James Hoyt delivered mail in rural Iowa for more than 30 years. Yet Hoyt had long kept a secret from most of those who knew him best: He was one of the four U.S. soldiers to first see Germany’s Buchenwald concentration camp.
Hoyt died Monday at his home in Oxford, Iowa, a town of about 700 people where he had lived his entire life. He was 83…
Hoyt had rarely spoken about that day in 1945, but he recently opened up to a journalist.
“There were thousands of bodies piled high. I saw hearts that had been taken from live people in medical experiments,” Hoyt told author Stephen Bloom in a soon-to-be-published book called “The Oxford Project.”“They said a wife of one of the SS officers — they called her the Bitch of Buchenwald — saw a tattoo she liked on the arm of a prisoner, and had the skin made into a lampshade. I saw that.”
Pete Geren, the secretary of the U.S. Army, said the sacrifice Hoyt made for his country so many years ago should never be forgotten…
“Mr. Hoyt, as a young man, saw unspeakable horrors when he was one of the soldiers to discover the Buchenwald concentration camp, and those are experiences as a country and a world we can never forget.
As a nation we should remember people like James Hoyt – every day.
I’m glad he did speak to a journalist so his experience has been recorded. As each of the few remaining members of his generation who were actually there and saw the depths that human beings can sink, it gets easier for those that would deny the holocaust ever happened.
The concept and appeal to “heroes” really is overused in our society.
“As a nation we should remember people like James Hoyt – every day.” /// No, I don’t think so, unless you mean as a large gray mass amalgamating the millions who fought in the war? And that would mean to actually remember the war==why it was fought and so forth.
I’ve already heard the current Georgia conflict analogized to the Servian troubles that started WW1.
History is tricky. Hero worship is a appeal to group non-think.
I wish he had spoken more in order to refute the Holocaust deniers, who seem to be gaining more and more converts every day.
#3
My father in law spent several weeks bringing supplies to concentration camps at the end of WWII – his children didn’t know about this until recently. It’s normal for people who’ve experienced horrific events to not want to talk about them.
It’s heartwarming to see bobbo is here representing individual non-think. And no comprehension of history.
#2. “The concept and appeal to “heroes” really is overused in our society.”
I do agree, but better to be used in this context than the nauseating reference to sports heroes.
#5–moss==I disagree. A better retort would be to say I am being too literal rather than non-thinking.
But lets give it a test:
TEST–to Eideard and Moss==post back in one week and tell us how many days you thought about James Hoyt.
Separate mindless sentimentality from actual thinking. You both can do it.
Well, he’s dead now. He didn’t talk about it much. It is surprising that nobody at DU has mentioned the death of Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who did talk about camps, and other importantstuff.
#8–B Dogg==thanks for that. I gave it a close read. Good stuff.
Interesting to me what a fantastic writer he was. Many very well turned phrases and sentences in that piece.
Still, what caught my attention was the central conceit in his speech==that evil is present it the world, and that evil is the world not having the same religious based values that he has.
From that perspective, while a victim of intolerance, he shows no tolerance himself.
There were millions serving in world war 2, how does being there him a hero? The two most overused words are “hero” and “victim.” This seems to be nation of victims and heroes.
#9 – Bobbo
>>Still, what caught my attention was the
>>central conceit in his speech==that evil is
>>present it the world, and that evil is the
>>world not having the same religious based
>>values that he has.
Where the frack did you get that from???
#10–Mustard==from my reading of the linked speech. Hard to miss if you simply read it.
#11
Wow, that was quite a leap, and a massive generalization as well. Congratulations on, well, something.
#11
Huh? The Nazis were mostly catholic. That holocaust was caused by religious zealots attempting to eradicated the “Jewish problem” along with a mixture of eugenics, centralized government power and a leader bent on genocide.
#12 – Bobboli
I read the linked speech.
Could you maybe point me to a few key sections that you think reveal Solzhy’s views on religion that prompted you to say “what caught my attention was the central conceit in his speech==(sic)that evil is present it the world, and that evil is the world not having the same religious based values that he has.”
TIA
Don’t remember many references to religion from the Nazis. From what I’ve seen the holocaust was about eradicating an ethic group.
A self effacing gentleman, modest, urbane, austere.
#16–Mustard: Here is some of what caught my attention–in seratim as it appeared:
1. Also, truth is seldom pleasant; it is almost invariably bitter. /// (Not relevant to this issue, but a well turned phrase.)
2. The defense of individual rights has reached such extremes as to make society as a whole defenseless against certain individuals. It is time, in the West, to defend not so much human rights as human obligations. /// Watch any appeal to “obligations”==what they are, who gets to impose them.
3. Destructive and irresponsible freedom has been granted boundless space. Society appears to have little defense against the abyss of human decadence, such as, for example, misuse of liberty for moral violence against young people, motion pictures full of pornography, crime and horror. It is considered to be part of freedom and theoretically counter-balanced by the young people’s right not to look or not to accept. Life organized legalistically has thus shown its inability to defend itself against the corrosion of evil. /// I think Jerry Falwell lifted this almost verbatim.
