Oral history interview with Irving Lisman

James R. Bird, who was a 26-year-old Corporal in 1945 and a member of Battery A, 160th Field Artillery Battalion, 45th Infantry Regiment, discusses experiencing several hundred days of combat in Italy; having heard of concentration camps during this time; being unprepared for what he saw upon entering the Dachau concentration camp; the penetrating odor he smelled as he saw numerous dead bodies within railway cars, on the ground, and in the crematorium; staying at the camp lasted for a few hours; seeing former prisoners dressed in striped outfits and not having much contact with them; his unit moving on and experiencing a couple more days of combat before the war was over for them; not thinking much about this event in the intervening years, until he began reading books about the Holocaust; his desire to speak to high school students and counter those people who claim that the Holocaust never happened; his frustration that the murder of non-Jews during the Holocaust is not mentioned alongside the 6 million Jews who were killed; his thoughts on the Germans who shielded escaped POWs and kept fliers from being captured; and how the thought of Dachau is still shocking to him.

Oral history interview with John W. Bizukiewicz

Oral History

John Bizukiewicz, a 20-year-old in 1945 and a Private First Class (PFC) Assistant Machine Gunner in Company A, 63rd Armored Infantry Battalion, 11th Armored Division, discusses his unit’s approach of the Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria towards the end of WWII; being wounded during the Battle of the Bulge; their sister unit, the 65th Armored Infantry Regiment, which had liberated Mauthausen; approaching the camp and hundreds of skinny men, women, and children (probably between 12 and 16 years old) in striped prison uniforms walking along the road; not having a chance to talk to them as his unit pressed on; entering the camp and looking into the barracks; seeing former inmates still on their bunks; seeing the crematorium, which had been cleaned up; the doctors who had arrived to tend to the inmates; not staying long since his unit had to move on; being sent home to await recall for shipment to the war in the Pacific, but the war ended and he was discharged; returning to the Mauthausen camp in 1984, and participating in one of the yearly reunions; and his lack of communication about his WWII experiences with his family and friends.

Oral history interview with Robert V. Black

Oral History

Oral history interview with John F. Boland

Oral History

John Boland discusses his experience in World War II, when in 1945 he was a 21-year-old Corporal assigned to the 131st Evacuation Hospital; doing sundry administrative jobs; the deployment of the hospital in May 1945 to the Mauthausen concentration camp and nearby Gusen concentration camp; spending most of his time in Mauthausen and not remembering much about Gusen, except that Gusen was smaller and he had to shuttle back and forth; the crematorium at Mauthausen; the hundreds of inmates still in the barracks; his memories of how the camp smelled; the moving of the dead bodies with bulldozers into trenches, after which they were sprayed with chemicals; the surviving inmates only tolerating potato soup; the demographics of the inmates, which included Poles, Russians, Jews, and Czechs; remembering that he only saw men and some boys; his memories of two 16-year-old youths on crutches (he has a picture of them among others); a Catholic priest from a nearby town who came to tend to the inmates; making friends with a Polish inmate about his age, and staying in contact with him (the man became a Monseigneur at the Vatican); some of the former prisoners, who had caught a couple of camp guards as well as the camp commandant and killed them; his reaction to this act of revenge; returning to the US and awaiting shipment to Japan; the war ending in the Pacific and remaining home; his occasional communication with others about his experiences; and still having dreams about his experiences.

Oral history interview with Francis P. Boss

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Oral history interview with Robert L. Bowes

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Oral history interview with John Brooks

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Oral history interview with Percy J. Buckmaster

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Oral history interview with Levi Burns

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Oral history interview with Eldred J. Burr

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Oral history interview with Marjorie Butterfield

Oral History

Marjorie Butterfield, who was a 25-year-old 2nd Lieutenant Nurse in 1945 and a member of the 131st Evacuation Hospital, discusses being deployed to the Gusen concentration camp three weeks after its liberation; seeing 2,000 or so starved men, women, and children in the camp; her reaction to this sight; working in the hospital for about two and a half months, along with some German nurses who had been locally procured; working as a relief nurse, taking the place of others who were off duty; the shortage of medicine and the hospital not being fully equipped to care for so many; how only the very sickest would receive antibiotic medication; many of the former prisoners dying; the collection of the dead every morning for mass burials in graves marked with Crosses and Stars of David; having limited interactions with the inmates since she did not speak German and they did not speak English; returning to the US and being discharged; trying unsuccessfully to block out her experience and finding it difficult to adjust to daily life; feeling angry when people claim the Holocaust never happened; and her belief that the Medical Corps never receives the credit it deserves when stories are told about World War II.

