I get so sick I could scream

I get so sick I could scream
by meridiantoo
01/27/2009, 10:03 AM #

There is a poster here who claims to live in Italy, or the Alps above Italy. He is prolific in his postings, claiming falsification of history by several secret international groups of bankers and conspiracy plotters who in his opinion continue to manipulate our memories of the horrible things that mankind is capable of doing to those who are weaker. In his opinion, they do that to hold all of us captive under their control. He feverishly posts warnings that just as they fabricated the reports of 6 million deaths under the Nazi regime, they continue to manipulate our beliefs about the truth today. Honestly I get tired of hearing that there is an international conspiracy behind every tree of the forest of evil that humanity seems capable of.

This poster says that he wishes he "knew the truth" and then casually throws out half truths and opinions in order to push whatever the agenda he happens to be pushing.

To him I would say that I can offer a teaspoon of truth this morning and am happy to do that, since it honors one of the most honorable men I know.

My father was a WWII US Soldier five miles outside of Buchenwald when the camp was liberated in April of 1945. He entered Europe after coming on shore at Normandy the beginning of the second day (D-Day+2), when the front line was separated from the water by about 200 yards and a thousand dead bodies, then he fought his way from tree line to tree line all the way across Germany, watching his 18 - 20 year old friends get shot and die. So many good men died in that journey of liberation from truly evil opponents of freedom, but he tells me he has learned to live with that.

For all of the years of my youth and most of my adult life, my father absolutely refused to speak about Buchenwald and the day he entered the camp with the Third Army troops who liberated that place of Hell. Then one day about ten years ago he took me away from my mother to his wood working shop and told me things that I would have just as soon wished he had never shared. I think he finally got to the point that he knew that he must pull those memories out of his heart and pass them on. As I said, I would have been happier not knowing. Perhaps he told me so that I could share a teaspoon of the truth with you today.

Eventually that day, he told me that he has never gone a full week without waking up at least one night, unable to go back to sleep as those faces of the dead and the living dead come back to visit him. He said the living they found that day bother him much more than the dead, but that there were plenty of the dead to contend with. He spoke of piles of bodies scattered around the camp, dumped here and there with an almost casual German efficiency over the last few weeks before the camps were overrun by American soldiers. He says that the mostly dead men and a few women were piled up "naked and staring out in the cold". He spoke of "open eyes staring out of emaciated skeletons covered with translucent bluish skin that was beginning to rot away". At 70+ years old, he openly cried as he told me about dead and nearly dead faces that were still so vivid in his mind that he almost knew them by name (50 years later).

I can't tell you anything about numbers from Buchenwald and have no desire to reduce those lives to numbers. I have read about the place in Wikipedia - an article you no doubt will tell me was written by some Jew Propagandist working for your conspiricy team. I can tell you that my Father was a Methodist, who had met his wife (my mother) at church. He was not a Jew Conspiritist. He was simply raised to know evil when he saw it. For many post D-Day months he had learned to know death as a close associate of his daily life. And he told me that he hardly ever dreamed about the boys who died walking beside him entering some German Village, moments after the crack of a rifle shot, or on the instant blast of a mortar or bomb explosion. He said that what he has never been able to get out of his mind was the weak people that the Nazis took to the barracks behind fences of heavy poles and wire at Buchenwald and then starved to death or shot in the head before piling up in the cold between those houses of death. Those are the better memories he has of the camp. He spoke about the smell of death and the sight of death. He said that there was no way to avoid seeing the death, other than to look up at the sky - it was everywhere and the only thing you could do was to close your eyes, then you could be free of vision and only forced to deal with the smell of human rot.

He cried that day and stopped crying and then began crying again as he talked about unheated barracks, where his breath came out in fog, filled with rows of wooden bunks containing three or four barely alive men or women, many absolutely naked with nothing more than scraps of blankets to stave off the freezing temperatures as they died of starvation. They said that in the last weeks, the solders would come by each day, pick a few of them at random and put a bullet through their heads, then leave them where they fell, or insist that those not chosen to die that day strip them and take them outside to go on top of the piles in the walkways between the buildings.

He said that there were several thousand dead bodies all killed in the last week or two before liberation and left in decaying piles in the main camp alone. (I need to share that I know Buchenwald was "Not A Death Camp" as was Aushwatz and others. My father's experience was witnessed at one of the lesser work camps, where not so many died.)

He said at the orders of the American Officers above him, that they went back into the neighboring German towns and made the Germans come to Buchenwald and walk the rows of piles of dead bodies and then dig the graves so that the rotting bodies could be buried.

To this poster I say, "What right do you have to question the accuracy of numbers? Have you no soul? Were you there when the Nazis put bullets through the heads of Poles, Czechs, Undesirables? Were you there to stare into the eyes of the dead? Do you feel good when you sit in the comfort of your Italian apartment and spew hate against those who morn the dead?"

In my mind I believe that the spirit of these poor weak people still they call out to those of conscience at night, but In my mind, you have closed your heart and whatever conscience you should have to their cries. I do know that there are old grim black and white photographs of what was there. There are honorable men like my father who were there. I am sorry that you were unable to witness first hand the few thousands he saw so that you would understand that 6 million is a number, just as 1 million. There is little difference in the cries of 1 million and 6 million as they die.

Please excuse my poor restatement of historical horror. Those who died deserve better than I am capable of writing. My father deserves better than this.

meridiantoo