Bearing Witness: American Soldiers and the Holocaust

In the final days of WWII, as American soldiers fought their way across Europe toward the final Nazi stronghold of Berlin, they stumbled--almost by accident--across Nazi "work camps," a euphemism for slave labor and death camps populated by Jews, gypsies, and other "undesirables." Liberating the death camps was a mission the GIs neither trained for nor expected. Drawing on a combination of old newsreels and first person accounts, Bearing Witness, hosted by newsman Morton Dean, offers up a tribute to the citizen soldiers, some little older than boys, who were both liberators and witnesses to Hitler's "final solution." Infantrymen, nurses, and combat photographers are still haunted by the scenes of horror (when the GIs arrived, the ovens were still smoking, and men, women, and children were dying of disease and starvation at the rate of 300 per day) they encountered over a half century ago. Surviving prisoners remember the many small acts of kindness shown them by the Americans, while soldiers recall the incomprehensibility of the single-minded viciousness heaped on helpless prisoners, particularly children. Today, these elderly witnesses to genocide are compelled to pass on the horrors of what they saw to future generations. As one man puts it, "someone has to remember what happened there." While this brief documentary features many graphic and disturbing images, this is still suitable for high school audiences and above. Recommended. Aud: H, C, P. (S. Rees)