Oral history interview with Victor C. Camarena

Oral History

Oral history interview with Charlotte Chaney

Oral History

Charlotte Chaney discusses her experiences during WWII when she was a 23-year-old in 1945 and a 2nd Lieutenant Nurse assigned to the 127th Evacuation Hospital; her unit being assigned to the Dachau concentration camp shortly after its liberation; not having heard of concentration camps before she entered Dachau and being shocked at what she saw; the camp’s layout, including a large courtyard, a large administration building, barracks, and warehouses with a factory where the prisoners were employed; the crematorium where there were bones scattered around; her mission which was to clean up the facility and clean up the inmates; one barrack, which had women and children, who ranged in age from babies up to 14 years old; returning to the US and initially having some difficulty adjusting to life; being able to speak with her husband about her experiences and later telling her story to middle school and high school students; her thoughts on Holocaust denial; speaking in later years with a former prisoner who ended up being a multi-millionaire, and her internal response to this encounter; and how the impressions of Dachau will always remain in back of her mind.

Oral history interview with Larry Christian

Oral History

Larry Christian discusses his experiences during WWII when, in 1945, he was a 19-year-old Private First Class (PFC) soldier assigned to the 111th Combat Engineer Battalion, a part of the 36th Infantry Division, Seventh Army; entering the Dachau concentration camp shortly after its liberation; his memories of the smell in the camp; the quiet in the camp and the absence of German guards; seeing that the gates were open; staying in the camp for about 15 minutes but finding the experience traumatic; seeing hundreds of stacked, naked bodies awaiting burial by German civilians, who had been gathered by US soldiers from nearby villages; how the German civilians seemed as shocked about what they saw as he was; the two dozen or so survivors who left the camp, still in their striped prison garb, and found food in the surrounding area; many former inmates suffering from eating more than their starved bodies could handle; the 121st Infantry Regiment, which had caught some of the former guards and were sending them away; failing to comprehend at the time exactly what had happened there; not understanding until later about the extent of the Holocaust; what he saw when he returned home; his friend who took pictures of the camp; and his disbelief that anyone could deny the Holocaust happened.

Oral history interview with James E. Clark

Oral History

Oral history interview with Ralph W. Clausen

Oral History

Ralph Clausen discusses his experiences during WWII when, in 1945, he was a 26-year-old Staff Sergeant assigned to the 910th Anti-Aircraft unit; arriving at the Dachau concentration camp approximately four hours after its liberation by the US Infantry; spending no more than 45 minutes at the camp and not entering the barracks; being surprised and shocked at what he saw; how the appearance of the camp was completely unexpected; noticing three or four railway box cars with numerous naked and starved dead bodies strewn about, along with a dead German guard; the crematorium, where there were a number of naked corpses, bundled in stacks of six, awaiting burning; hearing a rumor about a torture chamber but not seeing one; not knowing the nationalities of the dead; his memories of the smell in the camp, which stayed with him even after leaving the area; talking to Germans later on, and how they claimed not to have known what was going on in the camp (Ralph did not believe them); and returning home and talking about his experience with his family, who believed what he had seen.

Oral history interview with Kenneth J. Colvin

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Oral history interview with James Constable

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Oral history interview with Hubert Cook

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Oral history interview with Delbert Cooper

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Oral history interview with William Cooper

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Oral history interview with John R. Corbett

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Oral history interview with Joe Costo

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Oral history interview with Morris Cousin

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Oral history interview with William H. Deierhoi

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Oral history interview with Walter P. Doggendorf

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Oral history interview with Alex Dryden

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Oral history interview with Warren W. Eddy

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Oral history interview with Victor A. Fabietti

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Oral history interview with Ralph W. Fink

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Oral history interview with Charles Fraser

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Oral history interview with John Gidley

Oral History

John Gidley discusses his experiences during WWII when, in 1945, he was a 21-year-old Private First Class (Pfc) Medical Corpsman; being assigned to the 56th Medical Battalion which supported various Infantry Divisions as they fought through North Africa, Sicily, Italy, France, Belgium, and Germany; acting as company aid man, litter bearer, and ambulance driver as needed; being a company aid man in support of the infantry that liberated the Dachau concentration camp; being very shocked by what they saw; the smell in the camp; seeing up to 5,000 emaciated, male prisoners in striped prison garb with shaven heads, some barefooted, speaking German and Polish as they stood congregated in the yard; how the former inmates were happy to see the Americans; seeing numerous bodies in 80 to 90 box cars in an adjacent rail yard with some still alive among them but too weak to get out; the angered response of the American soldiers and how they marched off a number of German guards to a 10-mile distant POW camp; the furnaces, which were still hot; seeing numerous bodies stacked in warehouses to await burning; the burning of some corpses while others were placed in a mass grave; one well-nourished prisoner collaborator who was killed and thrown in the mass grave; his lack of interaction with the former prisoners; remaining in the camp for only 12 hours; having to move out with his supported infantry unit; returning home after the war; not brooding over what he saw in the camp; showing the pictures he took at Dachau to his friends; and his thoughts on whether something like the Holocaust might occur again.

