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.

The post WWII Army Captain Describes Horrors at Dachau appeared first on Award-Winning Writer and Graphic Designer.

“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

The post Spielberg Movie ‘Who Will Write Our History’ Gives the Facts vs #FakeNews appeared first on Award-Winning Writer and Graphic Designer.

My father, David Mark Olds (born David Moses Goldstein), was an Army Captain in WWII. He grew up in the Lower East Side of Manhattan with so much anti-Semitism in the world that he changed his name.

Dad’s barrel chest expanded when he told battle stories: “The smell of rotted flesh” and “seeing corpses stacked like cordwood,” at Dachau. He stood taller when he said, “It was a just war. I was proud to fight.”

I’d never seen my father cry until my older sister married a German. Like Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof, Dad tried to accept his daughter’s choice to marry a non-Jew in the country he loathed. It pained him every time we visited her in the country he bravely defended against. Germans had murdered everyone in his family except his Russian parents who’d been sent to America, both at age 16.

This year, pre-election stress made me flee Manhattan for a week to be with my sister and nieces in their tiny rural town near Frankfurt. We spoke of ways the world had changed—a female running for president, a Jew as her Democratic runner-up.

We also spoke of America’s version of Hitler: Trump, the man who memorized Hitler’s speeches. Adolf shouted to crowds, “Make Germany great again!,” while here in my homeland, Trump changed only one word.

My father was a registered Democrat. He said, “People fought for your right to vote.” He taught me never to discriminate against any religion or skin color: “Most people secretly hold prejudices but you must always act with fairness.” Honesty and honor were my father’s signature attributes and he put family first.

See Also: WWII Army Captain Describes Horrors at Dachau

It’s a dangerous time now for everyone. Right-wing politicians in Europe are all cheering. The polls said Hillary Clinton had an 85% chance of winning. If I cried to my father, “How could this be happening?,” Dad would’ve put his arms around me and said what he always did, “People lie in polls. They say what they think others want to hear. They tell the pollsters they read The New York Times, while they buy the New York Post.”

For years, he lamented what happened to the pure jazz radio station he was president of. There weren’t enough listeners to sell the advertising needed to keep it going. “People say they love pure jazz because they like to feel sophisticated. The truth is they only want commercial jazz.”

Perhaps that is a partial explanation for how off the media outlets were about this presidential race. Of course Trump is not Hitler and now that the world has seen the devastation such a demagogue can inflict, my Dad would tell me that I mustn’t fear the worst. “Worrying will wear you down to a frazzle,” he’d say.

“Always take the high road,” Dad said. He taught me to stand strong in the face of adversity. So now, if I appeal to my best self, I can summon optimism that our president-elect will grow into the office and be a more honorable president than he ever seemed as a candidate or reality TV star.

We must believe that Trump will not be able to undo all of the good that people like my father fought for.

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