Evans Army Community Hospital and the 4th Infantry Division Equal Opportunity teams partnered on Apr. 10 at the Elkhorn Conference Center to honor and learn about the lives of Holocaust survivors and their liberators.
Days of Remembrance is observed each April and this year’s theme is “Legacy of Perseverance.” The observance recognized victims and told their stories of perseverance, survival and healing. The also recognized allied forces who liberated prisoners and troops who became prisoners of war as well as holocaust survivors.
“More survivors, and now liberators, are coming forward to tell their testimony,” said Todd Hennessy, director of Colorado Holocaust Educators and event guest speaker. “We are gaining so many (stories), getting a much broader picture of how it truly was then.”
The story of Prisoner 27016 was highlighted during the observance. He was a liberator who became a Holocaust survivor. His name was Cpl. Anthony C. Acevedo, a combat medic assigned to Company B, 275th Inf. Reg., 70th Inf. Div.
Acevedo was taken captive after several days of intense fighting in the densely forested Ardennes region of Wallonia in Belgium, France or more famously known as the Battle of the Bulge. Nazi Soldiers then took Acevedo and his fellow allied forces to a POW camp. After a few days, the captors demanded Jewish Soldiers identify themselves-few complied. The prisoners were lined up and then selected at random based on their Jewish “look” and transported to Berga an der Elster, Germany, a slave labor sub-camp of the Buchenwald Concentration Camp. Acevedo, a Catholic born Mexican-American, was among those taken.
Acevedo maintained a detailed journal of his and fellow prisoners daily life in Berga an der Elster. His records recount the back-breaking job of digging tunnels and atrocities such as rape, murder, torture and starvation. Also recorded were each of the names and assigned prisoner numbers of those who succumbed to illness and starvation throughout his interment.
As allied forces gained precious ground across Europe and approached concentration and labor camps, Nazi Soldiers and guards would flee, sometimes abandoning their charges. For those housed at Berga an der Elster, the Nazis decided to take their prisoners along a 214-mile march to escape Allied forces.
“We marched and as we walked along the road you could see men which had been shot through the head,” wrote Acevedo in his journal dated Apr. 20, 1945. “Men that couldn’t make the march had to drop out, then were shot.”
The human convoy, slowed by the sick and injured, was eventually abandoned in a small barn within a village that had been taken by American forces.
“We were liberated today, April 23, 1945,” wrote Acevedo.
Acevedo soon returned to America, started a family, and became an active participant at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. Before his passing on Feb. 11, 2018, he would donate his journal, medic arm band adorned with the signatures of his fellow survivors, and tell his story of capture and liberation on film for future generations to remember the events he witnessed.
During his speech, Hennessy touched on the importance of remembering the atrocities of World War II and to learn from the darker side of history to help prevent those actions from repeating again in future history.
“That’s not enough to curse the dark spot of the past. Above all, we have to illuminate the future,” said Estelle Laughlin, Holocaust survivor, during an oral history interview with the Holocaust Memorial Museum. “I think that on the Day of Remembrance, that most important thing is to remember the humanity that is in all of us to leave the world better for our children and for posterity.”
For more information about the Holocaust or to hear the stories of survivors and liberators visit the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum at www.ushmm.org.