Multimedia Mania/abacus-multimedia-mania.iso/dp/0113/01132.txt

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$Unique_ID{bob01132}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{Liberation of the Nazi Concentration Camps 1945, The
Chapter III: The War Correspondents - Part I}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Various}
$Affiliation{}
$Subject{buchenwald
war
died
years
little
asked
camp
heard
murrow
correspondent}
$Date{1987}
$Log{}
Title:       Liberation of the Nazi Concentration Camps 1945, The
Author:      Various
Date:        1987

Chapter III: The War Correspondents - Part I

Moderator:  Fred W. Friendly (USA); Professor of Journalism, Columbia
University; Army correspondent in Europe during World War II.

Boyd Lewis (USA):  War correspondent in World War II.

Col. (Ret.) Curtis Mitchell (USA):  Writer, editor, film producer; media
coordinator with U.S. Army in World War II.

Svenn Seehusen (Denmark):  Leader in the Danish resistance.

Institutional identifications are those at the time of the Conference.

Fred Friendly

     I pondered for months after this invitation about which of those events
of April 1945 that I lived through that I could share with you.  Although I
have a journalist's appetite to hear myself speak, I'm not going to speak.
I'm going to play you a tape spoken by a man who died 16 years ago and who
made this report from Buchenwald in 1945.  His name was Edward R. Murrow.  I
was his junior partner.

     The day that we went into Mauthausen in Austria was almost to the day
when he went into Buchenwald.  He was six years older than I was.  We each
filed reports.  Those among us who are young will want to remember that there
were three kinds of information that came out of that war:  official
information, censored information - every war correspondent who filed his
copy, whether it was Murrow on a rooftop at the BBC or whether it was one of
my colleagues on a bombing mission, had to send it through a censor - and then
there was free information, which for mass communications could not exist; it
was a declared war.

     I want Edward R. Murrow's tape, which I play every year to students at
the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, to speak for itself.  I call it
the best piece of television journalism ever done, and obviously there are no
pictures.

     You may wish to close your eyes as you listen to part of it, for your
mind's eye will transport you to Buchenwald swifter and with more accuracy
than any television camera, electronic or film, could ever do.  It runs about
19 minutes.  It won't bore you.

     I would warn you that because we had no satellites or cable in those days
- it was short wave - the first three or four minutes may be a little
difficult for you to hear; you will hear the carrier signal and the
interference.  Take my word for it - put up with it.  Your effort will be
rewarded.

     One personal note.  When I went into Mauthausen as an enlisted-man
correspondent, of all the sights and sounds that stunned me, the weakness of
the brave men and women who survived was the most memorable.  I wrote about
the thousands dead and hundreds alive in barracks - six high, four men in a
bed.  When we walked through, they shouted in various languages, "Viva
Americanski."  Then, to my great embarrassment, they applauded.  But their
hands were so emaciated, so much without flesh, that it sounded to me, I
wrote, like seals clapping.

     Murrow, whom I didn't know at that time, although we later became fast
friends and partners, described the same event, hundreds of miles away, almost
to the minute, as "the prisoners were so weak that it sounded like emaciated
babies clapping."

     You are familiar with the sound, "This is Edward R. Murrow, this is
London."  That battle is over.  Ed is gone, but he lives, and I think he might
introduce this by saying, "This is Buchenwald, April 15th, 1945."  Please
listen, even if it's hard.

Voice of Edward R. Murrow; April 15, 1945

     Permit me to tell you what you would have seen and heard had you been
with me on Thursday.  It will not be pleasant listening.  If you are at lunch
or if you have no appetite to hear what Germans have done, now is a good time
to switch off the radio, for I propose to tell you of Buchenwald.

     "It is on a small hill about four miles outside Weimar, and it was one of
the largest concentration camps in Germany.  And it was built to last.

     "As we approached it, we saw about nine hundred men in civilian clothes
with rifles advancing in open order across the fields.  There were a few
shots.  We stopped to inquire.  We were told that some of the prisoners had a
couple of 55 men cornered in there.  We drove on, reached the main gate.  The
prisoners crowded up behind the wire.  We entered.

     "And now, let me tell this in the first person, for I was the least
important person there, as you shall hear.  There surged around me an evil-
smelling horde; men and boys reached out to touch me.  They were in rags and
the remnants of uniforms.  Death had already marked many of them, but they
were smiling with their eyes.

     "I looked out over that mass of men to the green fields beyond where
well-fed Germans were plowing.  A German, Fritz Kersheimer, came up and said,
'May I show you around the camp?  I've been here 10 years.' An Englishman
stood to attention saying, 'May I introduce myself?  Delighted to see you.
And can you tell me when some of our blokes will be along?' I told him,
'Soon,' and asked to see one of the barracks.  It happened to be occupied by
Czechoslovakians.

