Show April 13 1995 Page 3 Fifty years ago they were released from concentration camps today their story continues to haunt us: remembrance of the Holocaust In Dani Weigand news editor me in peace let me sleep night at least without my being wet with tears and my eyes burning and my head throbbing Let me gel away from it all preferably away from the world!” These am the pleas of a young girl Anne Frank during her time of hiding in World War II A girl who left behind her diary when she was stripped from her mother and father and taken to sen where she would die in Bergen-DMarch 1945 only three months before liberation Fifty years later we arc reminded of the tragedies and atrocities committed during Adolf Hitler's reign In 1924 while in prison for treason Hitler developed and published "Mien Kampf” This hook expressed his plans for the “master race” an Aryan nation A nation where whites would hold absolute power Hitler believed the Jewish people were against everything the Nazi party believed: Communism pacifism internationalism and Christianity The Nazis used the theme of Lcbcnsraum which means “room to live” The plan was for the Germans to expand into Poland and Russia no matter what the Lcuvc were executed in the gas chambers and their bodies burned in incinerators Each camp would keep some of the stronger ones to use us workers These people would have to donate any valuable belongings to the Special Service Among these were gold capped teeth eyeglasses and the hair off their heads Tlic living conditions were harsh They worked night and day in (lie really no longer human beings in the accepted sense Not even animals but putrefy ing corpses moving on two legs" Phillip llallic used this passage in his article of ethics “From Cruelty to Goodness” lie stresses the fact that deep humiliation was the tool most used hy SS officers “In order to want to live in order to be able to walk erect we must respect ourselves as beings printed in Philip llallie's h-s- i Innocent Blood he Shed She talked of the town’s generosity toward Jews She said tlte people of lx ('hamhon were eager to share all they had with the Jewish people The people of the village were seen as the “rainbow” in the lime of war One woman pulled I lallie aside and thanked him for writing the hook and told him the people of lx When the order of the liberation camps in Germany and Poland was US soldiers would embark upon figures with sunken many human-lik- e and :ycs grotesquely thin bodies “Their had receded into their eye sockeyes ets” explains Sgt Joseph Kushlis quoted in the April 3 edition of US News uiul World Rciwrt “Perhaps as much as an inch - tliey appeared to be nothing hut dark holes in their skull and face” Soldiers would havetosorl the dead from the living in huge piles of bodies All Jewish people were required to wear the Star of David on their clothing This picture is of children in school when Jews were still allowed to attend Concentration camps were estab- facilities They would go weeks without food or water When the trains arrived at the camps they would sort the living from the dead Alter their arrival most of the Jews Liberation 1 1 cost those executed were Jewish The Jews were transported to these camps by train in cattle cars without bathroom people it may prevent anothei reign of terror like that of Hiller announced so was the order from it ler to his troops All camp inmates were to be killed or released before allied troops could gel to them el lished and over 1 0 million people would become victims of torture and used for medical experiments Six million of with the information ol the Holocaust refuse to believe such atrocities could take place litis is why lime needs to be taken to continue the education of this event If we can tell the stories ol these camps If the Jews were not producing goods they were cither burying bodies of fellow menwomcn orcarrying tliem to incinerators During the wimer months prisoners did not always have clothes to wear and often froze to death Kcska Weiss’s Journey Thwufih Hell explains “Urine and excreta poured down the prisoners’ legs and by nightfall the excrement which had frozen to our limbs gave off its stench We were ’higher than our feces" lie explained that because of the extreme embarrassment these people experienced they thought of themselves not as humans but as things and instruments Feeling this way the Jews often gave up hope for being rescued from live camps and would soon die Heroes of their ow n time In 1994 Steven Speilberg produced “Schindler's List” a compelling story of a man who saved llutusands of Jews He started a small business Dcutch linamil Fabrik and hired 5(X) Jews to work for him This business would continue flourish and Schindler's business would be known to outsiders as a concentration camp To the people living there he was a savior The Schindlcrjudcn (Schindler's Jew s) were provided with a 2(XX)caloric diet daily When the camp was liberated in 1945 Ik provided each one of his workers with bottles of vodka cigarettes and two yards of cloth so they would have items to trade for other goods they A similar story is of a French village In had not yet been burned the Incinerator that that of the people lx Chamhon-sur-Lingo- n The town was home to approximately 3500 These people saved close to ft (XX) Jewish people most of them children the Holocaust “I have read your book and I believe that you moralists should be awakened to the fads Nothing happened in Lc Chambon mulling of any importance whatsoever The Holocaust dear professor was like a geological event like an earthquake!! was the armies and nations that performed actions that counted tydividualsdid nothing You sentimentalists have got to learn that the mushy-minde- d soup While we may never understand how it was possible for the Nazi party to kill so many we must continue to remember and study the stories of the people involved in the I lolocaust “livery survivor is a story" said w itness to the I lolocaust Yal ta Soncnson Flinch “We must listen to them before it is (ini late" great masses make the difference Your people and the people they saved simply do not ex- ist" needed Soldiers arrived at a camp to find bodies Chambon saved all three of her children's lives After llallic published his novel he received a letter from Massachusetts explaining one man's feelings of Thousands were left unhuried and soldiers would dig mass graves for the bodies Members of the camps that were still alive were crying out for food and water Soldiers learned that giving food to them was dangerous Samuel Glasshow was quoted in the same article “One of my men gave a candy bar to one of them who grabbed it and ran away and gulped it down so fast that he became unconscious” Another soldier found a man picking grass and pulling it into warm water to make The people ol lx It is very frustrating to hear the ions opin- of people who I eel the Jewish Holo- never (’hamhon were under constant threat hy saving these people because their caust government was in compliance with (lie Nazis A young girl's passage is Some people happened when presented Adolf Hitler clutching being shot picture of himself after In the head |