JOINT BASE LEWIS-McCHORD, Wash. – On the morning of April 12, 1945, then 19-year-old Pvt. Leo D. Hymas, and his unit from the 97th Infantry Division, investigated what they thought was a Nazi prisoner of war camp in Germany's Black Forrest near the town of Weinmar. Instead, what they found were more than 18,000 starving men, women and children, surrounded by hundreds of dead bodies; some of the last victims of Adolph Hitler's "Final Solution." During the Holocaust, more than 11 million people, including 6 million Jews, were killed by the Nazis, destroying a generation in Europe and forever changing a generation of American GI's, including Hymas.

Now, with the support of the Washington State Holocaust Education Resource Center, Hymas spends much of his time traveling to tell his story so that travesties, such as the Holocaust, will never happen again. On May 4, he came to Joint Base Lewis-McChord, during the 2010 Holocaust Days of Remembrance gathering.

"What I saw that morning, in Buchenwald, has never faded," Hymas explained to the crowd of servicemembers. "There were hundreds and hundreds of naked, rotting bodies, stacked like cordwood, waiting to be burned in the six crematorium ovens."

"We ran to the huts, opened the doors 'come out, you're free,'" he explained.
"Our Docs came, our nurses came, we did what we could. We couldn't help all of those who were still alive. They continued to die," he added.

With the full attention of the audience, Hymas went on to explain to his scilent audience, that their discovery of the camp received a lot of attention. Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, Gen. Omar Bradley , and Lt. Gen. George S. Patton, all traveled to the camp to view firsthand what the Soldiers had found.

"[Eisenhower] ordered that we were to go into Weinmar, and march all of the civilians out to the camp and make them see what had been going on 5 kilometers from their home," he told the audience. "We made them gather up these naked rotting bodies, throw one over their shoulder, handkerchief over their mouth, and carry them to a huge common grave."

The event of that day was almost too much for the 19-year-old Soldier to bear.
"What I remember most about all of that was those dark eyes that just followed me every place I went," Hymas said softly of the camp's victims.

Holding a replica Nazi knife before the crowded room, Hymas motioned to the inscription written in German. "[It] means blood and honor," he explained. "I am an eyewitness here today to tell you that this little knife represents no honor - but much blood."

"I wish to tell you that what little bit I did in those two years, to overcome that terrible evil, was the very best thing I ever did in my life," Hymas concluded.

"[What he did] makes you proud to be an American and to be a part of the Army," explained U.S. Army Spc. Netalie Johnson, a combat medic with Headquarters, Headquarters Company, 555th Engineer Brigade (Triple Nickel). "By looking back at the past, we're being motivated to move on and to good for this country and for the whole world."