Today’s post has little obvious Listowel connection. However, whereever we are, we cannot fail to be moved by these awful images.
Buchenwald was liberated on April 11 1945. To coincide with this anniversary last week, Life magazine published photographs taken by the war photographer, Margaret Bourke-White. Bourke White was the first female photo journalist allowed into combat zones. Here are a few examples of her work, lest we ever forget. These photos were not published at the time and even now they are very hard to look at.
Emaciated men look out from their bunks, unable to comprehend that they are going to get out of that hell hole alive.
This poor man, nearly dead from starvation, staggers against his bed as he tries to stand.
Horror of horrors; the incinerated remains of some poor souls.
This is a photo of horrified, appalled and sickened good German people forced to confront what had happened a few short miles from their town, Weimar.
Here I quote from Life magazine:
“In one of the signal moments of his long career and, indeed, of the entire war, an enraged General Patton refused to recognize that the Weimar citizens’ ignorance might be genuine — or, if it was genuine, that it was somehow, in any moral sense, pardonable. With Olympian wrath, Patton ordered the townspeople to bear witness to what their countrymen had done, and what they themselves had allowed to be done, in their name.”
If you want to read more, the story is here:
http://life.time.com/history/behind-the-picture-bourke-white-and-the-liberation-of-buchenwald/#1
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Jim Halpin is gathering together a collection of war memorabilia and he is displaying it in Church St. I took these pictures of part of the window display.
On the May bank holiday weekend there is a vintage expo planned for town, with a model soldier display, vintage cars and farm machinery and much more. When I have any more info I’ll bring it to you.