Anne Frank Exhibit

[Walt's Daughter]

As many of you know, I was gone for several days on a trip to Georgia. While there I had the pleasure of meeting one of my dear vets, Russ Weiskircher, who is featured on my site.

 

Russ was so moved and so shaken by what he saw at Dachau in WWII, that he decided to become a vocal component, sharing what he saw with the world. He is currently a co-chairman of the Georgia Holocaust Commission and writes and speaks to groups including school children.

 

Here is an excerpt from his page:

 

...Our battalion was headed for Munich, rounding up German troops along the way. April 29, 1944 brought about the absolute damnable experience of the entire war. We were ordered to proceed to Dachau and to liberate and secure the concentration camp located there. We didn’t know what to expect.

 

The liberation of Dachau is one of the mostly hotly contested tales of the war, For some reason unknown to me and others, many units that were not even near the place, claim to have been there on April 29, 1945. Let me say here and now that the 45 th Division and a small element from the 42nd Division were the only true liberators. LTC Felix Sparks, now Brigadier General retired, and his Third Battalion of the 157 th Infantry was the liberator. Our I Company penetrated the walls and entered the camp. I was there with the Bn Hqs element. We discovered the boxcars loaded with corpses, the crematory, the labs, the barracks, and the compound with over 30,000 prisoners. They were dead and near dead and diseased and in many cases out of their minds. I won’t attempt to recall the details but I will at the conclusion of this account, list several websites where you can read eyewitness accounts including the detailed, brilliant comments of General Sparks.

 

This single experience changed my life. I would never have believed that man could be so brutal and inhumane. We didn’t linger long in Dachau, it was a rehabilitation task for the medics and the experts and it took months to screen the inmates. The immediate concern was food and medicine and relocation. Repatriation would take months, even years...

 

While in Georgia I was able to meet with the General, his wife Jane, a good friend Jena, who is also actively involved with the commission and Kitty, a friend whom I was introduced to by Russ about a year ago through email (she too belongs to the commission). My step-daughter and I met them for lunch then proceeded to Kennesaw University to view the exhibit.

 

It was a beautifully done exhibit and I'm so glad that I had the time to take the tour. While there we viewed a 28 minute film. There weren't many dry eyes in the room of approximately 65 people. The crowd consisted primarily of college students who where there on a field trip, but a young girl about 8 years old grabbed the hearts of all in the quiet room when the film showed a swaztika being blown to pieces high atop a building in Germany at the end of the war. As the dispicable icon crumbled to the ground, the young lady began to clap. It was quite a moment.

 

The exhibit also displayed art work done by local area students. Stunning, heart-warming, shocking, disturbing, sad, gut-wretching, haunting... These are just a few adjectives that came to mind. It was obvious that the story of the holocaust will live long in their hearts and won't be forgotten.

 

If you have a chance please read Russ' page and also take a moment to visit the Anne Frank page.

 

http://www.6thcorpscombatengineers.com/Rus...Weiskircher.htm

 

http://www.kennesaw.edu/annefrank/

 

If you've never taken the time to read the Diary of Anne Frank, then I strongly urge you to do so. I don't care if you are 12, or 26, or 86. READ IT. I read it the first time when I was in junior high, then again a few years back when Anne's father re-released the book with the words that he originally withheld from the public.

 

Anne's desire was to become a journalist and even at the tender age of 13, she was already blossoming into a very talented one. Sadly Anne's dream to become a published author did come to fruition, but at the cost of a life; her own.