On April 29, the anniversary of the Americans liberating Dachau concentration camp in 1945, Israel begins its Memorial Day. As Israelis mourn the soldiers and civilians massacred by Hamas and other terrorists with the support of too many Westerners, it is a sobering illustration of how violent antisemitism survived Nazi defeat and continues in our own day.
Eight decades ago, Allied soldiers were horrified at the atrocities they found had been committed by the Nazis in order to exterminate Jews. The Jewish population, in fact, never recovered fully from the Holocaust. And yet in our own day, as Islamic jihadis in multiple nations try to finish what the Nazis began, leftists and even some “conservatives” in Western nations cheer on the jihadis and vilify the Jews. Those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it, and how many lives are lost along the way?
With over 50 hostages still in Gaza and the death toll still increasing from the ongoing war, the state of Israel posted April 29, “Tonight marks the beginning of Israel’s Memorial Day (Yom Hazikaron). Since October 7th, Memorial Days have been especially difficult. We remember our loved ones – women, children and men – who were murdered, kidnapped, burned and tortured. We remember our brave soldiers who lost their lives protecting our people. They are with us – always. May their memory be a blessing.”
The Old City walls in #Jerusalem lit up tonight in honor of Israel’s fallen. We carry their light with us — always.
— Israel (@Israel) Apr 28, 2025
On this very day eighty years ago, American soldiers of the 42nd and 45th Infantry Divisions finally and gruesomely came face-to-face with the reality of the Nazis’ Final Solution at Dachau. While the Allies knew that there was a concentration camp in that area of Germany, Tara Ross writes, they had no idea how truly horrific the operations and conditions of Dachau were.
Related: L.A. Drops Charges for Hamas Rioters, Charges 2 Jews Instead
“Up until April 29, 1945,” Lt. Jack Westbrook elucidated the soldiers’ mentality, “the majority of us in my unit were not aware of the Nazi efforts to exterminate the Jews—certainly not its scope, nor its effect on the world; and certainly none of us were aware of the Dachau Concentration Camp.” The general sense was that perhaps prisoners were being used for slave labor at the camp. The Allies had not taken the Nazis’ genocidal rhetoric and reports of Nazi atrocities seriously enough.
“As we approached, there was a very distinctive smell,” Private Richard Marowitz recounted the arrival. “We knew it fairly well, the stench of death… [T]he smell was not a farm,” as he at first thought, “it was Dachau that we had smelled miles before we got there.” The concentration camp was a death camp.
Today marks 80 years since the liberation of Dachau by American forces.
Over 200,000 people were imprisoned there, including Jews, political dissidents, Roma and others deemed “enemies” of the Reich.
On this solemn anniversary, we remember the victims and honour the liberators. pic.twitter.com/283UXQG0bL
— European Jewish Congress (@eurojewcong) April 29, 2025
The 42nd Infantry found a “death train.” Colonel William W. Quinn said, “They were expected to be dead by the time they reached Dachau, so that their corpses could be done away with in the famous crematory.” Corpses filled the boxcars.
Tom Sitter remembered his and his fellow soldiers’ shock: “We were not prepared for this. This was one of the most sickening … All we saw were bodies piled on flatcars and people were streaming out when we got there.” Chaplain Eli Bohnen soberly wrote home, “The human mind refuses to believe what the eyes see. All the stories of Nazi horrors are underestimated rather than exaggerated.”
Captain J. Barnett stated of a Dachau subsidiary camp “[a]ll life in the camp had been extinguished.” He found burned bodies and pits where a “huge number of corpses [were] piled on top of one another … The arms and legs of many of the corpses had been broken, apparently to force them into the pit.” The most badly abused prisoners of the camp inmates were Jews (Nazis also targeted and killed Catholics, other Christians, ethnic minorities, and political dissidents). Chaplain Bohnen said, “They were emaciated, diseased, beaten, miserable caricatures of human beings. I don’t know how they didn’t all go mad.”
#OTD in 1945: The liberation of Dachau concentration camp.
Today I am also remembering Willy Field, who survived Dachau to fight in the British forces for 11 straight months after D-Day.
He was one of 10,000 German Jews who fought for Britain – a truly humble hero!!
RIP!🕊️ pic.twitter.com/My16Mw1dZf
— Dr Helen Fry | WWII Historian (@DrHelenFry) April 29, 2025
Some survivors seemed to agree that they would have gone mad had they not been liberated. One survivor gratefully declared, “I hate to think of what would have happened to us if you had not come at the time you did. You, the G.I. Joes, spoke the first kind words to us in years. You held in your arms our living skeletons, too weak to walk, too weak to eat, and too weak to live. . . . To the camp survivors, G.I. Joe came from heaven. You were a divine force of mercy.”
Some 60,000 prisoners were freed from Dachau and its subsidiary camps by the troops, Ross notes. Quinn declared, “[Dachau] will stand for all time as one of history’s most gruesome symbols of inhumanity. There our troops found sights, sounds and stenches horrible beyond belief, cruelties so enormous as to be incomprehensible to the normal mind.” A Dachau survivor who married one of the American soldiers who liberated the camp refused to tell her grandchildren anything but, “I remember the day the Americans came.” She could not bear the other memories.
If the American soldiers who liberated Dachau were a divine force of mercy, then we also in our own day must be a force to fight antisemitism. Even here in America, we see violent Jew-haters rage on campuses and in streets, and in Los Angeles the only arrested individuals charged criminally over pro-Hamas riots are two Jews who fought back. Never Again is now. What will our response be?
Editor’s Note: Do you enjoy PJ Media’s conservative reporting and historical contextualization of breaking news? Support our work so that we can continue to bring you the truth. Join PJ Media VIP and use the promo code FIGHT to get 60% off your VIP membership!
