified and contacted through Rozell’s networking efforts.The five survivors who traveled to Louisville to spend time with their families touring the Louisville Slugger plant and other city sites are part of a vast network of Holocaust train survivors now living throughout the United States, Canada, Israel, Europe and as far away as Australia. The manifest of the names of all those loaded on the train is now listed on Rozell’s site and linked with the United States Holocaust Museum and Yad Vashem in Jerusalem.

This year two train survivors, Ariel University emeritus math professor Gideon Kornblum from Jerusalem and retired graphics printer Kurt Bronner from Los Angeles, were new to the gathering. They joined with retired Duke University medical professor Dr. George Somjen from Durham, NC; Brooklyn College physics professor Micha Tomkiewicz from Brooklyn, NY; and Bruria Bodek Falik from Woodstock, NY, all of whom have attended reunions with the remaining veterans beginning in 2008 and continuing ever since.

Bergen-Belsen concentration camp survivors (from left) Micha Tomkiewicz, Bruria Falik and Kurt Bronner. (Photo by Alan Smason)

In every case these Holocaust survivors brought their wives, children and grandchildren with them to meet and socialize with the children and grandchildren of the men they consider the liberators of their families.

This year only 12 veterans were in attendance. Their number was lessened in December with the passing away in Florida of Carrol Walsh, a retired New York State Supreme Court judge, who was one of the two tank commanders that captured the train in question.

It was through Walsh’s grandson, a student in Rozell’s history class more than a decade ago, that Rozell first learned of what occurred on that date. Beginning in 2001, he heard first-hand in a series of interviews with Walsh how he and fellow tank commander George Gross happened onto the train and its human cargo.

Rozell explained how the train got there. On April 6 the Bergen-Belsen commander, fearing the approach of the Soviet Army [note: the British Army] and not wanting to let the world know of the savagery of the Third Reich and its “Final Solution,” dispatched three separate trains crammed full with prisoners to Theresienstadt concentration camp, also known by the name of its garrison city, Terezin. Of the three trains sent out that date [note: not all three trains were dispatched on same day], the first with 2,500 aboard encountered a series of mishaps that made it fall into the hands of the Americans on April 13. A second train with 1,700 prisoners aboard, using information it gleaned from the first train, eventually made it to Terezin on April 20, where most of its inhabitants were liberated on May 8 by the Soviet Army. The third train with 2,400 souls aboard also was liberated by Soviet troops on April 23 at Trobitz.

With laser pointer in hand, former 1st Lt. Frank Towers prepares to show audience members where the train was liberated at Farsleben. (Photo by Alan Smason)

Walsh and Gross were on a scouting mission along with members of the 119th regiment, having been dispatched from the recently captured town of Hillersleben by Major Clarence Benjamin. Benjamin had come upon several Jews who had escaped the train while it lay in wait. They had told him of the train’s existence and he instructed Walsh and Gross to accompany him.

Despite its holding a full head of steam, the train commanded by SS Captain Hugo Schlegel and its complement of a dozen guards or SS troops were contemplating orders from the German command. In front of them were the Allied forces, while behind them the Soviet troops were advancing. The orders were chilling. Either blow up the train there with explosives found in one of the freight cars or advance the train to the Elbe River, blow up a bridge there and plunge the train into the waters below, killing all aboard including the guards.

The train was standing at a spot so remote it was originally considered as Magdeburg by the World War II veterans who first began to tell their stories. Walsh and Gross saw several Jewish prisoners milling about, but when they pressed their tanks into service, the German guards threw their rifles down, ran away or disrobed, attempting to evade capture by donning the clothes of their captives. It was in vain, though, because their much better physical condition gave them away almost immediately.

Emeritus mathematics professor Gideon Kornblum traveled from Jerusalem to be a part of the reunion of the veterans and survivors. (Photo by Alan Smason)

Gross placed his tank in front of the train, while Walsh went back to the headquarters to alert them to their finding. With their Nazi captors away or arrested, the train’s doors were flung open and the wretched survivors  began to slowly vacate the compartments to which they had been confined.

“These freight cars were much smaller than the ones we see on our normal railroads, about half to two-thirds the size of our freight cars,” Towers recounted. “These freight cars were left over and remodeled after World War I and became known as ’40 and 8s.’ They could easily hold 40 men or eight horses, thus the nomenclature.”