Oral history interview with Roman Gilyard

Oral History

Roman Gilyard discusses his experiences during WWII when, in 1945, he was a 33-year-old soldier assigned to the 56th Armored Engineer Battalion; arriving in the Mauthausen concentration camp in early May 1945 after its liberation by the 11th Armored Division; the surprise he and his unit experienced at seeing the camp; being assigned to the burial detail to clear the stacked naked corpses of about 1,200 men and place them into trenches; the German civilians who were engaged in the burial detail and their assertions that they knew something was going on in the camp, and their claim that they never really knew what it was; the dead bodies in the barracks, along with the living emaciated former prisoners; the physical conditions of the former prisoners; the cries of the survivors for food, even though they could only been fed so much so that they would not over eat; the crematorium; not going to the nearby Gusen concentration camp but hearing of its existence; working in the camp for about two weeks before receiving orders to move on; returning to the United States; having nightmares about his wartime experiences for about a year; having pictures of the camp, which were given to him by one of his buddies, and not showing the pictures to his friends; and his avoidance of anything that concerns the concentration camps.

Oral history interview with Joseph J. Godawski

Oral History

Oral history interview with Richard M. Good

Oral History

Richard Good discusses his experiences during WWII when, in 1945, he was a 20-year-old Technician -5 (pay equal to a corporal) soldier engaged as a driver of the Service Company Commander of the 12th Infantry Regiment, 4th Infantry Division; entering the Dachau concentration camp shortly after its capture; the surprise he and his unit experienced at seeing the camp; the concentration camp guards who were caught in the area and were taken prisoner and sent off to a POW camp about 10 miles away; the gate of the camp which was left open, and how he thinks this was probably a mistake since some prisoners left to find food (this could have been hazardous to their health if they over ate); seeing hundreds of former inmates still alive, many of whom were in the yard and looked like skin and bones wearing striped prison uniforms; how it was still cold and there was some snow on the ground; the soldiers’ attempts to help by giving their food, but they had to be careful not to give too much; seeing hundreds of naked corpses in a long pit beyond the crematorium, where he also saw piles of ashes strewn around; a large room that was filled with children shoes, clothing, and human hair; the smell in the camp; a German guard who tried to hide by wearing a prison uniform, but his well-fed appearance gave him away and he was shipped off to the POW camp; learning more about the concentration camps after returning to the United States; and how his experience in the war strengthened his religious beliefs.

Oral history interview with Joe L. Grevencamp

Oral History

Oral history interview with Maurice A. Hannon

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Oral history interview with Leon Hawkersmith

Oral History

Leon Hawkersmith (born circa 1920) discusses his experiences during WWII; being a tail gunner on a B-24 and completing 15 combat missions with the 8th Air Force out of England before he was transferred to Italy and assigned to the 98th Bomb Group, US Army Air Corps when he was shot down; becoming a prisoner of war (POW) of the Germans for a period of over a year towards the later part of the war; being treated roughly when he was first captured; spending about five days in a cattle car without food and only some substitute coffee and no place to lay down; arriving in Frankfurt, Germany, where he received some soup; ending up in the Stalag 17 POW camp; being marched in formation near the Dachau concentration camp, and seeing a group of about 50 or more political prisoners, in striped uniforms, headed towards them; the physical condition of the prisoners, who were all emaciated, just skin and bones, in much worse shape than the American POWs even though Leon had lost 50 pounds during his year in captivity; the political prisoners begging for food, but the American POWs were not able to help them; seeing one of the political prisoners fall to the ground and the German guards tell two other prisoners to pick him up, but they were too weak to do it, so one German guard shot the prisoner as he was begging for his life; how at the time, Leon was really not that shocked by the German’s action as he had seen what the Germans were capable of while he was a POW, but he could only internally ponder how any man can do that to another man; seeing a civilian woman come out of her house and in German yell that Roosevelt was dead, which is how they found out about the President (and it also marks the time of the incident); and his return to the United States and how it took him a year to adjusted to life and get married.

Oral history interview with Irene Zieske

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Oral history interview with Gerald Heffernan

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Oral history interview with Harry J. Herder

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Oral history interview with John Houston Hill

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Oral history interview with Oscar Hines

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Oral history interview with James T. Hinshaw

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Oral history interview with Barnett Hoffner

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Oral history interview with Jerry P. Hontas

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Oral history interview with Glenn Horwege

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Oral history interview with David L. Ichelson

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Oral history interview with Jean Ingols

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Oral history interview with Ernest James

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Oral history interview with Leonard B. Johnson

Oral History

Leonard Johnson discusses his experiences during WWII when, in 1945, he was a 31-year-old physician; the deployment of his medical unit to Buchenwald concentration camp shortly after its liberation; having no advance knowledge of where he was heading, although he had heard about the existence of concentration camps; the unit’s mission, which was to identify the sick and to arrange for their evacuation to hospitals in the rear, where treatment was to be provided; being a general practitioner, but not being involved in treating any patients within the camp, except for one hernia case suffered by a Russian survivor; the conditions upon their arrival, including his impression that everything appeared to be miserably in disarray where the prisoners were kept; the foul smell in the camp and the thousands of inmates, whom were all skinny for lack of food and many were too sick to leave their bunks, which were layered four on top of each other and were exposed to urine and feces from the higher layers; the survivors, who were all men younger than 60 years old; the survivors’ physical and emotional responses to being cared for; how some survivors were disillusioned and bitter; retaining one shocking image of a flat-bed with stacked naked corpses six to eight feet high awaiting cremation in the adjacent crematorium; people from the surrounding areas coming to see what was inside the camp; not having much conversation with inmates nor visitors because of the language barrier; returning to the United States; the time it took to readjust; getting married; and the effects his wartime experiences had on his practice, including his more balance assessment of the trivial versus the important.

