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From
Culture Watch:
Although it may not be well known to many people today, when the war
in Europe was won by the Allies in 1945, one of the many actions taken
to right the wrongs was to force ordinary German citizens to walk
through the concentration camps and see for themselves what they had
allowed to take place.
This was part of the larger process known as Entnazifizierung
(Denazification) which the Allies undertook after the war to rid
Germany and Austria of all things related to Nazi ideology. As part of
this, numerous films showing the horrors of the concentration camps were
made and shown to the German public.
But forcing German citizens to actually see what was taking place all
around them was a major part of this. Not only did they have to tour the
camps, but often they had to bury rotting corpses and/or exhume mass
graves. The sights and the stench were certainly powerful wake-up calls
to many who claimed ignorance or denied any responsibility.
“But we didn’t know” was just not a sufficient excuse. Many of these
folks did know, or at least should have known. Where were all those
train cars going to? Farmers had received tons of human ash to use as
fertiliser. Where did that come from?
Tons of human hair from murdered women also was received by
manufacturers. Were no questions asked? What about the continuous cries
of the tortured? Was it all just a wailing of the wind? Even if they did
not know all about the details of what was happening in the death
camps, ordinary Germans in the millions voted for and supported the Nazi
program.
Ordinary Germans sang hymns of hate in mass rallies. They cheered on
Hitler and the Nazis. They believed in the myths of German supremacy and
the inferiority of other races and peoples. So they were responsible
for this, and they cannot be allowed to be exonerated here.
One account of this – of many – is worth citing here. This one
involves General Eisenhower and what he did following the war’s end:
As Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Forces
in World War II, General Eisenhower had been given information about the
Nazi concentration camp system well before he led the invasion to
liberate Western Europe (June, 1944). Reports on the massive genocide
inflicted on Jews, Gypsies, political prisoners, homosexuals,
dissidents, and other groups by the Schutzstaffel (SS) had been
circulated among all the Allied leaders. Very few of the Allied
commanders, however, had an accurate conception of what is now known to
the world as the Holocaust until their troops began to encounter the
death camps as they marched into Western Germany.
On April 4, 1945, elements of the United States Army’s 89th Infantry
Division and the 4th Armored Division captured the Ohrdruf concentration
camp outside the town of Gotha in south central Germany. Although the
Americans didn’t know it at the time, Ohrdruf was one of several
sub-camps serving the Buchenwald extermination camp, which was close to
the city of Weimar several miles north of Gotha. Ohrdruf was a holding
facility for over 11,000 prisoners on their way to the gas chambers and
crematoria at Buchenwald. A few days before the Americans arrived to
liberate Ohrdruf, the SS guards had assembled all of the inmates who
could walk and marched them off to Buchenwald. They left in the sub-camp
more than a thousand bodies of prisoners who had died of bullet wounds,
starvation, abuse, and disease. The scene was an indescribable horror
even to the combat-hardened troops who captured the camp. Bodies were
piled throughout the camp. There was evidence everywhere of systematic
butchery. Many of the mounds of dead bodies were still smoldering from
failed attempts by the departing SS guards to burn them. The stench was
horrible.
When General Eisenhower learned about the camp, he immediately arranged
to meet Generals Bradley and Patton at Ohrdruf on the morning of April
12th. By that time, Buchenwald itself had been captured. Consequently,
Ike decided to extend the group’s visit to include a tour of the
Buchenwald extermination camp the next day. Eisenhower also ordered
every American soldier in the area who was not on the front lines to
visit Ohrdruf and Buchenwald. He wanted them to see for themselves what
they were fighting against.
During the camp inspections with his top commanders Eisenhower said that
the atrocities were “beyond the American mind to comprehend.” He
ordered that every citizen of the town of Gotha personally tour the camp
and, after having done so, the mayor and his wife went home and hanged
themselves. Later on Ike wrote to Mamie, “I never dreamed that such
cruelty, bestiality, and savagery could really exist in this world.” He
cabled General Marshall to suggest that he come to Germany and see these
camps for himself. He encouraged Marshall to bring Congressmen and
journalists with him. It would be many months before the world would
know the full scope of the Holocaust — many months before they knew that
the Nazi murder apparatus that was being discovered at Buchenwald and
dozens of other death camps had slaughtered millions of innocent people.
General Eisenhower understood that many people would be unable to
comprehend the full scope of this horror. He also understood that any
human deeds that were so utterly evil might eventually be challenged or
even denied as being literally unbelievable. For these reasons he
ordered that all the civilian news media and military combat camera
units be required to visit the camps and record their observations in
print, pictures and film. As he explained to General 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.’”
(Read more.)
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