“These cars that they encountered contained 75 to 80 men, women and children,” Towers continued. “They’d been in these cars for six days, stopping at night to get their daily ration, which basically was a kettle of water with some potato skins or lentils. That was their ration for six days.”

When Walsh returned with backup troops, they came face to face with the horrors of the Holocaust, none of which they had seen in their march towards the heart of Germany.

Kurt Bronner, at his first reunion of the 30th Division of the U.S. Army Infantry, gives his thanks to the veterans, (Photo by Alan Smason)

“They had very little sanitary facilities. They were dirty, stinking, flea-infested and lice-infested and put into these cattle cars,” Towers recalled. “When they opened the doors of these cars, many of the victims just fell out to the ground. Some of our men just had to turn and throw up; the stench was so bad. This was inhumane. This was what the Germans were giving them: nothing. They were treated lower than animals.”

Rozell concurred, but gave an interesting sidenote. The German guards had radios and had informed the prisoners of the death less than 24 hours before of President Franklin D. Roosevelt in Warm Springs, GA. Many of the U.S. soldiers were so busy fighting battles that they first found out about his death through the freed Holocaust survivors. [note: the reporter may have heard this from someone, but it was not me. I indicated what the soldiers told me- that the column was stopped and they were notified by their own commanders. Shocked, they went on to liberate the train the next day.] The prisoners were fearful at first because the Germans had told them the Americans would shoot them when they found them.

“There was one soldier, an individual I hear many soldiers talk about,” Rozell remembered. “Apparently, he came down from the hill and he said in Yiddish ‘I’m a Jew. I’m Jewish.’ He was from Brooklyn and I’ve heard it from at least a half-dozen people because it does make an impression.”

When 1st Lt. Towers was ordered to the train the following day he had several concerns. “The first thing we wanted to do was get these people medical care,” Towers stated.

“We were sort of in the middle of a no man’s land. We had to get these people out of there,” he noted. “So it fell in my lap to get transportation to get those people out of there and to remove them back to a previous town that had been liberated the day before at Hillersleben.”

Sadly, 30 of the victims on the train had already died of organ failure or starvation and were buried immediately at Farsleben, according to Towers.  Over the course of the next two weeks, nearly another two dozen weakened survivors contracted typhus and died. They were buried in a cemetery in Hillersleben, some five miles away. One of these was Somjen’s father.[note: the number is over 100.]

Little did Towers know, but the interaction he had with transporting the victims of the Holocaust was to be short-lived. Within a few days of arranging their transportation and care by private citizens and for the sick to a nearby German field hospital, he and other segments of the 30th Division were moving out to fight the Germans in what turned out to be their final assault at Magdeburg. Within days the war was over for Towers and the entire 30th Division.

For the survivors they had liberated, most of whom were Hungarian Jews, there were many years of living in displaced persons camps, moving back to their hometowns to attempt to find parents or loved ones and, eventually, emigration to more welcoming countries as Communism gripped the Slavic states.

For Kornblum, who was only five at the end of the war and who was then an orphan, much of the story of his past was brought to life at Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial and museum in Jerusalem, near where he now resides with his wife Annette. Although several previous attendees had come in from European cities or like Falik had lived in Israel for a time, Kornblum is the first resident of the Jewish state to travel expressly [note: others have travelled to the USA to reunions from Israel] to a 30th Division reunion.

“Originally people gave me the impression that I was aboard the train headed for Tobitz. I was very happy to learn that I was in the so-called Magdeburg train liberated near Farsleben,” Kornblum confessed. He remembers some childhood memories such as celebrating Shabbat with his grandfather on Friday evenings in addition to the slaying of his mother at the hands of the Nazis and the death of his father at Bergen-Belsen. “But I have very little recollection,” he admitted.

Bronner, who was 18 at the time of liberation, had far more vivid memories of that day, even though he spoke no English at that time. “The first  words in English I ever learned was (sic) ‘One only,’” he said. “That was when I went to the bathroom and I closed the door. Having the privacy to be by myself: that was freedom!”

Rozell first became aware of the impact his website was making in 2006, when he was contacted via email by an elderly [note: a grandmother, but not my idea of elderly] woman in Australia who was only seven at the time of the liberation of the train. She was amazed at the images displayed on the site captured on the day of her liberation by Benjamin and Gross. Thus began countless emails and telephone calls to many excited survivors with Rozell’s website as their focus.