Oral history interview with Roberta Jones

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Oral history interview with Dale Kaltved

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Oral history interview with Paul H. Kappel

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Oral history interview with William Kearns

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Oral history interview with Raymond Keenan

Oral History

Raymond Keenan discusses his experiences during WWII when, in 1945, he was a 32-year-old Corporal serving in Company C of the 355th Regiment, 89th Infantry Division; his unit, which stumbled across the Ohrdruf concentration camp in 1945; seeing a dozen dead bodies lying in a circle with bullet holes in their heads (one was an American Aviator in uniform); only encountering two survivors in the camp, one of who was a Jew who had somehow hidden and thereby survived the killing of all the other inmates; the 15 bodies along the railroad tracks waiting to be burned; seeing at a nearby shed another 50 dead and emaciated men treated with lime; the terrible smell in the camp; the bodies showing marks where they had been beaten; a pit that was about 30 yards wide and 50 yards long where allegedly about 10,000 bodies were buried and where one leg still stood out of the ground; General Eisenhower, who came and looked at the site and was enraged; the mayor of the nearby town and his wife being forced to tour the camp; staying at the camp for three days and then moving on; not being able to forget what he saw at the camp and having dreams about it; asking himself “What kind of people could do such a thing?”; and how it had been the worst experience of the war for him.

Oral history interview with Bruce Kendall

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Oral history interview with James Kennedy

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Oral history interview with Wesley B. Kimmell

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Oral history interview with John Kleinmann

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Oral history interview with Loren G. Knutson

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Oral history interview with Fred Kort

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Oral history interview with Norman C. Kunkel

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Oral history interview with Kenneth J. Kurtenbach

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Oral history interview with Thomas V. Lee

Oral History

Thomas Lee discusses his experiences during WWII when, in 1945, he was a 27-year-old Sergeant assigned to the 123rd Cavalry Squadron, 106th Cavalry Group; his unit entering the Dachau concentration camp; their approach to the camp’s gate, where there were still some German guards, and some were shot while others were turned over to inmates who were walking about in the yard; the prisoners who were all emaciated men, weighing less than 100 pounds, dressed in concentration camp uniforms; entering a barrack and finding middle-aged men, barely alive, many too weak to get out of their bunks, which were stacked four on top of each other; the crematorium, where the fires were still burning with bodies inside; the nearby box cars with doors wide open and dead bodies inside; being shocked and enraged by what they saw and not being able to imagine anything worse; communicating a little with a French prisoner, who told him that food was a soup kettle in the middle of the yard which tasted like dishwater and was given out twice a day, and that when someone was told that he was going to a shower, everyone knew he was going to be gassed; hearing that the Germans used hungry dogs to attack prisoners who were uncooperative; being unable to do much for the former prisoners, except to report what was found; his regret that he did not have a camera to take pictures, but on the other hand he wondered if he would have kept them, since in all the months of combat, this sight was the worst and he wanted to forget about this experience; and how normally he really did not want to talk about this topic, but did not mind going on record and answering the interviewer’s questions.

Oral history interview with John G. Leen

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Oral history interview with Frank I. Lewis

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Oral history interview with Richard Lewis

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Oral history interview with Dean E. Lindgren

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Oral history interview with Mary Ann McCarthy Mahan

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Oral history interview with Gene C. Mallette

Oral History

Gene Mallette discusses his experiences during WWII when, in 1945, he was a 20-year-old soldier at the rank of Technician 4 (T-4) (pay scale of Sergeant); being in the National Guard at the time of Pearl Harbor and going overseas to Northern Ireland in January 1942; being assigned to various units including Company K in the 168th Infantry Regiment, Company K in the 133rd Infantry Regiment (during the North African and Italian campaigns), the 34th Signal Company, and the 3151st SIAM (a Signal Information and Monitoring unit) first under the 5th Army in Italy and subsequently under the 7th Army (in support of the invasion of Southern France); traversing combat in Germany near the end of the war, and approaching the Dachau concentration camp; not entering the camp, but seeing the inmates on the streets in striped prison uniforms and looking like skin and bones; seeing mostly men in their 20s as well as some women and some children; the numbers on their arms or wrists; seeing British POWs who had been imprisoned in another nearby camp and were in better shape than other prisoners and were able to listen to the BBC on a secret radio while they were imprisoned; the enraged reaction of his fellow soldiers over what they saw at the camp; hearing how the German Army had treated the Poles, Russians, and others who had been confined in the concentration camp; their incredulity over how some people could be so inhuman to other people and let them starve to death; being hardened by his three and a half years of combat, but still feeling anger about the camps; not being able to converse with the citizenry or the former inmates because he did not speak German; working in a Red Cross photo laboratory for about three weeks, where he copied many concentration camp pictures depicting the dead bodies and the crematorium; writing about his experiences; having some problems adjusting after his war-time service; how his attention span was limited to about one hour in his studies and then he had to move about before he could get back to work; and feeling lucky that he never had nightmares.

