Research Catalog

Details

Additional authors

1. Mazal Holocaust Collection TxSaTAM

Description

1. xvii, 356 pages : illustrations, map; 25 cm

Summary

1. At last, the everyday fighting men who were the first Americans to know the full and horrifying truth about the Holocaust share their astonishing stories. Here we meet the brave souls who--now in their eighties and nineties--have chosen at last to share their stories.
2. At last, the everyday fighting men who were the first Americans to know the full and horrifying truth about the Holocaust share their astonishing stories. Rich with powerful never-before-published details from the author's interviews with more than 150 U.S. soldiers who liberated the Nazi death camps, The Liberators is an essential addition to the literature of World War II--and a stirring testament to Allied courage in the face of inconceivable atrocities. Taking us from the beginnings of the liberators' final march across Germany to V-E Day and beyond, Michael Hirsh allows us to walk in their footsteps, experiencing the journey as they themselves experienced it. But this book is more than just an in-depth account of the liberation. It reveals how profoundly these young men were affected by what they saw--the unbelievable horror and pathos they felt upon seeing "stacks of bodies like cordwood" and "skeletonlike survivors" in camp after camp. That life-altering experience has stayed with them to this very day. It's been well over half a century since the end of World War II, and they still haven't forgotten what the camps looked like, how they smelled, what the inmates looked like, and how it made them feel. Many of the liberators suffer from what's now called post-traumatic stress disorder and still experience Holocaust-related nightmares. Here we meet the brave souls who--now in their eighties and nineties--have chosen at last to share their stories. Corporal Forrest Robinson saw masses of dead bodies at Nordhausen and was so horrified that he lost his memory for the next two weeks. Melvin Waters, a 4-F volunteer civilian ambulance driver, recalls that a woman at Bergen-Belsen "fought us like a cat because she thought we were taking her to the crematory." Private Don Timmer used his high school German to interpret for General Dwight Eisenhower during the supreme Allied commander's visit to Ohrdruf, the first camp liberated by the Americans. And Phyllis Lamont Law, an army nurse at Mauthausen-Gusen, recalls the shock and, ultimately, "the hope" that "you can save a few." From Bergen-Belsen in northern Germany to Mauthausen in Austria, The Liberators offers readers an intense and unforgettable look at the Nazi death machine through the eyes of the men and women who were our country's witnesses to the Holocaust. The liberators' recollections are historically important, vivid, riveting, heartbreaking, and, on rare occasions, joyous and uplifting. This book is their opportunity, perhaps for the last time, to tell the world. -- Publisher description

Subject

1. 1900-1999
2. Geschichte 1945
3. World War, 1939-1945 > Concentration camps > Liberation
4. World War, 1939-1945 > Concentration camps > Germany
5. World War, 1939-1945 > Concentration camps > Austria
6. Nazi concentration camps > Germany
7. Nazi concentration camps > Austria
8. World War, 1939-1945 > Atrocities
9. Soldiers > United States > Interviews
10. World War, 1939-1945 > Personal narratives, American
11. Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) > Personal narratives
12. Guerre mondiale, 1939-1945 > Camps d'internement > Libération
13. Guerre mondiale, 1939-1945 > Camps d'internement > Allemagne
14. Guerre mondiale, 1939-1945 > Camps d'internement > Autriche
15. Camps de concentration nazis > Allemagne
16. Camps de concentration nazis > Autriche
17. Guerre mondiale, 1939-1945 > Atrocités
18. Holocauste, 1939-1945 > Récits personnels
19. Nazi concentration camps
20. Liberty
21. Atrocities
22. Soldiers
23. US-Soldat
24. Befreiung
25. Konzentrationslager
26. Concentratiekampen
27. Bevrijding (Tweede Wereldoorlog)
28. Amerikanen
29. Militairen
30. Austria
31. Germany
32. United States
33. Europa (geografie)

Genre/Form

1. Interview
2. Personal Narrative
3. interviews.
4. History
5. Interviews
6. Personal narratives
7. Personal narratives – American
8. Erlebnisbericht
9. Interviews.
10. Récits personnels.

Contents

1. Introduction: How do you prepare to see that? -- The beginning of the end -- Life and death in Berga -- Incomprehensible -- Springtime for Hitler -- Little boys became men -- Mere death was not bad enough for the Nazis -- Ike knew this would be denied -- Buchenwald : this ain't no place I wanna be -- Gardelegen : even the good Germans had blood on their hands -- Bergen-Belsen -- I start crying and I can't talk any more -- Landsberg : the Kaufering camps -- Dachau : shock beyond belief -- They're killing Jews : who cares? -- Mauthausen : death on the not-so-beautiful brown Danube -- You are still individually and collectively responsible -- After the war, and long after the war.

Owning institution

1. Harvard Library

Bibliography (note)

1. Includes bibliographical references (pages 337-339) and index.

Processing action (note)

1. committed to retain