The main text of this post comes from William Quick’s “STEVESHIT” website, a short lived attempt by Dr. Quick to disparage my Dad’s account of his experiences around Weimar in 1945. I copied Dr. Quick’s comments here to show the strange animosity he has toward the proper publication of my Dad’s story. Perhaps my brother in law does not understand that I, as an academic and as a proud son , would welcome an academic review of the materials. That review can not happen until my brother Hugh Schwartz stops insisting that he will keep the WWII materials from the eyes of the surviving pool of survivors until the pictures rot and the survivors are dead. Part of the evidence in the collection is this photograph. I am showing the backside because it refers to the enlarger my Dad somehow assembled while at Nordhausen .. a subsidiary camp near Buchenwald. Another inscribed picture shows a Pharmacy that my Dad identifies as the place he procured chemicals to develop the negatives shot with his Argus C3, The collection includes some of those negatives and the camera is now have in my library. Together with Dr. Robert Schwartz story their are other soldier’s) stories of their entry into the camp before Patton’s arrival ..it seems to me there is good reason to believe the story my Dad told.
Liberator or Visitor at Buchenwald?
NOTE: This is a direct copy of the material posted by William Quick of his now defunct website: https://steveshit.wordpress.com/. If you click on the header above, it will bring you to the full copy along with a marginal note from me. As always, comments are welcome.
As usual, SMS is misrepresenting the truth in a blogpost about his father’s supposed exploits liberating Buchenwald, at BUCHENWALD 34: Anniversary of the liberation, where SMS makes some outrageous claims that a reader has also questioned:
1) “my father, Robert Schwartz, led the first US Army medics to enter the camp [Buchenwald]… on April 9, 1945.” Contrary to this statement, Buchenwald was not liberated until later in April, on April 11, 1945. Sometime that day, the SS guards fled, and the prisoners assumed control of the camp. US Army scout cars and tanks found the camp in late afternoon, and passed through as they continued pursuing the German army. No US forces, either military or medical, provided any care until about April 13, when the US Army took over [Reference: “13 April 1945, 11:30 am. Lt. Colonel Edmund A. Ball of the 80th Infantry Division [Third Army] takes command of the camp; a company of the 317th Infantry Regiment is assigned to protect it. Ball meets with 21 representatives of the International Camp Committee, is briefed on the situation and decides what is to be done next.”]
2) “my father, Robert Schwartz, led the first US Army medics to enter the camp [Buchenwald] and give care” There’s no evidence that Dr Robert Schwartz let the first US Army medics into Buchenwald. Immediately after the camp’s liberation (on April 11, 1945), the camp’s medical care was placed under the leadership of Dr. Joseph Brau, a French radiologist who had been a prisoner at Buchenwald [Reference: “On the 12th of April, the French physician Dr. Joseph Anselme Brau became head physician for the liberated camp.”]. US Army medics weren’t even present at the camp until the 120th Evacuation Hospital staff arrived on April 15; the 120th was not fully operational for another two days.
3) “The Gestapo wanted their colleagues in Buchenwald to blow up what was left and called to say explosives had been sent. The Gestapo in Weimar did not know that the explosives they were sending to Buchenwald were not useful. The camp had been liberated a few days before when starved and emaciated inmates stormed the watchtowers, seizing control… A prisoner answered the phone and informed headquarters that explosives would not be needed, as the camp had already been blown up, which, of course, was not true.” A somewhat different version is at history.com: “As American forces closed in on the Nazi concentration camp at Buchenwald, Gestapo headquarters at Weimar telephoned the camp administration to announce that it was sending explosives to blow up any evidence of the camp–including its inmates. What the Gestapo did not know was that the camp administrators had already fled in fear of the Allies. A prisoner answered the phone and informed headquarters that explosives would not be needed, as the camp had already been blown up, which, of course, was not true.”
This story, especially in the mashup as written by SMS, contains at least one factual error: the camp was not liberated “a few days before.” The camp was liberated by the prisoners on April 11, after the SS left; later the same day, the American troops arrived. Only one book, The Second World War: A Complete History, by Sir Martin Gilbert, mentions the story but does not reference the source. When challenged by a reader about the source of the story, SMS responded “I do not now [sic] if the anecdote about the phone call is apocryphal.”
