« They had hanged their own children »
American soldier George Leitman reaches Germany in the spring of 1945 and is experiencing shocking things there. « The Germans have even killed their own children, » he says of a crime that fills him with horror to this day.
When Laitman and his comrades from the Sixth US Army Battalion step on German soil, the war is still raging. The situation in the villages of South Germany is chaotic. « The front line was extremely mobile, » he recalls. In the last months of the war, the Wehrmacht and the SS have been fighting fanatically to preserve their departing Nazi regime. Lateman is experiencing many of the horrors of the war he remembers to this day.
A view he will never forget
« We arrived in a suburb, » he recalls almost 80 years later. « There were 15-20 children there-all boys. They were 10-12 years old and all up to one hanged. I knocked on the nearest door and asked what happened, » Laitman recalls. Local people told him that the children were killed by the fearsome Wafen SS (the SS military unit). « Apparently, they have gathered all the children in the village, gave them an anti -tank grenade launcher, and ordered them to shoot when the first American tank appeared. But at the sight of the tanks, the children fled, » Laitman told the State Gazette.
« A day later, the essays returned, gathered the children again and hanged them on the trees. They hung their own children, » says the American veteran. Later, historians were able to document many many crimes of the Wehrmacht and SS, who killed German civilians who refused to fight.
« I started to doubt the humanity »
George Leitman’s impressions of the war formed him forever. « The image of the kids struck me so much that I began to doubt the humanity. I began to think that you could not fully trust yourself. Because in what motivated the essays in their actions, there was nothing rational, » says the American veteran.
Also disturbing is the fact that in the decades, after the end of the war, almost all German mass murderers and their assistants deny their own responsibility for the war, which took the lives of over 60 million people. They also deny that they supported fascist ideology, which divided people into worthy and unworthy of life. It is this ideology that ultimately leads to the mass destruction of European Jews, Sints and Roma, as well as many other people. The Germans killed, shot or killed near 1.5 million children – most of them were Jewish.
Laitman’s family is also a victim of the Holocaust
George today lives in a home for the elderly in Berkeley – with his wife Nancy. « I often wonder: how it is possible for you to turn as many educated people as the Germans into something as horrifying in such a short time, » Laitman says, adding, « Every time I met the Germans, I invariably wondered if they or their parents were not guilty and what it was. »
« Real hell »
« When we reached the concentration camp Cauufering near Munich, my comrades were horrified. They were disgusted by what the Germans had
The Cauufearing concentration camp consisted of eleven different camps – there the Nazis deported 23,000 people, mainly Eastern European Jews, who were used as forced workers for the German weapons industry. Finally, they all had to be liquidated. They called it extermination through labor.
When George Leitman entered the released camp in April 1945, a real « real hell » was revealed to him – so a survivor described the conditions in the concentration camp. « There were corpses everywhere. Many of them were still smoldering because the Germans had tried to burn them. But since people were just skin and bones, they did not burn, » the veteran recalls. To this day, these paintings still wake him up at night.
« Coldness and ruthlessness will turn against all of us »
George Leitman is also concerned about politics. « It is amazing that a man like Donald Trump can become president. It is disturbing that large parts of society support fascist ideas. Whenever the blame for something has been thrown into whole groups of people, it has led to human tragedies, » says the 99-year-old American veteran of war.
In May, George Leitman turns 100. Despite all the difficulties, he says he had a good life: he was able to travel the world, start a family and meet interesting people. How his father died he learned only years after the end of the war: he was killed by the Germans in a camp in Yugoslavia – along with hundreds of other prisoners. Just because he is a Jew. To this day, George Leitman is trying to imagine what his father’s life was. These thoughts never leave him.
