By Sergio Carmona
Florida Jewish Journal
Jerry Klinger of Boynton Beach [Florida] is on a mission to make sure that American liberators of the Nazi concentration camp Buchenwald are honored with a memorial.
Buchenwald, a Nazi camp established on Ettersberg Hill near Weimar, Germany, was liberated by Lt. Gen. George S. Patton’s United States Third Army, XX Corps in 1945. Klinger’s father was a liberated survivor from that camp.
Klinger, who is president of the Jewish American Society for Historic Preservation, is proposing to the Buchenwald Gedenskstatte Foundation an American Liberators’ memorial in front of the Buchenwald camp gate that commemorates the soldiers who advanced the liberation on April 11, 1945 on the Ettersberg. He is funding this project through his society. The foundation and the commission are expected to review the proposal on July 3.
“Though I am the son of a liberated survivor from Buchenwald, I do not consider the project a Holocaustproject,” Klinger said. “It is an American project of honor.”
The site of Buchenwald ended up in the East German Zone until the reunification of Germany.
“The narrative was that the Communists had liberated the camp and not the Americans,” Klinger said. “There are 44 memorials to Russians in Thuringia, where Buchenwald is located. Northing for the actual liberators, the Americans.”
Klinger feels that the necessity of having a permanent memorial to the liberators, which has never been done before in Buchenwald or near it, has become more apparent.
“We’re now coming up on the 75th anniversary of the liberation, and we’re only dealing with a handful of liberators left alive. We have to acknowledge what these people have done and say thank you to them and let them know that their sacrifice was for a purpose.”
Klinger said the proposed memorial is deliberaely simple and low key to minimize the inevitable historical fighting over text.
“The narrative of who liberated Buchenwald is still a problem for some. The iconic image of American soliers entering Buchenwald is the central medium of interpretation.”
Klinger said he has received support from Richard Grenell, the U.S. ambassador to Germany; Susan Eisenhower, the granddaughter of President Dwight Eisenhower; U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fl), U.S. Rep. Lois Frankel (D-West Palm Beach) and German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
Bernd Schmidt, a supporter of the American Liberators’ Memorial effort in Buchenwald who lives in Weimar, Germany, said, “Jerry Klinger fights for what many people in the world think.”
“There is no memory of the liberators in Buchenwald. That’s why a monument is fair. me and my friends support it. A monument is not a piece of paper. Anyone who passes by will remember the truth.”
Schmidt feels that a memorial for the liberators of Buchenwald is overdue.
“During the era of East Geramny, there was no place for Americans in history. It was Cold War. After the fall of the Wll, when the truth came to the table, one could have remembered a monument to the Americans. It’s a shame to waith 75 years.”
Klinger is trying to do a parallel project in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, where his mother was liberated, for the British liberators. As with Buchenwald, he is funding the efforts.
Visit JASHP.org for more information on the society.
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Republished with permission from the June 19, 2019 edition of the Palm Beach Jewish Journal-South.