Behind the Headlines a Unique Holocaust Project

Dr. Fred Crawford’s experience as “possibly the only non-Jew” in a Nazi prison camp in 1944 has led to a unique. “Witness to the Holocaust” project at Emory University’s Center for Research in Social Change in Atlanta, Ga.

Now director of the Emory Center and a professor of sociology, Crawford left high school and enlisted during World War 11. When his fighter plane was shot down over Hungary, a Nazi-inspired mob thought he was a Jew and almost lynched him, he told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. He was beaten, dragged to the nearest poplar and had a noose placed around his neck. At that moment, his dog tag flopped outside of his shirt and the crowd noticed that a small gold cross was attached to it. Deciding that perhaps he wasn’t Jewish, the mob spared his life and had him thrown in prison.

Crawford was incarcerated in a civilian prison near Budapest, and he watched through the narrow window of his cell each morning as Jews were marched off to be hanged. He later was sent to Stolag 7A, a POW camp near Dachau. His camp and Dachau were both liberated on the same day, and Crawford saw the death camp, complete with boxcars of bodies, on April 30, 1945.

Believing that the Holocaust was a “unique catastrophic event of modern history,” Crawford and Dr. David Blumenthal. professor of Judaic Studies at Emory, set up the “Witness to the Holocaust” project in the summer of 1978. To trace the influence of the Holocaust, they began to record the testimony of liberators of Nazi concentration camps.

“We thought we’d have 10 liberators volunteer.” Crawford told the JTA, “but we had 30 names in one month, 150 names in two months and now we have over 300 names.” Interviews with these liberators are being taped and transcribed.

“In addition to this valuable information found in the tapes the liberators and others have been donating rare historical materials to the project,” Crawford said. “We have on file over 60 unpublished photographs taken at six different camps. Included in these pictures are many of German civilians touring the camps and burying the dead.”

TWO-FOLD PURPOSE OF THE STUDY

The purpose of the study is two fold to add to the existing historical testimony concerning the camps and their liberation from a previously untapped source, and to measure the impact of the event on the liberators themselves.

“Although it is too early to present conclusive data or general trends in the research,” Crawford said, “we have found unique information in these first interviews. In answer to the questions of historical account, we have already recorded instances of encounters between the American military and the Nazi guards which to our knowledge, have not previously been documented.

“In addition to accumulating a documentation of horror as our soldiers saw it, “he continued, “our aim is to outlaw the Nazi Party in the United States. We defeated the Nazis in World War 11, but we failed to and the Nazi sickness.”

With the attempts to rewrite history and deny that the Holocaust occurred, Crawford feels it’s important to prove what happened with a source that non-Jews will not reject. The liberators in the project, “every American’s father or brother, will be able to communicate to a section of society that never cared.” Crawford believes.