the people on this train don’t look like walking skeletons to me

I got a comment on a post yesterday from a professed “skeptic” who does not leave a name, of course (they never do), nor does he share his name at his website, though on his “About” page he does reveal that it  “is about Holocaust history and what I see as malign political influences that have distorted our understanding of history. My interest in the subject came about after I was expelled from a History Honours course run by a University in the city of Melbourne after presenting some material criticising some of the more wild claims in the literature several years ago.  This traumatic experience lead me to investigate further and everything confirmed my initial suspicions.”

Hmm, sounds like a conspiracy to me. Sorry about the trauma, so as he wishes, here is what he left to be published on this site, with my responses.

Hello, I came here after reading Dan Porat’s The Boy, where some of the Hillersleben photos feature.

Hi. Yes, I was consulted by the author, and helped him get some of the photos of the liberation- which was at Farsleben, not Hilersleben.

Maybe I am missing something here, but the people on this train don’t look like walking skeletons to me. German civilian rations were 1600 calories pro Tag 1944/1945, so the fact that the photos you present show individuals that look slim but hardly starved seems to undermine your central thesis – namely History Matters. Clearly, you don’t think so or you would use your material more carefully.

"A woman and two children rest next to a stopped train" 4-14-2011 by Harry E. Boll. USHMM Archives.

Clearly, it was not I, but a soldier who referred to the victims he cared for as “walking skeletons”.  Also, these ” slim”  individuals were so weak that many could hardly stand- again, more eyewitness liberator testimony. Maybe the soldiers are lying, something that has been suggested by skeptics before. Several “slim people” are lying dead on the hillside in the background- and the skeptic has missed the point that the ones physically able to pose for a photograph have done so. Many more could not even get out of the cars without assistance-many were dead inside the cars, literally falling out on top of horrified soldiers as they slide open the doors-something the skeptic would have learned had he/she been more thorough in his research of my work. Perhaps he would suggest that the boys in the photo to the left, taken by US forces the day after liberation, are the picture of health. And thanks for bringing in the plight of the unfortunate German civilians. Perhaps we should compare suffering here as well.

Secondly, don’t you think you are being rather disrepectful of the sacrifice shown by the American GI by continually reducing their experience down to the liberation of some detainees on a train. It verges on insulting to continually insist that people who repeatedly saw their buddies being blown away would privilege the experience of 2500 Jewish people on a train who don’t look starved at all

I think a little ironic that the post above  the one that the skeptic commented on mentions the sacrifice and not the train liberation at all(“Hell came in like a freight train. I heard an explosion and went back to where my friend was.” 67 yrs. ago this week.), a common thread throughout my work, which he must have run across if he used the link in Porat’s book to get to this site. And it is also stated at the bottom of my “About” page, which the skeptic should take the time to read before invoking one’s “skepticism”, that “if you are a Holocaust denier/minimizer/revisionist, and/or run-of-the-mill hate spewer, thank you in advance for sparing  me your epistles… I’ve already heard it all.“  It really can get tiring, but thanks for writing to remind me that I have a better job to do. Sadly, I’ll also be adding the word “skeptic” to my list.

And while I usually refrain from posting photos such as will follow, unfortunately it feels necessary now. The train survivors left this camp 12 days before this photo was taken by British troops.

THE LIBERATION OF BERGEN-BELSEN CONCENTRATION CAMP, APRIL 1945 part of "WAR OFFICE SECOND WORLD WAR OFFICIAL COLLECTION" (photographs) Made by: No 5 Army Film & Photographic Unit A British Army bulldozer pushes bodies into a mass grave at Belsen. The driver of the bulldozer wears a protective handkerchief over his mouth and nose.

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“Hell came in like a freight train. I heard an explosion and went back to where my friend was.” 67 yrs. ago this week.

"Both the enemy and the weather could kill you, and the two of them together was a pretty deadly combination." Bulge veteran Bart Hagerman. Photo: George Silk/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images Dec 20, 1944

The morning of December 16, 1944. A lonely outpost on the Belgian frontier.

In subzero temperatures, the last German counteroffensive of World War II had begun. Nineteen thousand American lives would be lost in the Battle of the Bulge. “Hell came in like a freight train. I heard an explosion and went back to where my friend was. His legs were blown off-he bled to death in my arms.” The average age of the American “replacement” soldier? 19.

