Legion Post 20 hears World War II book author recount horrors of Dachau liberation
Alex Kershaw, resident historian with Friends of the World War II Memorial, recounted at a National Press Club American Legion Post 20 meeting Wednesday the liberation of Nazi Germany's Dachau concentration camp through the eyes of an American infantryman shocked by the horrors he witnessed.
It's a story Kershaw recounts in his book, "The Liberator," and in presentations before high school students who he often finds unaware of the sacrifices made by GIs in World War II.
Kershaw's recounting comes on the heels of a December poll by The Economist that found 20 percent of Americans aged 18 to 29 think the holocaust was "a myth." An additional 23 percent think the systematic murder of some six million Jews and five million non-Jews by Hitler's regime has been "exaggerated." The poll found only seven percent of Americans overall are holocaust deniers.
Kershaw uses the harrowing wartime experiences of Felix L. Sparks to humanize the liberation of death camps for high school students. Sparks was the son of a dirt-poor Arizonia copper miner who spent two years wandering about the U.S. during the Great Depression before enlisting in the Army in 1936 while down-and-out in San Francisco. He saved enough during his two-year hitch to earn a college degree and a Reserve Army officer commission. Called to active duty on the eve of World War II, Sparks rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel with the 45th Infantry Division's 157th Infantry Regiment. He ended his military career as a brigadier general in the Colorado Army National Guard.
Sparks' unit suffered heavy casualties during the liberation of Italy and took part in the invasion of southern France in August, 1944. On April 29, 1945, Sparks and soldiers under his command entered Dachau, a satellite concentration camp established in 1933. They encountered railway cars filled with some 2,000 bodies followed by rooms stacked with decaying corpses as they advanced on Nazi SS combatants.
In an interview with Kershaw, Sparks said his men "went crazy with rage and vengeance." Some 30 to 50 captured Germans were executed before Sparks was able to stop the shooting. Sparks told Kershaw, "I wanted the madness to end; I wanted the killing to end."
Also in April 1945, Supreme Allied Commander Dwight D. Eisenhower witnessed Nazi brutality at Ohrdruf concentration camp where bodies were piled in mounds and emaciated inmates struggled to survive. Kershaw said Eisenhower, like Sparks' men, was traumatized by what he saw. He ordered the media to record the devastation and compelled local Germans to be marched through the camp in anticipation of the day when some would deny that such horrors took place.
Kerkshaw cited for his Legion Post audience British Prime Minister Winston Churchill's famous admonition that “those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it” as part of the Friends of the World War II Memorial's mission to educate young Americans about the horrors of the war and the heroism if the young Americans who risked and often lost their lives to end it.
Kershaw also complimented the state of Virginia's mandate that students learn about the holocaust in high school.
Prior to Kershaw's presentation, the Club's newly elected president, Emily Wilkins, spoke to the Post about her plans for the coming year. Post 20 is one of the oldest posts in the Legion and was established at the urging of Gen. John J. Pershing, commander of U.S. forces in Europe in World War I and an associate member of the Club.
Speaker portions of the Post's meetings are open to all Club member at the Club and via Zoom.