Holocaust Remembrance

4 Pages 967 Words

The Holocaust is a horrifying chapter in our history, an event some people can't even believe happened, many more would just like to forget it. But there are survivors of this Holocaust who can attest to the horrors that they went through, who will not let us forget it. Survivors who can not forget and will not forgive the Nazis and the atrocities they subjected them to. They are all innocent individuals, who share only the suffering they went through and the injustice of being persecuted for who they were, rather than something they did. The armies who liberated them from the concentration camps found a diverse group of prisoners, people with completely different backgrounds, all with their own stories to tell.
The Allied forces liberated the few remaining prisoners from the death camps in late 1944 and early 1945. They marched in expecting nothing but a large prison, completely unprepared for the Hell that they found. The soldiers had difficulty comprehending what they saw, the death, torture, disease, and starvation, all of innocent people, all at the hands of other men. Soldiers cried and were sick to their stomachs as they swore their revenge, and they told reporters, "We have seen Dachau. Now we know what we are fighting for." Other soldiers, like some people today, tried, for a little while, not to believe the horrors of what they saw, but the ovens were still hot and the truth could not be denied; there were also the survivors themselves who were there to confirm what the soldiers saw. They rushed to the soldiers as they entered the camp, begging for food and medicine. Sergeant Henry DeJarnette said of the survivor's welcome that it was like "Being hugged and kissed by walking skeletons. " Some senior intelligence agents took interviews of some of the survivors; many more have told their stories to others since. (Milk, pp.48-50)
Esther Cohen remembers the liberation and remembers not really believing it was over. She was very ...