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layout: transcript |
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interviewee: ray none buch |
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rg_number: rg-50.030.0045 |
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pdf_url: https://collections.ushmm.org/oh_findingaids/rg-50.030.0045_trs_en.pdf |
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ushmm_url: https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn504545 |
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gender: m |
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birth_date: 1920-09-18 |
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birth_year: 1920.0 |
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place_of_birth: new york city, ny |
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country: usa |
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experience_group: soldier |
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ghetto(s)_encyclopedia: none |
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ghetto: none |
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camp(s)_encyclopedia: none |
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camp: none |
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non_ss_camp: none |
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region: none |
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needs_research: checked |
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data_entry: gg |
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accession: 1989.h.0363 |
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revisit: none |
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tags: transcripts |
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--- |
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--- |
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layout: transcript |
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interviewee: ray none buch |
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rg_number: rg-50.030.0045 |
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pdf_url: https://collections.ushmm.org/oh_findingaids/rg-50.030.0045_trs_en.pdf |
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ushmm_url: https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn504545 |
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gender: m |
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birth_date: 1920-09-18 |
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birth_year: 1920.0 |
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place_of_birth: new york city, ny |
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country: usa |
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experience_group: soldier |
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ghetto(s)_encyclopedia: none |
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ghetto: none |
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camp(s)_encyclopedia: none |
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camp: none |
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non_ss_camp: none |
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region: none |
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needs_research: checked |
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data_entry: gg |
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accession: 1989.h.0363 |
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revisit: none |
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tags: transcripts |
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--- |
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<body><dialogue class=""><p><sentence id="1">RAY BUCH December 28, 1989</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="3">Q: Ray, can you, uh, tell me your, your full name please?</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="5">A: I'm Raymond Stephen Buch, B-U-C-H. It's German.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="7">Q: And where were you born?</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="9">A: I was born in <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">New York City</span>, in <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Manhattan</span>, in the <span class="BUILDING">Harlem Hospital</span>.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="11">Q: In what <span class="NPIP">year</span>?</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="13">A: In the year 1920, in September 18th.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="15">Q: Um, where did you grow up?</sentence><sentence id="16">Tell me a bit about your family and about your parents.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="19">A: Well, my folks were from, uh, the <span class="COUNTRY">Ukraine</span>.</sentence><sentence id="20">Uh, my mother came from the Polish side of the <span class="ENV_FEATURES">Bug River</span> and and my father was on the <span class="REGION">Russian side</span> and, uh, they were childhood friends and they immigrated to the <span class="COUNTRY">United States</span> at different times and met in <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">New York</span> and my father was in World War | and, uh, in the infantry which, uh, I was quite proud of as you'll find out later.</sentence><sentence id="21">And, uh, he bought a <span class="DLF">farm</span> in <span class="REGION">New Jersey</span> and we shortly moved to <span class="REGION">New Jersey</span>, that is the father and mother, and, uh, when my mother was pregnant with me she went to a lying-in hospital which happened to be in <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">New York City</span> because the <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">railroad train</span> went right through our <span class="DLF">farm</span>, stopped at the <span class="BUILDING">house</span> and picked her up and delivered her to <span class="BUILDING">Pennsylvania Station</span> and she took a <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">cab</span> to the <span class="BUILDING">hospital</span>.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="25">Q: Okay.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="27">A: There was no such facilities in <span class="REGION">New Jersey</span> at the time.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="29">Q: Okay.</sentence><sentence id="30">Um, tell me then a little bit...you grew up in <span class="REGION">New Jersey</span>?</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="33">A: Yes.</sentence><sentence id="34">Yeah.</sentence><sentence id="35">Then we went back to the <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">city</span> for a couple of years and I got to be a, uh, street bum and, uh, kids learned how to smoke cigarettes and rammed around and got into gang fights and the usual.</sentence><sentence id="36">And, uh, at, uh, age ten we moved back to the <span class="DLF">farm</span> because of the Depression and we were on a <span class="DLF">farm</span> until I was inducted into the Army.</sentence><sentence id="37">I became a carpenter before I went in the Army, and that's why I was in the engineer... in the engineers.</sentence><sentence id="38">We had, uh, uh, I had the background for it, having built <span class="BUILDING">factories</span> and <span class="BUILDING">movie theaters</span> and different structures, <span class="BUILDING">houses</span>, <span class="BUILDING">barns</span> and so on in <span class="REGION">New Jersey</span> before I went in the Army.</sentence><sentence id="39">And in the <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Armny</span> I picked up on that and learned a lot of new things.</sentence><sentence id="40">Learned how to blow up the things that I had built, and which was a terrible thing in my mind--when we had to destroy <span class="BUILDING">buildings</span> and <span class="DLF">bridges</span> and even <span class="ENV_FEATURES">trees</span> which we blew down occasionally to, uh, to make the war effort a little more, uh, well, not useful but to learn what we had to do in service, in combat.</sentence><sentence id="41">And it stood us in good stead stead because the things we learned were, uh, important to the Army and nobody else.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="51">Q: Right.</sentence><sentence id="52">Uh, tell me about when you uh, what were the circumstances in which you were taken <span class="NPIP">overseas</span>?</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="55">A: Well, we went, we [were] inducted in the Army, in the Armed Forces, in 1942, uh, late in "42, in November, and we maneuvered in <span class="REGION">Louisiana</span> and <span class="REGION">Texas</span> for approximately a year, uh, a little over a year, and, uh, we, uh, then went to <span class="REGION">Texas</span> and the plains of dry, plains of <span class="REGION">Texas</span> near <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Abilene</span>, at <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Camp Barkley</span> and then we went to the <span class="DLF">desert</span> to get desert training at Patton's <span class="BUILDING">desert training center</span>, which is now a national monument.</sentence><sentence id="56">And in those days it was bleak, dreary, miles of endless wastes, and typical of <span class="COUNTRY">North Africa</span> where we thought we might go.</sentence><sentence id="57">However that war ended before we got there.</sentence><sentence id="58">So we trained in the States until September of 1944.</sentence><sentence id="59">And then we shipped from <span class="REGION">California</span> to <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Camp Kilmer</span>, <span class="REGION">New Jersey</span>; and from there to <span class="COUNTRY">England</span>, because the 12th Armored Division had taken our equipment.</sentence><sentence id="60">We were landed in <span class="COUNTRY">England</span> instead of directly in on the continent.</sentence><sentence id="61">Then from <span class="COUNTRY">England</span> we got trans-shipped to the continent.</sentence><sentence id="62">And we landed at <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Cherbourg</span>, and we started to track east towards the, uh, <span class="REGION">fighting front</span>.</sentence><sentence id="63">And about the time we got there--December 16th, 1944--is when the Battle of the Bulge started.</sentence><sentence id="64">So we were thrown into the Battle of the Bulge, and that was our first baptismal of fire.</sentence><sentence id="65">And, uh, first couple of days we lost hundreds and hundreds of men, wounded and killed.</sentence><sentence id="66">Approximately 300 killed and a couple of thousand wounded.