Liberator of Buchenwald shares ‘emotionally charged moment’ with survivor

Written by Joanne Hill    

Tuesday, 07 February 2012

TORONTO – Irving Roth was a starving 15-year-old imprisoned at Buchenwald when American Army Combat Engineer Frederick (Rick) Goss Carrier literally blew the locks off the concentration camp’s gate. Roth doesn’t know if he met Carrier on April 11, 1945, the day the camp was liberated by the Americans, but it was “an emotional

” Roth told the Jewish Tribune in a telephone interview. “Without him, if they had tarried another two or three weeks, I may not be alive.”ly charged moment” when the two men shook hands recently at an event hosted by the March of the Living.

Carrier was an assault reconnaissance combat engineer attached to General Patton’s Third Army during World War II. He was following the advancing American infantry in the German city of Weimar on April 10, 1945, tasked with finding and securing engineering equipment, vehicles such as trucks and cement mixers, and road- and bridge-building supplies left behind by the Nazis. He had to find the materials, map them and get the information to his superiors.

Churches were always a good place to go for information, Carrier had learned, so when he spotted the spire of a cathedral, he “drove over the rubble to find that church,” he told the Tribune. People at the church told him about a stone quarry and lumber mill at the site of a prison camp nearby and offered to take him there.

One of them told Carrier that Russian prisoners had overpowered camp guards following the evacuation, just a few weeks earlier, of thousands of Jewish prisoners who were taken on a forced death march to Auschwitz.

Prisoners who were left behind were deemed too sick to move and many had already died of typhus, he was told.

Nothing they told him could have prepared Carrier for what he witnessed when they arrived at Buchenwald. It was his 20th birthday.

“I left my teenaged years and became a man that day,” said Carrier. “The barbed wire fences were covered by [living] skeletons: they were so starved they looked like zombies. They were staring through the barbed wire.”

Carrier and his guides heard gunfire nearby and saw prisoners trying to squeeze through a small gap at the bottom of the fence. Carrier acted instinctively. “I turned, grabbed my wire cutters and cut an oval out of the barbed wire fence, and the people started coming through.” Their striped prison uniforms were torn and some of the pri
The danger of contracting typhus from the sick prisoners or of being caught in the gunfire between the Russians and Nazis was too great, so Carrier and his companions retreated to his jeep and returned to the town. He radioed his commanding officer and was told they would send troops, including medics, the next day to take over the camp.soners’ arms were covered with open sores. “Some were on their hands and knees and groaning.”

Carrier spent part of the night at the church in Weimer, then returned to Buchenwald and took refuge high in a guard tower at the edge of the camp where he waited until morning, “watching for dawn.”

He met the US armoured guard at the gate. He wrapped explosives around the heavy padlock and chain, ignited it, and opened the gate. More horrible discoveries awaited them inside the campgrounds. Carrier had served under Patton on D-Day and “was used to seeing corpses lying around but never people who had been tormented and starved to death. The look in their eyes! When I first saw it I upchucked; I couldn’t handle it.”

Thanks to Carrier’s discovery and actions, Buchenwald was liberated by the Americans the day after his 20th birthday.

“The war was fought for a purpose and we achieved that purpose: we defeated the Nazis.”

This year, Carrier will be one of a delegation of from 80 to 100 WWII liberators who will join the 25th annual March of the Living, to walk and bear witness together with about 100 Holocaust survivors. “I’m 87 years old and I’m only too happy to be a part of this whole mission,” said Carrier.
Roth, now 82, has been on the march several times and will participate again this year. He gives his survivor testimony before tens of thousands of people each year through programs offered by March of the Living, Christians United for Israel (CUFI), and other organizations. He said it is important for him personally as a survivor, and for young people who are learning about the Holocaust, to hear the “validating” testimony of liberators.

“In a sense, I have another corroborating eyewitness to what I’m saying, someone who saw it from the outside in,” said Roth. “You have two people: one was on the inside and one was on the outside.”

More than 150,000 young people have taken part in the March of the Living over the past 25 years, according to Eli Rubinstein, education director for the International March of the Living and director of March of the Living Canada. This number includes many non-Jewish people from diverse backgrounds. Of the 12,000 expected to participate this year, about 30 per cent will be non-Jewish. There is a deepening sense of urgency to the march because “this is really the last generation to learn directly about the Holocaust from those who went through it.”

High school students from around the world will spend a week in Poland, where they will meet Polish students and righteous Polish gentiles. On Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, they will march from the German Nazi death camps of Auschwitz to Birkenau in memory of all victims of the Holocaust. Their stay in Poland will be followed by a week in Israel, where they will mark Yom Ha’aztmaut, Israel’s Independence Day, by walking through Jerusalem.

“They are taking a journey that many people who perished in the Holocaust would have loved to take,” said Rubinstein. “We are taking the steps for them.”

Their visit to the Jewish homeland “is such an important part of our trip. We go from the tragedy of our past, which is the Shoah, to the hope of our future, which is Israel.”

Dr. David Machlis, vice-chairman, March of the Living, said the organization is gathering archival material and testimonies from liberators and will create a documentary from footage they will film during this year’s trip.

“It is imperative to establish this incontrovertible and everlasting testament to the truth,” said Machlis.

Rubinstein said they are actively seeking participants from among Canadian veterans of WWII “who took part in any part of the campaign in Europe. We’d be very honoured if they would come with us. Besides the survivors, there are no greater heroes than those who liberated Europe from Nazi tyranny. We owe them an enormous debt of gratitude and we are hoping to get as many as possible to come on the trip so we can say thank you.”

For more information, or to donate to the “Adopt-A-Liberator” program, visit www.motl.org.
Last Updated ( Wednesday, 08 February 2012 )

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