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Cargando... The liberators : America's witnesses to the Holocaust (edición 2010)por Michael Hirsh
Información de la obraThe Liberators: America's Witnesses to the Holocaust por Michael Hirsh
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Inscríbete en LibraryThing para averiguar si este libro te gustará. Actualmente no hay Conversaciones sobre este libro. This is an important historical book documenting the stories of ordinary men called to witness and attempt to clean up and rebuild. War was bad enough, but liberating the camps was exposure to cruelty and evil not experienced on the battlefield. My friend and relative, Duane Mahlen, is among those soldiers interviewed in the book. This is a view into what it looks like to have seen the aftermath of evil. His most striking comment is how people a mile or two away from the camps denied that they knew anything terrible was happening. The author interviewed more than 150 U.S. soldiers who were the first to arrive at concentration camps across Europe near the end of World War II. These soldiers recount what they witnessed and how they felt, both at the time of the discoveries and as they have grown older. It is a touching, saddening, enlightening view of the war; I highly recommend it to everyone. It's hard to read because of the subject matter, but well worth every tear you will shed. The next time you see a veteran, thank him or her for serving our country. We wouldn't be free without their sacrifices! sin reseñas | añadir una reseña
At last, the everyday fighting men who were the first Americans to know the full and horrifying truth about the Holocaust share their astonishing stories. Here we meet the brave souls who--now in their eighties and nineties--have chosen at last to share their stories.
At last, the everyday fighting men who were the first Americans to know the full and horrifying truth about the Holocaust share their astonishing stories. Rich with powerful never-before-published details from the author's interviews with more than 150 U.S. soldiers who liberated the Nazi death camps, The Liberators is an essential addition to the literature of World War II--and a stirring testament to Allied courage in the face of inconceivable atrocities. Taking us from the beginnings of the liberators' final march across Germany to V-E Day and beyond, Michael Hirsh allows us to walk in their footsteps, experiencing the journey as they themselves experienced it. But this book is more than just an in-depth account of the liberation. It reveals how profoundly these young men were affected by what they saw--the unbelievable horror and pathos they felt upon seeing "stacks of bodies like cordwood" and "skeletonlike survivors" in camp after camp. That life-altering experience has stayed with them to this very day. It's been well over half a century since the end of World War II, and they still haven't forgotten what the camps looked like, how they smelled, what the inmates looked like, and how it made them feel. Many of the liberators suffer from what's now called post-traumatic stress disorder and still experience Holocaust-related nightmares. Here we meet the brave souls who--now in their eighties and nineties--have chosen at last to share their stories. Corporal Forrest Robinson saw masses of dead bodies at Nordhausen and was so horrified that he lost his memory for the next two weeks. Melvin Waters, a 4-F volunteer civilian ambulance driver, recalls that a woman at Bergen-Belsen "fought us like a cat because she thought we were taking her to the crematory." Private Don Timmer used his high school German to interpret for General Dwight Eisenhower during the supreme Allied commander's visit to Ohrdruf, the first camp liberated by the Americans. And Phyllis Lamont Law, an army nurse at Mauthausen-Gusen, recalls the shock and, ultimately, "the hope" that "you can save a few." From Bergen-Belsen in northern Germany to Mauthausen in Austria, The Liberators offers readers an intense and unforgettable look at the Nazi death machine through the eyes of the men and women who were our country's witnesses to the Holocaust. The liberators' recollections are historically important, vivid, riveting, heartbreaking, and, on rare occasions, joyous and uplifting. This book is their opportunity, perhaps for the last time, to tell the world. -- Publisher description No se han encontrado descripciones de biblioteca. |
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Google Books — Cargando... GénerosSistema Decimal Melvil (DDC)940.53History and Geography Europe Europe 1918- World War IIClasificación de la Biblioteca del CongresoValoraciónPromedio:
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There were many more camps than I realized. The main camps like Dachau and Auschwitz had dozens of sub-camps.
Camps kept springing up through the final weeks of the war in Europe, as the Nazis were determined to exterminate the Jews and other “undesirable” populations in the camps rather than allow the Allies to liberate them.
Many veterans recalled smelling a terrible odor beginning several miles away from the camps and getting stronger the closer they approached. The veterans who spoke of the odor nearly to a person rejected claims of the local Germans who said that they had no idea what was going on in the camps. The stench made it impossible for them to believe those claims.
Most of the veterans still suffered from PTSD more than sixty years after these events. I agree with the author that the U.S. needs to provide more and better mental health services for veterans.
This book preserves eyewitness testimony from some of the first witnesses to the horrors of the Holocaust. It’s not easy reading, but it’s important reading, and it should be widely available in libraries to keep these memories alive and prevent this evil from being repeated. ( )