4. When a government starts an earnest fight against terrorism, public opinion immediately accuses it of violating the terrorists’ civil rights. There are many such cases. /// Again not relevant but he said this in 1978. He knows human and societal nature.
5. But should someone ask me whether I would indicate the West such as it is today as a model to my country, frankly I would have to answer negatively. No, I could not recommend your society in its present state as an ideal for the transformation of ours. AND
A fact which cannot be disputed is the weakening of human beings in the West while in the East they are becoming firmer and stronger. /// This is the setup.
6. I have had occasion already to say that in the 20th century democracy has not won any major war without help and protection from a powerful continental ally whose philosophy and ideology it did not question. /// Russia did lose a lot of men. Would Hitler have taken Stalingrad without the infusion of American equipment?—I think so. Irrelevant, but too interesting to pass up.
7. That is, freedom was given to the individual conditionally, in the assumption of his constant religious responsibility. /// Well, I hope most of us would disagree with that statement.
#17
Yea, I didn’t get the Catholic reference at all. Let’s be honest, the holocaust was an ugly race related abomination fueled by hate and history. To link it to religion, or politics, or anything else is generally misleading.
From a person who lives a stones throw from Mr Hoyt, he’s not hero, but a man who had seen hell and returned. I won’t call Mr Hoyt a hero, but I will tip my hat to the man’s memory. Gods speed Mr Hoyt.
I saw him (on video) at the Holocaust Museum in Washington DC not 30 days ago. What a terrific recount of what happened. It has the audience mesmerized.
My thoughts are with his family.
#19 – Bobbolina
Eh, I don’t know. I think your Atheistic fervor is causing you to find religious infiltrators in every corner and under every bed.
Items 1- 6 in your list are irrelevant. Only in item 7 does anything approaching “religion” enter into the equation. And I believe that when Solzhy speaks of “constant religious responsibility”, he’s speaking more about attending to a higher spiritual plane, rather than implementing prayer in schools or intelligent design in biology textbooks.
When he says “All the glorified technological achievements of Progress, including the conquest of outer space, do not redeem the Twentieth century’s moral poverty which no one could imagine even as late as in the Nineteenth Century“, it’s kind of hard to disagree.
Somewhere along the way, much humanity has lost its moral compass. Doesn’t matter how many cores we can put in a computer, or how Vista does vs. Linux and OS X, or how many folks we can stuff into the International Space Station. Something has been lost. And no amount of technology can make up for that.
#23–Mustard. Kinda muted response there. I guess thats as far as you can allow yourself to agree.
In short, to rephrase, Solzhy (you knew him that well?) speaks out of both sides of his mouth, denigrates all accomplishments, and raises “religion” as the primary concern. What do you bet its his version of religion too?
Just like anyone that negates all the progress and good things our society is accomplishing, if its not your particular brand of lunacy, its all a lack of moral compass? Hah.
#24 – Bobster
Yep. I knew him that well. By the time Gulag Archipelago had come out, I’d read every word he ever published. And I continued reading.
And Solzhy doesn’t “denigrate all progress”. If you read what he wrote, he said that the progress doesn’t “redeem the Twentieth century’s moral poverty”. I’m hard pressed to argue against that.
And I don’t have a “particular brand of lunacy”. But I know a fucked-up society when I see one, and I see one every day.
The trivial has become the supreme.
Or, perhaps that’s your brand of lunacy, and you think that’s just fine.
A cada cual lo suyo, as we used to say back in Humacao.
#25–Mustard, uncommonly thoughtful. Whats the trick?
I’ve tried to read S. but he proved much too ponderous for me. After the 50th wave of wheat fields, or the 50th wave of prisoners into the gulag, I’m ready for something else? But I have that reaction to most of the worlds most profound authors.
I disagree (honestly) with any notion that we have lost our moral compass etc. Its all a manufactured argument as if things were somehow “uniform” in the past and are now falling apart. Society has always been chaos and this appeal to a fiction is just pure manipulation.
For every issue you might want to show is worse, I can show you one that is better.
Its all BS. Stop the red (sic) herrings, the straw men, the tangential, and present whatever the issue is with proposal’s to make things better. Everything else is propaganda–and usually transparent if you open your eyes.
#26 – Bobster
I don’t have a proposal to make things better. At least not yet. That’s why I’m not running for King (or has that position been downgraded back to President?)
In any case, society as a whole has lost its moral compass. Sure, their are some folks that still have one, but the teeter-totter has already begun to descend on the other side.
#27–Mustard, there is still time. The rising of each sun presents a new day.
When you finally get down to specifics, you will find the generalities don’t apply.
#28 – Bobbo
That has got to be the most content-free message you’ve posted to date. And that’s saying a lot.
#28–Mustard, thats sad. Maybe an illustration will help:
1. Generality==most people are kind thoughtful people who take other points of view into consideration.
2. Specifically==Mister Mustard is an idiot.
Hope that helps.
I have to agree. The use of the words “hero” and “victim” are very overused.
Being brave doe not make one a hero.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn, in my opinion, is not a good writer. I slogged through about the first 50 pages of Gulag A before giving up. While that was over 30 years ago, I have no intention of trying again.