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GIs Remember - Isadore Zaritsky - Ebensee

Philadelphia-born Isadore Zaritsky landed in Normandy soon after D-Day, June 6, 1944, with the 80th Infantry Division. He fought in the Battle of the Bulge and other major campaigns.

"Near the end of the war my unit came upon the Ebensee Concentration Camp in Austria, quite by accident. The survivors were walking skeletons made up of skin and bones. How could anyone have done this to another human being?

I went into a building that held the ovens, and took pictures of the human ashes that had been left in the ovens by the fleeing Germans and others in charge of the camp. The room next to the crematorium, 10 ft x 10 ft, held bodies almost to the ceiling.

Today there are so many in the world who try to say there was no such thing as these concentration camps ... but I've seen them. Naturally, we cannot blame all of the Germans for what some did."

GIs RememberNational Museum of American Jewish Military History