Buchenwald Concentration Camp

For the past 71 years, Leo Hymas has been haunted by what he had witnessed just inside of a small town in Germany during World War II, but let’s start from the beginning. He was born in Sharon, Idaho on February 2, 1926. He had received his draft notice in May and so he went directly from High School to the Big City. During his 11 months of his career, Hymas had lost his best friend and disobeyed orders to kill two German Military prisoners of war, but what he had found next was not expected, he had discovered the Buchenwald Concentration Camp. He had engaged in a firefight with German Soldiers guarding the camp, Hymas and three other machine gunners blew through the razor-wire fence and captured or killed all of the guards. Buchenwald was the first concentration camp found by American Soldiers. And Hymas, 19 years old at the time, was given the nickname “Leo the Liberator.” But the images and memories from that …show more content…
Eisenhower and General George S. Patton, and according to Hymas, became physically ill at the sight of the emaciated prisoners and hundreds of dead bodies. “General Eisenhower issued a statement to the world about what we had discovered here, and I also got to go home in the process, where there will be no one shooting at me.” During WWII, the United States put about 10 million men under arms,” Penner said. “I can only imagine what it might have felt like to be one of those selected soldiers walking into one of those camps in Buchenwald, Dachau and others. It boggles the mind.” Hymas a member of the speaker’s bureau for the Washington State Holocaust Education Resource Center, shares his wartime experience as a way to come to peace with his memories. Hymas said, “I was blessed to help free many oppressed people. What tiny little bit I did to help overcome that terrible, awful wickedness, as difficult as it was, was the best thing I have ever done in my