Retired principal reflects on Holocaust
DIANA LEE GRODEN
Issue date: 4/13/09 Section: Campus News
slept in rows of dirty,
bare wooden bunks stacked
four levels high. On a bottom
bunk, in a filthy bed of
straw, laid a cadaverous
old man in rags, too weak
to speak, beseeching in his
eyes. The stench of death
was overwhelming; Cpl.
Bass couldn't breathe. He
stepped out into the cold air
and made his way to the next
building.
There, the young soldier
saw the cement floor of the
interrogation room covered in
blood and torture instruments
spiked into blood-spattered
walls.
In the third building,
labeled jars containing human
body parts sat on shelves. His
guide explained that "selection"
took place every morning,
when people were chosen
as subjects for operations
and medical experiments.
Naked, atrophied bodies had
been stacked neatly in a pile 4
feet high and 10 feet long
near the crematorium. Cpl. Bass saw a blackened
skull in one of the six ovens.
He was to learn that, once a
week, human ashes were
trucked out to the fields to be
used as fertilizer to grow
crops for Germany's
Wehrmacht.
Bass saw no children. But
he did see a mound of clothing
against a wall: little caps
and sweaters and booties and
stockings and shoes.
The American unit drove
back to camp in silence that
night. The memory of the
"walking dead" haunts Bass
to this day.
For more than 25 years
thereafter, Bass spoke to no
one about what he saw at
Buchenwald, but his
encounter would change how
he saw the black experience,
influence the course of his life
and hand him a mission.
Before he walked through the
gates of the concentration
camp, Cpl. Bass was an angry
young black soldier, disillusioned
and embittered by
segregation and racism both
at home in the United States
and in the military while at
war overseas. When he
emerged, he knew even then
that he was meant to draw on
what he had witnessed to
speak out against prejudice
bare wooden bunks stacked
four levels high. On a bottom
bunk, in a filthy bed of
straw, laid a cadaverous
old man in rags, too weak
to speak, beseeching in his
eyes. The stench of death
was overwhelming; Cpl.
Bass couldn't breathe. He
stepped out into the cold air
and made his way to the next
building.
There, the young soldier
saw the cement floor of the
interrogation room covered in
blood and torture instruments
spiked into blood-spattered
walls.
In the third building,
labeled jars containing human
body parts sat on shelves. His
guide explained that "selection"
took place every morning,
when people were chosen
as subjects for operations
and medical experiments.
Naked, atrophied bodies had
been stacked neatly in a pile 4
feet high and 10 feet long
near the crematorium. Cpl. Bass saw a blackened
skull in one of the six ovens.
He was to learn that, once a
week, human ashes were
trucked out to the fields to be
used as fertilizer to grow
crops for Germany's
Wehrmacht.
Bass saw no children. But
he did see a mound of clothing
against a wall: little caps
and sweaters and booties and
stockings and shoes.
The American unit drove
back to camp in silence that
night. The memory of the
"walking dead" haunts Bass
to this day.
For more than 25 years
thereafter, Bass spoke to no
one about what he saw at
Buchenwald, but his
encounter would change how
he saw the black experience,
influence the course of his life
and hand him a mission.
Before he walked through the
gates of the concentration
camp, Cpl. Bass was an angry
young black soldier, disillusioned
and embittered by
segregation and racism both
at home in the United States
and in the military while at
war overseas. When he
emerged, he knew even then
that he was meant to draw on
what he had witnessed to
speak out against prejudice
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