Page 136 - Witness: Passing the Torch of Holocaust Memory to New Generations
P. 136
What The Messiah Looks Like
Irving Roth (in black suit and tie), is flanked by US Army WWII liberators, including Rick Carrier, the first Allied soldier to enter Buchenwald and witness the atrocities committed by the Nazis there. Irving Roth recalls that day: “By 11:00 in the morning every guard disappeared. By 3:00 in the afternoon, on April 11, 1945, Rick Carrier and his comrades came to Buchenwald. Two American soldiers walked into my building. You may not know what the Messiah looks like – but I do. There were two of them – one was black and one was white. There were 300 of us 15-year-olds weighing on average 75 pounds...skeletons! They looked at us and broke down. [But] I was free.”
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