Retired principal reflects on Holocaust
DIANA LEE GRODEN
Issue date: 4/13/09 Section: Campus News
The Army truck came to a
halt. The engine quieted.
Twenty-year-old Cpl. Leon
Bass, a member of the intelligence
and reconnaissance
unit of the 183rd Engineer
Combat Battalion, stepped
down into the stillness of a
cool afternoon. It was 1945,
April 11 or 12, he doesn't
remember exactly. Several
men from his unit had been
ordered to drive to a place
outside Weimar, not far from
their camp in Eisenbach,
Germany.
Before them, unguarded
and eerily agape, hulked a
large black iron gate, the
words "Jedem Das Seine"
("To Each His Own") soldered
at the top, inserted into
the middle of a white enclosure
studded with several
small windows and above
which loomed a brown
wooden watchtower. All was
silent. They saw no one. The
young American men in uniform
were unprepared for
what waited beyond.
The white officer had said
they were driving to investigate
a concentration camp.
Buchenwald. In all of his
training, Cpl. Bass was never
told about such a thing. Now
there he was, about to enter
another world.
Before him lay the shock
of his life. People stood staring
as he stared back at them.
They were nothing more than
skin and bone. Their eyes
were sunken. Their heads
were shaved. Some were covered
in sores and bruises -
they had been beaten and
starved. Tattered, striped
pajama-like clothing hung on
their skeletal frames. Some
were naked. As they started
to stumble toward him, Bass
drew back. "What is this
insanity? Who are these people,
and what have they done
to be treated like this?" Bass
asked himself.
A young prisoner stepped
forward to tell the story of the
people in the camp. They
were gypsies and homosexuals,
Jews and trade unionists,
even Catholics, all
transported there by the
Nazis. He led Cpl. Bass
around the camp. They
stepped into an unheated
barrack, where the prisoners
halt. The engine quieted.
Twenty-year-old Cpl. Leon
Bass, a member of the intelligence
and reconnaissance
unit of the 183rd Engineer
Combat Battalion, stepped
down into the stillness of a
cool afternoon. It was 1945,
April 11 or 12, he doesn't
remember exactly. Several
men from his unit had been
ordered to drive to a place
outside Weimar, not far from
their camp in Eisenbach,
Germany.
Before them, unguarded
and eerily agape, hulked a
large black iron gate, the
words "Jedem Das Seine"
("To Each His Own") soldered
at the top, inserted into
the middle of a white enclosure
studded with several
small windows and above
which loomed a brown
wooden watchtower. All was
silent. They saw no one. The
young American men in uniform
were unprepared for
what waited beyond.
The white officer had said
they were driving to investigate
a concentration camp.
Buchenwald. In all of his
training, Cpl. Bass was never
told about such a thing. Now
there he was, about to enter
another world.
Before him lay the shock
of his life. People stood staring
as he stared back at them.
They were nothing more than
skin and bone. Their eyes
were sunken. Their heads
were shaved. Some were covered
in sores and bruises -
they had been beaten and
starved. Tattered, striped
pajama-like clothing hung on
their skeletal frames. Some
were naked. As they started
to stumble toward him, Bass
drew back. "What is this
insanity? Who are these people,
and what have they done
to be treated like this?" Bass
asked himself.
A young prisoner stepped
forward to tell the story of the
people in the camp. They
were gypsies and homosexuals,
Jews and trade unionists,
even Catholics, all
transported there by the
Nazis. He led Cpl. Bass
around the camp. They
stepped into an unheated
barrack, where the prisoners
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