Holocaust Remembrance a sobering commemoration

Published May 6, 2008
By Staff Sgt. Connie L. Bias
92nd Air Refueling Wing Public Affairs

FAIRCHILD AIR FORCE BASE, Wash. -- Church steeples loom over smoke and barbed wire.

A young girl's emaciated arms reach eagerly for a small bit of chocolate.

Weak light peeks through lampshades made of tattooed human skin.

Flashes of horrific scenes still run through Leo Hymas' memory - scenes like those above of starvation and torture, of death and hopelessness. As an 18-year-old drafted Army private, Mr. Hymas served as a heavy machine-gun operator in France, Germany and Czechoslovakia in the 1940s. In 1945, at age 19, his military team liberated Buchenwald, one of the largest Nazi concentration camps in Germany. Mr. Hymas shared that experience with Fairchild May 2 at a Holocaust Remembrance ceremony.

"In Germany, I heard shells dropping and men screaming; I have never been so scared in my life," said Mr. Hymas. "[Regarding Buchenwald,] I cannot tell you the evil-smelling, evil-looking, terrible, hellish place that was."

That hell included 18,000 starving prisoners, a crematorium "built specifically to burn bodies," and Nazi guards. Between July 1937 and April 1945, about 250,000 prisoners were held at the slave-labor camp, with an estimated 56,000 deaths. Not officially an extermination camp, Buchenwald was "where people were sent to work until they died," Mr. Hymas said.

"When I see the ugly black swastika, it reminds me of the ugly, black hearted men of the SS who perpetrated the crimes committed on the Jews," he said. "The white makes me think of that little girl in Belgium asking for chocolate, and I don't have to tell you what the red makes me think of."

Those thoughts were so overwhelming for Mr. Hymas that, for years, he didn't speak of the atrocities he witnessed. That silence ended one Independence Day celebration when a round of celebratory gunshots caused the veteran to "hit the dirt," an action that prompted Mr. Hymas' mother to start asking questions about his time in Germany. Answering those first few questions started a much-needed healing process, he said, and in 1997 Mr. Hymas began sharing his wartime experience publicly with students and audiences. Today, the war hero has gone from that young private who was "so scared, I don't know how I ever made it," to a powerful legacy of liberation and freedom who has full confidence in the United States, its principles and its military.

"I love the American flag and what it stands for," he said. "I want you all to come home as soon as possible and victorious; I want victory. And you can do it. I have faith in you to do it."