Protecting the Truth of the Holocaust

++++++++++++++CAUTION: CONTAINS GRAPHIC IMAGES++++++++++++++++

When Dwight D. Eisenhower entered Ohrdruf Concentration Camp after it was liberated, he had the foresight to document the horrors he saw with his own eyes.

Ohrdruf was liberated on 4 April 1945, by the 4th Armored Division, led by Brigadier General Joseph F. H. Cutrona, and the 89th Infantry Division. It was the first Nazi concentration camp liberated by the US Army.

When the 4th Armored Division soldiers entered the camp, they discovered piles of bodies, some covered with lime and others partially incinerated on pyres. The morbid nature of the discovery led General Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in Europe, to visit the camp on 12 April with Generals George S. Patton and Omar Bradley. After his visit, Eisenhower cabled General George C. Marshall, the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in Washington, describing his trip to Ohrdruf:
“…the most interesting—although horrible—sight that I encountered during the trip was a visit to a German internment camp near Gotha. The things I saw beggar description. While I was touring the camp I encountered three men who had been inmates and by one ruse or another had made their escape. I interviewed them through an interpreter. The visual evidence and the verbal testimony of starvation, cruelty and bestiality were so overpowering as to leave me a bit sick. In one room, where they were piled up twenty or thirty naked men, killed by starvation, George Patton would not even enter. He said that he would get sick if he did so. 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.’”

Fast forward to 13 August 2023. There are still people who deny the Holocaust ever happened. They deny it, or something I think is even worse, distort the facts. This is often done at a government level.

It happened. Below are a few images that were captured and are disturbing. It is important to be confronted every now and then with the evils of mankind. Today, we are at a point where it could easily happen again, and possibly on a larger scale.

US generals Eisenhower, Bradley, Patton, and Eddy inspect a cremation pyre at the camp on 12 April 1945, after liberation.

Cable, General Eisenhower to General Marshall concerning Nazi horrors; requests visit by members of Congress and the media, 19 April 1945 [Dwight D. Eisenhower’s Pre-Presidential Papers, Principal File, Box 134, Cables Off (GCM/DDE 19 Apr–10 Nov 45 (4); NAID #12007738]

The bodies of prisoners lie stacked in a shed in the Ohrdruf concentration camp. The original caption reads, “These emaciated, nude corpses, stacked like cord-wood in a bin at the concentration camp at Goth, Germany, tell their own story of the sadism and brutality of the Nazi gaolers. They are strewn with quicklime in a haphazard attempt to destroy evidence of the crimes. General Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Allied Commander, viewed the Gotha horrors during a tour of the Third Army Front.”

Letter, General Patton to General Eisenhower concerning a prisoner/guard who showed them the camp at Ohrdruf and another camp at Weimar, 15 April 1945 [Dwight D. Eisenhower’s Pre-Presidential Papers, Principal File, Box 91, Patton George S. Jr. (1); NAID #12007734].

It is up to us to present the evidence even though it is eight decades later. We still must convince some people [deniers] that the Holocaust happened.

sources

https://www.eisenhowerlibrary.gov/research/photographs

https://www.eisenhowerlibrary.gov/research/online-documents/world-war-ii-holocaust-extermination-european-jews

https://www.archives.gov/news/topics/holocaust-remembrance-day

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