</sentence><sentence id="67">And, uh, from there we went to the <span class="DLF">Siegfried Line</span> after crossing the <span class="ENV_FEATURES">Rhine River</span>, and we traveled across Europe, uh, like vagabonds, thirty miles at a time.</sentence><sentence id="68">We'd stop and wait for the rest of the infantry to catch up.</sentence><sentence id="69">We were in an armored division which would go thirty miles in a day easily whereas an infantry division were lucky to go three or four miles in a day.</sentence><sentence id="70">So we were always ahead of our, uh, support units.</sentence><sentence id="71">We had infantry in our own <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">units</span>, which defended the people who were, uh, in spear-heading as we called it.</sentence><sentence id="72">And, uh, we travelled across Europe, uh, for, uh, weeks at a time and towards the end of the war was just a continual pack, pick-up, pack-up, dig-in, pack-up and go, go, go.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="91">Q: Was the fighting very heavy at that point?</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="93">A: Uh, well, we had a lot of pockets of resistance.</sentence><sentence id="94">The German people, the Volksturm and the SS would drive the local farmers into shooting at us.</sentence><sentence id="95">If they didn't shoot at us, they would shoot the farmer.</sentence><sentence id="96">And they made feeble attempts at trying to shoot us naturally and the SS, uh, troops kept moving back in towards the interior of <span class="COUNTRY">Germany</span>, and, uh, the, well, you know, this went on a couple of months.</sentence><sentence id="97">I'm trying to talk here in a few minutes and describe, uh, uh, a couple of months of activity--it's very difficult.</sentence><sentence id="98">The, uh, thing that I remember was we started to see our men being killed and because of our men being killed, a couple here and a couple there, we would kill whole squads of Germans the way they mowed down the, uh, prisoners and, uh, their opponents.</sentence><sentence id="99">And sometimes the <span class="DLF">hillsides</span> would be covered with bodies of the Americans, or a <span class="DLF">hillside</span> would be covered with the bodies of the Germans, and then later on when they were trying to march the political prisoners that were in, <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">concentration camp</span> inmates or, uh, slaves on <span class="DLF">farms</span>, they would, uh, march them ahead of them trying to get them out of our way so we wouldn't see what we they had done to these people apparently.</sentence><sentence id="100">Anduh....</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="109">Q: Did you see any of this?</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="111">A: Yes.</sentence><sentence id="112">These bodies were lying along the <span class="DLF">roadsides</span> where they'd fallen in exhaustion or they were shot because they weren't going fast enough and, uh, it was a terrible thing but, uh, it was practically a common occurrence in the last days of the war.</sentence><sentence id="113">From April 15th to the end of the war we saw this in many <span class="NPIP">places</span> and, uh, uh, the, uh....</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="117">Q: Was that your first contact with <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">concentration camp</span> victims?</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="119">A: Was, was in April, about the 15th of April, yeah, we started to see the where they had been marched ahead of us because, uh, in because of the nature of the spear-heading, the 11th Armored was a part of Patton's 3rd Army which you see here on my cap, this is the 11th Armored Division, and I was in the 56th Engineers, and that's this little insignia right here which is our uniform insignia.</sentence><sentence id="120">And the 11th Armored patch was ordinarily worn on your shoulder and, uh, there there were several armored divisions.</sentence><sentence id="121">We were one of them.</sentence><sentence id="122">The <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">4th Armored</span> was a sister division, and we were leap-frogging ahead, uh, in spurts as it were until and then we'd rest for a day or two until the infantry caught up to, to, uh, contain the <span class="REGION">lands</span> that we had just over-run.</sentence><sentence id="123">And that's when we would see these prisoners who had been walking ahead of us for a couple of days.</sentence><sentence id="124">We'd catch up to them and we'd see the ones who had been, uh, uh, had died along the <span class="DLF">roadsides</span>.</sentence><sentence id="125">And by the hundreds in some cases, and then just here and there and then they tried to bury some and they were, made half-hearted attempts because they took too much time to bury them.</sentence><sentence id="126">They were trying to hide the, the ones that had died and then there were so many of them they just left them after a while.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="135">Q: All right, tell me if you would where you were as you were about to approach <span class="POPULATED_PLACE" lat="48.257331" long="14.50012">Mauthausen</span>?</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class=""><p><sentence id="137">How did you get there?</sentence></p></dialogue><dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="138">A: Well, uh, we were in a combat command.</sentence><sentence id="139">And Combat Command A is the one I was in ordinarily.</sentence><sentence id="140">Uh, we were down in...in <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Linz</span>.</sentence><sentence id="141">We were, we forked out.</sentence><sentence id="142">A combat command, one would go to the left, one would go to the right and sometimes a third combat command called "CCR," or "Reserve," would take a central point.</sentence><sentence id="143">And there would be three prongs of us armored, uh, divisions spanning out and covering as much <span class="REGION">territory</span> as we could; and taking it in and and opposing and and mowing down the opposition with our heavy guns, our 75, uh, millimeter guns and three-inch guns on, uh, <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">tank destroyers</span>.</sentence><sentence id="144">And, uh, we kept going and going and until we got to <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Linz</span>.</sentence><sentence id="145">That was CCA, but CCB went, uh, to the north ofus...</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="154">Q: Excuse me.</sentence><sentence id="155">Translate.</sentence><sentence id="156">What is CCB...?</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="160">A: Combat Command B. There are three combat commands in an armored division - Combat Command A, which is, uh, composed of select troops depending on a situation from the main body of the division which of 11,000 men, and, uh, CCB would be another group of men, engineers and tank destroyers, uh, or artillery depending on what we thought we needed, medical men and of course supplies always brought up the rear, following the trains- -they called it <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">division train</span>.</sentence><sentence id="161">And then CCR was a reserve command of troops ready to go to the aid of CCB or CCA whichever was needed.</sentence><sentence id="162">In most cases they were always in the back.</sentence><sentence id="163">But when needed, they would be shifted to the front, or to relieve the pressure of one group that was in the front.</sentence><sentence id="164">For instance, CCA was stuck in the, uh, certain section of <span class="DLF">Siegfred line</span> for a couple of days and couldn't get through and had some casualties, so they took them back and CCR replaced them.</sentence><sentence id="165">That's the, that's the, there's three parts--they call it a triangular division, and those are the three parts.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="172">Q: So you were moving toward <span class="POPULATED_PLACE" lat="48.257331" long="14.50012">Mauthausen</span> ... .</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="174">A: Right, and CCB, uh, were the ones that found the <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">camp</span>.</sentence><sentence id="175">They, uh, the doctor--that's, uh, Doormeyer (ph), I believe it was, he had gotten a Red Cross, uh, official and they came down the <span class="DLF">road</span> and with a Red Cross flag flying on their, uh, <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">Volkswagen</span>, and, uh, our men spotted it and the one fellow, uh, Sergeant Albert, uh, J. Kosiek,!</sentence><sentence id="176">uh, was able to speak Polish and so did the doctor that was in this, uh, uh, vehic..uh, <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">Volkswagen</span>.</sentence><sentence id="177">And, uh, he said, "We have a <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">camp</span>.</sentence><sentence id="178">They're ready to surrender.</sentence><sentence id="179">We want you to come and take the...the Germans prisoner."</sentence><sentence id="180">And they came down to meet us; so they took us right to the <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">camp</span>.</sentence><sentence id="181">And, uh, the fellows were greeted with cheers and the SS troops had already evacuated because they knew what was going to happen to them, and they only left the ordinary German soldiers there who were guards.</sentence><sentence id="182">And these, uh, German soldiers, uh, had of course thrown all their weapons in and now the people had them.</sentence><sentence id="183">And they were ready to shoot all the soldiers, but, uh, we kept them from doing that and, uh, but they did hang some of the worst, uh, guards, some of the ones that had treated them the worst--the, they took care of them before we got there actually.</sentence><sentence id="184">They were hanging on the <span class="DLF">fences</span>, uh, butchered and, uh, desecrated; it's no worse than what they had done except here you saw an able-bodied man now hanging on an <span class="DLF">electric fence</span> and, uh, cut apart and they they were paying back a little bit you know of what they had gotten.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="196">Q: Okay.</sentence><sentence id="197">Let's back up a minute.</sentence><sentence id="198">You are about, you are approaching the <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">camp</span>.</sentence><sentence id="199">You have your your doctor in front of you?