{"id":1826289,"date":"2023-01-27T12:36:22","date_gmt":"2023-01-27T17:36:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1826289"},"modified":"2023-01-27T12:38:50","modified_gmt":"2023-01-27T17:38:50","slug":"holocaust-remembrance-day-and-liberating-the-camps-never-forget-never-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/holocaust-remembrance-day-and-liberating-the-camps-never-forget-never-again\/","title":{"rendered":"Holocaust Remembrance Day And Liberating The Camps: Never Forget. Never Again."},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"float:left\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">22<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fholocaust-remembrance-day-and-liberating-the-camps-never-forget-never-again%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1826289&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47-->\n<p>Friday marks International Holocaust Remembrance Day, and people all around the world will pause and reflect on what happened to the Jewish people in the ghettos and concentration camps run by Adolf Hitler\u2019s Third Reich \u2014 what caused it, who allowed it, and how we can prevent it from ever happening again.<\/p>\n<p>While there are certainly many who were more greatly impacted by the Holocaust than I \u2014 Jewish survivors, the family members of those who perished in the camps, and the Allied soldiers who witnessed the atrocities firsthand \u2014 reflecting on the Holocaust always takes me back to grade school and the first time my father told me that my grandfather, an American tank mechanic with the 9th Armored Division, had seen it with his own eyes.<\/p>\n<p>He couldn\u2019t tell me much \u2014 only that PopPop (as we called him) had been at the Battle of the Bulge and the American seizure of the famed bridge at Remagen. PopPop, as many of his brothers-in-arms, never spoke about it. It wasn\u2019t until he died in 1995, 50 years after the end of the war, that we were able to sort through his records and learn the truth of what he had done.<\/p>\n<p>William Franklin Greenplate was a farm foreman in a small town in Delaware, a small man (just 5\u20195\u201d and 130 pounds) with a less-than-high-school education. He listened to the whispers of war in Europe, like many others. In February 1941, he enlisted in US Army. The Army, possibly in part because of his small stature \u2014 and thus his ability to squeeze into the tight quarters inside a tank \u2014 assigned him to an armored division.<\/p>\n<p>The training took several years and it was October 1944 when he finally set sail for Europe. D-Day was a huge success for the Allies. Operation Market Garden, however, was less successful. But in spite of that, Allied troops had liberated France, Belgium, and Holland \u2014 and troops were gathering in the Ardennes forest of Belgium and Luxembourg, preparing to drive the Nazis back into Germany.<\/p>\n<p>PopPop and the 9th Armored Division were sent to that location, along with other green units, in order to wait for orders and supplies. Hitler, against the advice of his generals ordered his tank division toward Antwerp to take the port city at any cost. Between Hitler\u2019s armies and their objective were PopPop\u2019s division, most of the 106th Infantry Division (The Golden Lions), and the 101st Airborne Division in Bastogne.<\/p>\n<p>The Battle of the Bulge was a terrible experience for the Americans trapped in it. Joachim Peiper, a Hitler Youth graduate, killed almost all of the American soldiers as they surrendered. Several companies from the 106th Infantry were captured, and some were taken prisoner or murdered. PopPop\u2019s unit was overrun just outside of Bastogne, and they were ordered to execute a \u201cfighting retreat\u201d Run for the city. He was one of a few to make it to Bastogne alive \u2014 and by the time he got there, the Germans had the city completely surrounded.<\/p>\n<p>He was then reassigned to Team SNAFU, which consisted of the stragglers that had made it to Bastogne. Many were suffering from what they called combat fatigue. It would be called PTSD. The Team SNAFU was a small, ragtag group whose job it was was to stop the Germans closing in on the city.<\/p>\n<p>For six days they held the German army at bay \u2014 despite being outnumbered five-to-one \u2013 until General George S. Patton arrived with his Third Army, breaking the siege.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-494299\" class=\"wp-image-494299 size-large\" src=\"https:\/\/www.dailywire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/image1-3-1007x576.jpeg\" alt=\"Photo\/Virginia Kruta\" width=\"1007\" height=\"576\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/image1-3-1007x576-1.jpeg 1007w, https:\/\/dw-wp-production.imgix.net\/2023\/01\/image1-3-300x172.jpeg 300w, https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/image1-3-768x439-1.jpeg 768w, https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/image1-3-1536x879-1.jpeg 1536w, https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/image1-3-2048x1172-1.jpeg 2048w\" style=\"display:none\"><\/p>\n<p id=\"caption-attachment-494299\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Photo\/Virginia Kruta<\/p>\n<p>PopPop was reassigned by the 9th Armored to Bastogne after Bastogne. \u201cPhantom\u201d Division was established and the gradual push into Germany began. The 9th Armored was among the first to cross over the Rhine River in March 1945. <a href=\"https:\/\/history.army.mil\/html\/forcestruc\/cbtchron\/cc\/009ad.htm\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">taking control<\/a> Remagen&#8217;s famed Ludendorff Bridge.<\/p>\n<p>On May 8, 1945 \u2013 the day Germany officially surrendered and ended the war in Europe \u2014 PopPop\u2019s unit <a href=\"https:\/\/encyclopedia.ushmm.org\/content\/en\/article\/the-9th-armored-division\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">joined members<\/a> of the 1st Infantry Division (The Big Red One) in throwing open the gates at Zwodau and Falkenau \u2014 two subcamps of the Flossenburg concentration camp that were located in what is now the Czech Republic. Only a few dozen prisoners remained alive at Falkenau \u2014 which had primarily housed Soviet prisoners of war \u2014 when American troops arrived. Zwodau still housed nearly 1,000 starving female prisoners \u2014 some Jewish, and some Roma.<\/p>\n<p>The camps, which were located across Europe, were primarily used by the Nazi regime to house Jewish prisoners \u2014 many of whom were systematically forced from<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Friday marks International Holocaust Remembrance Day, and people all around the world will pause and reflect on what happened to the Jewish people in the ghettos and concentration camps run by Adolf Hitler\u2019s Third Reich \u2014 what caused it, who allowed it, and how we can prevent it from ever happening again. While there are &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":93,"featured_media":1826292,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[541],"tags":[11623,4237,11792,7660,14292,6364,16728],"class_list":["post-1826289","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-daily-wire","tag-liberating","tag-again","tag-camps","tag-day","tag-forget","tag-holocaust","tag-remembrance"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1826289","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/93"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1826289"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1826289\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1826292"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1826289"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1826289"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1826289"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}