Adolph Hitler’s “Final Solution” was carried out in 42,400 concentration camps, ghettos, and forced labor camps spread out throughout Europe. An estimated 15 to 20 million people were murdered in these camps including six million Jews. For the young American GIs who liberated them, the horrors of the Nazi concentration camps far outweighed anything they had experienced in war. Tasked with the welfare, James S. Moncrief was one of the first GIs to arrive at Buchenwald. He quickly reported back to Major General Robert W. Grow, that the horrors he saw at Buchenwald were worse than anything he could have imagined. Robert Muhler stayed at Buchenwald about one week, restoring order and standing guard. He found himself drawn to the skeleton men walking around, and yet repelled. He had never seen such emaciated people. John M. Williams was given a ghastly tour of Buchenwald by one of the inmates, Mr. Bernstein, who showed Williams the various methods the Nazis used to murder Buchenwald’s inmates including inoculating them with disease, crushing their skulls, the gassing method, shooting, and the nail method. Seeing a dead soldier didn’t bother Williams, but the walking dead at Buchenwald were ghastly. After the B-24 bomber he navigated was shot down over France, Art Zander spent seven weeks in hiding, until he was double-crossed by a Frenchman and turned over to the Gestapo. Zander was horrified to learn that instead of being sent to a prisoner of war camp, he was one of an unlucky 870 American soldiers deemed terror fliers by Hitler himself and ordered to concentration camps. At Buchenwald, Zander and his fellow GIs avoided the wife of the camp’s commandant. Nicknamed the Bitch of Buchenwald, she walked around the camp admiring the men’s tattoos. If she saw one she liked, she had them murdered and skinned. Those stories and more in Part 1 of a 3 part episode on Liberators of the Holocaust, the most important podcasts yet in the Always Remember - World War II Through Veterans' Eyes series.

Liberation of Buchenwald

Buchenwald Barracks - Elie Wiesel, Nobel laureate and author of NIGHT is highlighted.

The Nazis experimented on prisoners inoculating them with toxins and disease germs to provide serums for German soldiers

Wooden shoot where prisoners had their heads crushed and their bodies flung down to the basement. Notice the meat hooks where bodies were hung until they stiffened.

Nail Method - Prisoners were lined up next to the wall as an executioner pushed a lever shooting a nail like object out of the wall into the prisoners head killing them

Crematorium - 10 ovens were installed at Buchenwald. The same type were later installed at Auschwitz-Birkenau.

The ashes of the dead were spread in the surrounding area like garbage.

Prisoners were often forced to watch executions

Ilse Koch, the Buchenwald commandant's wife, was a sadist who would wander through the camp searching for prisoners with interesting tattoos. If she saw one she liked, she had the bearer shot and skinned. She made book covers, lampshades, pocketbooks, and bags from the human tattooed skin. After the camp's liberation, her macabre collection was put on display by the GIs so that local residents could see the depths of her depravity.

Ilse Koch, the BITCH of Buchenwald, on trial for war crimes

James S. Moncrief and his wife Jerry. Moncrief arrived at Buchenwald just hours after Captain Keffer found the camp to assess what was needed to care for the liberated prisoners.

Robert Muhler spent a week at Buchenwald caring for the prisoners. He found himself "...drawn to those skeleton men walking around, and yet repelled." He considered what happened at Buchenwald to be a "demonic evil." After the war Muhler became a pacifist and a Presbyterian minister.

In 1946, just one year after he helped liberate Buchenwald, John M. Williams wrote a brilliant, unpublished essay called "Concentration Camp Chaos" for a class he took at Texas Christian University. Williams described the macabre tour of the camp that Mr. Bernstein, an English speaking Jewish survivor of the camp, gave him. Williams is pictured with his wife Phyllis.