</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="204">A: Yeah, this doctor went, went, uh, took us right up to the <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">camp</span> and right to the main <span class="DLF">gate</span> and, Ul exasare</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="206">Q: Describe that.</sentence><sentence id="207">Describe entering the <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">camp</span>.</sentence><sentence id="208">Tell me exactly what you saw.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="212">A: Well, uh, let let me put this, uh, let me get you straight on this.</sentence><sentence id="213">I had gone with CCA to <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Linz</span> " Officially, Staff Sargeant Albert J. Kosiek.</sentence><sentence id="214">Platoon leader of First Platoon, Troop D, 41st Cavalry Reconnaissance Squadron, Mechanized.</sentence><sentence id="215">and we had, uh, taken over two tons of dynamite off the <span class="DLF">Adolph Hitler Bridge</span>, my squad and I, because we don't want nobody else there because if, if there was booby trap we overlooked, it would have blown the whole <span class="DLF">bridge</span> and ourselves to bits.</sentence><sentence id="216">Meantime this was going on at the <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">camp</span>.</sentence><sentence id="217">I'm telling you what Albert Kosiack told us, when we went back in 1975 and he had, we had, uh, we went over by <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">plane</span> and we went, we were together for a week or so, and we talked this thing over and, uh, I feel as if I were there.</sentence><sentence id="218">And, uh, well the people just hugged them fellows; they just, they--it was indescribable.</sentence><sentence id="219">They were so happy.</sentence><sentence id="220">They were screaming and they were trying to touch them and, uh, fellows and, uh, he said he'll never forget it and of course the doctor who was, uh, who could speak Polish was, was, the doctor told, uh, Kosiack told the doctor to have the people who now had the German machine guns and everything to please stack them up and, uh, we'll take care of them.</sentence><sentence id="221">So they set fire to them.</sentence><sentence id="222">So that the people wouldn't have the guns because they would be going down in the <span class="REGION">countryside</span> shooting everybody, so to keep them from doing that, they stacked all the guns and then they set fire to them.</sentence><sentence id="223">But the, by the time we got near, the people knew the war was over because <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">airplanes</span> and radios, they had, somebody had a radio--they had one radio in the <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">camp--</span>and they knew the war was almost over.</sentence><sentence id="224">It wasn't over until the 8th.</sentence><sentence id="225">We got there on May Sth, three days before the war was over.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="242">Q: When did you physically get to the <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">camp</span>?</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="244">A: I got into the <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">camp</span> about May 10th, when they called for the engineers to come with <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">bulldozers</span>.</sentence><sentence id="245">I was in the engineers as I explained before, and my friend Al Salzman (ph) from <span class="REGION">Massachusetts</span> was a bulldozer operator so, uh, I was helping him and, uh, taking movies and black and white pictures, slides.</sentence><sentence id="246">I had all the film I needed because, you may think this is funny, but I had a lot of girlfriends and these girls were sending me film from the <span class="COUNTRY">United States</span>, and I had all the movies that I took pictures everyday of combat.</sentence><sentence id="247">When I wasn't being shot at I was shooting with movie film and with, uh, black and white.</sentence><sentence id="248">And I have hundreds and hundreds of feet of movie film which unfortunately didn't all get <span class="BUILDING">home</span>.</sentence><sentence id="249">It was x-rayed.</sentence><sentence id="250">It was, uh, lost.</sentence><sentence id="251">It was stolen.</sentence><sentence id="252">It was buried.</sentence><sentence id="253">One, one, in one timea___ went right through my knapsack full of Battle of the Bulge pictures.</sentence><sentence id="254">The 35 millimeters, most of <span class="DLF">mine</span> was gone.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="266">Q: Okay.</sentence><sentence id="267">Let's let's get back, we're back from the film.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="270">A: Yeah, right.</sentence><sentence id="271">Well, I'm just trying to tell you why I got the film in the <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">camp</span>.</sentence><sentence id="272">I had all film and I'm sorry I don't have all of the film that I did take.</sentence><sentence id="273">But anyway ....</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="278">Q: I want to see, for the purpose of this tape, I need to ask you if you would to describe the scene at <span class="POPULATED_PLACE" lat="48.257331" long="14.50012">Mauthausen</span> when you, Ray Buch, first went through those <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">camps</span>.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="280">A: Okay.</sentence><sentence id="281">We came up through the <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">town</span> and, uh, it's on a steep hillside, on the top of a <span class="ENV_FEATURES">mountain</span> and a <span class="DLF">quarry</span> is, uh, next to it which is below them and part of the <span class="ENV_FEATURES">mountain</span> which the <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">camp</span> sets on, if they keep on quarrying there the <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">camp</span> will fall down into the <span class="DLF">quarry</span>.</sentence><sentence id="282">Uh, as we approached it looked like a hugh <span class="BUILDING">prison</span> which we have back in the <span class="COUNTRY">States</span>.</sentence><sentence id="283">And that's exactly what it was.</sentence><sentence id="284">However, inside the <span class="DLF">prison walls</span> and in back of them were, uh, compounds consisting of <span class="BUILDING">barracks</span>, which held a couple of hundred people and these were in the main part of the <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">camp,</span> on the top part and here we saw double <span class="DLF">electrified fences</span>.</sentence><sentence id="285">Uh, uh, people were by this time sunning themselves, and a lot of people were nude because they had no clothes: they had been worn off or torn off by those who were stronger and, uh, people were walking around nude because they didn't have enough clothes at the time.</sentence><sentence id="286">Uh, we had, uh, as I said there were other visitors coming.</sentence><sentence id="287">In fact I think the Russians came one of the days and they of course they started then to bring troops in from the <span class="REGION">Russian front</span>, from the <span class="REGION">American side</span>, (cough) excuse me, and from the German civilians nearby we started to get those people to come up by the truckload and we told them to dress in their Sunday best, and then we made them dig <span class="DLF">graves</span>, and, uh, we wanted them to see what was going on and then we had them carry the bodies, load the bodies in the <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">wagons</span>.</sentence><sentence id="288">We took wagonload after wagonload of bodies out to the <span class="DLF">grave site</span>, which was the <span class="DLF">soccer field</span> or the sport, uh, they call it the <span class="DLF">Sportplatz</span>.</sentence><sentence id="289">And, uh, we made the Germans handle, load them up in the <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">wagons</span> from inside the <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">camp,</span> take them down to the the, uh, <span class="DLF">graveyard</span>, the <span class="DLF">grave site</span>, and unload them, put them down in the <span class="DLF">graves</span>, side by side, by the hundreds--would be a hundred and fifty people or so in a row--and side, practically on top of each other.</sentence><sentence id="290">They were such, they were all skin and bones and it was--I have pictures of them and movies which you'll see later, but the, uh, uh, bodies were so emaciated that that you you couldn't possibly understand how those people were alive and walking around.</sentence><sentence id="291">And, uh, some of those walking around looked better than the dead, of course, a little better than the dead and some of them looked worse, and they're still alive depending on their resistance or whatever--I don't know.</sentence><sentence id="292">But it was incredible that they were still walking in many cases.</sentence><sentence id="293">The walking dead we called them at that time.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="308">Q: What was the reaction of the German civilians to having to bury the dead?</sentence><sentence id="309">What did they . .</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class=""><p></p></dialogue><dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="313">A: They, they all they just shook their heads.</sentence><sentence id="314">They were crying.</sentence><sentence id="315">They said, No, nein, nein--we didn't know--we knew they were a <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">camp,"</span> but they didn't realize what was happening to all the people because they had, uh, a <span class="DLF">quarry</span> with a railroad--they ran, uh, stone out you know on the <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">train</span> down below.</sentence><sentence id="316">On a lower level there was a <span class="DLF">railroad track</span> to take the <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">train</span>, uh, the quarry stone out to different building projects throughout <span class="COUNTRY">Austria</span>.</sentence><sentence id="317">Went to the main <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">railroad</span>, down along the <span class="ENV_FEATURES">Danube</span>.</sentence><sentence id="318">And, uh, they didn't realize that the there would be carloads of, uh, uh, clothing going out from all these people, would be going out by the carloads to be reprocessed into new blankets and German Army uniforms or whatever, uh, from the people who had died.