When Rozell contacted the archivist at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, he received more material, such as the manifest list of passengers, which enabled him to do outreach with other survivors, who now were scattered across the globe. Rozell, Tomkiewicz and his wife [note: Rozell, Towers and Varda Wiesskopf] have now contacted approximately 240 survivors, all 18 years or under at the time of their liberation [note: a few were older].

Rozell has held several reunions with his high school class in Hudson Falls and has had Towers and Walsh meet with the survivors of the train, beginning in 2007. He has had oral histories recorded on video and transcribed for insertion on his website. Since 2008 the 30th Division members, led by executive secretary Towers, have invited the Holocaust train survivors to be included in their reunion activities as guests. The veterans and their families have joined with the Holocaust victims and their families to ensure that this small event at the end of World War II will always be remembered.

Crescent City Jewish News

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Grandfather’s hidden photos inspire Holocaust film

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on April 4, 2013|

eisenhower at ushmmBy BRIDGET MURPHY, Associated Press

BOSTON (AP) — Matthew Nash’s grandfather only mentioned the photographs to him once.

Twenty-five-years later, they are the subject of a new documentary on the Holocaust that Nash spent three years making after finding the pictures his grandfather took while serving as an Army medic in World War II.

Kept hidden from Nash and others in the family, the photos were not something Nash’s grandfather seemed to want to talk about with relatives. But they were something he could never forget.

Nash’s film — “16 Photographs at Ohrdruf” — tells of the first concentration camp that U.S. soldiers liberated in 1945.

The 72-minute film will have its first public screening Thursday evening at Lesley University in Cambridge, Mass., and also will be shown as part of the Boston International Film Festival on April 16 and the G.I. Film Festival in Washington in May.

The summer he was 12, Nash asked about his grandfather’s World War II service as the two were stacking wood in his grandparents’ barn in East Dorset, Vt.

“As I recall he got really quiet,” said Nash, now a 37-year-old photography professor at Lesley University. “I think he just said, ‘Yeah, we saw some really terrible things. When you get a little older, I’ll show you some pictures and you’ll understand.'”

But Donald Grant Johnson, a former Army lieutenant, died in 1991 without sharing the photos with his grandson. Family members only spoke of the pictures in whispers.

When Nash’s grandmother threatened to destroy them when the subject came up at Thanksgiving dinner in 1995, Nash and his sister felt compelled to secretly sift through their late grandfather’s belongings the following Christmas. That’s when they found an envelope marked “Holocaust” tucked away in a wooden trunk. Inside were a few letters and a series of snapshots of a war horror the 23-year-old Johnson encountered as a soldier in April 1945.

Johnson took most of the photos at Ohrdruf in Germany. Nash believes his grandfather may have treated survivors of the camp, which the Germans had formed as a sub-camp of Buchenwald.

On a personalized sheet of notepaper with “Don Johnson” printed at the top, the 65th Infantry Division Army veteran cataloged the photo collection as best he could.

“Lime Pit — effort to destroy bodies,” reads one handwritten caption. “Griddle used in (vain) attempt to incinerate bodies — note skull bottom center,” reads another. “Small stack of bodies,” says yet another.

Soldiers are on the outskirts of some of Johnson’s shots, standing together to view piles of emaciated and burned corpses. Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower wanted many witnesses to the Nazi atrocity so that reports of it couldn’t be dismissed as propaganda.

“He had as many units as possible come and see the camp,” said Geoffrey Megargee, a scholar from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum who appears in Nash’s film.

Johnson likely came to Ohrdruf within a few days of its liberation. He later returned home to become a banker, National Guard soldier, and a volunteer emergency-medical technician.

Some of Johnson’s photos show survivors, including what he described as a survivor being treated by two camp doctors. The skeletal-looking man is lying on a cot, with what appears to be an open wound on his hip, as the men stand beside him. In another, a bare-chested boy of about 14 looks toward the camera, with what appears to be prisoner barracks in the background.

Nash found 19 photos in all and used 16 in his film. His research showed his grandfather may have shot a few of the photos at Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria.

The professor also discovered from letters his grandfather packed away with the pictures that he had wanted his photographs to become part of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. He said in one letter that he had visited more than one concentration camp, but Ohrdruf was engraved in his memory.

“I keep the pictures close at hand and have made a point of looking at them frequently,” Johnson wrote. “And, during my years of National Guard service, I made a point of showing them to the personnel, hoping we could prevent any such disasters from happening again.”

Johnson died two years before the museum opened, and before he sent the pictures. Nash has since given the photos to the museum for its archives, and said he’s proud to have done that for his grandfather.

