This is frighteningly real and Eisenhower’s concerns were spot on. My own father was one of the soldiers who had to tour Buchenwald (and other camps) on the General’s orders; it left a lasting impression on him too. For those with ears to hear, listen and understand.
Eighty years ago, as Allied forces moved through a broken Europe in the final days of World War II, my great-grandfather, Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, walked into a place that changed him forever: the Nazi concentration camp at Ohrdruf, a subcamp of Buchenwald.
What he saw there – piles of corpses, skeletal survivors and evidence of unimaginable cruelty – would stay with him for life. He feared the world might one day try to deny it ever happened. So, he took action. He decided to etch it into the annals of world history.
He immediately ordered American troops, members of Congress, and international journalists to visit the camps and document the atrocities.
Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower listens as a U.S. lieutenant questions a liberated slave laborer at the Nazi concentration camp at Ohrdruf which was liberated April 4, 1945. (Photo12/UIG/Getty Images)
“The visual evidence and the verbal testimony of starvation, cruelty and bestiality were so overpowering,” he wrote to Gen. George Marshall, “I made the visit deliberately, in order to be in a position to give first-hand evidence of these things if ever, in the future, there develops a tendency to charge these allegations merely to propaganda.”
