From Newsgroup: rec.aviation.military

We Are Human Angels

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In the fields near Farsleben, Germany, George Gross, a tank commander in
the 743rd Tank Battalion, was rumbling through the German countryside
when he saw it: a train, ghost-like and stationary on the tracks,
looking like a discarded toy in a landscape ravaged by war. There were
no soldiers guarding it, no banners flying. Just a string of weathered
boxcars sitting in the middle of nowhere, seemingly abandoned by time
itself.
Gross and his men approached with the caution of soldiers who had seen
too much, but nothing could have prepared them for the moment they pried
open those heavy wooden doors. This wasnrCOt a shipment of coal or
military supplies. It was a cargo of souls. Inside were 2,500 Jewish
men, women, and children who had been evacuated from the horrors of Bergen-Belsen. They were being moved to the Theresienstadt ghetto, a
final journey that most expected to end in a mass grave. When the German guards saw the American tanks on the horizon, they didnrCOt fight; they
simply melted into the woods, leaving their prisoners locked inside to rot.
The sight that greeted the Americans was a physical manifestation of
hell. The air inside the cars was thick with the scent of sickness and long-term starvation. The soldiers looked upon faces that were little
more than skin stretched over bone, with eyes that had long ago stopped looking for hope. These people had endured years of systematic
dehumanization, followed by days in these sealed cars without a drop of
water or a crumb of bread. Many were too weak to stand, and some were
too broken to even realize the doors had been opened. For a long,
agonizing minute, the two groupsrCothe liberators in their heavy olive
drab and the liberated in their ragsrCosimply stared at one another in a vacuum of disbelief.
Then, the world shifted. It started as a murmur, a ripple of realization
that traveled from one wagon to the next. The soldiers standing before
them werenrCOt wearing the dreaded deathrCOs head insignia; they were
wearing the white star of the United States. George Gross would later
recount that the transformation was like watching a dead forest suddenly spring to life. The silence was shattered by a low, guttural wail of
grief and joy. People who hadn't moved in days crawled toward the light,
their skeletal hands reaching out just to touch the cold steel of the tanks. But the most profound moment of the day didn't involve a tank or a gun.
It involved a single Jewish-American soldier who stepped forward toward
the huddle of survivors. He didn't offer a military command. Instead, he
spoke in Yiddish, the mother tongue of many of those inside. He told
them, in words they understood in their very marrow, that he was one of
them. He showed them a small necklace, a symbol of their shared faith
that the regime had tried to extinguish from the earth. In that instant,
the liberation was no longer a strategic maneuver or a footnote in a generalrCOs report. It became a restoration of identity. To be seen, to be known, and to be claimed by a brother in a foreign uniform was the first
true meal they had tasted in years.
On those forgotten tracks near Farsleben, 2,500 lives were handed back
to the people who owned them.
Those silent fields in Germany stand as a permanent altar to the responsibility we carry for one another. The soldiers who opened those
doors weren't just finishing a war; they were starting the long, slow
process of healing a broken world. Their legacy is a quiet command to
every generation that follows: never look away.
<We Are Human Angels >
Authors
Awakening the Human Spirit
We are the authors of 'We Are Human Angels,' the book that has spread a
new vision of the human experience and has been spontaneously translated
into 14 languages by readers.
We hope our writing sparks something in you.
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From Newsgroup: rec.aviation.military

"a425couple" wrote in message news:Th2lR.128668$SpSc.115518@fx12.iad...


I found this while looking for a description of Lindbergh's visit to the Mittelwerk V-2 rocket slave labor factory whose horrors he described in his diary. This skips over it but the rest is good.

https://www.historynet.com/lone-eagles-war/

He flew 50 combat missions as a civilian. FDR had offered to create a Department of Aviation for him to lead and was furious when Lindy declined
it, as he knew well that he was too honest to be a politician.

General Arnold supported him and proofread his initial America First speech. Lindbergh knew better than anyone else how unready were were to fight
Germany, in part due to that Army spy mission disguised as a goodwill visit. He was on the committee that tried to determine how much could reasonably be asked of the B-29. Several other advanced proposal had proven impractical or impossible. Lindbergh didn't oppose fighting, just rushing in unprepared and suffering.

The job at the Mayo Clinic was developing high speed and altitude bail-out equipment and procedures for the new jets. He tested it himself in their altitude chamber, outlasting several assistants. https://www.mnhs.org/lindbergh/learn/other-occupations/scientist

Newsgroups that ES doesn't recognize deleted.

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From Newsgroup: rec.aviation.military

"Jim Wilkins" wrote in message news:10n2sel$26hc4$1@dont-email.me...

Mittelwerk V-2 rocket slave labor factory

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mittelwerk

"Casualties of the V-2 rocket are estimated at 2,541 killed and 5,923
injured. By contrast, of the roughly 60,000 people who passed through Mittelbau-Dora and its subcamps, an estimated 20,000 died either at the camp or at places they were subsequently transported to..."

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