I write a weekly column for the local newspaper about our military veterans who've served in conflicts and wars from times gone by: World War II, Korea and Vietnam. I put a premium on the opportunities to interview the WW II and Korea folks, especially, because there are so many fewer of them.
There's a Facebook page I run, entitled, 'A Veteran's Story'; all of the veterans that have been profiled to date are on that page. Every week, when a new story is posted, I'll make that week's soldier the profile picture for the page and, if there's a suitable one available, it'll be posted as that week's page background photo.
It's just one more way of honoring these patriots.
Last week's story was about Morrie Sheffer, who served in the Army's 8th Air Corps in Europe during WW II. As part of his duties in the bomb wing's public affairs office, Morrie wrote stories for the outfit's newspaper...an assignment that afforded the young soldier the opportunity to travel all over Europe and write on a variety of topics, including the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials.
He also wrote a story after being sent to tour Dachau Prison Camp, the Third Reich's very first genocidal extermination facility, shortly after the war. 31,951 souls were executed there.
To put that into perspective, imagine a just-shy-of-capacity crowd at the Cleveland Indians' Progressive Field being killed with Zyklon-B gas by the Nazis, victims who were told they were being given showers.
Mr. Sheffer didn't have very many photos from his time in WW II; since he'd covered the Dachau camp, I chose a photo from the internet to use as the weekly page background, a photo from Dachau.
A photo from the Dachau crematory ovens, one showing three prisoners standing beside a deceased victim about to be burned to ashes.
One of the page readers was offended by the photograph, sending me an email to tell me how terribly offended she was and how ashamed I should be for using that picture. She certainly got her moneys' worth. I didn't reply to her communication but, knowing she also follows this page, I will now.
Get over it.
Get over your offended self. What happened at Dachau, and all the other Nazi death camps, is history, very well-documented history. It is a terrible, horrific history, but it is history nonetheless, whether you see those pictures or not.
Conditions were so terrible that, after visiting the Ohrdruf sub-camp at Buchenwald, Supreme Allied Commander Gen. Dwight Eisenhower ordered that members of Congress and prominent newspaper editors be flown to Europe in order to witness the atrocities committed at these death camps. He wanted it on record, in print, in photographs, in newsreels, so that there could be no denial of what had been done to these human beings by the Third Reich.
I will not bend or distort history, no matter how distasteful it may be to some. Your feelings may be fragile but history...and truth...doesn't care.
Neither do I.
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