Of the sixteen million American men and women who served in WWII, four and a quarter hundred thousand died on the field of conflict. In 2011, nearly 1000 veterans of World War II quietly slip away every day. The national memory of the war that did more than any other event in the last century to shape the history of the American nation is dying with them. The Germans threw 250,000 well trained troops and tanks against a lightly defended line on the Ardennes frontier in Belgium and Luxembourg, which created a pocket or “bulge” in the Allied offensive line, the objective being to drive to the port of Antwerp to split the American and British advance and force a separate peace with the Western Allies. What ensued was the bloodiest battle in American history. It saddens me that it comes as a shock to many Americans today that the “Battle of the Bulge” didn’t originate as a weight-loss term.

On a personal note, I have had the privilege of interviewing many of the veterans of this battle. In the high school where I teach, I have been inviting veterans to my classroom to share their experiences with our students. As their numbers dwindled, I smartened up, bought a camera, and began to record their stories. And for the past decade, I have been sending kids out into the field to record the stories of World War II before this generation fades altogether. These men and women have helped to spark students’ interest in finding out more about our nation’s past and the role of the individual in shaping it. On our website we have worked to weave the stories of our community’s sacrifices into the fabric of our national history. And that, to me, is what teaching history should be all about. After all, if we allow ourselves to forget about the teenager who bled to death in his buddy’s arms, if we overlook the sacrifices it took to make this nation strong and proud, we may as well forget everything else. I shudder for this country when I see what we have all forgotten, so soon. But if you are taking the time to read this post I suppose I am preaching to the saved.

I will close with the account of a nineteen year old infantryman who in fact survived the battle and the war, and who I was able to introduce to many Hudson Falls students on more than one occasion. Sixty-seven years ago this week, a day began that would forever change his life.  Frank is now the only living Medal of Honor recipient from World War II left in New York State and New England.

In the winter of 1944, nineteen year old Private First Class Currey’s infantry squad was fighting the Germans in the Belgian town of Malmédy to help contain the German counteroffensive in the Battle of the Bulge. Before dawn on December 21, Currey’s unit was defending a strong point when a sudden German armored advance overran American antitank guns and caused a general withdrawal. Currey and five other soldiers—the oldest was twenty-one—were cut off and surrounded by several German tanks and a large number of infantrymen. They began a daylong effort to survive.

The six GIs withdrew into an abandoned factory, where they found a bazooka left behind by American troops. Currey knew how to operate one, thanks to his time in Officer Candidate

Francis Currey MOH and Ned Rozell March 2010-Ned is friends with the last WWII Medal of Honor recipient in NY and NE, Frances Currey. Yes, the special edition GI Joe he signed for Ned is 19 yr. old Frank!

School, but this one had no ammunition. From the window of the factory, he saw that an abandoned half-track across the street contained rockets. Under intense enemy fire, he ran to the half-track, loaded the bazooka, and fired at the nearest tank. By what he would later call a miracle, the rocket hit the exact spot where the turret joined the chassis and disabled the vehicle.

Moving to another position, Currey saw three Germans in the doorway of an enemy-held house and shot all of them with his Browning Automatic Rifle. He then picked up the bazooka again and advanced, alone, to within fifty yards of the house. He fired a shot that collapsed one of its walls, scattering the remaining German soldiers inside. From this forward position, he saw five more GIs who had been cut off during the American withdrawal and were now under fire from three nearby German tanks. With antitank grenades he’d collected from the half-track, he forced the crews to abandon the tanks. Next, finding a machine gun whose crew had been killed, he opened fire on the retreating Germans, allowing the five trapped Americans to escape.

Deprived of tanks and with heavy infantry casualties, the enemy was forced to withdraw. Through his extensive knowledge of weapons and by his heroic and repeated braving of murderous enemy fire, Currey was greatly responsible for inflicting heavy losses in men and material on the enemy, for rescuing 5 comrades, 2 of whom were wounded, and for stemming an attack which threatened to flank his battalion’s position.

At nightfall, as Currey and his squad, including the two seriously wounded men, tried to find their way back to the American lines, they came across an abandoned Army jeep fitted out with stretcher mounts. They loaded the wounded onto it, and Currey, perched on the jeep’s spare wheel with a Browning automatic rifle in his hand, rode shotgun back to the American lines.

After the war in Europe had officially ended, Major General Leland Hobbs made the presentation on July 27, 1945, at a division parade in France.

source material “Medal of Honor: Portraits of Valor Beyond the Call of Duty by Peter Collier.

Frank signs autographs at our school.

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