Courier Writer Looks Back At End Of WWII

About 60 years ago, as World War II was winding down, my platoon set up its equipment on the grounds of the Central Library in the heart of Munchen-Gladbach – a large city in the heart of central Germany.
We used the library’s empty warehouse as a barracks, and after months in the field, we were grateful for the “luxurious” accommodations.
On a Thursday evening, army trucks rumbled onto the large library grounds, bringing with them hundreds of former concentration camp inmates who had been liberated earlier in the week. The sight was appalling; the smells even worse. And the Yiddish some of them spoke was dissimilar to the Yiddish words my parents spoke and I grew up with.
They were helped out of the trucks by hospital personnel and, like skeletons, marched stiffly into the tents that were set up for them that night. They were mostly silent, seemingly unaware that they had been saved, but still unsure if their new saviors would be any better than their former captors.
About six the next morning, I was sent by my Lieutenant to where they were sleeping because he knew that I could speak to them. He wanted me to tell them where showers had been set up and that clean clothes would be distributed after breakfast.
When I came into the first tent, some were curious if I was really an American-Jewish soldier. I convinced the Eastern-European prisoners when I told them about my parents… that my mother came from Lithuania and my father from Belarus. The clincher was when I told them that I would try to arrange for Friday religious services that night.
Most were undecided about their futures, except where they wanted to go. The ones who knew that they had lost their entire families told me that they did not wish to return home, but others with a glimmer of hope were returning home to hunt for their loved ones. I later learned that most of them were being sent to Paris and, from there, to Marseilles via train, where they would be shipped to Palestine.
That evening, a Jewish Army chaplain led a large Friday night service for the camp inmates in the library auditorium. At the end of the 40-minute service, when the Kaddish (memorials for the dead) was said, it took almost longer than the service itself.
The following morning – fed, washed and dressed – the camp inmates left their tents and climbed onto the Army trucks, which then sped toward Paris.
Sixty years have passed since that encounter in the library, and I can only dimly recall the blank-eyed faces of these people when they first entered our camp. But, I can never forget the smell of death and despair that they brought with them.
Victor Ross is a freelance writer.