Oral history interview with Vincent McCabe

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Oral history interview with E.J. McCoy

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Oral history interview with Bill McLaughlin

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Oral history interview with William Meyer

Oral History

William Myer discusses his experiences during WWII when, in 1945, he was an 18-year-old US Army Private, when his unit, the 371st Field Artillery, stumbled across a subcamp of Dachau, near the end of the war; his unit moving rapidly and not stopping long in the camp; the sunny weather conditions on that day; seeing hundreds of emaciated men and some women appear in their grey uniforms, moving slowly like walking skeletons; his unit having to restrain the inmates from killing their German guards who looked like decrepit soldiers; the nearby farmers claiming that they did not know what was going on inside the camp, but the word was that they had entered to collect the ashes; seeing piles of shoes, eye glasses, and hair in the camp; not being able to communicate with the prisoners; using a form of sign language to communicate; the emotional condition of the prisoners; being shocked by the situation in the camp even though he was cognizant of the atrocities the Germans had committed on US soldiers at Malmedy; returning home and not talking about his experience; being cautioned not to talk in order to preserve actions in progress to prosecute Germans for war crimes; realizing in hindsight that he too had suffered psychological impact from the war; discussing his war-time experiences 25 years or more after the war at reunions with 45th Division soldiers (they had flanked each other during the war); learning more about the cruelties after the war; and his outlook to not hold grudges.

Oral history interview with Encil Mizer

Oral History

Encil Mizer discusses his experiences during WWII when, in 1945, he was a 28-year-old Corporal assigned to the Headquarters Company of the 701st Tank Battalion attached to the 102nd Infantry Division; coming upon, in April 1945, a large burned-out brick barn standing alone in a field with dead bodies visible at its door; inspecting the building and determining that the Germans had placed straw soaked with gasoline at the building, herded the men of a nearby forced labor camp into the building, set it afire, and covered the exit with a machine gun; a small emaciated child who had somehow survived the massacre; the smell of the burned bodies, which was overwhelming and unforgettable; the German citizens from the nearby town who were brought to the barn where they were forced to lay out a cemetery, dig 1,019 individual graves, and place crosses and Stars of David as appropriate; the citizens claiming not to have known what went on in the camp; the German Air Corps being responsible for the camp; the reaction he and his fellow soldiers had to the camp; returning home and not talking about his experience for a long time; having some problems adjusting to life after the war; growing up in a small town in Ohio and feeling different from others in his military unit who were from big cities; the Italian-American soldiers and his two best friends in the unit who were Jewish; his brother-in-law, who had been a prisoner of war and claimed that his survival was due to receiving Red Cross packages; and having some pictures of what he saw and even some pictures of German officers burying their dead which he was willing to share with the museum.

Oral history interview with C. Kent Moore

Oral History

Oral history interview with Albert R. Moran

Oral History

Albert Moran discusses his experiences during WWII; being a Corporal, employed in the Motor Pool of Company H, 66th Infantry Regiment, 71st Infantry Division; his unit approaching a small concentration camp at the close of the war; being alerted about the camp but not expecting what he saw; arriving in the camp, where the gates had been opened and 100 to 200 prisoners were streaming out, all looking like skin and bones; the lack of food in the camp; the soldiers giving the former inmates their K rations which consisted of hard crackers; receiving orders to not feed the former inmates, but to bring them to the Field Hospital which had been set up on a small incline; approximately 150 former inmates needing assistance to get to the hospital; seeing some former inmates crawling on their hands and knees begging for food; the medics feeding them with liquids; seeing only men in the camp, all in tattered uniforms and all around 45-55 year old; observing that they seemed to be mostly Polish, and not knowing if they were Jewish; seeing hundreds of dead bodies scattered around the compound and in buildings; the trenches containing dead bodies; the German guards, who had apparently departed a couple of days earlier; his unit checking the Germans of military age in the nearby town to see if any of them had been SS guards; Army Engineers arriving to clean up the camp; his unit staying only a couple of hours and then moving on; his memories of an instance at Christmas time when a German unit nearby loudly celebrated Christmas, and the fighting started again in earnest the next day; not wanting to talk about his experiences after the war; becoming more conversational when in midst of fellow veterans of the Veterans of Foreign Wars and The American Legion; the history of the 71st Infantry Division being recorded in a book with pictures, just like the books of other divisions; not being able to forget the image of prisoners crawling on hands and knees and begging for food; and hearing stories of other camps like Dachau, and knowing that those stories were hard to believe unless you had seen this yourself.

