Along with other liberators, the two men were among those honored as well on April 11 at the Jewish community’s annual Day of Remembrance for the victims of the Holocaust.
Pauzar, who was in France and Germany, was a sergeant in the 62nd Armored Infantry when his division came upon Ampfing, a German sub camp of Dachau. Orders were to keep going.
“I was in a half-track pursuing the Germans, and drove along the right side of the camp and saw one of the prisoners coming toward me,” he remembers. “He was emotionless, shuffling, looking straight ahead, wearing a striped uniform. I don’t know if he was alive one week later. We left medics there.”
He and Williamson, who was in the 69th Infantry, agree that one of the most difficult orders they received was not to feed concentration camp survivors if they came upon them.
“In their weakened condition, rich food could have killed them,” said Williamson. “One of our biggest frustrations was refusing candy to the small children. The truth was these people had to be restored back to health slowly and carefully after their brush with starvation. In looking back, I hope the children forgave me for not giving them my chocolate.”
Author Michael Hirsh interviewed Pauzar and 150 other liberators for his new book “The Liberators: America’s Witness to the Holocaust.”
“I wanted to find out what they experienced then and how it impacted the rest of their lives,” he said. “Many men and women are still negatively impacted 65 years later.”
“When a 90-year-old man talks to you about night sweats and flashbacks, all you can feel is sadness,” said Hirsh, who cried his way through some of the interviews.
Local Holocaust survivor Sam Heider weighed just 75 pounds when he was liberated from Dachau. He said the most beautiful sound he has ever heard were the words: “Americans! Americans! Americans!”
“After five years of the most inhumane conditions mankind has ever known, I owe my life to the Allies who liberated us from Nazi Germany,” Heider said.
Williamson and Pauzar both said they seldom spoke about their experiences in combat or as liberators after they returned to the United States.
“A lot of us were trying to forget the whole thing and get our lives back,” said Williamson.
Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2440 or mmoss@Dayton DailyNews.com.
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