Liberators of Nazi Camps to Meet in U.S. Next Fall

The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council, the federal organization that will establish a memorial to the victims of Nazim, has announced it will sponsor the first “International Conference of Liberators of Concentration Camps” that will take place in Washington next autumn. The specific dates have not been set for the gathering to which delegations from ten countries are expected to attend.

Elie Wiesel, chairman of the Council and himself a survivor of Auschwitz and Buchenwald, said the conference will honor the Allied Forces who liberated Nazi concentration camps and that every effort will be made to locate medical corps personnel, military correspondents and photographers, and every commanding officer of each army that had participated in the liberation as well as the chief of staff, the battalion commander, and the officer of the detachment that first entered each camp.

Australia, Canada, Czechoslovakia, France, New Zealand, Poland, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia have been invited by the Council to send a formal delegation made up of individuals who participated in camp liberations. Initial contact with these countries was made through the Department of State. The U.S. Army Center of Military History, commanded by Brigadier General James Collins Jr., will provide liaison between the Department of Defense and the Council. The U.S., the host country, is the home of more than 5,000 survivors of these camps.

Miles Lermon, chairman of the Council’s Committee on International Relations and a resistance fighter during the Nazi occupation of Europe, has met with representatives of American veterans organizations to seek their help in locating American liberators, the Council said. The Council’s offices are at 425 Thirteenth Street, N.W., Washington. D. C., 20004.