Nash made the documentary with about $5,000 and the help of friends in the film business.

Among film interviewees, Nash talked to veterans who served in the same infantry division as his grandfather, including Boston resident Edwin “Bud” Waite. The 87-year-old was an infantry soldier who wasn’t part of liberating concentration camps, but visited Dachau later. He said he sees value in Nash’s film effort.

“I think it’s very important because the younger people nowadays, they don’t really understand concentration camps back in World War II,” Waite said.

Megargee, who will give a lecture before Thursday’s screening, said Nash’s film opens up a personal window into what the Allies were fighting against in World War II.

“When you can personalize the history, especially for younger kids, it helps to get them interested. It’s one thing to talk about tens of thousands of camps. It’s another thing to bring it down to the level of one American soldier,” he said.

Copyright 2013 The Associated Press.

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WE WILL BE THERE, WILL YOU??

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on January 15, 2013|

Matthew Rozell, 30th Infantry Veterans of WWII, Holocaust survivors at Mighty Eighth Air Force Museum, March 2, 2012.

Matthew Rozell, 30th Infantry Veterans of WWII, Holocaust survivors at Mighty Eighth Air Force Museum, March 2, 2012.

Frank Towers’ invitation to soldiers, survivors, interested parties and their families to come to Louisville in the spring. The soldiers have convened annually since the end of World War II; since 2008, thanks to the project, the 30th Infantry Division has hosted Holocaust survivors and their families as well for very emotional, uplifting, and fun times. Email for details.

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Don’t forget the dates!!       April 11 – 12 – 13, 2013

Don’t forget to make your Hotel Reservation

and Registration!!

Hotel Crowne Plaza,  Louisville, KY

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Dear Fellow 30 Division Members and Friends:

I hope you all enjoyed your holiday and that the New Year holds only good things for you and your family.

Now that the holidays are over it is time to focus on making your reservations for the Reunion.  Included are the Pre-Registration Form and the Reservation Form and the information to make your hotel reservations. Please do it NOW.

We have a great program planned and will include a trip to the Louisville Slugger Factory and Museum, a professional photographer that will take a picture of you and/or your family (so bring your medals and ribbons to show off).  We will also have one of Louisville’s noteworthy news casters, Ken Schulz, MC our banquet on Saturday evening.  Our entertainment will include a local bagpiper as well as others.

Why come to Louisville?

Louisville, is a city of urban neighborhoods that have been revitalized, and some of our best known shopping areas are the Bardstown Road and Frankfort Avenue corridors with their small shops and plentiful locally owned restaurants.  The homes and buildings in the Old Louisville neighborhood is one of the largest historic preservation districts featuring Victorian architecture in the U.S.  The Downtown area has had significant renovations over the last few years with the construction of the YUM! Center which is home court for our Louisville Cardinals men’s and women’s basketball teams.  The Center, along with Waterfront Park and Fourth Street Live, have attracted new housing, shops and restaurants breathing new life into the area.

Louisville has museums to interest everyone..  Home to the Frazier International History Museum; The Muhammad Ali Center; The Louisville Science Center; The Kentucky Museum of Art and Craft and many, many more.

Our hotel, the Crowne Plaza, is locally owned and operated.  It is near the airport and offers free shuttle service from the airport to the hotel.  The Crowne Plaza also offers many amenities including indoor/outdoor pool, fitness center, boutique shop, 24 hours business center, complimentary Wi-Fi, and more.

You can see Louisville is the place to be, so much so that Louisville was named “The Top U.S. Travel Destination for 2013” by Lonely Planet’s, the world’s leading travel publisher.

We are looking forward to having you here and sharing some of our history and hospitality with you, and most of all, to meet many of your former friends and colleagues.