</sentence><sentence id="319">And they didn't incinerate any of the clothing the clothing because, uh, it was bad enough burning up the bodies that they burned, and, uh, the German people were were, knew there was a <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">camp.</span></sentence><sentence id="320">They knew people was going to it but I don't thing they knew how bad it was.</sentence><sentence id="321">It's a similar situation in the <span class="COUNTRY">United States</span>--now we have newspaper reporters that get in and we tear our jails apart.</sentence><sentence id="322">We know what's going on because we're an open free public, but under a dictatorship, I believe that most of those people did not know and they acted as if they didn't know.</sentence><sentence id="323">And they cried.</sentence><sentence id="324">Of course we did too.</sentence><sentence id="325">I can cry right now thinking about how terrible it was and, uh, I had an empathy for them because, uh, I was of German descent.</sentence><sentence id="326">My parents spoke German and, uh, but however they didn't teach it to me because it was taboo in World War I and I knew my English and only knew a few words, mostly cuss words in German.</sentence><sentence id="327">When my father would get mad, he would say, .</sentence><sentence id="328">Uh, that, that's my imperfect German but that's what about the extent of my German.</sentence><sentence id="329">However I picked it up over there and I was able to interview a couple of the girls.</sentence><sentence id="330">I picked on girls because they were pretty as, as you, as I said before; I don't know why but the these girls always did me favors and this one girl said that she had been marched ahead of the German troops from <span class="REGION">Silesia</span> and coll... and the story confirms what I had said earlier about marching them from the ea..<span class="REGION">western front</span> towards the center of <span class="COUNTRY">Germany</span> and from the <span class="REGION">eastern front</span> towards the center of <span class="COUNTRY">Germany</span>, and they had marched all these thousands of people in, uh, to <span class="POPULATED_PLACE" lat="48.257331" long="14.50012">Mauthausen</span> from various camps around the east and west and this one girl was, uh, been marched for about a week she said ahead of the Germans.</sentence><sentence id="331">She says better to with the Germans than the Russians, because they were raping the girls and the women and it was pathetic.</sentence><sentence id="332">We had a <span class="DLF">line</span> of demarcation, the <span class="ENV_FEATURES">Steyr River</span>; the Russians on one <span class="NPIP">side</span> and the Americans on the other.</sentence><sentence id="333">And it was bedlam over there - screaming and killing and shooting and tearing the <span class="NPIP">place</span> apart.</sentence><sentence id="334">They [the Russians] would send the <span class="INT_SPACE">toilets</span> back <span class="BUILDING">home</span> and the sink...the running water, they, forgetting that they needed running water.</sentence><sentence id="335">And they were just a bunch of wild animals, the Russian soldiers.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="360">Q: Let's come back to <span class="POPULATED_PLACE" lat="48.257331" long="14.50012">Mauthausen</span>.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="362">A: Yeah.</sentence><sentence id="363">Right.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="366">Q: Okay.</sentence><sentence id="367">You are in <span class="POPULATED_PLACE" lat="48.257331" long="14.50012">Mauthausen</span>.</sentence><sentence id="368">You have started to bury the dead.</sentence><sentence id="369">Uh, were you involved at all in helping to get the <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">camp</span> organized?</sentence><sentence id="370">What, what was done?</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="376">A: Well, the <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">camp,</span> the doctors started coming in and they had already had, uh, uh, experience April 15th, uh, out in, uh, <span class="POPULATED_PLACE" lat="48.269612" long="11.468478">Dachau</span>.</sentence><sentence id="377">It was one of the biggest ones we overran, which was around April 15th.</sentence><sentence id="378">So by the 5th of May when we got there, and a couple of days later when the engineers got there to, to start digging <span class="DLF">trenches</span> to bury the dead, uh, they were pretty much, uh, they pretty well knew what they had to do to help these people, so we rushed in supplies and, uh, emergency supplies from, uh, the Army medical, uh, supplies and surplus, uh, Army uniforms and, uh, the, uh, various <span class="BUILDING">factories</span> and <span class="BUILDING">warehouses</span> around that the Germans had or the Austrians had were utilized to supply foo.</sentence><sentence id="379">We raided those in other words, and we, the civilian population had, was, had to go without.</sentence><sentence id="380">In fact that winter, the following winter, they a lot of them almost starved.</sentence><sentence id="381">Uh, but we were trying to to feed these people.</sentence><sentence id="382">And, uh, our division set up the, uh...and Colonel Seibel was in command, and he was in command of CCB at the time as I mentioned earlier.</sentence><sentence id="383">And he directed the, uh, uh ...the proceedings, that is, uh, the cleaning up of the <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">camp</span> and the burning of this and burning of that.</sentence><sentence id="384">Some of the clothes and things that we, were burned up and old, uh, latrines--uh, they were filthy.</sentence><sentence id="385">Uh, we tried to get rid of some of the things that were contagious that would spread germs and so on.</sentence><sentence id="386">So the people themselves were still dying because they were beyond help.</sentence><sentence id="387">We got there too late and they died daily, uh, by the hundreds the first few days and then they tapered off and there was a few, maybe a dozen a day, uh, thirty days later.</sentence><sentence id="388">But, uh, we were there for about thirty days, our division, and then the 26th Infantry Division took over.</sentence><sentence id="389">In fact, some of those came in early so they could see how we were doing it.</sentence><sentence id="390">Our men stood guard to keep the, uh, people under control because some of the, the Russian prisoners were very aggressive anduh....</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="406">Q: What does that mean?</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="408">A: Well, they they wanted to shoot every German that came in the <span class="NPIP">place</span> because they had been, uh, put in, incarcerated in this <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">camp</span> and they were skin and bones and they, they were ready to tear them apart with their bare hands, so we had to have our men walking around with guns to keep everything, keep the keep these people from uh killing each other or killing their former, uh, masters so called.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="410">Q: What was your role in the <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">camp</span>?</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="412">A: Well, I was, uh, an engineer and and as I said our, my project was to, uh, help bury the dead because my buddy, Al Salzman, was on a <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">bulldozer</span> and I helped him grease it and maintain it and, uh, had opportunity to see quite a lot of the <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">camp</span>.</sentence><sentence id="413">Well, and so did he, and its amazing how, uh, you can forget details.</sentence><sentence id="414">There was so many things going on and if somebody prompts you or if you see a picture, they'll bring back a whole story just about a picture.</sentence><sentence id="415">Uh, a picture can tell a thousand words.</sentence><sentence id="416">Well, I took a lot of movies and maybe they'll be put on tape later and that'll explain some of what I'm talking about.</sentence><sentence id="417">But, uh... .</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="424">Q: What other <span class="NPIP">parts</span> . . .</sentence><sentence id="425">you've, you've described the burial of the dead very well and I thank you.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="428">A: Yeah.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="430">Q: Uh, what other parts of the <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">camp</span> did you see?</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="432">A: Oh I, we went through the, uh, <span class="BUILDING">barracks</span>, the different <span class="BUILDING">barracks</span> to see how the people were.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="434">Q: What was the condition of the <span class="BUILDING">barracks</span>?</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="436">A: All right.</sentence><sentence id="437">The <span class="BUILDING">barracks</span> were, this was, in the few days that we were there, the first few days that we were there, there were still some dead in the <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">bunks</span>, and we were getting the German people to take them out, and they threw them out like (ph)_ out in the <span class="DLF">yards</span>, and they were piled up there.</sentence><sentence id="438">Then from there they took and put them into <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">wagons</span> and took them down to the <span class="DLF">graveyard</span>.</sentence><sentence id="439">And now in the <span class="BUILDING">barracks</span> where the, uh, people, where there were six hundred in a <span class="BUILDING">barracks</span>, there were two and three people in each <span class="INT_SPACE">bunk</span>.</sentence><sentence id="440">They were so skinny from malnutrition that, uh, two people could sleep side by side very easily and they, there were so few <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">bunks</span> they had to take turns sleeping.</sentence><sentence id="441">And, uh, uh, I took pictures, movies inside the <span class="BUILDING">barracks</span> and, uh, I'll never forget these people were so weak that the ones who had, were stronger, would strip the clothes off of the weak ones who couldn't fight back and put those clothes on themselves because they were better for instance than their own.</sentence><sentence id="442">None of these people were issued clothes.</sentence><sentence id="443">They had uniforms and when the uniforms wore out at this late stage of the war, why they were nude.