FRED PETERSON
11/18/94 SYLVANIA, OHIO
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My name is Craig Bradley Roy Peterson. I was born at the hospital, but my parents lived at the corner of Whiteford and Argonne, it is 1 block North of Alexis. My whole life, except for two years, when my family moved up to Michigan, for two years. I was born March 19, 1926 and entered the service in 1944, I graduated and about a week later after graduation, I was in the army, at 18. When we moved from there, we moved to the South end of Sylvania, and that's where I spent my whole childhood. It varied from industrial or rural, we all had gardens. I knew Jews, three families, my grandmother rented a home from a Jewish family for several months and there was two Jewish businesses in Sylvania, that's all the Jewish people ever knew. I was always friendly, with the two, and they're both good stores. She was my grandmother’s landlady in Toledo. I think they were just everyday people; they were businesspeople. I will say that the ones that I knew, were businesspeople. Maybe Hitler held that against them, you know, that they were hardworking businesspeople.
I was in, H company, 222nd infantry regiment, 42nd rainbow division. I landed over there after, the Battle of the Bulge, started. I got in at the end of the war, it wasn't not busy, or anything like that. I was still in school, but in fact, I was in basic training. I went over when, The Battle of the Bulge, was on, not over yet, and they rushed us up that way. I was put in the 42nd Rainbow Division, that was kind of the southern edge of the battle, so we went up when Patton decided. We were on that edge, we were filling in right where he pulled out, that's where we was, as he pulled out, so we had to take that area over. I went in there, I guess January 1945, until the end and it was all over. I helped liberate the Dachau concentration camp in Germany, April 29, 1944. I'm sure they knew what was happening, but I was never told. I'm sure somebody knew, they had to know. We were heading for Munich, Germans were pretty well beat by then, I didn't do it myself, see it myself, but they came across a couple of prisoners, who escaped from Dachau, they told us there was a prisoner of war camp there, and so then we went that way, instead of right for Munich, we veered off that way, and that's how we happened to be at Dachau on April 29th. We got there the evening before and we went in the next morning, early the next morning. We just assumed it was a prisoner of war camp. It is what we've heard, it was a prisoner of war camp, and we were liberating it the next morning, which we did. We went in, but by then, a lot of them had ran away, but a few were there, we captured some of the German hierarchy in the camp, and German guards in the camp. It was terrible, we're seeing very few prisoners walking off in the morning, just before daybreak.
I didn't have a watch, but I think it was early in the morning, 8:00 or 9:00 o'clock in the morning. We went in there, on the side with those boxcars. There were 40 some box cars there, and the ones that were close, if I remember right, is one we opened, and all I think about, that line there, and only one live person in those boxcars. I got in that first line with about 15 cars, we open them up, and we found one live person, in all those boxcars. Somebody told us, that the SS had machine gunned those boxcar's before they left, when they pulled out of there, but there was holes in the boxcars. They were in them for two weeks, locked up in there, no food, nor water, nor sanitation, or nothing, and they never got out of them, even women and children, one live person, and he's living today. I am going over in April, for the 50-year celebration, and the survivors of Dachau, are planning a little celebration for us and he's going to be there. It was a terrible smell, musty smell, you know that we got into that. They all came running out, you heard the gunshots in the background. They were screaming, we would have to follow it, there's nothing, but we got in there. I heard some shooting in the back of the camp, some of the guys went around the back, there was a little shooting now, but I went through the front door shooting there. We caught a few guards some of them exchanged uniforms with the inmates, but they weren't hard to find. They were pretty well fed, for the rest of the inmates, it was terrible conditions in there. At the time I didn't know how long they'd been in there; it was better after two weeks. I didn't really want to touch them because of such terrible conditions. They were dirty, they were ragged, some had shoes on, some didn't have shoes on, you have to feel sorry they could look like that, it's different when a soldier shoots a soldier, but something like that, all those people in such terrible shape. They were glad to see us, they were wanting to hug and shake hands with us, and everything like that. Some of the guards got shot back there, it was out of my part of the camp. I heard some shots back there, but what happened I don't know, I wasn't there. After everything settled down, I wanted to run a little bit. I went to one of the barracks, then I walked over to the crematory, where that was at they didn't have nothing set up for gassing.
