Learning from the Holocaust: The Strength of the Human Spirit

1. Learning from the Holocaust: The Strength of the Human Spirit Days of RemembranceApril 23-30, 2017

2. Days of Remembrance Each year, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum leads the nation in commemorating Days of Remembrance. Days of Remembrance was established by the U.S. Congress to memorialize the six million Jews murdered in the Holocaust—as well as the millions of non-Jewish victims—of Nazi persecution.

3. Days of Remembrance The week of remembrance is set aside to honor and to remember the victims of the Holocaust and their liberators, so we never forget the great atrocity of which mankind is capable and to remember the Strength of the Human Spirit. This presentation shares the story of Eddie Hellmuth Willner a German Jew, a U.S. Army Major, and a survivor of Auschwitz.

4. Days of Remembrance On April 9, 1945, Eddie Willner was one of 500 prisoners on a death march out of Langenstein-Zwieberge, a subcamp of Buchenwald concentration camp. Under the watch of SS guards and German shepherds, the prisoners moved, unsure where they were being taken or what their guards were planning. “We were in our third day of marching when six of us prisoners, who had long planned escape, felt that our time had come,” Willner said. “We had just crossed a small bridge that passed over a narrow stream and that’s when we made our break, spreading out in different directions to make it more difficult for the guards to target all of us, which meant some of us would probably survive. The dogs were released, some of the prisoners [were] shot, but we kept running.”

5. Days of Remembrance Willner was 18 years-old at the time. Several years earlier, he and his parents, German Jews, had fled to France and were on the run. While in hiding, they were betrayed, arrested and put on a transport to Poland. His mother was sent to her immediate death in the gas chambers at Auschwitz. He and his father were made slave laborers at a nearby subcamp. Willner’s father, who had earned the Iron Cross medal for valor while fighting on the front lines for Germany in World War I, would be killed two years later when he was deemed too old for labor at age 50.

6. Days of Remembrance Willner, now orphaned, endured his first death march from Auschwitz through Gross-Rosen and Buchenwald concentration camps before arriving at Langenstein in February 1945. At Langenstein, he was put to work blasting tunnels and removing rock in the Harz Mountains that were to secretly house Adolf Hitler’s new “super weapon” intended to turn the tide of the war—V-2 rockets. Few prisoners made it out of Langenstein alive.

7. Days of Remembrance By April 1945, the Allies were moving in on German positions. The SS guards ordered those who could still walk to assemble and march out the of the Langenstein camp. On the third night of the march, Willner and his fellow prisoners made their escape. Only two of the six succeeded, Wilner and a Dutch Jew, Mike Swaab. The others were shot. As Allied planes flew overhead, the escapees, wearing blue and white striped concentration camp uniforms and weighing only 75 pounds—and near death—ran for several days. Hiding in ditches and a barn by day, they moved toward distant artillery fire, which they assumed came from the Western Front, at night.

8. Days of Remembrance When they heard the sound of rumbling tanks a half-mile away, “We jumped up and threw our hands up in the air,” Willner said. “The first tank stopped and we showed them the number tattoos on our arms.” The soldiers were members of Company D, 32nd Armored Regiment, 3rd Armored Division, under the command of Army 1st Lieutenant Elmer Hovland. He and his crew dismounted, approached the emaciated survivors and pulled them up onto the tanks.

9. Days of Remembrance In the following days, the soldiers, including Staff Sergeant Brady Laird saw to it that the boys were cleaned up, received medical attention and clothed in the soldiers’ own reserve uniforms. The mess sergeant, Sergeant Louis “Pepsi” DeCola, took particular care to feed the boys and comfort them. “There were no questions asked,” DeCola told The Washington Post in 2002 during Willner’s reunion with “the boys” of Company D. “[Willner] was somebody’s child, he was somebody’s son.”

