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Section below transcribed by Howard Levin, cleaned by Elana L ('07)
Please report errors to: info@tellingstories.org.

Prisoner Violence in Buchenwald

OK, Let's move on from there.

About the officers that the people in the camp...

I am sure all the officers took off long before we got there. There were probably some guards that they ordered – and Gemans follow orders – probably they ordered some guards to stay there for some reason or other. Any of them who were smart, just left because it was obvious what was going to happen. These people had been tortured and starved and beaten. What do you think they were going to do?

Did you see anything within Buchenwald or hear of other soldiers telling you of things that they saw in Buchenwald of prisoner violence?

I can tell you after we left Buchenwald that I saw violence against German SS troops. After we left and went down toward Munich, we were parked in a field one night, and there was a barn and it was dark, still no lights, and we could see there were lights in this barn, so we walked over there. Ray and I walked over to the barn. We went into the barn. And here's four – and these were all displaced persons, maybe they came from the camps or wherever they came from – they showed us, under their arms, where they had the SS insignia. What they were doing was dropping rocks on them, like this, big rocks dropping on them. And they were kicking them. And we were standing there watching this. We didn't have any guns. I thought surely they killed those people. After we were there about fifteen or twenty minutes, an American officer came in, and he had a pistol, and he made them stop. And he told us to go get our ambulance and pick these guys up. I thought they were dead. They were not dead. We hauled them in to an EVAC hospital, just like we'd been taking the regular Americans to, and every one of them was alive. And they sat up on the litter.

Jorgen wanted me to tell you about this one German we took in one night. This was towards the end of the war too, And he knew it. He said, "The war is over. You boys just want to go home." And he's SS, SS Major. So Lockhart says, "You better keep your helment, Ray" – what was I going to do with my helmet, in case he tried to jump us or something. He didn't want to do any of that, he was out of the war. He spoke perfect English, probably better than we did, and he said, "You boys don't understand this. You want to go home. But within four years, the Americans and Germans will be allied agains the Russians." And we said, "Oh, you are out of your mind. This is impossible, it couldn't be. They are our allies." He was right. Within four years we were allies and we were in the Cold War with Germany in just a few years. So that's another side-story. And that is brutality that I saw agains Nazi Germans. We don't know whether they were German guards or not. They were German SS people.

Everybody is nervous about explaining that, but it's part of the story, it needs to be told.

I haven't even told Jorgen.

He's here, you want the police?

No. You are a detective, Howard. You found out things about me that I didn't know anybody knew.

Section below transcribed by Emma S ('10), cleaned by Elana L ('07)

Your show you guys.

Besides the guy who predicted the Cold War, did you meet any German officers or SS officers that you could communicate with?

We met different Germans and, there is another little story here that I didn't mention. Toward the end of the war after we'd been to Buchenwald—which is in more the eastern center part of Germany—as we'd come back from a load of patients to EVAC. hospitals, as we'd come back and it'd be toward evening or maybe even dark. Here was all kinds of German soldiers coming out to give up to us, give up to us. So we made them throw their guns down and then they got on the ambulance, on the top, on the hood, on the fenders, inside, all over as many could cling because they knew we weren't going shoot them.What we did, we’d just go on back to the outfit and turn them over the military police and they put in a prisoner war camp somewhere. So they knew the war was over, so we didn't....

Just a little side story on that German officer, I think I told Jorgen. My friend, Ray Lockhart, was a really nice guy but we got that German officer back to an EVAC. hospital and Ray took his watch. Now I wouldn't have taken that man's watch. He started yelling for the commanding officer of the medical facility and a captain came down and he said, "Ok, I don't care what you guys did, just get out of here" So we left. I was going to ask Lockhart if he still had that watch, I wouldn't have taken that man's watch, no way. Now you said about drinking, we're still on the tape aren't we? Ok. Coming across France, you know what they make in Epernay? Champagne, Epernay. That's in 1944, so I'm nineteen. So we're pulled off into a field, parked in a field and there is a little café back down the road a ways, so we go back there and it's summer time, you know, it's in August and it's hot and we went into this little place and we ordered, we thought were soda pops. But it was champagne and it tasted like soda pop. Pretty soon I was not able to communicate and how I ever got back to the ambulance, I don't know. But I heard them calling my name, "Sanders, Sanders" And I couldn't answer, but I made it back to the ambulance and I got in on the floor and that was my introduction to wine and champagne. So you see how innocent I was.

End of the war, ok, here we go. Bring me up there somebody!

After you were going through all these camps and picking up people...

Two concentration camps, all that I saw during the war.

After you were picking up people from there, could you pretty easily tell that the war was going to be over?

Oh, sure, sure.

How did you know?

