060611 Survivor and liberator remember the Holocaust
By Sharon Haught
May 29, 2011
489
Summary: Nazi concentration camp survivor Leo Silberman and camp liberator Joe DeLuca shared their very personal stories of the liberation of Hitlers concentration camps during the Wayne County Historical Societys Ed Arn Veterans Roundtable on May 26.
Two men who witnessed the same historical events but from very different perspectives shared the dais at the 7th annual Wayne County Historical Society Ed Arn Veterans Roundtable to speak about their experiences as a survivor and a liberator of the Nazi concentration camps of World War II.
Entitled Liberation, the two hour long panel discussion featured the firsthand accounts of Holocaust survivor Leo Silberman and local WWII veteran Joe DeLuca of the horrors of Hitlers concentration camps.
Though the two men were born half a world apart they shared the experience of being eyewitnesses to Hitlers atrocities.
Born and raised in Wooster, DeLuca attended Wooster High School before joining the Army in 1943. As a member of the 103rd infantry division, DeLuca saw frontline action as a rifleman in five different countries as the Allies chased Hitlers army across Europe.
Just two years before DeLuca enlisted, a 14 year old boy from a village outside of Krakow, Poland was taken from his family to the Plaszow forced labor camp. For the next two years, Silberman was forced to work as a laborer for the Nazis, clearing debris after Allied bombing runs and razing tombstones in local Jewish cemeteries to make roads for the Nazis as depicted in the movie Schindlers List.
During his five years at Plaszow and later at Buchenwald, Silberman described how he witnessed the senseless brutality of the Nazis firsthand – a commandant who used the laborers for target practice as they worked, captives killed simply for having red hair, workers shot on the spot for spilling a pot of soup or dropping a railroad tie too close to a guard.
As Silberman and the tens of thousands of other concentration camp victims struggled to simply survive, in 1945 the Allies began closing in on camps like Buchenwald.
It was DeLuca and a pair of heavily armed comrades who were dispatched to investigate a compound that the Nazis had abandoned the previous day. When the trio of American soldiers finally made their way to the compound they encountered the horrific sight of thousands of bodies stacked like cordwood DeLuca recalled.
Just the day before DeLuca entered the camp, Silberman and his fellow Jewish prisoners were spirited away to another camp in Czechoslovakia, which was liberated shortly thereafter by Soviet troops. By bribing the guards, Silberman was able to escape to Austria where he was picked up by American troops and moved to a displaced persons camp in Landsberg, where he spent the next four years.
While DeLuca returned to his home in Wooster, Silberman made his way to Iowa and later to Cleveland where he has lived and raised a family since 1951.
DeLuca and Silberman met for the first time when local historian and attorney Jeff Musselman brought the two together for the annual Ed Arn Veterans Roundtable.
While neither man shared their stories for decades, both felt compelled to share their personal accounts of Hitlers atrocities so that the generations that follow them will never forget what happened over 65 years ago.
Assisting Musselman in his duties as moderator were students from Jolene Dyers Holocaust and the Dangers of Indifference class at Wooster High School, who studied this pivotal event in history this school year.
For the past seven years, the Ed Arn Veterans Roundtable has been held in the days leading up to Memorial Day. The event originated during the Wayne County Historical Societys Viet Nam exhibit when military historians and veterans gathered to discuss their personal experiences during the war. That event was so successful that the Historical Society made it an annual event and named it in honor of well-known local WWII veteran and author Ed Arn.
For more information on the Wayne County Historical Society log on to www.waynehistoricalohio.org.
