Saul Padover, an American intelligence officer, recounted conversations that he had had with prisoners he met when Buchenwald was liberated. After speaking with a German Communist who had been imprisoned in the camp, ‘a Belgian inmate came over and asked ironically why we wasted time with Germans, even German Communists. “A good German”, he said, “is a dead German.”’ Padover also spoke with a Pole, a former teacher from Kattowice, who had survived Auschwitz and then been evacuated to Buchenwald:
He burst forth into such a flood of imprecations against the German race as I have ever heard. He raised his arms and cried out to God to bring down His vengeance upon the German nation; to exterminate every German man, woman and child; to strike to death every living German being; to cleanse the earth of all German blood unto eternity. I was tempted to say Amen, and I felt like crying.
Source:
Bessel, Richard. “Revenge.” Germany 1945: From War to Peace. New York, NY, HarperCollins, 2009. 165. Print.
Original Source Listed:
Saul K. Padower, Experiment in Germany. The Story of an American Intelligence Officer (New York, 1946), p. 358, 359.
Further Reading:
Konzentrationslager (KZ) Buchenwald (Buchenwald Concentration Camp)
Konzentrationslager Auschwitz (Auschwitz Concentration Camp)
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