There was no more resistance really. I mean, few people were dying and a few people were being wounded, but the columns would not stop. You didn't want me to diverse, but when we went back to this 50th commemoration, I called the state department to see if it was legitimate, whether the German government really was going to pay our airfare and our hotels on to be at the Buchenwald for the 50th  commemoration, they said, "Yes, we’re pretty sure it is but call our consulate in Leipzig and speak to a man named Raymond Groff." I called and he said, "Well you're the only guy that has ever called, only old soldier that has ever called me," and he said, "I need a man for a town called Keutzberg and the Lutheran church will put you up there and then after you're done there I need you to go to Gotha, where the Oberbürgermeister will put you up there because they have another celebration for a German that saved the city of Gotha, the commanding officer who shortly after was killed by the SS because he had given up the town of Gotha to the 4th Armored Division. So we did go to Ktreutzberg and we got there, two little old people, and it's dark and snowing and a kind of misty rain and snow. They said, "Come on you have to be hooked up for nightly news broadcast.” And it's dark and I'm tired and, "What!?” So I go into a trailer, I'd never been on television. So I am standing out under this gate, 15th century or something and there is this good looking gal who is the reporter, asking me questions in German and it is going back to a truck and I've got plugs in my ears telling me what she asked and then I am answering it in English and my wife is up in the room, which is right there, watching me on television. She said, "Did you know what you were doing?" I said, "I had no idea what I was doing.”

Was that the piece? Because you were quoted in the New York Times.

Yes.

Is that from the same interview?

Same time. Yes.

What was it like going back for the 50th anniversary?

Well, I met survivors like Nicholas, and I met half a dozen others, a couple from down in San Diego area and another man that had worked for the bitch of Buchenwald, who made lamp shades out of human skin. And he'd worked in this garden and he said that she was just a terrible person. He had one of the carts run over him one time. He showed me his leg was all gouged out. There was a lot of stories. There was Russians that I met that had been prisoners there and actually there was a couple of Americans that happened to have been shot down towards the end of the war and they were brought to Buchenwald, but they survived the thing. So that was the only Americans. I mean, there could have been civilians, I have no idea.

Was it at all hard to go back or was it a no brainer, like you wanted to go back?

Was it hard to go back? It was a free trip.

That was a no, it was not hard?

Wasn't hard to go back, but it was hard to meet some of these people that had actually been there. And Nicholas—since he finally saw an American, who was there when he was there, he says I am his savior, you know, he calls me his liberator. I said, "Nicholas, I had no idea who you were or where you were.”

Were you ever in an accident? In the ambulance, were you ever in an accident at all?

Ok, I missed that didn't I? Ok, yes, I missed that story. On the trip back to Metz from this town called Boulet. We had a load of casualties and when we go out to the ambulance, I'll show you how it was arranged. And I saw the two cat eyes coming, I happened to be driving, so I told you we were watching the top of the trees. So I kept moving over 'cause they looked like they might be coming very fast. I thought I was right up against the trees, but I wasn't. There was enough room that that jeep hit my front right side, took the wheel off—and that's a big wheel if you look at it—went back, and we didn't know until we got out later. We had four walking wounded, were sitting on that pull down seat in there and we had two litters on the left side. One man on the top litter had a splint on his broken leg and when they hit us, his leg jumped out of the splint he was screaming the first thing we did was get his leg pulled back straight in the splint, so it took him out of the pain. Then we took the four walking wounded that were sitting on the side and we went back to find the jeep, which was behind us, of course, upside down on top of two guys. So the six of us could lift the jeep enough to pull these guys out. And one guy had his head split open, I mean, a head wound is just going to bleed tremendously, whether his skull was cracked. Anyway we used every compress we had in the ambulance to try to stop this guy’s bleeding.

So when the next ambulance came back from Metz on the way back up to Boulet, where the battalion aid station was, we loaded our six guys and they took them back. So then we were empty. Then the next one that came back, we loaded these two guys that had been under the ambulance, under the jeep, and they took them back. And then we rode back into Metz with them and the guy with his head all bandaged up as best we could, he was sitting up on a litter. We found out later, that they had gone back to Metz, they were infantry men, they had gotten drunk on schnapps or whatever, and they were going back up front and there was five of them, two of them ended up underneath the jeep and the three buddies took off and left, left them under the jeep. I'd forgotten that story.

These were American infantry men?

Yes, American infantry men. We didn't really liberate anything, the ambulances. The armored group did.

Is there a story about your involvement there?

Oh, that's later.

Are we still in the war right now?

No, we're not in the war. When they asked me back to the 50th commemoration, I told you about this town called Kreuzberg. I was going to explain then why the people in Kreuzberg—I was asked to speak to the town, so Raymond Groff interpreted for me and the asked me, it was Easter Sunday, why did the Americans burn our town? I had no idea why we burned their town. The column had come up to the river, the Vera River, and it was fast flowing and they were about to cross the bridge into town because they just wanted to move east, finish up the thing. There were still some Germans in town, they had a couple of tanks and they blew the bridge. The bridge was mined and they blew it. So we were stuck on the west side of the river and the had to wait for the engineer to come, to put a pontoon bridge across there and I never saw the Germans hit a bridge but that night they came over and hit that pontoon bridge that was another day delay. the tanks in town started to fire on Easter Sunday, and Easter is a big deal in Germany. The kids were out—Easter eggs—and the town caught on fire. Well, it was because the German tanks were shooting at us, so our guys shot back at them and eliminated the tanks.

