OPINION:
Eighty years ago last Friday, on April 4, 1945, the U.S. Army liberated its first concentration/slave labor camp, Ohrdruf, which was populated by Jewish and non-Jewish civilians from multiple countries. Over the next month, American forces would also liberate Buchenwald, Dora-Mittelbau, Flossenbürg, Dachau and Mauthausen; British forces would liberate Bergen Belsen and Soviet forces, Stutthof, Sachsenhausen and Ravensbrück. Eight days after Ohrdruf’s liberation, Generals Eisenhower, Bradley and Patton bore witness to the tortured, starved bodies there. (Nazi death camps in Poland had either been liberated by the Soviets or destroyed by fleeing SS troops.)
We occasionally hear Holocaust deniers spew their falsehoods. Instead of listening to them, we should remember the words of Gen. Eisenhower after his visit to Ohrdruf: “We are told the American soldier does not know what he is fighting for. Now, at least, we know what he is fighting against.”
PAUL L. NEWMAN
Merion Station, Pennsylvania
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