Best Regards,

Bill Vaughan. President

30th Infantry Division Veterans of WWII

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Taps – 2012

(Last 6 Months)

ADAMS, Cleveland L. 30 MP Plat. 7/30/12 Stockbridge, GA

ADKINSON, Bruce 743 TkBn B 6/17/12 Beverly, MA

DUMEY JR, (DuMay) Leon 120-G 11/23/12 Cape Girardeau, MOM

FARKAS, Louis 119-I 12/ /12 Colton, OR

HOGUE, Donald W. 117 K 6/12/12 Montevallo, AL

HOUCK, Arthur T. 120-K 6/16/12 Hampstead, MD

LAZINGER, Sol 117-B 6/13/12 Philadelphia, PA

MAXEY, James C. 120 CN 6/ 29 /12 Tullahoma, TN

MILLER, Edmund L. 120-H 9/07/12 Pewamo, MI

PITRUZZELLO, Joseph S. 119-L 5/02/08* Alexander City, AL

PRUITT, Frank H. 120-2BnHq 12/10/12 Spartanburg, SC

PULVER, Murray S. 120-B 9/21/12 Peoria, AZ

STANFORD, Arna V. Widow 8/18/10* Williamsburg, VA

STECKLER, William 105 Engr. B 9/09/12 Palm Harbor, FL

SULLIVAN, Thomas “Jack” 118 FA 8/07/12 Savannah, GA

TURNER, Woodrow W. 117-F 8/15/12 Littleton, CO

UBBES, Jean M 743 TkBn-B 7/28/12 Kalamazoo, MI

VOORHIS, Thomas K. 120-K 8/06/12 Manteca, CA

WALSH, Carrol S. 743 TkBn-D 12/17/12 Sarasota, FL

YOUNG SR., James E. 120 6/26/12 Butler, PA

Those with an asterisk (*) were received too late for a prior publication.

Our Most Sincere Condolences to the Families of These Lost Heroes

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As most of you already know, men of the 743rd Tk. Bn., and  30th Infantry Division, liberated over 2.500 victims of the Holocaust from Bergen-Belsen on 13 April 1945.

We will be honored to have some of these Survivors join with us again at Louisville.  Two of them have never been with us before, so they will give a resume of their life history, so be sure to come to hear these stories that have never been told before.

One of these Survivors will be coming all of the way from Jerusalem, Israel, joining with other members of his family, to meet his Liberators for the first time.  The other Survivor will be coming from San Diego, CA with his daughter, also to meet for the very first time with some of his liberators.

To make it clear, each of you veterans were “Liberators” of this group of victims.  Although you may not have had any personal hands-on experience with them at the time of their liberation, You were doing your job which was supporting the action in the local vicinity of this tremendous discovery and the release of these frail humans to Freedom.

Join with us on this occasion to meet these Survivors that you helped to liberate 68 years ago !!

This will be an Historic event !!  68 years to the date of their Liberation !!!

 

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The day of April 13 1945 was a Friday and a sunny and windy day.

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on January 3, 2013|

Friday the 13th.

This account comes to me from a survivor’s son who lives in Hungary. He had read of Carrol Walsh’s passing on the internet and contacted me. It is Carrol who is commanding one of these tanks. Sgt. George Gross commanded the other, and took photographs.

I just came across this website . My father was on this train.
He passed away twenty years ago, in April 1992.

Here is an excerpt from his memoirs about his liberation day.
—————————————————-

Translation from my father’s Memoirs pp. 302-304.
————————————————-

The day of April 13 1945 was a Friday and a sunny and windy day. In the morning, the SS opened the doors of the freight cars, after they had argued with each other whether they should kill us with their submachine guns. But the US troops were too close.

——————————————————————-

Perhaps it was an older SS man who prevented our execution. Later that day, a Jewish woman, who had been his lover in the camp, saved him from becoming a prisoner of war or worse. She got him civilian clothes, I do not know how. The same woman became the lover of an American soldier later.
——————————————————————

Several hundred people wrapped in rags streamed through the open doors, if they could be called people at all. We were all mere skeletons.

The train was idling in a deepening, so I climbed uphill, across a road and to a field. I was pulling out potatoes planted on the field, when a motorcycle approached. It was a motorcycle with a side-car. There was an elegant SS or Nazi leader in the front: I could not decide, since he was wearing a mixture of uniform and civilian clothes. It must have been his wife sitting behind him and his child in the side-car. He pulled over and offered me a cigarette. I told him I did not smoke, so he closed his silver-looking cigarette-case and started the engine.
He seemed to hesitate about the direction he should take.

Prisoner taken. Photo by tank commander George C Gross, April, 1945.

Prisoner taken. Photo by tank commander George C Gross, April, 1945.

Then two small American tanks arrived. I was standing in the middle of the road, and noticed that the American soldier leaning out of the turret of one of the tanks aimed his gun at me.
The tank came closer and closer, and the soldier lowered his submachine gun. I must have looked terrible, so he did not take me for an enemy. I was lucky he had not shot me from the distance, since my small coat and boots vaguely resembled a military uniform. Lice were crawling all over my clothes and skin.

