Thursday, April 23, 2009
Freedom
On this day in 1945, Allied forces liberated some 350 American soldiers from a concentration camp at Berga an der Elster.
Berga an der Elster was a slave labor camp where 350 U.S. soldiers were beaten, starved, and forced to work in tunnels for the German government. The soldiers were singled out for "looking like Jews" or "sounding like Jews," or dubbed as undesirables, according to survivors. More than 100 soldiers perished at the camp or on a forced death march.
It was on this day six decades ago, April 23, 1945, when most of the slave labor camp soldiers were liberated by advancing U.S. troops. The emaciated soldiers, many weighing just 80 pounds, had been forced by Nazi commanders to march more than 150 miles before their rescue.
Read the whole thing, and remember.
To this day I can't speak to a German without the Holocaust in the back of my mind.
Splash, out
Jason
Berga an der Elster was a slave labor camp where 350 U.S. soldiers were beaten, starved, and forced to work in tunnels for the German government. The soldiers were singled out for "looking like Jews" or "sounding like Jews," or dubbed as undesirables, according to survivors. More than 100 soldiers perished at the camp or on a forced death march.
It was on this day six decades ago, April 23, 1945, when most of the slave labor camp soldiers were liberated by advancing U.S. troops. The emaciated soldiers, many weighing just 80 pounds, had been forced by Nazi commanders to march more than 150 miles before their rescue.
Read the whole thing, and remember.
To this day I can't speak to a German without the Holocaust in the back of my mind.
Splash, out
Jason
Labels: history, in memoriam, soldiers' issues, WWII
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