World War II Army Captain, David Mark Olds (1920–2009), was my father. He told me that he could never erase from his mind what he and his driver, Shady had seen in Dachau. WWII had just ended and the Dachau prisoners had been freed.

Here is the chilling description in my father’s words:

Dad Describes Dachau

We came to the town of Dachau first, a pretty little farming village, green grass, a church spire, neat little houses—a German Currier and Ives. From the village you could see the smokestacks of the ovens, just a few miles away. As we drove to the camp, up to the tall, barbed wire-topped fence, a peculiar smell filled the air, like food gone bad, mixed with body odor and smoke.

The Dachau Gates Were Open

A few MP vehicles and tanks were parked near the gates. Shady parked alongside. The gates were wide open, and we just walked into the concentration camp. It was a madhouse. Pitiful stick figures in striped pajamas, obviously the camp uniform, were milling about, limping and shuffling around, apparently unable to grasp that they were really liberated. A team of American MP’s were trying to restore some order, setting up a mess line, and a delousing tent. It was heartbreaking to look at the ex-prisoners.

WWII Prisoners Freed

All were emaciated, unshaven. Up close, they smelled nauseatingly of sickness and dirt and decay. But the worst was their eyes—hollow, staring dark circles in their pasty faces. As we walked in, we saw a commotion going on in one corner of the large open area. A bunch of the stick figures had surrounded a guard, who hadn’t left with the retreating German soldiers. He was an older man, in his fifties I judged, in a gray uniform. The Nazis had run out of younger, able-bodied men, and had scraped the bottom of the barrel to find any camp guards.

Prisoners Beat Up Nazi Guards

The inmates were screaming, faces contorted in rage, their open mouths displaying ragged, discolored stumps of teeth. They were holding pieces of wood they had picked up, iron bars, stones, whatever came to hand, as they closed in on the guard, who was on his knees, terror in his face, pleading for his life.

See Also: My WWII Army Captain Dad, Donald Trump, and Veteran’s Day

The crowd began to beat him, their terrible anger lending strength to their pipestem arms. The MP’s stood by, watching, making no effort to intervene, as he was beaten to death. Then the crazed stick figures darted away, shouting, shaking their fists, looking for more of the hated guards. Shady and I walked across the forbidding, graveled square to the crematoriums. The brick ovens were cold, their doors open, the chimneys looming over them.

Bones and Ashes

It was obvious that the camp authorities had tried to rake out all the bones and ashes, but enough remained as mute witness. The ovens gave off the sickly sweet, dreadful smell of burned human flesh. Around the corner, behind a shed, we saw a pile of corpses, twenty-five or thirty, in the striped ticking uniforms, pitifully thin, like skeletons, most with mouths open in ghastly rictus, stacked up one on top of the other. The cliché came to life for me: they really did resemble piles of cordwood, ready for the fireplace. Shady turned away and threw up. I was close to it myself.

Liberation

A terrible rage shook me. I wanted to find a German, any German, and kill him. Shady and I stood there, pulling ourselves together, then we walked back to the jeep. We took out all the cigarettes and candy and food we had, and came back in, distributing them to all to the outstretched hands that encircled us. Many of the liberated prisoners were crying, sobbing, holding each other, staggering about. Others, overcome by their liberation, and their hunger and fatigue, sat or lay on the ground, staring, mumbling, trying to comprehend it all.

I wanted to stay, I wanted to go, I wanted to drive back to that pretty little town and ask the people how in God’s name they could have lived their lives next door to that horror, and remained sane. There was no way they couldn’t have known what was going on those few kilometers away. I wanted to destroy the town, and all its stone-faced, stone-hearted inhabitants. But there was nothing we could do. We drove off.

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“This Sunday, January 27, UNESCO headquarters in Paris, France, and over 350 venues in 55 countries, will host an unprecedented screening of the award-winning documentary, “Who Will Write Our History” and concurrent Facebook Live events. The international screening events and Facebook Live, orchestrated by Abramorama, and with the support of UNESCO, the World Jewish Congress’ #WeRemember initiative and multiple major partner organizations, takes place on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, and comes at a time of rising anti-Semitism, anti-Semitic attacks, and increasing concerns that the lessons of the Holocaust are quickly being forgotten.”

I feel a personal connection to this film by Spielberg and Grossman due to my family’s horrific past in Europe where they died in the Nazi concentration camps. My father’s cousin meticulously researched what happened to our family. Many were killed in the camps. The most frightening was the family members who died in Auschwitz. We will never know if they were experimented on by the demonic Dr. Josef Mengele.
Watch the Trailer
Synopsis: This film is about a courageous group of resistance fighters imprisoned in the Warsaw Ghetto in World War II. In November 1940, days after the Nazis sealed 450,000 Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto, a secret band of journalists, scholars and community leaders decided to fight back. Led by historian Emanuel Ringelblum and known by the code name Oyneg Shabes, this clandestine group vowed to defeat Nazi lies and propaganda not with guns or fists but with pen and paper. Now, for the first time, their story is told as a feature documentary.
The New York Times calls it, “A vital Holocaust documentary…Heartbreaking.”
Writter and director Roberta Grossman and executive producer Spielberg teamed up once again to create Who Will Write Our History which the writings of the Oyneg Shabes archive with new interviews, rarely seen footage, and stunning dramatizations that transport us inside the Ghetto and the lives of these courageous resistance fighters. They defied their murderous enemy with the ultimate weapon—the truth—and risked everything so that their archive would survive the war, even if they did not.

Now playing at the Quad Cinema in Manhattan

Showtimes & Tickets

Wed January 23

• 11.05am
• 1.00pm
• 3.05pm
• 5.10pm
• 7.15pm
• 9.20pm

Thu January 24

• 11.05am
• 1.00pm
• 3.05pm
• 5.10pm
• 7.15pm
• 9.20pm

Fri January 25

• 11.00am
• 1.00pm
• 3.40pm
• 6.30pm

Sat January 26

• 11.00am
• 1.00pm
• 3.40pm
• 6.30pm

Sun January 27

• 11.00am
• 1.00pm
• 3.40pm
• 6.30pm

Mon January 28

• 11.00am
• 1.00pm
• 3.40pm
• 6.30pm

Tue January 29

• 11.00am
• 1.00pm
• 3.40pm
• 6.30pm

Wed January 30

• 11.00am
• 1.00pm
• 3.40pm
• 6.30pm

Thu January 31

• 11.00am
• 1.00pm
• 3.40pm
• 6.30pm

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