Oral history interview with Frank Moran

Oral History

Frank Moran discusses his experiences during WWII when, in 1944, he was a 21-year-old Staff Sergeant in the 8th Air Force; being shot down in August 1944 and remaining a Prisoner of War for almost a year; being held in a POW camp at Barth, Germany near the Baltic Sea (Stalag Luft I); hearing artillery fire for several days in April 1945 as the Russian Army approached the camp; the ditches that had been dug for the POWs and the American senior officer being able to talk the German Commandant out of killing them; the German guards fleeing the camp and the prisoners breaking down the doors; hijacking the local mayor’s car and going with two other pilots towards a nearby airport; driving by another prison camp; finding that all the equipment had been taken from the airport; returning to the other prison camp and finding that it was a concentration camp with prisoners from Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, and Russia; the condition of the inmates, many of whom were unable to walk (those who could walk had already been marched out); seeing approximately 30 two-story brick buildings filled with 3,000-4,000 prisoners, many of them naked, and men on the 1st floor and women on the 2nd floor; the overwhelming stench of the camp; seeing furnaces that were still hot with burned bodies in them and stacks of dead bodies ready to be burned; finding one prisoner who spoke English (he had lived in the United States for 10 years) and hearing from him how the Germans had killed tens of thousands of prisoners by taking about 250 prisoners at a time in garbage boats and opening the bottom hatch, dumping them into the ice-cold Baltic Sea to drown; the physical condition this inmate was in (his legs had swollen to 3 times their normal size); his comparison of the POW camp he had survived and the Barth concentration camp; starvation in both camps and the concentration camp prisoners going without food much longer than the POWs; experiencing during the war a horrible rail journey lasting about a month, where only half of the POWs could lay down at one time in their overcrowded cattle car and with very little food; only 115 of the 150 POWs surviving the journey; the conditions in the concentration camp still being a shock to the POWs despite the hardships they had also faced; returning to the POW Camp, where the Russian Army had finally arrived; the follow-on troops providing radio communications to London, which brought more help to the camp; 35 Red Cross marked trucks with 10 doctors arriving and treating the POWs; the POWs taking the doctors to the concentration camp to tend to those inmates; the doctors’ shock at the conditions of the camp inmates; the evacuation of the POWs to Camp Lucky Strike in Le Havre, France; eating food he had missed since being a POW; planning a trip in 1994 to return to the camp; and having issues at night when he thought back about his war-time experiences.

Oral history interview with Marion L. Morr

Oral History

Marion Morr discusses his experiences during WWII when, in 1945, he was a 24-year-old Army Corporal assigned to headquarters company of the XV Corps; his unit fighting through Italy and Southern France; approaching the Dachau concentration camp as the war was coming to an end; seeing 10 or 12 railway cars filled with dead bodies, all men; his shock at the sight; walking around the camp and seeing men, aged mid-teens to late 60s, all almost starved to death, wearing little clothing; the poor sleeping conditions in the barracks; seeing the crematorium, where in an adjacent room naked corpses were stacked up; the reactions of his fellow soldiers; inmates who had killed some of the guards; many former prisoners being happy about liberation; seeing a woman’s prison in France, where the prisoners were in a far better condition; finding out later that Dachau was not even one of the worst concentration camps; visiting the area about 45 years later but not returning to the camp; and not talking too much about his experiences except upon his return from combat, to family and friends where he needed to show pictures since it was too hard to explain otherwise.

Oral history interview with Robert F. Morrow

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Oral history interview with Charles Olsen

Oral History

Charles Olson discusses his experiences during WWII when, in 1945, he was a 31-year-old 1st Lieutenant, assigned to the Headquarters of the 82nd Airborne Division as an Intelligence Officer; moving towards the Elbe River near the end of the war, when the unit was advised that there was a concentration camp ahead; hearing about concentration camp before seeing one; finding the camp’s gate open and seeing five or six buildings; looking into the first two buildings and seeing rows of bunks with five levels filled with corpses; not being able to enter the third building because of the corpses blocking the way; the 20 to 25 emaciated men who were still alive, most in prison uniforms, some walking in the yard with corpses all around; not being able to converse with them since he did not speak their language; the German guards having fled before the Americans arrived; how the sight was shocking, but he was not that shocked after having seen months of warfare; taking pictures of what he saw; not seeing any crematoriums or gas chambers in the camp; proceeding to the nearby town and having the mayor round up men with shovels and had him designate a burial place where individual graves were dug to accommodate the approximately 200 corpses; the gathering of the town’s people and making them see the camp; assessing their response and determining that the camp was shocking to them; some locals denying that they knew what was going on in the camp, but the smell alone should have provided a clue; a write-up by a Chaplain who reported on the burial [Mr. Olson provided this document during the interview]; the performance of the burial by clergy with crosses at the graves and Jewish prayers, as appropriate; initially trying to forget what he had seen; not talking about what he witnessed when he returned from the war, thinking no one should hear about it; later determining that people should hear about the camp; and speaking with other veterans years later which proved quite emotional.

