Yes, the Holocaust happened

There is a growing idea that the Holocaust didn't happen. It did happen. I was a "liaison-observation pilot during World War II. In April 1945, I was assigned the mission of flying the medical inspecting officer to the Buchenwald concentration camp near Weimar, Germany. This was days after the camp was liberated by U.S. troops.

What we saw at Buchenwald was absolutely horrible. When we entered the first barrack, we were hit by a terrible rotten odor. On each side of the building were sleeping racks three or four levels high, each about 3 feet high, filled with mostly naked men. In the middle of the room were two garbage-type containers (50 gallons or so) filled with what turned out to be thin soup for their food.

Our guide was a small, hump-backed Jewish prisoner. He explained his physical condition as being a broken shoulder, caused by being hung from the public hanging rack for punishment for his being too long in the toilet. He was hung by his thumbs, his hands tied behind his back.

As we moved through the building, I saw one of the men come out of his bunk, crawling at me. I asked our guide what the man wanted. He spoke to the man, then explained: "He wants to touch your feet, because you saved their lives.

Even with this humbling and frightening experience, I was not prepared for what happened as we went out the back door. Immediately to our left was a stack of naked human bodies taller than waist high. I thought they were wax dummies put there to impress our medical inspector, but they were real, some with their eyes and mouths open.

The large area into which we came held several other barracks. A wagon loaded with more bodies was passing and our guide explained that the medics had set up three barracks, one for dead bodies, one for people so near death that they could do nothing for them and a third for those whose lives they were trying to save.

We passed through the crematorium area where there was a row of ovens, like huge country mail boxes, where the bodies were burned. They still contained partially burned remains, and between each oven was a pile of human ashes and bits of bones 3 to 4 feet high. Then we saw the public hanging site where our guide had been strung up. From there we went into a building where they did their tanning of human skin that had been cut from prisoners who had interesting tattoos.

Yes, the Holocaust was real. Buchenwald, where an estimated 56,000 prisoners were killed before U.S. forces liberated the camp, was real. I know because I was there. I will never forget what happened there and I hope America never will, either.

Gray lives in Tipton.

Archive ID: 3162929