The few hundred former inhabitants of the concentration camp surrounded the tanks right away. Suddenly somebody remembered that the SS guarding us were still in the carriages. The SS were caught quickly, and lined up. The “intrepid” SS were trembling so heavily that their pants were flapping.

The first thing a Jewish woman asked from the soldier leaning out from the tank was money, and she received a dollar bill. She must have established her future with this dollar.

My attention was drawn to something else: in the rear of the tank there was a box of canned food. I climbed under the tank, emerged at its end, and pulled out a can. It turned out that I stole a can of oranges. This was my luck. I ate the potatoes charred in the can with the oranges, and probably this combination saved my life. Everyone who ate meat or anything greasy died within hours or within one or two days at the latest.

I felt fever in my body, undressed completely naked in front of staring women, and went into the ice-cold water of the lake next to the railroad. People warned me not to do this, but I went into the water, felt good, felt that I got rid of the lice and the burning heat of the fever. When I put on my rags again, I felt the fever ever stronger.

I asked an American soldier to sign the photo of my fiancee (I still have this photo). To my surprise, he signed the name Churchill. I thought he was joking. But he reassured me that his name was really Churchill.

(Once I read about a father named Churchill, who went to see his son’s grave in Vietnam during that war. The report mentioned that the father had been a soldier in World War II. He must have been my Churchill)

In the evening, there were news that we should flee, because the Germans pushed back the Americans. The Germans would massacre us for sure, the women had pulled out material for parachutes from a carriage in order to make clothes.

I was already so weak that I did not care whether the returning Germans would kill me: I stayed in one of the carriages, and fell asleep.

On Saturday, April 14, German peasant [horse-drawn] carts came for us by some order, so I was carried to Hillersleben. I dragged myself to the first floor of the first building, it looked like an office building, lay down under the sink of the bathroom, and fell asleep.

I am sure the American soldiers had no idea who we were and what we went through.

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he has a dramatic way of proving his point.

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on January 1, 2013|

Class Act
Historic Reuniter
By Nancy Cooper
Photography by Erica Miller
Volume 147, Number 1, January/February 2013, Page 7

How does a young man from a small town with no experience in Holocaust education become a well-regarded figure in World War II and Holocaust history nationwide?

Matthew Rozell 12-12 American Spirit magazine

Not purposely posed. Erica Miller photo. Click the photo to see what I mean…. Only thing missing from 1992 is Dad.

The answer is part of the story of the remarkable career of Matthew Rozell, history teacher at Hudson Falls High School in New York. Following in the footsteps of his father, who was a history teacher in a nearby town, Rozell has taught at his alma mater for the past 25 years.

When Rozell emphasizes to his students the importance of tracking down primary sources, he has a dramatic way of proving his point. Through such primary research, he and his students have been able to identify and reunite Holocaust survivors with the U.S. soldiers who freed them.

Rozell’s instrumental role in such a historic reunion began in 2001 when he sat with Carrol “Red” Walsh, tank commander, U.S. Army 743rd Tank Battalion, to listen to some of his World War II tales. After nearly two hours of conversation, Walsh was reminded by his daughter to “tell [Rozell] about the train.” That prompt was a catalyst to a bigger story.

Walsh related that in April 13, 1945, his tank division saw something unexpected near Magdeburg, Germany: freight train cars alone on a track. When he drove his tank alongside the train, he could see that the cars were filled with Jewish men, women and children—more than 2,000 of them.

Intrigued by the story, Rozell searched for photographs of the liberation, which he posted on his school’s website in 2002. It wasn’t until four years later that Rozell received an e-mail from a grandmother in Australia who had been a 7-year-old girl on that train. She said that as soon as saw the photographs, she fell out of her chair: This was the day of her liberation in 1945.

From then on, “Almost every time I opened my e-mail inbox, there would be another message from a survivor, somebody that I wasn’t aware of before,” Rozell says. “These people weren’t aware of each other for the most part before finding the site.”

With the help of liberator Frank Towers and a survivor’s daughter, Varda Weisskopf of Israel, Rozell and his students went on to reunite nearly 225 Holocaust survivors with their American liberators. Rozell organized 10 reunions: One took place in Israel and three happened at his school. Students recorded the individuals’ interviews as part of a World War II Living History Project (www.hfcsd.org/ww2). Learn more at https://teachinghistorymatters.wordpress.com.{clarification: there have been at least 10 reunions since Rozell began the project; however he did not organize the ones occurring off campus but rather participated in or otherwise helped to facilitate them.}

Students have said of Rozell and the project: “He puts history right in front of your eyes. Never could I have gotten the experience of meeting such inspiring people who learned to love after the ultimate form of prejudice was thrust upon them. A message of acceptance not only reached the little town of Hudson Falls, but the entire world.”