</sentence><sentence id="444">And there were so many women just lying nude in their <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">bunks</span> they and I I felt bad about taking movies of them so I got some of them waving but I didn't make it a point to ... and anyhow I didn't get all those movies <span class="BUILDING">home</span> anyhow.</sentence><sentence id="445">But I do have some in the <span class="BUILDING">barracks</span>.</sentence><sentence id="446">This will explain what I am talking about.</sentence><sentence id="447">It was unbelievable.</sentence><sentence id="448">The <span class="BUILDING">barracks</span>, uh, in the <span class="BUILDING">barracks</span> the <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">bunks</span> were four to six high and had to climb up like monkeys and some of them were too weak to get to their <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">bunks</span>, so they sleep on the bottom one and the ones that were stronger would sleep on top.</sentence><sentence id="449">And, uh, that's where I interviewed the young lady from, uh, Sil... <span class="REGION">Upper Silesia</span>, and you'd wonder when you see her, uh, why she looked so, uh, well-nourished.</sentence><sentence id="450">It's only because she had of her own via...volition, of her own free will, marched with those prisoners ahead of the Russians to get away from the Russians.</sentence><sentence id="451">And, uh, it was an anachronism in the middle of all this starving, starv...and starved people and these human skeletons to see someone looking as well as she did.</sentence><sentence id="452">But there were quite a few others that had just been marched in a few days before and hadn't had a chance to starve.</sentence><sentence id="453">The way, I hate to even, it, it, it's so silly when you think back on it, how these people just starved to death.</sentence><sentence id="454">They would give them rations of one piece of bread, a crumb of bread for a day, and a lot of times the bread was moldy and we started feeding them with soup and, uh, bread which we made from the flour we got downtown.</sentence><sentence id="455">We got the bakeries going and a little later on we got carpenters in, from the German soldiers, carpenters and plumbers and to get everything back in order because a lot of things were destroyed in the, by the people in fighting and then they destroyed it themselves because they were so sick of the <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">camp--</span>they were trying to knock down wire and everything.</sentence><sentence id="456">It was, uh, double <span class="DLF">electrified fences</span> to keep them in the compounds and, uh, the bodies were just thrown outside the <span class="BUILDING">barracks</span> into pile, into piles in the <span class="DLF">streets</span> there.</sentence><sentence id="457">There's no place else to bur...there's no place to bury them in the <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">camp</span>, the <span class="REGION">upper part</span>, until we started digging these <span class="DLF">trenches</span>.</sentence><sentence id="458">And, uh, let's see....</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="482">Q: What else did you see in <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">camp</span>?</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="484">A: Well, as I said, the people were lining up, uh, uh, to, uh, go to these, uh, <span class="BUILDING">soup mill</span>... or <span class="INT_SPACE">kitchens</span> or soup pots and what always struck me so odd, the people would be walking without shirts or without pants on, and they didn't think anything of it; they were so used to seeing humans nude most of the time.</sentence><sentence id="485">They stripped them everyday and hosed them down.</sentence><sentence id="486">This is stories that they told us later.</sentence><sentence id="487">But I actually saw and have movies of people walking around without clothes on and think nothing of it.</sentence><sentence id="488">The men in particular.</sentence><sentence id="489">Uh, the women weren't that, uh, uh, aggressive.</sentence><sentence id="490">In other words they, they were more polite.</sentence><sentence id="491">They tried to hide themselves.</sentence><sentence id="492">And the women that were nude in their <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">bunks</span> would put their hands over their breasts and it was pathetic.</sentence><sentence id="493">Very sad.</sentence><sentence id="494">I'm, I'm glad that it, that it has never been that bad since, uh, that is that we we haven't publicized these things, but what we do know and we hope that it never happens again and, uh, if these pictures will help prove a point, I'm sure they won't happen again.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="506">Q: Did you see the <span class="DLF">quarry</span>?</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="510">A: Oh yes.</sentence><sentence id="511">It was, as I said, it was down, uh, uh, below the <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">camp</span> itself.</sentence><sentence id="512">The <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">camp</span> was on the highest point of the <span class="DLF">hill</span>.</sentence><sentence id="513">The <span class="DLF">quarry</span> was, was starting to go into the side of the <span class="ENV_FEATURES">mountain</span> towards the; ultimately they, as I said earlier, the <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">camp</span> would have fallen in if they quarried that far.</sentence><sentence id="514">But the the <span class="DLF">staircase</span>, they, they quarried the <span class="DLF">staircase</span> right out of the stone of the <span class="ENV_FEATURES">mountain</span> and, uh, there were big blocks of stone.</sentence><sentence id="515">It was a typical <span class="DLF">quarry</span>.</sentence><sentence id="516">They were making building blocks for the <span class="DLF">bridges</span> and the <span class="DLF">highways</span> and also for stone <span class="BUILDING">buildings</span> that they, uh, were putting up here and there.</sentence><sentence id="517">Uh, most of the stones were going for, uh, <span class="DLF">highways</span> and for reinforcing underground <span class="INT_SPACE">bunkers</span> and things like that and the people had to carry stones up the <span class="DLF">stairs</span>, to the main <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">camp</span> because they built a hugh <span class="DLF">dividing wall</span> between the quarters of the SS troopers and the, uh, <span class="INT_SPACE">kitchen</span> and the <span class="BUILDING">infirmary</span> or the <span class="BUILDING">hospital</span>.</sentence><sentence id="518">They built a <span class="DLF">stone wall</span> between those and the, uh, <span class="BUILDING">barracks</span> where they had the experimental prisoners, where they they inoculated them with all kinds of, uh, germs or they froze them in vats of water and, uh, experimented generally.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="528">Q: Describe if you would what the experimental compound looked like.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="530">A: Well, uh, if you've ever been in an <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Army camp</span> in the <span class="COUNTRY">United States</span>, you'll see rows and rows of <span class="BUILDING">barracks</span>.</sentence><sentence id="531">Well, these were a little closer together.</sentence><sentence id="532">Uh, it reminded me of chicken coops on a big chicken ranch, and, uh, there was about seven rows of them and about ten <span class="BUILDING">buildings</span> in each row.</sentence><sentence id="533">And there was about two hundred people in each one of those <span class="BUILDING">barracks</span>.</sentence><sentence id="534">They were smaller than the ones down at the lower side of the <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">camp</span> where, where the quarry prisoners, uh, were quartered, and, uh, I don't know uh....</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="540">Q: What was the condition, what were conditions like inside these <span class="BUILDING">barracks</span>?</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="542">A: Uh, well they were less crowded because, uh, they still had the <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">bunks</span> but they had about three high and they still had about two people in in each one, but they weren't, they weren't as elaborate, hugh; the <span class="BUILDING">buildings</span> weren't as big as the ones in the lower <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">camp</span>, the lower section of the <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">camp</span>.</sentence><sentence id="543">Uh, they were smaller and only about two hundred people in each, which is almost what we had in our own <span class="BUILDING">Army barracks</span> in the States.</sentence><sentence id="544">We had about a hundred and fifty--well not a hundred and...uh, the bigger ones did but we had about seventy-five men and where we had seventy-five men, they had two hundred.</sentence><sentence id="545">That's how much more crowded the <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">bunks</span> were on top of each other whereas we only had <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">bunks</span> on the <span class="INT_SPACE">floor</span>.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="550">Q: What were the condition, the physical condition of these prisoners?</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="552">A: Well, it was very much the same as these the ones that we saw ear... earlier who were when we first came in--the ones who were the strongest naturally had the guns and everything.</sentence><sentence id="553">And but these people that we saw were very weak.</sentence><sentence id="554">They were all starved and all trying to eat a little soup.</sentence><sentence id="555">Uh, we had already started <span class="INT_SPACE">soup kitchens</span>, the first, first day we got there practically.</sentence><sentence id="556">Because the Army, we have so many cooks-- every one, every company has a cook--so we didn't eat.</sentence><sentence id="557">We forfeited our food and told our mess sergeants to take it to the 1 <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">camp</span>, which they did for the first couple of days until we got steady stream of supplies coming in.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="564">Q: Did you go in to the <span class="BUILDING">experimental labs</span>?</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="566">A: No, I, I, they didn't have them set up.</sentence><sentence id="567">They, uh, these experiments were going on before we got there.