So I didn't know any of this, but I got a hold of the archives in Washington, D.C. and I got the running play of the whole thing, from the morning report, from the tank commander and the whole deal. About why this all happened. So I packaged it up and mailed it back to the people in Kreuzberg, why their town got burned. Crazy. I have had a lot of experiences haven't I?

Section below transcribed by Andrea C ('10), cleaned by Elana Levin
Please report errors to: info@tellingstories.org.

End of the War

When you found out the war was officially ended...

Yes.

What happened? Where were you? What was your reaction?

At the end of the war?

Yes.

It was in Pilsen, Czechoslovakia. We'd gotten to Pilsen, Czechoslovakia on May 8th. The war was over. And the demarcation line was the Elbe River. And we were way past that, and Patton was ready to go on to Prague and keep going. Even into Russia, he was ready to go all the way. But, May 8th, the end of the war. It was August. May 8th, wasn't it? May 8th. And everybody said the war was over. May 8th, August, or June, July, June 8th. And do you know what they make in Pilsen?

You mean May 8th, correct?

May 8th. You know what they make in Pilsen?

Beer.

Pilsner Beer. It was summer time, we rolled the kegs out of the brewery, and we all got our canteen cups and drank beer in the sunshine, and the war was over, and we were alive. And, I shouldn't tell this...

Yes, tell it.

Some pretty girls in swimming suits were walking down the road passed us. Smart mouth me, not thinking those girls would know any English at all, I said, just real nice, I said, "My, what pretty boobs you have.” She said, "Thank you sir!" The guys never forgave me! They wouldn't let me forget it! "Thank you sir!?" I'm so embarrassed! It was awful! That was the end of the war.

Then you asked about later. We went on. The Russians were supposed to send out some prisoners of war that had been working in an Ersatz refinery in the east, about 200 miles east of us. East of Pilsen. And they were supposed to send these people out, and they didn't do it. And about two weeks went by, and they still hadn't sent them out, so we loaded all the fuel we could get in the ambulances and on trucks. We had six by six trucks loaded with fuel so we could go in after them. Of course the officer had detailed maps of where they were, and they were British and Americans that had been captured in North Africa. And they were building this refinery, and they said, "Every time we got it built, you guys come over and blow it up and we have to build it again!" But they looked in pretty good condition. They'd worked out some arrangements with whomever, and they didn't look like they were malnourished. We loaded them all up either on the trucks or in the ambulances to bring them back, and on the way back toward Pilsen, we came across two GIs on bicycles. They were riding bikes. They'd got out, evidently left the camp. And here they're riding bikes! So the convoy stopped, and the convoy officer that was ahead of the column said, "Come on guys! You're free! Come on, go with us!" They talked about it, for about three or four minutes, or five, whether they wanted to go with us or not! They were having so much fun going through the countryside, evidently. Finally they did get on one of the trucks and came back with us, they hated to leave their bikes.

From there, we came back to Pilsen with these people, and then they were—whatever they did with the prisoners of war, I don't know. We turned them over to a camp. And then we came back across Europe to pass the city that was blown up on the Rhine. Cologne! And we came right by the cathedral in Cologne, and they dozed out with the bulldozer, pushed enough debris out of the way around the cathedral, that we could get through town. And we stopped at Aachen, and from there, my knee had been swollen up again, so I went in on sick call to see if they'd take the fluid out again. The guy said, "Oh no, you can't go back to your outfit, I said, "I got my stuff back there! I've got some souvenirs," and, "No, no. You gotta stay here, we're going to fly you down to Paris. You need something done to your knee.” So I never went back to the outfit. They later went on down south to what they called Camp Lucky Strike, and they sat there till in the fall before they were able ship home.

Now, we had enough points. They came home on points. The ones that didn't have many points, stayed there in the Army occupation, the ones that had points got to come home. And some of those people were supposed to go to Japan, but the thing ended before they ever got that far. So I flew on a C-47 down to Paris hospital, stayed there for about a month, and then they shipped us by train to Cherbourg, where I came home on a hospital ship to Boston, and then across the country on a hospital train to Birmingham General Hospital in Van Nuys, and from there they operated on my leg, and did what they could do for it then. But then finally it broke down about thirty-five years later to the point I had to have a new knee replacement. And then because I'd put so much pressure on my good knee, eventually it went out, and I had to have it done too, but they've been very good! I had a fifteen year warrantee, and I think I'm eighteen or nineteen years on the first one! So...