Aug. 14

USA:

Buchenwald liberator, American hero dies at 83

* James Hoyt, three other U.S. soldiers were the first to discover
Buchenwald
* Hoyt was just 19 at the time: "I saw hearts that had been taken from
live people"
* Hoyt had rarely spoken about what he saw; lived quiet life after war
* Hoyt suffered from post-traumatic stress: "Seeing these things, it
changes you"


James Hoyt delivered mail in rural Iowa for more than 30 years. Yet
Hoyt had long kept a secret from most of those who knew him best: He was
one of the four U.S. soldiers to first see Germany's Buchenwald
concentration camp.

Hoyt died Monday at his home in Oxford, Iowa, a town of about 700 people
where he had lived his entire life. He was 83.

His funeral was Thursday at St. Mary's Catholic Church in Oxford, with
about 100 people in attendance. The Rev. Edmond Dunn officiated and
recalled time he spent with Hoyt and his wife.

"I used to go over to have lunch with Doris and Jim, and I would sit
across from Jim at the kitchen table and think, 'Before me is a true
American hero,' " he said.

Hoyt had rarely spoken about that day in 1945, but he recently opened up
to a journalist.

"There were thousands of bodies piled high. I saw hearts that had been
taken from live people in medical experiments," Hoyt told author Stephen
Bloom in a soon-to-be-published book called "The Oxford Project."

"They said a wife of one of the SS officers -- they called her the Bitch
of Buchenwald -- saw a tattoo she liked on the arm of a prisoner, and had
the skin made into a lampshade. I saw that." PhotoSee the horrors of
Buchenwald.

Pete Geren, the secretary of the U.S. Army, said the sacrifice Hoyt made
for his country so many years ago should never be forgotten.

"It's important that we don't allow ourselves to lose him," Geren told CNN
by phone. "It's the memory of heroes like James Hoyt and the memories of
what they've done that we must ensure that we keep alive and share with
the current generation and future generations.

"Mr. Hoyt, as a young man, saw unspeakable horrors when he was one of the
soldiers to discover the Buchenwald concentration camp, and those are
experiences as a country and a world we can never forget.

"You think back on a young man 19 years old and to have the experience
that he had," Geren said, his voice dissolving before finishing his
thought.

The discovery of Buchenwald, on April 11, 1945, began the liberation of
more than 21,000 prisoners from one of the largest Nazi concentration
camps of World War II.

The official U.S. military account of the liberation called the camp "a
symbol of the chill-blooded cruelty of the German Nazi state," where
thousands of political prisoners were starved and "others were burned,
beaten, hung and shot to death."

"There is reason to believe that the prompt arrival of the 6th Armored
Division ... on the scene saved many hundreds and perhaps thousands of
lives," it said.

As a private first class in the U.S. Army, Hoyt was just 19 when he and
his three comrades -- Capt. Frederic Keffer, Tech. Sgt. Herbert Gottschalk
and Sgt. Harry Ward -- found Buchenwald in a well-hidden wooded area of
eastern Germany. See U.S. military documents detailing the liberation

Hoyt was driving their M8 armored vehicle.

According to military records, Keffer was the officer in command of the
six-wheeled armored vehicle that day. The soldiers were part of the Army's
6th Armored Division near the camp when about 15 SS troopers were
captured. It was mid-afternoon.

"At the same time, a group of Russians just escaped from the concentration
camp, burst out of the woods attempting to attack the SS men. The Russians
were restrained and interrogated," Maj. Gen. R.W. Grow, the American
commander of the 6th Armored Division, wrote in a 1975 letter about the
Buchenwald liberation.

Keffer was ordered to take his three comrades and two of the Russian
prisoners "as guides to investigate, report and rejoin as rapidly as
possible."

"I took this side journey of about 3 km away from our main force because
we kept encountering SS guards and prison inmates, and the latter told us
of the large camp to the south," Keffer wrote in a letter around the 30th
anniversary of the liberation.

"We had been told by our intelligence that we might overrun a large prison
camp, but we -- or at least I -- had no idea of either the gigantic size
of the camp or of the full extent of the incredible brutality."

Keffer and Gottschalk, who spoke German, entered the camp through a hole
in an electric barbed wire fence. Hoyt and Ward initially stayed at the
vehicle.