</sentence><sentence id="568">This is what these people were telling us.</sentence><sentence id="569">I didn't see any of, of these <span class="BUILDING">inno</span>...inoculations or bathing in ice water or whatever.</sentence><sentence id="570">It's just, uh, what the people were telling us and what the records show now that from all kinds of witnesses and from the German records and so on.</sentence><sentence id="571">It collor...you know; it confirms the stories that we heard then.</sentence><sentence id="572">Couldn't-- they were unbelievable.</sentence><sentence id="573">In fact most of the guys were in a daze--so when they got, they couldn't, they they didn't want to comprehend what they had seen.</sentence><sentence id="574">They wanted to forget it.</sentence><sentence id="575">If you ask any of the fellows about what they saw at this <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">camp</span>, they--it was terrible.</sentence><sentence id="576">It stunk and the smell was awful.</sentence><sentence id="577">As I said, I was brought up on a <span class="DLF">farm</span> from age 10, and farm smells didn't bother me, uh, even the vilest, and they were vile--you know, these dead people.</sentence><sentence id="578">Some of them had been dead for a couple of days or more and then they had dysentery and their rectums were all sore and the, the skin was eaten away.</sentence><sentence id="579">These were people that are still alive let alone the dead ones, and they smelled.</sentence><sentence id="580">But I--the, the decaying flesh I was used to because on a <span class="DLF">farm</span> we had all sorts of dead animals and it was much the same.</sentence><sentence id="581">To me, I wasn't, uh, it didn't bother me.</sentence><sentence id="582">But most of the fellows remember the smell because they were city boys.</sentence><sentence id="583">They had not, uh, been exposed to this type of thing.</sentence><sentence id="584">So and as I said, uh, have thought it since then, we were in order and we were used to it because we had seen these bodies along the <span class="DLF">road</span> for a few days before we got to the <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">camp</span> and, uh, we had seen these stripped uniforms and these these human skeletons that, uh, were dead as we went by them, as we went, as we were spear-heading.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="605">Q: Was there anything else about <span class="POPULATED_PLACE" lat="48.257331" long="14.50012">Mauthausen</span> that strikes you in particular?</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="607">A: Well, the the security they had: they had the, they built another <span class="DLF">stone wall</span> between the double <span class="DLF">electrified fence</span> which was the original partition between the, the German officers" quarters; they had a double <span class="DLF">electrified fence</span> with this <span class="DLF">trench</span> in between with barbed wire on the ground over the <span class="DLF">trench</span> and, uh, the the security that they had to provide for themselves to keep these people from climbing over the <span class="DLF">wall</span> to get at them.</sentence><sentence id="608">And, uh, they had machine gun nests at every corner of the <span class="DLF">walls</span> overlooking the compound, and, uh, the other thing I couldn't get over was how the people were all out in the sun trying to sun themselves because they were confined in the <span class="BUILDING">barracks</span> a lot of them and they weren't even out working anymore.</sentence><sentence id="609">They were just kept in the <span class="BUILDING">barracks</span> and they'd feed them with a few crusts of bread and it was a real mess.</sentence><sentence id="610">Everything was smelly.</sentence><sentence id="611">There were no latrine facilities and, uh, they were doing it out in the <span class="DLF">streets</span> in you know their bowel movements and so on--such as they had, which wasn't very much.</sentence><sentence id="612">And I was a medic and I was amazed at having been in, having taught first aid before I went in the Army and being a medic at times in the Army on maneuvers, I was a medical aide, corpsman we called them.</sentence><sentence id="613">Uh, I was quite stricken, uh, stricken I should say by the fact that the genitals, or genitalia of the men and the women were the last things to apparently go because they looked normal.</sentence><sentence id="614">The women's breasts had 2 shrunk quite a bit, but their nipples and, uh, and looked normal.</sentence><sentence id="615">And the men's penises and testicles were about normal.</sentence><sentence id="616">And the rest of them were absolutely bones and, uh, with skin stretched over them.</sentence><sentence id="617">And that's the one thing that I'll never forget is, is the condition of, of the things that are needed to reproduce life.</sentence><sentence id="618">They're the last things to go, as far as I could see.</sentence><sentence id="619">In other words, Mother Nature was trying to save the reproductive organs.</sentence><sentence id="620">It was the one thing that struck me out of looking at all these thousands of dead whenever we buried them.</sentence><sentence id="621">And as I said, we had these, uh, they couldn't dig the <span class="DLF">graves</span> fast enough so we got our <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">bulldozers</span> to dig the <span class="DLF">trenches</span>, push the dirt out and then was a, uh, was a token for the Germans to get shovels and start to shovel the dirt back into the <span class="DLF">trenches</span>.</sentence><sentence id="622">Well we'd have been there for another two weeks burying them if we had to do everything by hand.</sentence><sentence id="623">We did dig a few <span class="DLF">trenches</span> by hand, but we then used the <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">bulldozers</span> because there were so many.</sentence><sentence id="624">They had them stacked up by the hundreds waiting to be buried.</sentence><sentence id="625">They couldn't dig the <span class="DLF">graves</span> fast enough by hand, so that's why we got the German, uh, civilians in there to, uh, handle them.</sentence><sentence id="626">They put them down in the <span class="DLF">graves</span> and laid them side by side and then they would throw a few shovels of dirt in and I'll never forget as the <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">bulldozer</span>, as Al pushed the, uh, stone and sand back into the <span class="DLF">trenches</span>, you would hear a stone crunching the ribs and the bones of the poor bodies down below.</sentence><sentence id="627">It was, because this was backfill for the <span class="DLF">soccer field</span> was made out of backfill and from the <span class="DLF">quarry</span> and there were a lot of hard stones mixed in and when they pushed the stones in they further crushed the poor things that were laid to rest in that, uh, <span class="REGION">area</span>.</sentence><sentence id="628">After the war they said that they moved the bodies to the <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">upper camp</span>--see this was down at the lower level, the <span class="DLF">sports field</span>.</sentence><sentence id="629">Then there was another lower level down around on the quarry level and, uh, there's now a third <span class="DLF">graveyard</span> up on the top where the, uh, the old <span class="BUILDING">barracks</span> used to be for the experimental prisoners in the upper part of the <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">camp.</span></sentence><sentence id="630">The <span class="DLF">stone wall</span> is gone now that was in between, the electrified fences are long gone and shortly after we got most of the people into <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">medical tents</span> away from the <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">camp</span> even.</sentence><sentence id="631">We moved them out into <span class="BUILDING">field hospitals</span>; we burned the <span class="BUILDING">buildings</span> down because they were that smelly and filthy from all the you know unclean--there's no <span class="NPIP">place</span>, no la...no facilities for latrines.</sentence><sentence id="632">They had these <span class="DLF">ditches</span> in the <span class="DLF">streets</span>, and when the rains came, it would wash everything down the hillside.</sentence><sentence id="633">So all that's gone now and it's, it's a <span class="DLF">graveyard</span>.</sentence><sentence id="634">They said they moved the bodies from that <span class="DLF">sports field</span> or <span class="DLF">soccer field</span> but when I went back in 1975 the <span class="ENV_FEATURES">trees</span> had grown over it already in 35 years.</sentence><sentence id="635">I went there 35 years later and, uh, the, it was so changed.</sentence><sentence id="636">It was a big <span class="BUILDING">museum</span> now.</sentence><sentence id="637">Where we had seen all these <span class="BUILDING">barracks</span> there were only; they left three of, uh, in the first row, I think there were three, no four left which were now made a <span class="BUILDING">museum</span>.</sentence><sentence id="638">They showed, they had those on exhibit.</sentence><sentence id="639">But the huge <span class="BUILDING">barracks</span> down below--they had six hundred to eight hundred people in them were all gone, used up for other purposes.</sentence><sentence id="640">But we did burn most of the <span class="BUILDING">barracks</span> in the <span class="REGION">upper part</span>.</sentence><sentence id="641">We left a few in the front which apparently were the cleanest.</sentence><sentence id="642">And, uh, we went back in 1975 and the Austrian civilians had a dinner for us.</sentence><sentence id="643">They provided us with, uh, a chauffeur and a <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">limousine</span> and they, uh, it was unbelievable how they treated us.</sentence><sentence id="644">We were like heroes.</sentence><sentence id="645">And the people, when we went back were hugging us again and trying to touch us and they were grabbing souvenirs and we were giving out little buttons like I have here from my various outfits.</sentence><sentence id="646">These are unit insignia.</sentence><sentence id="647">Here's the <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">41st Cavalry</span> which happens to be the <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">unit</span> that was the first ones in the <span class="DLF">gate</span>.</sentence><sentence id="648">And this Michael Green who was in the 41st Cavalry is going back to Europe this, uh, in 1990 for the 40th Anniversary, 45th Anniversary and, uh, he's bringing 3 some of these along to give to the people for souvenirs.