4) ” These troops, including my father’s medical company, entered the camp, gave care and were later ordered to leave so General Patton could lead the official liberation.” There is no evidence that Patton’s visit to the camp (variously described as occurring on April 14 or 15) was accompanied by troops leaving to make Patton a leader of “the official liberation” as SMS describes. [Reference: “The next morning while we were sipping coffee after breakfast, a great commotion broke out down at the gate. We wandered off in that direction, coffee cups in hand. A bright and shiny jeep came through the gate, with this fellow standing in front of the passenger seat, holding onto the windshield. His helmet was gleaming and elaborately decorated, his uniform spic and span, his pistol highly polished and oddly shaped, and, by God, there he was: it was George Patton himself touring this place. From time to time the jeep would stop and he would ask questions.”]
What was Dr. Schwartz’s actual role with respect to the Buchenwald concentration camp? In a letter to his wife dated May 1, 1945, he describes his “recent visit to the notorious concentration camp at Buchenwald.” His letter goes on to describe “descriptions of things that I saw myself; things that were seen by other soldiers (and related to me by several of them so that there can be no doubt as to their veracity) and stories that were told by inmates and checked by questioning other inmates for corroboration of details.” Nowhere in the letter does he describe the medical situation except in the generalities of “dietary deficiencies, diarrhea, dysentery, typhus, tuberculosis and death itself were universally prevalent” nor does he imply that he participated in the care of the survivors.
Visits to the camp were mandatory for nearby US Army troops [Reference: “Soon after seeing Ohrdruf, Eisenhower ordered every unit near by that was not in the front lines to tour Ohrdruf: “We are told that the American soldier does not know what he is fighting for. Now, at least, he will know what he is fighting against.’” Eisenhower felt it was essential not only for his troops to see for themselves, but for the world to know about conditions at Ohrdruf and other camps. From Third Army headquarters, he cabled London and Washington, urging delegations of officials and newsmen to be eye-witnesses to the camps. The message to Washington read: ‘We are constantly finding German camps in which they have placed political prisoners where unspeakable conditions exist. From my own personal observation, I can state unequivocally that all written statements up to now do not paint the full horrors.’ “]
It can easily be concluded that Dr. Schwartz’s role was limited to visiting the camp for a short while, as ordered by Eisenhower, and that he was not providing care at the camp, as postulated by SMS.
Granting you guardianship of the history of the sacred past would be as irresponsible as consigning the unwritten history of the future to a nuclear-armed Iran. Time and again, including today, you have convincingly demonstrated how ill suited you are for this role:
You call yourself an editor, yet you are at best indifferent—and probably ignorant—to the rules of spelling, grammar, and punctuation and yet so falsely confident in your capabilities that you refuse to utilize even the simplest of aids, such as spellcheck.
You demonstrate appalling taste and are shockingly disrespectful of human dignity and the rights of others.
You digitally alter photographs in the crudest of ways.
You appropriate words, art, and photographs from other sources without attribution.
You post photographs from elsewhere that have been digitally corrupted in even the crudest and most obvious fashion while failing to appreciate their alterations.
You employ photographs of randomly selected people you do not know to dishonestly indicate that they illustrate the accompanying text, when the terrible things you say about those shown have no basis in fact.
You gullibly repost satirical pieces, failing to realize that you have been taken in.
You post under false names.
You post falsely under the names others have used.
You unapologetically spew the most hateful of racial and religious slurs and tropes, seemingly thinking that you are somehow entitled to their use.
You so crave attention that you inexplicably publish even the most critical of comments and have no shame in airing the dirtiest of your laundry.
You repeat mistruths so often that you are incapable of distinguishing fact from fantasy.
Your arrogance in the face of sloppiness, malevolence, ignorance, stupidity, bias and bigotry, misanthropy and misogyny, hostility, hypocrisy, incompetence, and willful distortion of facts renders you supremely unqualified to function as any sort of a historian, amateur or otherwise.
Just imagine the damage you could do if a Holocaust-denier were to find a photo you altered or a story you embellished. Consider how that might be used to support their claims that all evidence of the greatest tragedy in human history was nothing but a hoax.
Anyone is welcome to respond.. I assume “[email protected]” will welcome your remarks.
Seems as if Mr. No No is shy. My guess is that this our usual resident troll, William Quick. He always seems to show up impersonating someone else .. usually with an email address that is made up.