There are those who deny the unspeakable horror of the Holocaust, in which Adolph Hitler and his Nazi regime slaughtered 6 million Jews in the 1930s and 1940s. Some say it did not and could not happen.

        But, in Cheviot, there is an 85-year-old man named Elmer Reis.

Elmer Reis of Cheviot holds a photo of himself in World War II and a photo of a displaced persons camp in Bavaria in 1945. (Glenn Hartong photo) | ZOOM |

        He knows the truth because he was there.

        And, around America, there are thousands more like him — elderly veterans with searing memories of April 1945, when, as young soldiers, they marched into Germany and liberated the survivors of the Nazi death camps.

        Like Mr. Reis, they become angry when they hear or read of people who deny the Holocaust or claim the atrocities were exaggerated.

        “I know what I saw,” said Mr. Reis, sitting on the couch in his home, fingering tiny, aged photographs of the Allies' conquest of Nazi Germany 57 years ago.

        “I'll never forget it.”

        Soon, the memories of Mr. Reis and dozens of other veterans of Gen. George S. Patton's Third Army will be preserved on videotape, along with their memorabilia and personal photographs, as part of an exhibition called “Mapping Our Tears” being created by the Center for Holocaust and Humanity Education at Hebrew Union College.

        “They are the living witnesses; the third party that can tell the story objectively,” said Racelle Weiman, director of the center.

Elmer Reis (left) and Maj. John J. Kerr in 1944 in Europe. | ZOOM |

        “There were the perpetrators of these crimes and there were the victims,” Ms. Weiman said. “Now, we can hear from the soldiers who were the witnesses.”

        For Mr. Reis, a retired Cincinnati police officer and Hamilton County sheriff's deputy, it is a memory that has never been far from his thoughts .

        He was the 28-year-old captain of a military police company in the Fourth Armored Division — “Patton's Best,” they were called — and they had had a storied march through France, Luxembourg and Germany after landing at Normandy in June 1944. The Fourth was the unit Patton sent to rescue the 101st Airborne under siege at Bastogne in the Battle of the Bulge; and they were one of the first units to cross the Rhine into Germany.

        In early April, the Fourth Armored marched to the tiny town of Ohrdruf, a village made famous in earlier times because Johann Sebastian Bach wrote some of his works there.

        But, in the world of Nazi Germany, it was home to a concentration camp that took the overflow from the better known Buchenwald. Jews were killed by the thousands at Ohrdruf. By the time soldiers of the Fourth Armored Division reached the camp on April 4, there were few left alive.

        “After the first wave in, I decided to go up to the camp and take a look myself,” Mr. Reis said. “What I saw, I didn't like.”

        Inside the camp, the first to be liberated by American troops, lay dozens of corpses. They lay in groups of 10, Mr. Reis said, in circles.

        “They were blindfolded and each one of them was shot, right behind the ear,” Mr. Reis said.

        Then, he said, he went into a concrete-block building near the parade ground where, inside, “bodies were stacked to the ceiling like cordwood.”

        “They'd spread lime in the cracks between the bodies to keep down the smell,” Mr. Reis said. “It didn't.”

        He saw a 30-foot long ditch, 10 feet deep and dug by the prisoners themselves, who were forced to carry bodies and dump them in. The workers, too, were killed and their bodies bulldozed into the pit. The Nazis then spread pitch and tar in the pit and set it on fire.

        “You cannot see something like that and not be moved,” Mr. Reis said. “What butchers they were.”

        It was not long after Mr. Reis' visit to the camp that Gen. Patton came to Ohrdruf. The general was so disgusted by what he saw that he vomited.

        “Patton sent for the mayor of Ohrdruf and his wife made them come down to the camp and look at what had happened,” Mr. Reis said. “The next day, they were found in their home dead. They'd killed themselves.”

        He said it was hard to believe that the people in Ohrdruf didn't know what was going on at the camp. “But there was a lot that happened under the Nazis that people didn't want to know. All I know is what I saw.”

        Today, Mr. Reis and several other veterans who helped liberate the camps will be the center's guests at a reception at Hebrew Union College.

        The purpose, said Gail Mermelstein, the curator of the “Mapping Our Tears” exhibit, will be to introduce them to the project and begin collecting their memories and memorabilia.

        “The veterans we have talked to already seem to want some way to share their experience,” said Ms. Mermelstein, whose parents were concentration camp survivors. “It's very important to them.”

        WCET (Channel 48) has donated its studio facilities so that the Center for Holocaust and Humanity Education can put the soldiers' recollections on videotape.

        Eventually, the tapes of the liberators, along with tapes of camp survivors and the photos and artifacts they donate, will be part of the permanent exhibit at Mayerson Hall on the Hebrew Union College campus.

        “Unfortunately, these are men who are growing old and they're aren't as many of them around to tell what they saw,” said Ms. Weiman.

        “Men like Elmer Reis know the truth. They saw it with their own eyes. Who better to tell the story?”

        "I know what I saw.

        I'll never forget it.'
       

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