</sentence><sentence id="649">But, uh, we were back again in 1980 and we're trying to go back every five years, and we meet the people that we released, and we meet their children, and now we're bringing our children and it's a great thing that the survivors of <span class="POPULATED_PLACE" lat="48.257331" long="14.50012">Mauthausen</span>, and there were around 12,000 alive when we got there.</sentence><sentence id="650">And I guess maybe un another couple of hundred died and so there were 11,000 actual people alive when we got there, but the ones coming back are the families of the victims who died in <span class="POPULATED_PLACE" lat="48.257331" long="14.50012">Mauthausen</span>.</sentence><sentence id="651">They come back by the thousands.</sentence><sentence id="652">But we were back in 1975 there were around 12,000 people there and you wouldn't know how they got there because every <span class="DLF">road</span> was full of these big, uh, <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">tourists bus</span> that hold fifty people--they were lined up like, uh, <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">cars</span> around a <span class="BUILDING">football stadium</span> in the States.</sentence><sentence id="653">Incredible where they come from <span class="COUNTRY">Spain</span> and <span class="COUNTRY">Hungary</span>, <span class="COUNTRY">Hungaria</span>--all the countries of Europe and, uh, we were, as I said, when they found out we were the liberators they couldn't do enough for us.</sentence><sentence id="654">They practically tore the, they wanted our hats; they wanted, they were going to tear the clothes off us.</sentence><sentence id="655">We were real celebrities.</sentence><sentence id="656">So I felt good about that and I'm; I just felt so sad about all those that were killed, over a hundred twenty thousand were killed in that <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">camp</span>.</sentence><sentence id="657">Or more.</sentence><sentence id="658">They're not sure.</sentence><sentence id="659">It's between a hundred twenty, hundred fifty thousand that they know of.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="713">Q: Is there anything else about <span class="POPULATED_PLACE" lat="48.257331" long="14.50012">Mauthausen</span> that you remember in particular?</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="715">A: Well, nothing except that it was made so the people couldn't get out, and as I said it looked like a <span class="BUILDING">prison</span> when we first observed it, and it was more like a <span class="BUILDING">prison</span> when you got in it, uh, because they don't have the double electrified fences.</sentence><sentence id="716">Our <span class="BUILDING">prisons</span> have <span class="DLF">fences</span>, but not electrified, and, uh, the, uh, condition of the people--the human skeletons walking around was another thing that impressed me.</sentence><sentence id="717">As I said the, uh, that anybody could be alive and that thin when they looked like bones, their legs, their arms, their feet looked swollen in many cases.</sentence><sentence id="718">That was the only thing that looked anywheres near normal was from their ankles down to their insteps.</sentence><sentence id="719">Uh, the rest of the bodies were, uh, skin drawn over their faces as if it were shrunk in the heat or whatever--just unbelievable.</sentence><sentence id="720">And I don't know what else to say...the smells as I said were terrible, but I wasn't too fazed by that for some reason, and I think it was because of my upbringing on a <span class="DLF">farm</span>.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="727">Q: Okay.</sentence><sentence id="728">Thank you.</sentence><sentence id="729">You had mentioned that some of your men were in <span class="POPULATED_PLACE" lat="48.269612" long="11.468478">Dachau</span>.</sentence><sentence id="730">Were you in <span class="POPULATED_PLACE" lat="48.269612" long="11.468478">Dachau</span> as well?</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="735">A: Uh, no, only after the war.</sentence><sentence id="736">Yeah.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="739">Q: Okay.</sentence><sentence id="740">Tell us if you would please, you were in <span class="POPULATED_PLACE" lat="48.257331" long="14.50012">Mauthausen</span> for thirty days roughly?</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="743">A: Yeah.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="745">Q: Where did you go from...no, before we do that, what--by the time you left at the end of thirty days--what shape was the <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">camp</span> in?</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="747">A: Oh, as I said, we started to burn some of the <span class="BUILDING">buildings</span> and, uh, the, uh, we backfilled the 4 <span class="DLF">trenches</span> and the latrines and most of the people were gone.</sentence><sentence id="748">The ones who could walk started walking <span class="BUILDING">home</span> within a couple of days.</sentence><sentence id="749">And, uh, the ones who were very sick we moved out into <span class="BUILDING">field hospitals</span> and, uh, some of those that stayed were trying to help us get the records to find out and to check on how many people were killed and to keep track of everything and we had some of the people working there because they didn't want to go <span class="BUILDING">home</span>.</sentence><sentence id="750">A lot of them were Russians and they didn't want to go back to to <span class="COUNTRY">Russia</span>, so, uh, we tried to keep them, uh, working in the <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">camp</span> and they, because the they said if we go back to <span class="COUNTRY">Russia</span> it will be the end of us.</sentence><sentence id="751">And it was we found out later.</sentence><sentence id="752">They were sent to the <span class="DLF">salt mines</span>, to <span class="REGION">Siberia</span> in other words, and, uh, that was something that I didn't think of until just now, but, uh, they were glad to be left behind.</sentence><sentence id="753">They didn't want to go back to <span class="COUNTRY">Russia</span> and we, they, uh, incidentally from after we let the, as I say, uh, should say, we took the demolitions off the <span class="DLF">bridge</span> in <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Linz</span>.</sentence><sentence id="754">Our group, our engineers were then sent out into, uh, north of CCB and the <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">camp,</span> and thousands, hundreds of thousands of German soldiers and White Russians tried to surrender to us.</sentence><sentence id="755">And we accepted their surrender, and, uh, in place, but they wanted to come into <span class="COUNTRY">Germany</span> you know, on our side of the <span class="DLF">line</span> because they didn't want to be anywheres near the Russians and unfortunately our politicians had said this is the <span class="DLF">line</span> of demarcation and all those Russians on that side, I mean Germans, will have to go back to the Russians and so a couple of hundred thousand soldiers that surrendered to us were returned to the Germans [Russians] and shipped to <span class="REGION">Siberia</span>.</sentence><sentence id="756">But that was, that was the 6th of May.</sentence><sentence id="757">In fact it was the afternoon of the Sth, the 6th and the 7th, and on about the 8th I got to the <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">camp</span>, and I was there on and off for a couple of days, but the main part was when we got the the <span class="DLF">ditches</span> or <span class="DLF">trenches</span> dug for the <span class="DLF">graves</span>.</sentence><sentence id="758">That was my main job there.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="771">Q: Where did you go when you left <span class="POPULATED_PLACE" lat="48.257331" long="14.50012">Mauthausen</span>?</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="773">A: Oh, we were sent into various little <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">cities</span> in <span class="COUNTRY">Austria</span>, uh, to maintain order and, uh, make sure there was no looting by the, uh, prisoners who had gotten away from the <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">camp.</span></sentence><sentence id="774">They were all over.</sentence><sentence id="775">They were going to march <span class="BUILDING">home</span>, but they wanted clothes.</sentence><sentence id="776">They were either stealing it from the Germans or taking it from the Germans, and they were fighting going on and we had to maintain order.</sentence><sentence id="777">It was a real <span class="BUILDING">madhouse</span>.</sentence><sentence id="778">And, uh, we were sent to <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Schwanenstadt</span>.</sentence><sentence id="779">And then from there we were, as engineers, we were sent out to maintain <span class="DLF">roads</span> and rebuild <span class="DLF">bridges</span> and, uh, electrical plants and, uh, to guard the prisoners in <span class="POPULATED_PLACE" lat="47.78781" long="13.757868">Ebensee</span>, which was a camp--a <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">concentration camp</span>--and it was now full of SS prisoners.</sentence><sentence id="780">And these haughty bastards, as we called them, were very independent; and, uh, they...they wouldn't...they didn't want to do anything.</sentence><sentence id="781">They thought they were still lords of the <span class="NPIP">universe</span>, being SS and being used to that, uh, having control, uh, full control over civilians and full control over the German Army.</sentence><sentence id="782">They were the masters of Hitler, they were, uh, Hitler's, uh, supermen.</sentence><sentence id="783">And, uh, we now had them crawling because we didn't feed them.</sentence><sentence id="784">They were digging up worms and eating worms.</sentence><sentence id="785">They dug up all the <span class="ENV_FEATURES">grass</span>.</sentence><sentence id="786">It was in May and June that we started putting them in, in late May.</sentence><sentence id="787">And they were digging up the <span class="ENV_FEATURES">grass</span>.</sentence><sentence id="788">They were eating worms.</sentence><sentence id="789">I mean it.</sentence><sentence id="790">And, uh, they were waiting, praying for rain and we had a few days of rain and the worms would come near the top and they would dig them out.</sentence><sentence id="791">And so we started giving them crackers and things, give them a couple of crackers from our K-ration boxes.</sentence><sentence id="792">And we'd get a wristwatch which was worth maybe seven or eight dollars, and then we sold them to the 5 Russians for over a hundred.