News-Info-Alerts

Re: Camp Liberators Sought

From: POW-MIA InterNetwork

Date: January 14, 2003

"Nazi camp liberators recruited
They'll reunite with survivors
BY CAROL ROSENBERG
crosenberg@herald.com


Ordinary American GIs were the bit players who helped to end Europe's Holocaust by opening the gates of Nazi Germany's concentration camps. Now an oral-history project wants them to take center stage and offer their World War II recollections before it's too late.

The Holocaust Documentation and Education Center of South Florida put out a call this week for oral histories from Army veterans who helped liberate the Nazi camps in 1945 in advance of a March reunion in Miami Beach for Holocaust survivors and the soldiers who helped liberate them.

''Although the liberating troops were battle-seasoned soldiers, they were totally unprepared for the shocking discoveries that assailed them in the Nazi camps. The liberators saw before them living skeletons moving slowly among the fetid smells of decaying corpses,'' the appeal said.

Moreover, the organization credits the ordinary foot soldiers with helping write the first draft of Holocaust history with their snapshots and home-style movies.

CRITICAL EVIDENCE

''The fact that the Allied soldiers documented what they found when they liberated the Nazi camps was critical,'' it said. ``Without the clear evidence that the Allies furnished to the world, the truth of the Holocaust might have become lost or ignored.''

The center is inviting Holocaust survivors to honor their liberators at the reunion and luncheon, scheduled for March 9 at the Fontainebleau Hilton in Miami Beach.

Director Rositta Kenigsberg said organizers opted for midday ceremonies because of the participants' advancing ages. The youngest veterans are in their mid-70s.

Organizers predict it will be ``an unprecedented reunion for survivors and liberators of many of the concentration camps.''

Because South Florida is rich in retirees, notably the aging, fading generation of U.S. veterans and World War II survivors, they urge anyone who helped liberate the camps or knows someone who did to contact the center at 305-919-5690.

So far, the center has done about 100 mostly hourlong interviews with former U.S. soldiers, predominantly South Floridians who have retired here as well as snowbirds from New York, Georgia and California. The 23-year-old center is the repository of nearly 2,000 Holocaust-era oral histories.

LARGE POTENTIAL

Kenigsberg, daughter of a concentration camp survivor, estimates that there are potentially ''thousands and thousands'' of veterans who can offer testimonies or take part in the March ceremonies.

Some, she said, may not be known to their own families and neighbors.

''Some of them went home, battle beaten, and didn't really say what they saw. They didn't tell their families, they didn't tell their wives,'' only to become more outspoken recently in response to an upsurge in Holocaust denial.

The call for veteran volunteers also comes amid the largest call-up of Florida reservists since World War II, many bound for possible war in the Persian Gulf -- a coincidence not lost on Kenigsberg.

'The liberators' stories have impact, especially since Sept. 11,'' she said. ``Our country has been threatened, so their experiences somehow no longer seem like ancient history of 50 to 60 years ago. And, especially, if our soldiers are going to go to another war, it hits home.''"