The Best Revenge

One of the first photographs on display at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum shows the American arrival at Ohrdruf, a labor camp that was an extension of Buchenwald, in April 1945. The GIs stare in abject horror at the ashes of a makeshift crematorium on which the charred remains of bodies can still be seen. As the world marks the 75th anniversary of the Allied liberation of the concentration camps, it is worthwhile to recall the moment through the eyewitness accounts of two members of the American military of vastly different ranks, backgrounds, and faiths.

One is Dwight David Eisenhower, the supreme commander of all the Western forces in Europe; the other, Lieutenant Meyer Birnbaum, a young Orthodox Jew from New York. Birnbaum served in George S. Patton’s Third Army, was among the original forces that entered Ohrdruf and Buchenwald, and then ended up staying for six months in Germany in order to help address the needs of the survivors.

Eisenhower entered Ohrdruf with Patton and Omar Bradley. Patton grew queasy and refused to enter certain parts of the camps, but Eisenhower insisted on examining every inch. He then insisted that all Germans in the area be brought to look upon what their people had brought about.