Holocaust 2 -Extension 1: Holocaust Survivor Henry Greenbaum Speaks

#2 Personal Story - Dr. Stevens knew this man: Following is a personal story of a Holocaust Survivor Named Henry. He is telling the story of the exact moment of his liberation.


Henry Greenbaum
 HENRY GREENBAUM: We were marching, we were sleeping over in that wooded area during the night. We came early in the morning, we heard them, wasn’t quite yet at midday because we didn’t have any watches but we could tell by the sun. That it was not quite midday yet. We heard a lot of commotion going on. A lot of, we could see the highway from the wooded area, we could see the highway. And there were a lot of tanks, jeeps, motorcycles, trucks and army soldiers, they were coming through, tons of them, but we didn’t know who they were. Were they Germans, were they Americans. We did not know who they were, so we kept looking, looking, looking, watching them, and then all of a sudden we turned around our two guards with the dogs took off, and they escaped, they let us sit there in a circle and didn’t do anything.
BILL BENSON: Out in the woods?

HENRY GREENBAUM: Out in the woods. So we were, they told us a lesson before, we tried to escape the previous time. That’s what happens to you when you try to escape. They killed all the wounded. So that was still in my mind, but everybody was scared to run anyway. We were sitting in a circle and just looking for them and we didn’t see them. I guess they were trying save their own skin. They probably knew that these were Americans with the, we didn’t know. They probably knew so they were trying to save their own neck and they ran away from us. And out of nowhere as we were sitting just in the column, a big tank comes off out of the column and comes towards us. It knocks over trees and underbrush and he rolls up…

BILL BENSON: And you still don’t know who…

HENRY GREENBAUM: …we still don’t know who he is, and we kept saying for sure now the Germans are going to kill all of us. Now we are all going to get killed, for sure and it so happened it wasn’t that. Who was it? It was an American tank, and the little hood, that little thing that they get out of. What do you call it?

BILL BENSON: The hatch.

HENRY GREENBAUM: The hatch, opened up and there comes another soldier with blonde hair, jumped up and he said “You are all free.” “You are free, free” I think he jumped off and he hollered for his partner to throw some rations down and we were fighting like cats and dogs trying to get a ration, I never got to one anyway. They would fight, and so he saw we were going to hurt each other. So he stopped and he told us to go across the road with him, follow his tank and he will take us across to the farm. There were quite a few of us and they are liberated, and there is plenty of food there. And we followed it.

BILL BENSON: Behind the tank?

HENRY GREENBAUM: Behind the tank, don’t walk near the side, he said just behind me. And we walked. It looked like forever, it was only maybe a half a mile but it looked like forever till we got there. So what did we do? We come there finally in the farm and right in front of the farmer’s house were three big pails of potato peelings with white powder all over, and what did we do? We never made the door inside to go looking for food, we saw this food here and when your hungry this look like, like one of the biggest steaks you could eat in your life, but we got on the floors started stuffing us up with these potato peelings with the white powder and I didn’t want any more food after that, I got through eating that, and once we opened the door we could not believe it that it was true. They had potato’s, boiled potato’s which we never got, and then they had milk and water and big breads that the farmers baked and they, all of them were sick in there moaning and groaning because they were overeating and not having food for five years and now all of a sudden you got all the food that you want. There with the medic, the guy that took us in with the tank, had to call for reinforcements. And they came in and people got medicine, I showed them my wound on my head, which was getting infected, they cleaned it up for me, put a bandage on it. I was with a human being, not with these animals that they, these sadistic animals. And when you look at them you think they can’t hurt a fly, but they are cold, they are hard, murder hearts they had on them people. Very bad.

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