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4,500 Jews Found in Buchenwald Camp Ask “where Do We Go from Here”; 1,000 Are Children

April 22, 1945
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About 4,500 Jewish survivors were found at the Buchenwald concentration camp, according to a report by an American army chaplain received here today.

Chaplain Herschel Schacter, who is at the camp at the present time, says that 2,000 of the survivors are from Poland, 1,000 from Hungary and the remainder from various European countries. About 1,000 are children between the ages of three and fifteen,

Capt, Shacter said that he spoke to hundreds of the survivors and that they were overjoyed at seeing an American rabbi, but that their main question was: “Where do we go from here?” Children of five and six, he reports, told him, pridefully, in Viddish, “I am a Jew,”

The Paris press features the accounts of the herrors at Buchenwald despite the rumored desire of the Ministry of Deportees to soft-pedal reports of atrocities. However, Jewish circles feel that these accounts will not do much to enlighten the public about Jewish sufferings, since Buchenwald was not, primarily, a Jewish camp.

Some means of informing the public about the atrocities committed upon Jews is necessary to offset the whispering and leaflet campaign of anti-Somitic groups, which are spreading rumors that “there were no Jewish deportoes nor any Jewish resistance,” Organized opposition to restoration of Jewish apartments is also being continued, by the “Association for Reconstruction of the French Home.”

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