Oral history interview with John Orr

Oral History

John Orr discusses his experiences during WWII when, in 1945, he was a 37-year-old 1st Lieutenant assigned to the 120th Evacuation Hospital; his unit being ordered into the Buchenwald concentration camp near the end of World War II; being met by a couple of former prisoners who showed them around; seeing the Camp Commandant’s quarters; seeing up to 200 prisoners stacked in bunks within the barracks; speaking with some of the ex-prisoners who spoke English and all were willing to talk; interpreters being provided by the military government later on; seeing Jews wearing the Star of David, political prisoners marked with a diamond, and convicted criminals; the few women and children in the camp, most of the inmates were men; the stacks of dead bodies; finding out that the prisoners had performed hard labor in the quarry, and some also did manufacturing jobs; the guards having fled the camp before the American troops arrived; one instance of a guard had been identified amongst the civilian population and the ex-prisoners took their revenge, beating him to death; the physical condition of the former prisoners, who were malnourished and had difficulty walking; medical wards being set up in the former SS barracks; having 20 Doctors, 40 nurses, and 270 enlisted personnel in the unit; the doctors amongst the former prisoners who continued to care for their patients; the camp’s numerous former sex workers who were housed in a guest house and began working as nurses, helping patients; his work to maintain the hospital’s supplies, assuring that the unit had everything that was needed; how Buchenwald was different from what he had seen in the war before; trying to get back to normal as quickly as possible; thinking he would be sent to the Pacific before the bombs were dropped; and not understand how people could get to be so cruel to other people.

Oral history interview with Mark Osweiler

Oral History

Mark Osweiler discusses being a prisoner of war during WWII; being under guard when he passed groups of concentration camp prisoners who were on a death march to Mauthausen concentration camp, and seeing in the distance groups in prison uniform along a hillside who were roving around; encountering another group of prisoners on the road and speaking to some of them who spoke English; the physical condition of the concentration camp inmates being worse than that of the POWs; giving the concentration camp inmates some cigarettes on the sly; most of the inmates having the Star of David on their uniforms; the political prisoners amongst the concentration camp inmates; keeping a log of what went on and having pictures [he shared these the interviewers]; having difficulties adjusting to life when he returned home; having to regain his physical strength; not getting a job until six months after his return; the presence of some shame over having been captured; his difficulties speaking about his experiences; and joining a POW organization where he felt comfortable.

Oral history interview with George Ouska

Oral History

George Ouske discusses his experiences during WWII when, in 1945, he was a 23-year-old Staff Sergeant assigned to the 649th Engineer Topographic Service Battalion; his unit being ordered to the Dachau concentration camp, which had already been liberated; his first impressions when he came upon box cars full of dead bodies with evidence of cannibalism, since parts of bodies had been hacked off; the members of his unit being disgusted and angry at what they saw; seeing emaciated former prisoners were roving around the camp; observing that the former inmates were middle-age and older men; lacing any memory of having seen a crematorium; entering numerous barracks; the headquarters offices which had been ransacked; the German citizens from a nearby town being brought in to see the camp; finding it difficult to believe that they had not known what was going on in the camp; reading a lot about the camp since the war; returning home from the war and not having any problem adjusting since his unit had not been involved in any direct combat; his experience at Dachau; and being believed by the people he talked to about what he saw in the camp.

Oral history interview with Martin L. Parisot

Oral History

Oral history interview with Robert Persinger

Oral History

Robert Persinger discusses his experiences during WWII when, in 1945, he was a 21-year-old Staff Sergean in the 3rd Cavalry Squadron, which was assigned to XX Corps, Third Army; his unit, at the end of World War II, liberating camp Ebensee, an outlying subcamp of Mauthausen concentration camp; details about the camp; driving a tank into the open gates of the camp; coming upon a large mass of about 15,000 male inmates who had been crammed into filthy barracks and fed very little; seeing former inmates as young as 15 and possibly even younger; the a small group of British prisoners in the camp; the hundreds of inmates who died after liberation; the dead bodies scattered around the camp; the former inmates who were extremely hungry, but also overjoyed in gaining their freedom; the unbearable smell of the camp; the crematorium; seeing a building labeled hospital; the primary effort of his unit to organize the feeding of the former inmates; the preparation of soup; the frenzied reaction of some of the former inmates to the food; one of the younger inmates, who spoke numerous languages and became the official interpreter; being in the camp for two weeks before they were relieved by Quartermaster troops; the demographics of the camp population, and his estimates that it was equally divided between Russian, Jewish, and political prisoners; the local residents’ fear that the former inmates might take revenge; finding it difficult to believe that they had not known what was going on in the camp; the locals being taken into the camp to see what was there; the detainment of a group of ‘Volkssturm’ (men drafted near the end of war who were too young or too old for the regular draft) members who had acted as guards; returning home from the war and not having a problem adjusting back to normal life; not discussing his experiences much about the war with family and friends; finding it was easier to speak with fellow veterans; and attending reunions of his unit, often around the site of the camp.

