History of Sorts

Martha Gellhorn was a pioneering female journalist who often reported from the front lines during World War II. Her father was Jewish, and her mother was a protestant. She was married to Ernest Hemingway from 1940–1945.

She was the only woman to land in Normandy, France, on 6 June 1944—D-Day. She was also one of the first journalists to report from the Dachau Concentration Camp after it was liberated by US troops on 29 April 1945.

This is just some of her recollection and accounts of the liberation of the first Nazi concentration camp, Dachau.

“We were blind—and unbelieving—and slow, and—that we can never be again. I have not talked about how it was the day the American Army arrived, though the prisoners told me. In their joy to be free and longing to see the friends who had come at last, the prisoners rushed to the fence and died- electrocuted.

Some died cheering because that effort of happiness was more than their bodies could endure, and some died because at last they had food, and they ate before they could be stopped—and it killed them. I do not know words fine enough to talk of the men who have lived this horror for years (three years, five years, ten years) and whose minds are as clear and unafraid as the day they entered.

I was in Dachau when the German armies surrendered unconditionally to the Allies. It was a suitable place to be. Surely this war was made to abolish Dachau and all the other places like Dachau and everything that Dachau stands for—to abolish it forever. That these cemetery prisons existed is the crime and shame of the German people. We are not entirely guiltless. We are the Allies, and it took us twelve years to open the gates of Dachau. We were blind, unbelieving, slow, and can never be that way again. We must know that there can never be peace if there is cruelty like this in the world. And should it be ever again, we cannot tolerate such cruelty. We would have no right to peace.”

As I stated earlier, Dachau was the first Nazi concentration camp. It opened on 22 March 1933. For 12 years, it was used for murdering people, initially political prisoners, and later for the mass murder of Jews, Poles, Romani, homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Catholic priests, and Communists.

What I find scary is that we don’t have learned anything from the history of the Holocaust. Genocides are still happening across the world. Even in many western so called modern countries there seems to be an upsurge of extreme right ideologies.

Sources

https://www.ushmm.org/search/results/?q=45075

https://www.pbs.org/perilousfight/psychology/disbelief_of_atrocities/letters/