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The Broadcasts of Edward R. Murrow: A Resource for |
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THE LIBERATION OF BUCHENWALD CONCENTRATION CAMP
Murrow was one of a number of journalists who witnessed the liberation
of the Buchenwald concentration camp on April 15, 1945.
What follows is from a radio interview with author Bob Edwards about
that experience:
“It was very clear in his Buchenwald broadcast, he was very angry. And
he didn’t record it until three days later. He was furious, and it really shows
in the broadcast. In fact, he says, if anything I have said about Buchenwald disturbs you, I’m not in the least bit sorry. I think he was angry on several fronts, angry of course at the Nazis for what they had done, but I think he
was also angry that we didn’t know. He had had some hints of the Holocaust,
or the “final solution,” as the Germans called it, a couple of years earlier,
and he had broadcast them. He was very skeptical. He said these reports,
if they’re true, it just seems too horrific to be true.
Liberating Buchenwald, he not only found out they were true, it was even
worse than you could conceive. The other thing was, in the surrounding
villages the people looked like they had not been at war. The people were
well fed, well clothed, they had suffered no effects of this war so far.
They were well inside Germany, and here, just over the fence was the
worst man can do to another human being. That upset him, too.
As the armies liberated the camps one by one, the commanding officers
of the liberating troops would go round up the Germans in the neighborhood
and have them come to see. I think in some cases they put them to work.
But mostly they wanted them to see—look, your country did this.” (Source)
Listen: Visting Buchenwald – 4/15/45
Read the full transcript of this broadcast
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