Rabbi Herschel Schacter Is Dead at 95; Cried to the Jews of Buchenwald: ‘You Are Free’

[steve2470]

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/27/nyregion/rabbi-herschel-schacter-who-carried-word-of-freedom-to-buchenwald-dies-at-95.html?src=me&ref=general



The smoke was still rising as Rabbi Herschel Schacter rode through the gates of Buchenwald.

It was April 11, 1945, and Gen. George S. Patton’s Third Army had liberated the concentration camp scarcely an hour before. Rabbi Schacter, who was attached to the Third Army’s VIII Corps, was the first Jewish chaplain to enter in its wake.

That morning, after learning that Patton’s forward tanks had arrived at the camp, Rabbi Schacter, who died in the Riverdale section of the Bronx on Thursday at 95 after a career as one of the most prominent Modern Orthodox rabbis in the United States, commandeered a jeep and driver. He left headquarters and sped toward Buchenwald.

By late afternoon, when the rabbi drove through the gates, Allied tanks had breached the camp. He remembered, he later said, the sting of smoke in his eyes, the smell of burning flesh and the hundreds of bodies strewn everywhere.

[Ilsa]

1. The father of a friend was an American soldier

and liberator at one of the big death camps. He told his son, a non-Jew, of the horrors he witnessed. He said he was amazed that a person could look as these people did and still be alive.

Of course some people think it's a big fraud because we didn't have personal phone cameras to document it on Facebook.

I'm very happy that the Rabbi was able to live such a long life.

Never deny. Never forget.

[steve2470]

2. agreed ! nt

[OldEurope]

3. Thank you, steve and Ilsa!

Never deny. Never forget.

And never let it happen again.

[tblue]

4. Amen. Never. To anybody.

I never knew of this rabbi. Alav Ha-sholom.

[ewagner]

5. Amen...

[OldDem2012]

6. NYT article from March 1st, "The Holocaust Just Got More Shocking".....

The Holocaust Just Got More Shocking

QUOTE:

THIRTEEN years ago, researchers at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum began the grim task of documenting all the ghettos, slave labor sites, concentration camps and killing factories that the Nazis set up throughout Europe.
Multimedia

What they have found so far has shocked even scholars steeped in the history of the Holocaust.

The researchers have cataloged some 42,500 Nazi ghettos and camps throughout Europe, spanning German-controlled areas from France to Russia and Germany itself, during Hitler’s reign of brutality from 1933 to 1945.

The figure is so staggering that even fellow Holocaust scholars had to make sure they had heard it correctly when the lead researchers previewed their findings at an academic forum in late January at the German Historical Institute in Washington.

The perpetrators of this terrible reign of terror were true monsters in every sense of the word.

We must never forget what some humans are capable of when left unchecked.

[freshwest]

7. Thanks, marking the thread. Have known survivors. Seen video and tattoos. Hard to discuss.