Family History

Sunday was Holocaust Remembrance Day.

My grandfather, Ray Clark, was serving in Patton’s army at the end of World War II. He was a Liberator, arriving with the first American troops at Buchenwald – the second-oldest of the extermination camps, behind Dachau. When I was a child, he would tell us the stories and show us the pictures he took there. He recorded his experience in his memoir, Journey to Hell: The Fiery Furnaces of Buchenwald.

The book is not a “Greatest Generation” -flavored story of American heroes saving the world. Papaw was too honest for that. His memoir is matter-of-fact in its tone, observing straightforwardly the fault lines in American virtue before, during, and after the war. For example, he notes how wealthy Americans like the Dulles family used their influence to secure an acquittal for the war criminal Franz von Papen. On the subject of whether the arriving American troops were treated like heroes, he was equally honest – the answer is, “not always.”

About the liberation of Buchenwald, he wrote:

We were the most impressed by the attitude of the inmates. In contrast to those liberated in prisoner of war and slave labor camps, these inmates showed absolutely no joy in being liberated. In fact, they, like the slave laborers, fully expected us (the United States) to continue operating the camp in the same manner as the German SS. After all, both the inmates and the cadre knew that we, the American people and the American Government, had been aware of their persecution for many years. The conditions inside the concentration camps and the murder of inmates were reported in U.S. newspapers as early as 1933. Also, President Roosevelt, in his instruction to Mr. William Dodd, ambassador designate to Germany, on 16 June 1933, is quoted as saying, “The German authorities are treating the Jews shamefully and the Jews in this country are greatly excited. But this is not a (United States) governmental affair. We can do nothing except for American citizens who happen to be made victims.” (Ambassador Dodd’s Diary, p. 5)

Clark, 102

It is not just Germany’s history that we need to remember, and learn from.

God rest you, Papaw Clark.