Commit to remembering the horrors of the Holocaust

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Jan. 27 was International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

80 years since the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau.

80 years since 6 million Jews were murdered in the Holocaust with nearly 1 million of them murdered at Auschwitz alone.

80 years of questioning, lamenting, decrying how we allowed such unprecedented evil to happen.

80 years of asking, absorbing, debating how we can ensure such a genocide never occurs again.

80 years of transferring sacred memory of survivors from one generation to the next so that the dead do not suffer the second death of being forgotten.

Yet, despite all of our efforts — survivors and their descendants bravely sharing their stories from classrooms to the State Capitol, laws mandating the teaching of the Holocaust, dignified public commemorations with speeches most solemn and reflective — the acrid smoke from the crematoriums still dissipate further in our collective memories.

Today, from one side of the political spectrum the memory of our 6 million martyred is weaponized against us by Hamas apologists, while from the other side the taunts of Elon Musk, the world’s wealthiest and most powerful billionaire, are celebrated, tolerated and rationalized.

They all dishonor the 300,000 Minnesotans who bravely fought fascism, including the 7,800 who never returned to experience another Minnesota summer.

Those who liberated the camps and the journalists who documented the Holocaust are almost all dead now.

But what they experienced can be immortal if only we take a few moments to read their testimonies.

On April 12, 1945, days after the liberation of Ohrdruf, a sub-camp of Buchenwald, war correspondents accompanying Generals Dwight Eisenhower, Omar Bradley and George S. Patton Jr., wrote of “smelling decaying flesh” and seeing “dead bodies littering the streets.”

Eisenhower would write to Army Chief of Staff George Marshall: “The things I saw beggar description … I made the visit deliberately to be in a position to give firsthand evidence of these things if ever, in the future, there develops a tendency to charge these allegations merely to propaganda.” This quote is prominently etched upon the wall at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum near the main entrance. We make sure to take a photo of the Minnesota National Guard members who accompany us for our annual trip to the USHMM in front of it, so we pay honor to both the victims, and the men and women who protect us from such evil today.

Two days after Eisenhower’s visit to Ohrdruf, the Minneapolis Star editorialized that it was publishing graphic pictures of Nazi war crimes “in order that our readers with our first-hand knowledge of the behavior of our German enemy may comprehend what their kinsman fighting in Germany had to face and what our Allies had to endure for five and a half years.”

Firsthand accounts of the Nazi atrocities began to appear Minneapolis newspapers. William Stoneman of the Minneapolis Star and Chicago Daily News Foreign Service wrote an article on April 21, 1945, entitled: “Torch Set to War Captives.” Jack Bell of the Minneapolis Star-Journal and Chicago Daily News Foreign Service reported: “Bell’s Last Word on Nazi brutalities: Torture Camps Aimed at Weakening Europe.” Unlike many accounts, which did not identify Jews as the primary target of the Nazis, Bell is explicit in describing the Nazi plan as “extermination of Jews” and “extermination of slave labor no longer able to work.”

Gideon Seymour, executive editor of the Minneapolis Star-Journal and Tribune, was also one of 18 editors of large circulation American newspapers and magazines to sign onto: “Report on Atrocities: Editors Urge Punishment of Nazi War Criminals” on May 12, 1945. The joint editorial advocated war crimes commissions to investigate; try and punish Germans responsible for the crimes of the Third Reich.

Minnesota and GIs from throughout the Upper Midwest saw the evidence of German atrocities firsthand. In fact, at least three (and likely many more) bore witness at Ohrdruf. Joel Glotter of Minneapolis and Robert Bain (a Bronze Star recipient) from Crookston were both members of the 89th Infantry Division — whose insignia proudly recognized its Midwestern roots dating back to World War l.

Glotter and Bain both crossed the Rhine River in small plywood-bottomed boats under intense fire in the amphibious assault to breach Germany’s western geographical barrier on March 26, 1945. On April 4, 1945, the 89th Division overran Ohrdruf and was the first concentration camp liberated by U.S. troops in Germany. Glotter recalled German citizens being brought to Ohrdruf to see the evidence of the Holocaust. Bain remembered the impact of Ohrdruf on the members of the 89th Division. Or in the words of General Eisenhower when he visited Ohrdruf: “We are told the American soldier does not know what he is fighting for. Now, at least he knows what he is fighting against.”

The acceleration of knowledge of the Holocaust whether by Minneapolis newspaper accounts or the stories of camp liberators was deepened by the participation of Minnesotans in the Nuremberg war crimes trials. Attorneys Benedict Deinard; Sidney Kaplan and Melvin Siegel were part of the prosecution teams at Nuremberg. Minnesota Supreme Court Justice William Christiansen presided over trials from 1947-49. Larry Tillemans — the subject of the documentary “The Typist” — from Minnesota was a clerk typist and stenographer for the American prosecution team. His friend in later years — Gerry Boe from Cross Lake — was a guard at the first Nuremberg war crimes trial.

On this 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau let us then commit ourselves to joining this sacred task of remembrance. In so doing we not only honor the memory of the millions who were murdered, and those who survived, but also the Minnesotans and other Americans who defeated Nazism and shared what they experienced so that none of us could ever say we did not know what evils humans are capable of.

Steve Hunegs is executive director of Jewish Community Relations Council of Minnesota and the Dakotas.