"We were tumultuously greeted by what I was told were 21,000 men, and what
an incredible greeting that was," Keffer wrote. "I was picked up by arms
and legs, thrown into the air, caught, thrown again, caught, thrown, etc.,
until I had to stop it. I was getting dizzy.

"How the men found such a surge of strength in their emaciated condition
was one of those bodily wonders in which the spirit sometimes overcomes
all weaknesses of the flesh. My, but it was a great day!"

Keffer said the prisoners, through an underground system, had already
taken control of the camp. The four soldiers notified division command to
get medical help and food to the prisoners as soon as possible.

The 6th Armored Division newspaper "Armored Attacker" ran a headline on
May 5, 1945: "Four 9th AIB Doughs Find Buchenwald." The article described
the discovery as "the worst concentration camp yet to be uncovered by west
wall troops."

Hoyt, a Bronze Star recipient and veteran of the Battle of the Bulge, was
the last of the four original liberators to die.

Born May 16, 1925, to a railroad worker and a schoolteacher, James Francis
Hoyt Sr. returned to his Iowa hometown after the war and largely kept
quiet about the atrocities he saw. He and Doris married in 1949 and had
six children. "She's the love of my life," he said.

He met Bloom, a journalism professor at the University of Iowa, in recent
years and began telling him his story.

Even 63 years after the liberation, Hoyt suffered from post-traumatic
stress disorder and attended a weekly group therapy session at a Veterans
Affairs facility.

"Seeing these things, it changes you. I was a kid," he said. "Des Moines
had been the furthest I'd ever been from home. I still have horrific
dreams. Usually someone needs help and I can't help them. I'm in a
situation where I'm trapped and I can't get out."

Hoyt was invited to attend the 50th anniversary of the liberation, but he
declined. "I didn't want to bring back those memories."

"Thinking back, I would have pushed to be a psychologist -- if for no
other reason than to understand myself better."

The military documents detailing Hoyt's involvement in the Buchenwald
liberation were discovered in a box in an archive at the The Center for
Military History this week after a CNN query.

It was fitting for the humble Iowan. Hoyt listed his greatest achievement
not as a Buchenwald liberator, but as spelling bee champ of Johnson County
in 1939, when he was in eighth grade. "I still remember the word I spelled
correctly: 'archive,' " he said.

The story of James Hoyt -- mail carrier, spelling bee champ and American
hero -- has now been archived for history. Sacrifices like his were
something his commander once said future generations should never forget.

"Memories of evil get erased, for life must go on, and new generations
cannot be locked in the past. But they would do well to remember the
past," Keffer wrote.

At Hoyt's graveside Thursday, a 12-veteran color guard gave him a
traditional three-shot salute. Hoyt's casket was draped with the American
flag, and that flag was folded, as is tradition, 12 times.

Retired Gen. Robert Sentman gave the flag to Doris Hoyt. Sentman had
earlier told mourners about the Buchenwald liberation.

"When the prisoners saw Jim, they picked him up and threw him in the air,
that's how happy they were after seeing such horrors. Prisoners had been
hung from hooks to die. He saw a lampshade made from a prisoner's tattoo.
Jim carried those horrors with him forever. He never got what he had seen
out of his mind. If you ever wondered about Jim, think about what he saw."

"When you were discharged, no one really gave a hoot about you. It was
difficult for a compassionate person like Jim to forget what he saw. He
was a hero."

(source: CNN)




FRANCE:

Holocaust T-Shirt Highlights Frances Anti-Semitism Problem


Anti-Semitic T-shirts sold in France and other recent incidents underscore
the conflict between Jews and North Africans in a country with a
reputation for anti-Semitism.

French prosecutors are investigating a reputed case of anti-Semitism in
which T-shirts that were sold in a store in the Belleville neighborhood of
eastern Paris displayed the slogan Jews are forbidden from entering the
park in German and Polish. The slogan is taken from Nazi signs posted in
the Polish town of Lodz in the 1940s, which lost about 95 percent of its
Jewish population of 200,000 in concentration camps during the War,
according to the BBC.

The sales assistant at the store, who said she did not know the meaning of
the slogans, claimed one person had bought five of the grey, sleeveless
garments for about 18 euros ($27) each.

