Op-ed: Remembering The Holocaust, And The American Soldiers Who Helped End It.

This article originally appeared in Daily Caller on January 27, 2023

Seventy-eight years ago today, the Nazi death camp Auschwitz was liberated by the Red Army, and in April of the same year, the U.S. 6th Armored Division freed 21,000 Jews in Buchenwald, including the future Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel. In another part of Germany, as a young Sergeant Henry Kissinger entered camp after camp, he wondered if he would find any of the 57 relatives he knew had disappeared from their homes during the Shoah.

According to one account, General Dwight Eisenhower reportedly “turned white at the scene inside the gates but insisted on seeing the entire camp.” Upon surveying the scene inside the gates, he said, “We are told that the American soldier does not know what he is fighting for. Now, at least he will know what he is fighting against.” Eisenhower, who was raised in the simple biblical traditions of the American plains, knew that his soldiers were liberating the descendants of those who had given Americans the Word and the notion that there was an unbroken continuum between the Hebrew people and the New World.

America’s founders bestowed upon their towns names like Hebron, Bethesda, Bethlehem, and New Canaan, reflecting a deep respect for the Jewish people, faith, and their “Promised Land.” In his 1790 letter to the Touro Synagogue, George Washington signaled a new dawn for Western civilization — that those whose survival and perseverance laid the intellectual and spiritual foundation for western religion, literature, art, the renaissance, and the enlightenment were welcome in a new land...

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