FRED PETERSON
11/18/94 SYLVANIA, OHIO
39 MINUTES
They had ways set up there, I guess it was operational. I don't think they ever did use it, but I went into the crematory, it was two rooms, full of dead corpses. In the one room they would just throw them up against the wall. The other one they were stacked real orderly. Why the difference in the rooms I don't know, I think that the one where they were thrown, there was a word that told where the crematory was. The inmates said there was three of them three hours it could've been four, but that's what they said. These were mostly Polish Jews, and we had a few Polish boys in our company, and they kind of went to crazy, they want to shoot to kill them off, until everybody was dead. We did have a few of the boys, that were very upset about the whole thing, they were the older fellows. We were to liberate the camp and there wasn't really much fighting, really as far as the battle goes, but most of them pulled out, I think the night before, but we did capture a few, maybe about 20 guards we captured. Not much fighting goes on after dark, really most of the time it was on daytime. I can't see how they would have been okay, no matter what would have been done, about the number of survivors that could deal with it. I had nothing to do with giving food, I was just the old infantryman, we moved in there, we left the next day, turned it over to somebody else. We moved out the next day, on with the war, we went to Munich the next day. I was never told anything, and I wasn't there at the cleaning up of the camps, that was done by another group, the 30th, the next morning. I think maybe some of our other Rainbow Troops moved in as we went, usually there are three regiments, air divisions. I set up a perimeter around the camp, not to let anyone out, if they want to get out, to assure that the guilty would not escape. All that were there we captured, we posted guards at the gates and knew the guards on duty, I guarded that night. I did hear we got the guards, the guards we did capture, we took away everything that they could use for weapons, we did that for any person. I'm sure they did the same to us, such as anything, for knife of any kind can be used for a weapon. I guess they were picking up the knives and stuff that were laying there, that we took away from Germans, but I didn't get into that either because this all happened the next day.
After Dachau we moved into Munich and were involved in the takeover of Munich. The German people were happy when we arrived. The war ended, I was just a young fellow, I spent my 19th birthday crossing the German border, that was in March. I was over there for another year, until June the following year. I was over there for 13 months after the war was over. When I came home, I was over that, it is still on my mind, long afterwards. We took a load of Polish displaced persons, back to Poland, when all of it was through, going though Czechoslovakia. I tried to see all I could see, this load of displaced persons, that were concentration camp survivors, were displaced persons they took back to Poland. These were not concentration camp people, they were in worse shape, these were people that worked there, and now were working for us. We were just trying to get them back to where they belong. I was in for a period in Austria, for the whole year. We got people back where they belong. It didn’t matter if they were French, Polish, Czechoslovakians, or whatever, that's what we did. I was on one of the details, and we went all the way through Czechoslovakia, which was all Russian territory, over to the Polish border, then we came back. My father had already died, my mother, she died within a year after I was home. It has only been the last 3-4 years; I have said anything about it. I just kept quiet, but then as more and more came out about it, then people started asking questions. I belong to the 42nd Rainbow past members. I was state president two years ago, very involved with that. There was my company. We were once the first ones in there.
I feel that they knew about it before we went over there. I did not know about it because I was never told about it. I'm sure that somebody had to know about it. I should have done something but that is why we were over there, trying to do something about it. All the German population was guilty, they felt it was not crimes by the German people, that they didn't know what was going on. Dachau was just a mile away from the concentration camp, and how they did not know anything was going on, they said they did not understand. After we moved out of there, they made these people all come out of their homes and walk through there. I was there when that happened. I heard them all cry one to another, they said they did not know what is going on. I do not believe it not for one minute they had to know what was going on. They had to smell the ashes that came up out of those things they had to wonder what that was.
I would not recognize any guard, but if they said, they were one, that's the only way I would know, I would not recognize anybody. They were told to do it. I don't believe if I was told to do some stuff, they were doing that I could have done it. Right Wing hate groups throughout the world should be stopped in their tracks, right now, even though our constitution in the United States allows freedom of speech. I don't believe I could burn the flag either, but the constitution says they can, and you can, you can burn a flag, but you can’t burn leaves that's not right. It's not right, no way is it right, even though we were trying to fight it at the end of World War II, the enemy became the Russians, we brought over some of the scientists that were involved in the rocket program in Nazi Germany, they were building rockets to use against us, and then we conquer their country, and then we took them in as scientists to help our war movement. I guess we were right not wrong at the time. I don't know that any of those people were really bad people, but as long as they could have helped us, I think we should have taken advantage of it. I'm not saying they never could help us, as long as they could help us in our programs, and they have done nothing really wrong, I mean other than protect their own country, what any soldier should do, I think we did right by having them help us. I know that many people who weren't religious, became religious, people who were religious became non-religious, some people it didn't change their faith, but whenever shelling started, they started praying, they got religion really quick, they were asking for all the help they could get. A day or two before that, they did say, they don't want to believe in God. I don't know what God could have done about it, but I'm sure he wasn't happy about it. The last 3-4 years I have been happy because I've helped three or four people that are publishing books about the Holocaust. We can't let it happen again. When children show prejudice, that would be the time I would try to teach them, not to have any prejudices, black, white, yellow, pink, purple, whatever religion, everybody should have their own religion and should be able, to practice the way they want to. The Holocaust is the worst thing that happened in my lifetime. I'm kind of glad that I had a chance to help out a little bit, to help end it. I never planned to be there, I was just there because I was supposed to be there, and I did what I was supposed to do, so glad we were able to do what we could do. I wish we could have done it sooner; we could have saved more lives. I was there, that day I did what I was told to do, and glad that I was there, it was a terrible thing, it should never happen again. I was 19 years and two months old, when we went into that camp.