80 years after the liberation of the Deshao detention camp, the witnesses remember

The stored Gahs, unofficially known as Bud, was a 20 -year -old soldier in the US Army who was fighting for a year when he and his unity for the first time entered the Dachau dependence camp outside Munich in 1945.

Its unit – the 42nd Infantry Division – witnessed a terrible fight since it started fighting in France. But he said that the liberation of the detention camp was completely different.

“When we opened the gates in front of Dushau, only then we really understood what we were fighting for,” said Mr. Jais, who was 100 years old, for the crowd that included survivors, families and bulls in Dushau on Sunday.

When he and his unity went through the gates, Mr. Jahees faced prisoners of malnutrition, disease and treatment to the point that they have alive. On the way there, soldiers found piles of bodies inside the train cars.

On Sunday, Jean Lavore, 101, who survived the camp after his arrest in his village in France, spoke about the sadistic treatment that the prisoners were forced to carry.

The minds of other survivors were nowadays. “I hear talk about weapons and nationalism, and the thought happens to me: Are people learned nothing?” Said Mario Candoto, 98, from Italy, who survived the camp but lost four of his brothers and fathers.

The eighty anniversary of the end of the Nazi era – and with it the anniversary of the liberation of detention camps – comes at a pivotal time for the Germans.

The last survivors, editors and perpetrators die of aging, and with them any living memories of the Holocaust. At the same time, it became the extreme right. While the alternative to Germany, or AFD, which reduced its leaders repeatedly from the Holocaust, was one day a marginal party, it is the most popular party in Germany, according to some polls.

“We are really living in a period of turmoil, I feel this in souvenir sites, and in Dushau in particular,” Gabriel Hamerman, director of Dachau Camp Camp, told the New York Times. “It is like a saddle.”

The anniversary also comes after a clear change in the tone of the relationship between Germany and the United States. While Washington was once effective in promoting a culture of accountability and memory, President Trump’s administration made its preference for AFD very clear.

In January, Vice President JD Vance shocked German leaders when he told a crowd of people in Munich that they should stop avoiding AFD. Last week, after AFD was official Described as an extremist party Written by the Local Intelligence Unit in Germany, Foreign Minister Marco Rubio, in Social media publicationAnd called on the decision of the intelligence unit in Germany “tyranny in camouflage”, adding that the border policies of Germany were instead the “extremist” problem in the country.

The anti -Semitic hate crimes in Germany have also increased. In a country that has long adopted the slogan “Once again”, many are concerned that liberal democracy is threatened. in He conducted a poll last year69 percent of the respondents said they believe that populism is a threat to democracy.

Even people who run souvenirs in the detention camp have noticed a worrying rise in thefts and simple crimes committed on their foundations. In 2019, Nikolai Nerling, an extremist right -wing and motivated video blogger, was convicted of inciting videos in which he had an interview with Dachau’s visitors and the consolidation of the crimes of the Nazis. Last year, thieves stole display elements from the camp of the camp.

A few weeks after Hitler’s arrival to power was established in 1933, the Dushau camp was initially held by political opponents. It was a model for future camps, and it was presented an official training site for the Paliphone SS forces before sending it to manage the new camps that Germany built throughout Eastern Europe when the war began. More than 40,000 people died in Dushau, who was more active over the past 12,000 prisoners.

It was built less than 10 miles outside Munich, and it was distinguished from the camps that were constructed later during the regime, which were outside the borders of the Reich. The injustice and tests committed in the Dushau camp cannot be ignored by the general population.

The American soldiers in the 42nd and 45th infantry sections were among the first Americans to witness and document the horrors of the Nazi regime. The scenes that they faced changed the entry of the camp 80 years ago many men for life. On Sunday, the families of the editors who attended the ceremony were often the party.

Among the survivors who came to Dushau on Sunday, most of them were in the nineties and a hundred, indicating that this may be the last major memory that includes people with direct camps memories. Among the youngest was Leslie Rosental, who traveled from Canada. Born only three months of editing, Mr. Rosental recently celebrated his eighty birthday.

“With the passage of time, the survivors and eyewitnesses are diminished quickly,” he said, noting that he and the seven infants who were born in Dushau in recent months before the liberation soon became “the last alive links to the Holocaust.”