</sentence><sentence id="793">And some of the Russians later on were paying five hundred to a thousand dollars for a Mickey Mouse watch, in particular.</sentence><sentence id="794">And we were getting these watches from the SS men and then selling them to the Russians for souvenirs, because we all had watches.</sentence><sentence id="795">We could get them anytime in the PX for about ten bucks.</sentence><sentence id="796">And here we were getting a hundred dollars to five hundred dollars.</sentence><sentence id="797">And some of the fellows that were able to go to <span class="POPULATED_PLACE" lat="52.4546411" long="13.3818501">Berlin</span> and trade with the Russians got over a thousand dollars for a wristwatch that we got for a cigarette.</sentence><sentence id="798">The cigarettes were worth money to them.</sentence><sentence id="799">They were like gold.</sentence><sentence id="800">And every soldier had a pack of cigarettes, a carton of cigarettes, a week issued.</sentence><sentence id="801">Whether you used them or not, you were entitled to a carton.</sentence><sentence id="802">So a lot of the guys learned how to smoke; and I hate to say this, but many of them are dead now because of the lousy habit.</sentence><sentence id="803">And their wives always complained, "Oh, yeah, he's been smoking like this ever since he got out of the Army, and dying of emphysema and lung cancer."</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="835">Q: Let's go back to <span class="POPULATED_PLACE" lat="47.78781" long="13.757868">Ebensee</span>.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="837">A: Okay.</sentence><sentence id="838">There we had double <span class="DLF">electrified fences</span> for them.</sentence><sentence id="839">We left them in <span class="NPIP">place</span>.</sentence><sentence id="840">And, uh, we had <span class="BUILDING">guard towers</span> and machine guns, and that's what we took turns guarding.</sentence><sentence id="841">And I hated that.</sentence><sentence id="842">I was only there a couple days.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="849">Q: Can you describe the <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">camp</span>?</sentence><sentence id="850">In addition to the <span class="DLF">fences</span>, what what did you see?</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="853">A: Well, the, the main <span class="BUILDING">barracks</span> were in back of it and, uh, I just stayed, we had <span class="BUILDING">guard towers</span> in a <span class="DLF">wire enclosure</span> which we had put up in front.</sentence><sentence id="854">It was something new.</sentence><sentence id="855">We had built that.</sentence><sentence id="856">And I...I'd seen Mauthausen, so I didn't go to look at the <span class="INT_SPACE">quarters</span> there because I figured they're all the same.</sentence><sentence id="857">And we were too busy taunting the SS men.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="863">Q: How did you taunt them?</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="865">A: Well, by offering them cigarettes and then crushing them in front of them and then stamping on them.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="867">Q: What, uh.... Did you make the SS do, uh, certain chores?</sentence><sentence id="868">How did you...?</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="871">A: Well, there was so many of them.</sentence><sentence id="872">And there was really nothing much for them to do.</sentence><sentence id="873">We made them build the <span class="DLF">fences</span>, yeah, their own "corrals" you might call it.</sentence><sentence id="874">Yeah.</sentence><sentence id="875">But we didn't trust them to to do what the ordinary soldiers were doing back in <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">camp,</span> in <span class="POPULATED_PLACE" lat="48.257331" long="14.50012">Mauthausen</span>.</sentence><sentence id="876">There, they were restoring the facilities and cleaning up and they were doing the buggy- lugging (ph) when they burnt the <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">camp</span>.</sentence><sentence id="877">And they were burning up anything stuff that was Nazi that they didn't like--I got a Nazi flag.</sentence><sentence id="878">I said, as | was watching it burn.</sentence><sentence id="879">I said, "Oh, I'll grab that and see if it's...." And it bur... guess it's full of <span class="DLF">holes</span>.</sentence><sentence id="880">L..I don't know.</sentence><sentence id="881">I've never unrolled it since I picked it out of the burning pile.</sentence><sentence id="882">And I got it in the <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">car</span>.</sentence><sentence id="883">I was going to show it to you, if you were interested.</sentence><sentence id="884">But that's the only souvenir that I got from the <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">camp</span>.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="899">Q: The SS, uh, I assume eventually you got, uh, <span class="INT_SPACE">soup kitchen</span> up and you fed them finally?</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="903">A: Yeah, yeah, yeah.</sentence><sentence id="904">Well, as I said, I was only there a couple of days because I hated guard duty and, uh, it was just standing there watching these guys do nothing.</sentence><sentence id="905">They'd play cards and dig for worms and they didn't have much to do.</sentence><sentence id="906">There was not much of an <span class="REGION">area</span> to dig for worms.</sentence><sentence id="907">In a couple of days the worms were gone.</sentence><sentence id="908">Unbelievable.</sentence><sentence id="909">So they were and they were without shirts, they were, uh, their uniforms were, uh, either torn off of them or whatever by somebody but a lot of them didn't have any shirts.</sentence><sentence id="910">They had pants and, uh, as I said we taunted them the way they did, uh, the civilians.</sentence><sentence id="911">They would shoot the civilians if they didn't fire at us earlier in the war and, uh, many times the people said the SS made them do it, which was true enough.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="921">Q: Did you see any trace of the real prisoners of <span class="POPULATED_PLACE" lat="47.78781" long="13.757868">Ebensee</span>, the former prisoners of <span class="POPULATED_PLACE" lat="47.78781" long="13.757868">Ebensee</span>?</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="923">A: No.</sentence><sentence id="924">Uh, the <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">camp was,</span> I had been working at <span class="POPULATED_PLACE" lat="48.257331" long="14.50012">Mauthausen</span> and most of those prisoners now the same as in our <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">camp</span> had, uh--well, those who were well were walking <span class="BUILDING">home</span>.</sentence><sentence id="925">They weren't going to wait for <span class="BUILDING">convoys</span>.</sentence><sentence id="926">And the sick ones were already in camps, uh, <span class="BUILDING">hospital tents</span> with the 26th Infantry Division.</sentence><sentence id="927">See, the 26th Infantry Division later took over <span class="POPULATED_PLACE" lat="48.257331" long="14.50012">Mauthausen</span>.</sentence><sentence id="928">And, in fact, I think they got the credit for taking <span class="POPULATED_PLACE" lat="48.257331" long="14.50012">Mauthausen</span>.</sentence><sentence id="929">Because by the time the newspapers finally got there, they claimed--the 26th Infantry Division claimed--they had liberated the <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">camp</span>.</sentence><sentence id="930">They did, in a way; but not the way the <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">11th Armored</span> did.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="939">Q: Okay.</sentence><sentence id="940">We are almost finished with the tape.</sentence><sentence id="941">Is there anything else that you want to add, anything else that you saw that relates to the Holocaust?</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="945">A: I'd like to bring out a point which I don't see, uh, discussed very often.</sentence><sentence id="946">And that is the fact that I personally knew thirteen men that were killed in action, and some right along side of me.</sentence><sentence id="947">And, uh, three hundred were killed in the Battle of the Bulge in the first few days of combat.</sentence><sentence id="948">And then ultimately we lost eight hundred men killed, and four thousand wounded or injured; and, uh, these were all expended in the effort to save Europe from Hitler's Nazi terrorism.</sentence><sentence id="949">And, uh, I'd like to bring that out, that we made a lot of sacrifices and those fellows that did it did it for the freedom not only of the <span class="COUNTRY">United States</span> but of Europe.</sentence><sentence id="950">And it's a point that is only brought <span class="BUILDING">home</span> when you go over and you walk over their <span class="DLF">graves</span>, which I did.</sentence><sentence id="951">And you think of the 45 years, it was 40 years when I walked on the <span class="DLF">grave</span> of my best friend, accidentally.</sentence><sentence id="952">I backed up to take a picture of Patton, his monument, which is at the head of the uh___ Cemetery.</sentence><sentence id="953">And I backed up to get the big cross in and I put my hand down on a tombstone, and as I walked around it I looked and it was August uh Heddenbock (ph), my buddy from back <span class="BUILDING">home</span>.</sentence><sentence id="954">And I just bawled.</sentence><sentence id="955">And I am sorry.</sentence><sentence id="956">I'm just overwhelmed.</sentence><sentence id="957">But that is what I'm thinking about--how lucky we are, all of us, to be here, to see the tapes, to have a free world, and even with the events happening today to see it coming to pass that our efforts have not been in vain.</sentence><sentence id="958">And that is the one thing that I would like to emphasize is that we lost a lot of good buddies.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="973">Q: I cannot think of a more fitting way to end this interview, and I thank you very much.</sentence></p></dialogue><dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="975">A: Well, I thank you for the opportunity to express these thoughts and, and hope then as I say that it will never happen again.</sentence><sentence id="976">Thank you, Doctor, for interviewing me.</sentence><sentence id="977">I appreciate it.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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