“It’s life-altering,” said another. “And because we’ve heard these stories, it’s our job to make sure it won’t happen again.”

The powerful lesson hasn’t been limited to his students at Hudson Falls. In 2008 Rozell was awarded a Museum Teacher Fellowship at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum for his work in Holocaust education. The Tennessee Holocaust Commission has created workshops based on his work. On September 25, 2009, Rozell and his students were named ABC World News “Persons of the Week.” His project was also the subject of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum documentary “Honoring Liberation,” which debuted at the Holocaust Days of Remembrance in Washington, D.C., in April 2010.

To keep his teaching methods fresh, Rozell says, “I listen to the kids and adjust all the time. Some days you do not know the impact you have, but I can look to the dozens of kids who have gone into history education as a feather in my cap of sorts.”

He advises today’s youth not to take the sacrifices of the past for granted: “Talk to older Americans who served their nation.”

-American Spirit Magazine, Jan.Feb. 2013. National Society Daughters of the American Revolution.

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The Golden Book.

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on November 28, 2012|

Just when you think that maybe things are “quieting down”,  an email comes in your inbox again.

At Thanksgiving Time.

Can’t wait to speak to Kurt. In the meantime, read below. He has to be around the 230th survivor of the train to make our acquaintance…good work Frank and Varda! Frank, you never cease to amaze me, at 95 yrs young, you are doing laps around me! So now I can share with the students, and fellow survivors and soldiers!

In the words of survivor Dr. Micha Tomkiewitz, “welcome to the family!”

—–Original Message—–
From: Kurt Bronner

Survivors Kurt Bronner and his lovely wife. Thanks to Frank and Varda W. for finding them- “welcome to the family”

Sent: Thursday, November 22, 2012 2:31 PM
To: Rozell Matt
Subject: Thanks

Dear Matt…This last week I have been in touch with Frank Towers and Varda W….They found me on the list on survivors of the deathtrain..I have seen movies and stories…Its like my past has been opened up…On this day of Thanksgiving I would like to wish you a happy peaceful Year and thank you for opening up a chapter of many survivors on that train…I live in Los Angeles and the Burbank school system has had a similar program and I have been talking to students in junior and high schools…Have 100s of letters from the students…Teachers like you are in my Golden book..Thank you for your groundbreaking efforts…with my best to You and your family with my love, Kurt Bronner

Teaching tolerance

April 08, 2000

by Irma Lemus, Burbank Leader

MEDIA DISTRICT NORTH — Fifty-five years have passed, but Kurt Bronner can still vividly recall his mother being beaten by a Nazi soldier as he watched helplessly through a barbed wire fence. It was the last time Bronner, now 74, ever saw his mother.

The Encino resident revisited the horrific nine months he spent at Bergen-Belsen, a concentration camp in northern Germany, Friday during a presentation to Burbank High School students.

The event was part of the Burbank Human Relations Council’s Holocaust remembrance program, held every April and May to coincide with Burbank’s Interfaith Days of Remembrance. About 25 Holocaust survivors and liberators are involved in the program, speaking at area schools about the human toll of hate and bigotry run amok

“If you remember anything from today, remember that hate exists and you, as future leaders, must stop the Holocaust from happening again,” Bronner, a Hungarian native, told the students.

“People think that it can’t happen here, but I remember my father once told me that it couldn’t happen in Hungary and it did,” said Bronner, who was removed from his home along with his family at the age of 17.

Don Duplechein, who served in the U.S. Army’s 567th Ambulance Company during World War II, also spoke to students Friday. He described the scene as he and about 30 other troops arrived at the Nazis’ Dachau death camp at the end of the war.

“You couldn’t believe it. When we arrived we saw people begging for food with lice all over their heads. We knew we had to feed and bathe these people,” Duplechein said.

To a small group of students who gathered after the presentation, Bronner spoke in more detail about his experiences in the concentration camp.

“A lot of people think that children were held at the camps, but the truth is that in a lot of the camps the children were killed and the only ones allowed to live were young people and adults,” he said.

