Los Angeles Times 11.4.2005
From
Associated Press
April 11, 2005
WEIMAR, Germany — Elderly
survivors of Buchenwald laid flowers Sunday and observed a moment of silence for
victims of the Nazis, 60 years after U.S. troops liberated the concentration
camp.
Flags from about 30 countries hung in a cold drizzle to symbolize
the nationalities of the 240,000 people imprisoned in the camp between 1937 and
1945. About 56,000 died — worked to death, shot or killed in medical
experiments.
German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and U.S. veterans came
to the camp memorial outside Weimar for the commemoration, which kindled vivid
memories for the survivors, most in their 70s and 80s.
Georg Sterner, a
Hungarian Jew, recalled looking out from Barracks No. 37 when the first U.S.
tank crashed through the barbed-wire perimeter fence on the morning of April 11,
1945.
"We were hanging out of the windows," said Sterner, who was 17
then. "It came slowly, slowly. It stopped between the trees. It revved the
engine … made a lunge, and broke through."
Once inside, shocked soldiers
found about 21,000 starving survivors and piles of corpses.
"It was so
incredible — stacks of bodies, the smell, the total shock and confusion, people
walking around by the thousands," said Jerry Hontas, who arrived the next day as
a 21-year-old Army medic.
"We were so shocked we couldn't talk to each
other for days," said Hontas, of Boca Raton, Fla. "We had no concept of this
kind of insane cruelty."