     "When I entered, men crowded around, tried to lift me to their shoulders.
They were too weak.  Many of them could not get out of bed.  I was told that
this building had once stabled 80 horses; there were 1,200 men in it, five to
a bunk.  The stink was beyond all description.

     "When I reached the center of the barracks, a man came up and said, 'You
remember me; I'm Peter Zenkl, one-time mayor of Prague.' I remembered him but
did not recognize him.  He asked about Benes and Jan Masaryk.

     "I asked how many men had died in that building during the last month.
They called the doctor.  We inspected his records.  There were only names in
the little black book, nothing more.  Nothing of who these men were, what they
had done or hoped.  Behind the names of those who had died there was a cross.
I counted them.  They totaled 242-242 out of 1,200 in one month.

     "As I walked down to the end of the barracks, there was applause from the
men too weak to get out of bed.  It sounded like the hand-clapping of babies,
they were so weak.

     "The doctor's name was Paul Heller.  He had been there since '38.  As we
walked out into the courtyard, a man fell dead.  Two others - they must have
been over 60 were crawling towards the latrine.  I saw it, but will not
describe it.

     "In another part of the camp they showed me the children, hundreds of
them.  Some were only six.  One rolled up his sleeve, showed me his number.
It was tattooed on his arm D6030 it was.  The others showed me their numbers.
They will carry them till they die.

     "An elderly man standing beside me said, 'The children - enemies of the
state.' I could see their ribs through their thin shirts.  The old man said,
'I am Professor Charles Richer of the Sorbonne.' The children clung to my
hands and stared.

     "We crossed to the courtyard.  Men kept coming up to speak to me and to
touch me professors from Poland, doctors from Vienna, men from all Europe, men
from the countries that made America.

     "We went to the hospital; it was full.  The doctor told me that 200 had
died the day before.  I asked the cause of death; he shrugged and said,
'Tuberculosis, starvation, fatigue, and there are many who have no desire to
live.  It is very difficult.' Dr. Heller pulled back the blankets from a man's
feet to show me how swollen they were.  The man was dead.  Most of the
patients could not move.

     "As we left the hospital, I drew out a leather billfold, hoping that I
had some money which would help those who lived to get home.  Professor Richer
from the Sorbonne said, 'I should be careful of my wallet, if I were you.  You
know there are criminals in this camp, too.

     "A small man tottered up saying, 'May I feel the leather, please?  You
see, I used to make good things of leather in Vienna.' Another man said, 'My
name is Walter Roeder.  For many years I lived in Joliet, came back to Germany
for a visit, and Hitler grabbed me.'

     "I asked to see the kitchen; it was clean.  The German in charge had been
a Communist, had been at Buchenwald for nine years, had a picture of his
daughter in Hamburg - hadn't seen her for almost 12 years, and if I got to
Hamburg would I look her up?  He showed me the daily ration - one piece of
brown bread about as thick as your thumb; on top of it a piece of margarine as
big as three sticks of chewing gum.  That and a little stew was what they
received every 24 hours.

     "He had a chart on the wall, very complicated it was.  There were little
red tabs scattered through it.  He said that was to indicate each 10 men who
died.  He had to account for the rations.  And he added, 'We are very
efficient here'.

     "We went again into the courtyard, and as we walked, we talked.  The two
doctors, the Frenchman and the Czech, agreed that about 6,000 had died during
March.  Kerscheimer, the German, added that back in the winter of '39, when
the Poles began to arrive without winter clothing, they died at the rate of
approximately 900 a day.  Five different men asserted that Buchenwald was the
best concentration camp in Germany.  They had had some experience with the
others.

     "Dr. Heller, the Czech, asked if I would care to see the crematorium. He
said it wouldn't be very interesting because the Germans had run out of coke
some days ago and had taken to dumping the bodies into a great hole nearby.

     "Professor Richer said perhaps I would care to see the small courtyard. I
said yes.  He turned and told the children to stay behind.

     'As we walked across the square, I noticed that the professor had a hole
in his left shoe and a toe sticking out of the right one.  He followed my eyes
and said, 'I regret that I am so little presentable, but what can one do?'

     "At that point, another Frenchman came up to announce that three of his
fellow countrymen outside had killed three SS men and taken one prisoner.  We
proceeded to the small courtyard.  The wall was about eight feet high; it
adjoined what had been a stable or garage.