Danny Screws, 17-year-old Burbank junior, said it was difficult to believe that nobody was willing to act to stop what was happening.

“I asked him [Bronner] how the government could let the people be treated that way. He told me that, although they were from Hungary, they were still Jews. I think that was wrong,” Screws said.

Bronner described traveling to the concentration camp by train with hundreds of people piled into a single boxcar, barely able to move or breathe . He talked about the horrible living conditions at the camps where thousands of people died from starvation and disease.

“I remember trying to find my father’s body as he was put on a horse-drawn carriage. I couldn’t find him to say goodbye because of all the bodies piled up,” said Bronner, whose father died at Bergen-Belsen.

Bronner was asked if he hated the Nazis for what they did to his family.

“You know, a student once asked me what I would do if the people that killed my parents walked through the door. I told the student that killing the person wouldn’t bring my parents back and it would make me a killer. You have to forgive, but never forget,” he said.

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It’s what we do.

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on November 17, 2012| 2 Comments »

Here is the interview that I did with NYSUT last week.

A staff member who is maybe thinking of leaving the profession wrote me a nice card about a month ago. In a follow up conversation she told me she saw me as a “beacon”- her word- for other teachers. That’s fairly heavy stuff to hear.

I feel  responsibility to add some extra comments below for the benefit of  teachers in general, and anyone else who is interested.

http://itswhatwedo.nysut.org/

Photo credit: Kris Dressen.

The reporter was competent, engaged and interested, but she had her deadline and we ran out of time.

I did not have a chance to tell her about the medic. I’ll include it below and will be passing it on to her. Kind of like the “moral of the story”, especially when you realize what it means for the soldiers.

I hope it serves as a reminder to teachers that what we all do every day makes a difference.

Here is the postscript to the story.

 *********************************************************************************

An important epilogue to the NYSUT story.

I know that some of you have been following the unfolding of the train liberation and reunions.  The part that is not mentioned in the article  is a phone call I got last Oct. from an 88 year old man in Scranton, PA who found me- and really wanted to be put in touch with the survivors.

You see, he had been a twenty something Army medic in 1945 when ordered to move out to the abandoned German Air Force hospital grounds at Hilersleben, immediately after the tank commanders came across that “death train” and Frank Towers evacuated the occupants to get them out of the battle zone.

Blessed – or maybe cursed – with a terrific memory, he can vividly recall the screams and overall sense of dread permeating the hospital, where he and his fellow medics wore a daily uniform of surgical masks, gloves and rubber aprons.

He remembers scooping handfuls of lice out of patients’ hair and administering countless needles, and the time he had to carry the body of a little girl to a tent serving as a makeshift morgue.

For six nonstop weeks after the liberation they confronted the horror and the evil. Well over 100 Holocaust victims, now his patients, died after they were freed by our troops. No one had trained Walter for this, and  for all these years he has lived with the guilt, the nightmares, and the trauma.

For 60 years he and his wartime buddies met after the war. Walter told me and some of our kids that in recounting their war stories, not one of them ever brought up that place called Hilersleben.

Those guys must have suffered from PTSD. And like many soldiers, his generation just did not talk about that.

Now he calls me at school, to chat, laugh, to let me know which of our survivors has contacted him, and to tell me he wants to meet me.

********************************************

Wait a minute-rewind- How did that happen?

I mean, Why did HE, find ME?

That all happened WAY before I was born.

I think about this, every single day.
Is there a reason I put on this earth? How do I make sense of my responsibility as a human being?

Did those soldiers have to put themselves in harm’s way, in many respects scarring themselves for life,  to care for “the brutalized and wretched” whom they did not even know?

******************************

What I offer to other teachers:
I’m an educator and so are you. As persons who spend most of our waking hours with young people, I can only postulate that we are in the “business” of molding human beings- which of course is not really a business at all. Like the soldiers thrust into that situation, ultimately we are caretakers of humanity.   It is an overwhelming responsibility, but it is not just a job.
It’s a mission.

Those soldiers made choices, confronted evil, sacrificed a ton, and saved humanity– Carrol, George, Frank, and Walter (“the Babe”)- and in doing so, I know they saved me, too. It sounds cliché, simplistic, Pollyanna, whatever- but it’s true.

You do your best to make a difference.

Lots of times you think you lose.

But here’s the real crazy part- most of the time you probably win.

Like these soldiers, sometimes you don’t know you have won until years later.

It’s just what we do.

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