MAUTHAUSEN, Austria – For the third year, Soldiers from 7th Army Training Command’s Joint Multinational Readiness Center represented the U.S. Army liberators during a ceremony commemorating the 81st anniversary of the Mauthausen Concentration Camp liberation, May 10, 2026.
“Each of us here, every country represented, must use courage and clear vision to defend and transmit the truth of what happened here,” said Ellen Germain, U.S. Special Envoy for Holocaust Issues. “Together, we remember those who died here, we thank the American Soldiers who liberated the camps, and we promise to do our best to ensure that it never happens again.”
Soldiers from JMRC’s 1st Battalion, 4th Infantry Regiment served as the color guard in two ceremonies honoring both the American victims and U.S. liberators, carried the U.S. delegation wreath, and marched and stood in formation alongside U.S. Marines from U.S. Embassy Vienna during the International Liberation and Commemoration Ceremony’s main procession through the former “roll call square” at the Mauthausen Memorial.
“Remember and honor the lives of those who perished here, but also the lives of those who survived here,” said Ambassador Art Fisher, U.S. Embassy Austria. “Although many atrocities happened here – things that we’ll never be able to make sense of; things we’ll never be able to put right – it’s so important that we remember.”
Fisher shared the story of the Mauthausen Survivors’ Flag. In the final days before liberation, some of the prisoners began to sew the American flag in hopes they would be rescued.
“It’s sometimes at the darkest point in life – and at night – that we see the light,” he said. “It’s important that as a society, we remember that light. That light is so important to continue to shed on what happened here, so that darkness can never return.”
U.S. troops liberated almost 40,000 people in the Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camps, May 5-6, 1945. At least 90,000 people had died there over seven years, with thousands more gravely injured, unable to recover even after the liberators arrived.
A survivor was quoted as saying, “Mauthausen was unlike anywhere else, a place of physical and mental torture, and abuse beyond our imaginations. Mauthausen prisoners were forced to climb the 186-infamous steps with granite blocks on their backs.”
Germain said, “the horrors of Mauthausen remind us of the need for vigilance in combating antisemitism and protecting fundamental freedoms, because when we don’t, unthinkable terror ensues.”
Special visitors walked alongside this year’s U.S. delegation, including Paul Blackstone and Robert Pettit, the grandsons of Capt. Jack Blackstone, 26th Infantry; the son of Robert Esterley II, Robert III who donated his father’s WWII uniform to the Mauthausen Memorial; David Greenfield, son of a survivor; and Helen Ayer Patton, granddaughter of Gen. George S. Patton Jr.
Col. Jonathan Drake, Defense Attache at U.S. Embassy Vienna, shared recollections of U.S. Army liberators from the 71st Infantry Division and 11th Armored Division, just two of the 36 U.S. Army divisions who are credited as being WWII concentration camp liberators, meaning they were on site within 48 hours of the discovery of a camp.
“The Soldiers of these divisions were battle-hardened,” Drake said. “They had been through an incredible amount of things. They had seen all sorts of untold hardship. Nothing they saw, prepared them for what they would see here. They thought the worst of the war was behind them, but the scenes of cruelty, starvation and systematic torture and death would horrify them and stay with them the rest of their lives.”
“Today, we remember that the struggle against the harshest of pressure, the worst injustice and against the cruelest violence - is never in vain,” he said. “We honor the sacrifice.”
One wreath ribbon inscription read: "In Remembrance of the Liberators of the Oppressed."
Representing that ideal, fourteen Soldiers from JMRC supported the 2026 “Never Forget” ceremony, including 1st Lt. Camden Skinner, Sgt. Joshua Parks, Sgt. Evan Rouse, Spc. Aiden Burke, Pfc. Joseph Brennan, Pfc. Nathan Wagenius, Pfc. Cody Case, Spc. Tristan Grace, Spc. Daniel Lester, Pfc. Aiden Nipp, Spc. Joaquin Andrade, Spc. Tyler Mcearchern, Sgt. Tai Ormsbee, and Sgt. Matthew Dillon.