Oral history interview with Fred L. Peterson

Oral History

Fred Peterson discusses his experiences during WWII when, in 1945, he was a 19-year-old Private First Class assigned to H Company, 222nd Infantry Regiment, 42nd Rainbow Division; going into the Dachau concentration camp with his unit; having never heard of concentration camps before seeing one; entering the camp on a sunny day, early in the morning; the bad smell of the camp which was noticeable as they approached the open gate; seeing some emaciated former prisoners in the yard and as others came out of their barracks, all in striped uniforms and overjoyed in the liberation; seeing men, women, and some children (perhaps six to 13 years old); the terrible shape of the barracks and some prisoners being too weak to come out; the crematorium where there were a 100 naked bodies waiting to go in the ovens; seeing a gas chamber that had never been used; seeing about 15 freight cars, all with dead bodies, except for one man found still alive; the shooting that was going on in the rear of the camp, but not knowing what it was about; hearing that some prisoners had gotten knives and had ventured into the nearby town where they looked for food and took revenge; the shock and anger amongst the men of his units at what they saw; staying in the camp for only one day and being relieved by another Divisional unit as they departed for Munich, Germany; going to the Czechoslovakian border as the war in Europe ended; not having a hard time adjusting to normal life upon returning home after over one year of occupation duty; the two yearly national reunions for his Division and one yearly reunion locally in Ohio which he liked to attend; speaking about their experiences during the reunions; not always being believed when he described the camp to civilians; and his interest in reading books about the Holocaust.

Oral history interview with Richard Radock

Oral History

Richard Radock discusses his experiences during WWII when, in 1945, he was a 24-year-old Sergeant, assigned to Company C, 305th Medical Battalion, 80th Infantry Division (Blue Ridge Division); working as a Dispatcher which included the dispatch of ambulances; his unit’s involvement in the liberation of two concentration camps; his unit following the 4th Armored Division into camp Ohrdruf one day after its liberation; his unit having some inkling of what to expect; the smell of death in the camp; the hundreds of former prisoners in the labor camp; the shock of the men in his unit at what they saw in the camp; the physical condition of the former prisoners, including sunken eyes and rotting teeth; some former inmates suffering from tuberculosis; the conditions of the barracks, which were plain, damp, and smelled of urine; some people being too weak to leave the barracks; learning that during the war any prisoner who tried to escape was hanged and seeing evidence of torture gadgetry; the mayor of the nearby town and many of its inhabitants being brought to the camp to see what had occurred (they claimed they did not know); the Air Corps bombing the supported factory but not the camp; continuing on and then coming upon Buchenwald concentration camp; seeing a circle of 80 dead prisoners who had all been shot in the head; the conditions of the surviving prisoners; seeing prisoners as young as 13 years old; many prisoners staying in their bunks in the barracks; the smell of the barracks; the crematoriums; seeing dead bodies scattered around the camp; the local Germans claiming that they knew nothing about the camp; the capture of the camp administrator, who claimed he was only following orders and was eventually shot by one of the former inmates; spending four or five hours in the camp before moving on; writing a book about his experience; landing on Utah Beach in Normandy and fighting for 273 days; tending to the wounded, including American and German soldiers; and how speaking about his experienced relieved the tension of the memories.

Oral history interview with Melvin H. Rappaport

Oral History

Melvin Rappaport discusses his enlistment into the US Army in 1941 before Pearl Harbor; being a 24-year-old Captain in 1945, assigned as Liaison Officer within the 6th Armored Division; fighting towards Chemnitz and Leipzig in Germany; coming across Buchenwald concentration camp in the vicinity of Weimar; the lack of German guards in the camp; a group of German soldiers who were trying to surrender and were confronted by Russian POWs; the use of dynamite to blow off locks in the camp; the camp yard, which was clear of people but was scattered with dead bodies; seeing mostly men and very few women; the crematorium, where there was a lift with bodies placed on stretchers to be moved downward into the ovens; seeing ashes all around; seeing a torture chamber; going into the barracks, where there were emaciated men lying on shelves, all in terrible condition, looking like skeletons; a six-year-old boy who interrupted the inspection and beckoned Melvin to come with him, saying “Kleine Kinder”; being led by the boy to an inner barbed-wire enclosure where he found a group of small children running around like wild animals; how the entire scene was shocking and unbelievable; not understanding what he had seen until years after the war, after hind-sight and reading about it; his unit moving on and the men in the unit not talking about this experience at all, as if nothing had happened; the Military Government and Medical units following up on administering the camp; the 1944 coup against Hitler; his thoughts on the knowledge of current youth about the war; the imprisonment and disposition of the Commandant of the Buchenwald and the Commandant’s wife; and attending a meeting of an association of concentration camps as a liberator.

Oral history interview with Robert Ricker

Oral History

Robert Ricker discusses his experiences during WWII when, in 1945, he was a 24-year-old Master Sergeant, assigned to the 433rd Signal Corps, attached to the 9th Air Force; being drafted in 1942 and fighting from Normandy through France; the order for his unit to go to Buchenwald concentration camp; staying in the camp for about half an hour; having vague memories of his time in the camp; taking pictures of the camp; seeing stacks of bodies near big gas burners and some more bodies lying around inside of the camp; seeing former inmates who looked like walking skeletons; not looking inside the barracks nor speaking to any of the inmates; being shocked and angry about what he saw in the camp; having some difficulties adjusting to life after his discharge; occasionally having nightmares; not talking about his experiences much; showing his pictures of the camp to other people; and his regret that many people do not know what happened during the war.

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