The news of the T-shirts comes on the heels of another incident sparking
accusations of anti-Semitism in France. In July French magazine Charlie
Hebdo published a controversial cartoon from cartoonist Bob Sin that
suggested President Nicolas Sarkozys son, Jean, would convert to Judaism
prior to marrying his Jewish fiance, heiress Jessica Sebaoun-Darty.

Responding to a public outcry of anti-Semitism and the threat of lawsuits
from the families of Sarkozy and Sebaoun-Darty, the editor of Charlie
Hebdo asked Sin to apologize, though he refused.
Background: JewishMuslim violence in France
The Belleville section of Paris has been the site of clashes between young
Jews and Muslims of North African origin on numerous occasions.

France is home to the third largest Jewish population in the worldafter
Israel and the United Statesbut it also has a reputation for
anti-Semitism. Since the second Palestinian Intifada began in 2000,
attacks against Jews have markedly increased in France and more Jews are
leaving the country for Israel. A July 2008 article from the Israeli
newspaper Haaretz wrote, Many French Jews say they no longer feel
comfortable or welcome in France, particularly within the working-class
suburbs of Paris, where many Muslim immigrants live.

The International Herald Tribune also described the tension between Jews
and North Africans in France in a March 2006 article. The friction breeds
in communities with large Jewish populations, where North Africans moved
in the 1950s and 60s. According to the Tribune, Jew is a commonly used
epithet in working class suburbs of Paris where the two ethnic communities
collide. Its blacks and Arabs on one side and Jews on the other, said
Sebastian Daranal, a young black man.

The Tribune indicates that its difficult for the French authorities to
counter such a contentious atmosphere because of their own history of
North African colonialism. As long as anti-Semitism came from the extreme
right there was a reaction, said Barbara Lefbvre, a history teacher who
has written on the subject. But when it came from that part of the
population that itself was a victim of racism, no one wanted to see it.

Many factors are cited for the difficulties, including ill-feelings over
the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and economic troubles.

In June 2008 a Jewish teenager wearing a yarmulke was hospitalized after
being attacked by a group of youngsters in the 19th Arrondissement of
Paris; 23-year-old Ilan Halimi was beaten to death in the same suburb a
year earlier. John Rosenthal of World Politics Review explained that
French authorities painted the incident as one in a series of clashes
between youth gangs, the Jews on the one side and black Arabs on the
other.

(source: Finding Dulcinea)




ISRAEL:

Olmert presents bill to increase payments to Holocaust survivors


Prime Minister Ehud Olmert received praise Tuesday after he decided to
present a bill to the Knesset for approval that would raise the monthly
state stipend for 40,000 Holocaust survivors in Israel.

After the increase, the Israeli government would be paying 75 percent of
what the German government paid the survivors in reparations, while they
had been paying only 47% of that amount until now, said Noach Flug,
chairman of The Center of Organizations of Holocaust Survivors in Israel.
Some had been receiving only 25%.

The survivors had been receiving a minimum of NIS 1,080 a month from the
government, a figure that would rise to a minimum of NIS 1,800.

"I think this is very important," said Flug. "They've corrected something
from the past."

The decision follows recommendations made by the State Committee for
Holocaust Survivors, headed by retired Supreme Court justice Dalia Dorner,
which called for using 75% of the yearly reparations paid by the German
government to Israel to supplement payments to survivors.

The center, which has been at the forefront of these negotiations,
applauded Olmert's decision.

Uri Chanoch, a survivor of Dachau and board member of the center, said
that survivors had been waiting to get benefits from the Israeli
government since the German government stopped paying reparations in 1969.

The Israeli government has delayed increasing the stipend for years, said
Chanoch, who will be representing survivors in upcoming discussions with
the government.

"I will give some credit. We got money for the poor survivors. Now the
question is the speed of the implementation," Chanoch said.

If the bill is passed as Olmert gives it to the Knesset, the increase will
be retroactive from January 1, 2008. In 2009, the government will fund NIS
2 billion to Holocaust survivors, according to a press release, compared
to NIS 1.75b. last year.

Most recipients of state aid were imprisoned in labor camps, concentration
camps, and ghettos. Others escaped from Europe to Israel during World War
II.

(source: Jerusalem Post)