     "We entered.  It was floored with concrete.  There were two rows of
bodies stacked up like cordwood; they were thin and very white.  Some of the
bodies were terribly bruised, though there seemed to be little flesh to
bruise.  Some had been shot through the head, but they bled but little.  All
except two were naked.  I tried to count them as best I could, and arrived at
the conclusion that all that was mortal of more than 500 men and boys lay
there in two neat piles.

     "There was a German trailer which must have contained another 50, but it
wasn't possible to count them.  The clothing was piled in a heap against the
wall.  It appeared that most of the men and boys had died of starvation; they
had not been executed.  But the manner of death seemed unimportant - murder
had been done at Buchenwald.  God alone knows how many men and boys have died
there during the last 12 years.  Thursday I was told that there were more than
20,000 in the camp; there had been as many as 60,000.  Where are they now'?

     "As I left that camp, a Frenchman who used to work for Havas in Paris
came up to me and said, 'You will write something about this perhaps?' And he
added, 'To write about this you must have been here at least two years. And
after that, you don't want to write any more.

     "I pray you to believe what I have said about Buchenwald.  I have
reported what I saw and heard, but only part of it; for most of it I have no
words.  Dead men are plentiful in war, but the living dead, more than 20,000
of them in one camp - and the country was pleasing to the eye, and the Germans
were well fed and well dressed.  American trucks were rolling toward the rear
filled with prisoners.  Soon they would be eating American rations as much for
a meal as the men at Buchenwald received in four days.

     "If I have offended you by this rather mild account of Buchenwald, I am
not in the least sorry.  I was there on Thursday, and many men in many tongues
blessed the name of Roosevelt.  For long years his name had meant the full
measure of their hope.  These men, who had kept close company with death for
many years, did not know that Mr. Roosevelt would within hours join their
comrades who had laid their lives on the scales of freedom.

     "Back in 1941, Mr. Churchill said to me, with tears in his eyes, 'One day
the world and history will recognize and acknowledge what it owes to your
President.' I saw and heard the first installment of that at Buchenwald on
Thursday.  It came from men from all over Europe.  Their faces, with more
flesh on them, might have been found anywhere at home.  To them, the name
Roosevelt was a symbol, a code word for a lot of guys named Joe who were
somewhere out in the blue with the armor heading East.

     "At Buchenwald they spoke of the President just before he died.  If there
be a better epitaph, history does not record it."

Boyd Lewis

     The silence that followed Murrow's broadcast is the most eloquent
applause I have ever heard in my life.  I only wish I could add a little more
silence to that which you gave as a tribute to one of the greatest reports I
have ever heard.

     I was a war correspondent in Europe at the time Ed Murrow gave that
broadcast.  This is the first time that I have heard it, and I tell you, I
share the deep emotion that is within all of you.

     Being asked to follow Murrow on this podium is like being asked to give a
demonstration of painting after Rembrandt has just finished.  I use that
allusion because in my retirement life I am now a professional portrait
painter.  I wish I could paint many of the faces which came before me as I
heard that broadcast.

     What I wish to speak to in a very few moments is the question of
credibility.  It seems to me outrageous that one should have to speak, as was
done in this meeting yesterday, of the fact that people sometimes doubt that
there were those camps in Germany and Poland and the other countries.

     I had a vivid description of this lack of credibility at the end of the
war when the first reports from the men that I had assigned to the forward
positions began to send back those awful words which the newspapers printed
under sensational headlines.  I was shocked a few days later to learn in
messages from my home office that there was great doubt in many quarters in
the United States that the correspondents had given a true picture.  Many
people, including many people in Washington, felt the correspondents had
overdone it, that they had been carried away, that they had been
overemotional.

     So I was delighted to learn within a few more days that a delegation of
VIPs was flown over from the United States to "put the picture in
perspective."  They landed in Paris - a rather cocky lot.  They were some of
the best men in the communications industry.  I don't recall all their names
now, but one was my friend Lowell Thomas; one was my friend and neighbor Bill
Chenery, the editor of the late, lamented Collier's magazine.  There was the
editor of Newsweek magazine.  There were editors and publishers of large
newspapers and newspaper chains.

     They were a little patronizing as they went through the Scribe Hotel
where the correspondents made their headquarters.  They headed for those
camps, which had been fairly well cleaned up by the time they got there.  But
I tell you, when they came back at the end of the week and we greeted them at
the door of the Scribe, we looked upon men who had gazed into the jaws of
hell, and they believed.  They believed.  Believe you me, they believed.

     So, if there is a theme for a war correspondent in speaking to you here
in this marvelous gathering, it is, "Believe.  Believe, and let us all do
something about it."