DEAR EDITOR:

Since Veterans Day, I was once again looking through photos that my dad took while overseas during World War II. He was in a self-propelled AAA Automatic Weapons battalion and was their radioman, who repaired equipment and took his turn manning the anti-aircraft guns. I inherited his box of small black and white photos and negatives several years ago after my mom passed away.

Growing up he seldom spoke of the war with my brothers and me. When he did share, it was usually some funny story. As I looked through the pictures, though, they revealed a different side of his three and a half years away from home. In light of the current Israel Hamas war, I reviewed some particular photos that shocked me, the first time I saw them. They were ones he took when they liberated a prison camp near Lansberg. They are heartbreaking and disturbing. They clearly show piles of emaciated corpses stacked like firewood. People need to be reminded of the barbarism of the Nazis and their “final solution”.

I found these comments that were made by his commanding officer, in regard to what they found at Lansberg.

“As the 36th assumed control of the prison, it was filled with both criminals and political prisoners (Jews)- 14,000 in facilities built for 500. Prisoners were in various stages of starvation in their black and gray striped shirts and pants. Some were motionless or dead and others just moaned, crying out for food or drink. Medical personnel went to work doing what they could. Around the fenced in enclosure were bodies of some who had tried to escape when they heard Americans approaching. In a nearby wood were three prisoners who had been decapitated. General Dahlquist forced the citizens of Lansberg to line up and go through the prison camp to see what had occurred. They were made to dig large open pit graves and bury the dead prisoners who were little more then skin and bone.”

You can clearly see in one photo civilian townspeople placing bodies onto a cart for burial.

There is no excuse or human rationale for what Hitler and the Fascists did to the Jews and other “undesirables” of Europe. The irrational hatred of Jewish people that exploded in Germany in the 1930’s, today is repeating itself all over the world. The recent attack on Jews in Amsterdam is evidence of that.

In the 1930s the Nazis first started with a negative PR campaign demonizing Jews and Judaism. The infamous brown shirts and Hitler Youth infiltrated the universities. The newest generations of supposedly bright young people in our country seem to be totally ignorant of history. They protest against Israel’s right to defend itself against the hatred and barbaric attacks by Hamas and chant “from the river to the sea” and “I am Hamas”.

Since Hamas took control of Gaza in 2007, they have continuously fired rockets into Israel and have attacked and murdered Israeli citizens. Since the Oslo Peace Accord of 1993, hundreds of Israelis have been murdered or injured by Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah and other terrorist groups. The tragedy of civilian deaths in Gaza is horrible, however, the blame lies squarely at the feet of Hamas. The United States needs to support our friend and ally in the region, and not tell Israel how to conduct their response to the Hamas death cult. Engaging and deprogramming the generations of Gazans and those living in the West Bank, including young children, who have systematically been indoctrinated to hate Jews and Israel, will be a difficult, if not an impossible task, since the poison of antisemitism runs deep.

My prayer is that the war ends, that the killing stop, that Hamas be eradicated, that those living in Gaza would reject the mission of Hamas, elect a civilian government that serves its people and not terrorists, and that they seek to live peacefully with their neighbors.

GARY BALOG

Girard