10. Days of Remembrance Having lost 27 members of his family in the Holocaust, Willner made his way to the United States after the war and enlisted in the U.S. Army. He was married for 49 years to a German woman, Johanna, with whom he had six children. During his 21 years of military service, he completed Officer Candidate School, achieving the rank of major before retiring in 1969. He served twice each in Germany, Japan, and Korea.

11. Days of Remembrance After leaving the Army, he became a social science analyst with the U.S. Census Bureau, where he worked for 20 more years. Willner was grateful to the soldiers of Company D and to his adopted country—and he was proud to be an American.

12. Days of Remembrance Major Eddie Willner died in March 2008. He is buried at Arlington National Cemetery in Section 60.

13. Days of Remembrance Today, we carry forward the proud legacy of men and women of the United States Army who played a vital role in liberating the camps at Buchenwald, Dora-Mittelbau, Flossenbürg, Dachau, and Mauthausen.

14. Days of Remembrance American forces not only brought freedom to the survivors of Nazi horrors, they also made sure that in its aftermath the world would know what had happened.

15. Days of Remembrance In the days after Allied forces captured the first concentration camps, Generals Dwight Eisenhower, George Patton, and Omar Bradley inspected the camps, and saw the horrors that had occurred.

16. Days of Remembrance Eisenhower ordered every American soldier in the area who was not on the front lines to tour these camps, so they could see what they were fighting against, and why they were fighting. These soldiers not only became liberators, but witnesses to one of the greatest massacres in history.

17. Days of Remembrance In a cable to General George Marshall in Washington, Eisenhower wrote about his experiences at the recently liberated Nazi camp of Ohrdruf: “The things I saw beggar description. . . . The visual evidence and the verbal testimony of starvation, cruelty and bestiality were . . . overpowering. . . . 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.”

18. Days of Remembrance Following up on his visit, Eisenhower urged Washington to send Congressional delegations and prominent journalists to these newly discovered scenes of Nazi crimes. U.S. Army Signal Corps cameramen rushed to the camps to document the atrocities for the public and for war crimes trials. Allied military commanders also forced German civilians to become witnesses, albeit reluctant ones, by ordering them to visit the liberated camps and to bury the thousands of dead prisoners.

19. Days of Remembrance The commitment of our forces to the survivors of Nazi atrocities did not end with liberation. In the aftermath of war, we cared for survivors and we helped reunite families. We provided both physical and spiritual nourishment to the survivors of the Holocaust.

20. Days of Remembrance Days of Remembrance raises awareness that democratic institutions and values are not simply sustained, but need to be appreciated, nurtured, and protected. It also clearly illustrates the roots and ramifications of prejudice, racism, and stereotyping in any society. More importantly, silence and indifference to the suffering of others, or to the infringement of civil rights in any society, can—however unintentionally—perpetuate these problems.

21. “Let us not forget, after all, there is always a moment when moral choice is made…. And so we must know these good people who helped Jews during the Holocaust. We must learn from them, and in gratitude and hope, we must remember them.” —Elie Wiesel Survivor of the Auschwitz, Buna, Buchenwald, and Gleiwitz concentration camps

22. Sources https://www.ushmm.org/ For additional information and facts go to: https://deomi.org/SpecialObservance/SupportDOR.cfm

23. Defense Equal Opportunity Management Institute, Patrick Air Force Base, FloridaApril 2017 Dawn W. Smith All photographs are public domain and are from various sources, as cited. The findings in this report are not to be construed as an official DEOMI, U.S. military services, or Department of Defense position.

24. Days of Remembrance The image of the man grasping the barbed wire reflects his hope of survival as he yearns for freedom outside the fence. The somber blue background represents the feelings of those who suffered and persevered during the atrocities of the Holocaust. The desire and motivation of the survivors to be free varied greatly yet each one lived to tell their story. The image of the tattooed arm reminds us of their history so that we “Never Forget.” The child's hand symbolizes our future, reminding us that the human spirit is resilient, powerful, and triumphant.