The Siegfried Line which spread from the Netherlands to Switzerland was Nazi Germany’s 400 mile westernwall, a heavily fortified defensive line that took the Allies six months to pierce. David Saltman remembered the Siegfried Line as a formidable opponent in itself. Robert Maxwell regained consciousness after throwing himself on a grenade to save his buddies only to find himself alone in an abandoned house. Maxwell found a lieutenant who helped him walk to a medic station. Along the way, his heal was blown off by another grenade. After having been pulled off the front line and sent back to the regimental headquarters, Edward Rychnovsky regularly checked the piles of corpses brought in on trucks for men from his company. When Nicholas Oresko’s platoon was ordered to make a third assault on a German position near the Siegfried Line, Oresko gave the order to attack, but no one in his platoon moved. Oresko decided to go by himself, and took out two machine gun emplacements that were pinning his men down. Stan Davis’s armored division took Trier, which had previously been thought impregnable. A seemingly peaceful apple orchard near the Sieg River proved deadly for Ralph Keller’s company, which took devastating losses. Byron Whitmarsh’s squad was engaged in a fierce firefight in and around a German cathedral. Furious that the Allies could use the Ludendorff Bridge at Remagen as a bridgehead across the Rhine River, The German forces waged an intense ten day battle to destroy the bridage with everything they had. Lloyd Huggins, Rex Whitehead, Byron Whitmarsh, Clarence Taylor, and Barney Zylka rememembered the fighting at Remagen as some of the fiercest of the war. Those stories in more in this the 14th episode of Always Remember – World War II Through Veterans Eyes.

David Saltman

Robert D. Maxwell, Medal of Honor Recipient

Henry Heller

Nicholas Oresko, Medal of Honor Recipient

Stan Davis

Ralph Keller

Byron Whitmarsh

Lloyd Huggins

Rex Whitehead

Clarence Taylor

Barney Zylka

The final battle before the anticipated invasion of mainland Japan, Okinawa became the deadliest battle for US forces in the Pacific with savage fighting on land, air, and especially sea. Nicknamed the Typhoon of Steel because of its intense artillery fire and bombardments on land, air and sea, the battle for Okinawa cost 49,000 US casualties including more than 12,000 deaths. For the Japanese soldiers, the battle for Okinawa was far worse with 90,000 deaths. As always, civilians suffered the most with an estimated 150,000 dead. William Agen recalled the terror of kamikaze attacks that occurred three or four times during the day and even more often at night. Raymond Goron and Phil Klenman both lost their best friends in kamikaze attacks. 23 servicemen received the Medal of Honor for their heroism at Okinawa. This podcast features the stories of six Medal of Honor recipients. Kamikazes set the LCS that Richard M. McCool commanded ablaze and resulted in 50% casualties amongst his crew, yet McCool still managed to rescue some 98 men from a sinking destroyer. Richard E. Bush threw himself on a grenade to save the wounded men in his squad. Elsewhere, a wounded Robert E. Bush gave his lieutenant a life saving transfusion of plasma with his one hand, while he used his other to fire his pistol at the advancing Japanese who were less than 30 feet away. Angry that the Japanese had his riflemen pinned down for too long on Hen Hill, Clarence Craft led a heroic attack against the Japanese defensive line killing an estimated 25 Japanese soldiers. Atop the 400 foot Maeda Escarpment, conscientious objector Desmond T. Doss rescued an estimated 75 soldiers lowering them 35 feet below the escarpment in a rope supported litter tied to a tree stump, all the while under enemy fire as he did so. While the bloody battle for Okinawa raged on, Staff Sergeant Henry E. "Red" Erwin was flying bombing runs over the Japanese mainland. On a mission to bomb a chemical plant near Koriyama, Japan, the phosphoresce smoke bomb Erwin was supposed to drop to signal to B-29s that they had reached their target exploded prematurely in the launching chute, shooting its 1300 degree Fahrenheit flames into the aircraft and, more precisely, into Erwin's face blinding him and destroying his nose. "Open the window! Open the window!," Erwin yelled as he attempted to throw the burning bomb out the window to save his aircraft. Those stories and more in this 13th episode of Always Remember - World War II Through Veterans' Eyes.

William Agen

Raymond Goron

Richard M. McCool

Richard E. Bush

Robert E. Bush

Clarence Craft

Desmond Doss

Henry "Red" Erwin

Henry "Red" Erwin receiving the Medal of Honor