From : BrocktonEnterprise
Added: Mar 16, 2008
The Enterprise of Brockton, Mass. By Maria Papadopoulos ENTERPRISE STAFF WRITER WALPOLE — Piles of decomposing human bodies. That's what Jim Shiels remembers most about the day he entered the Dachau concentration camp when it was liberated by U.S. forces. Shiels, then 19, was among soldiers in the 19th Armored Infantry Battalion, Combat Command C, 14th Armored Division. U.S. tanks knocked down the camp's high wire fence. "I saw all the bodies that were piled up, maybe 6 or 8 feet high, bodies waiting to be thrown into the ovens," Shiels, 83, said last week in an interview from his Walpole home. The stench at the camp in southern Germany was too much to bear. "It was unbelievable to think that people could actually kill other human beings and just throw them in the oven and burn them," he said. Thousands of emaciated prisoners, too weak to move, stared at the U.S. soldiers. Several of the soldiers wept at the sight, Shiels said. "They were skin and bones. Nobody could believe that anybody could exist and be so cruel to do that," he said. U.S. soldiers immediately gave the prisoners water, but were told not to give them solid foods, Shiels said. Starvation victims must be given small quantities of liquids to digest before being fed simple foods, or shock can occur. "The worst thing was you couldn't give them any food to eat, because they hadn't had solid food for who knows how long," he said. Part of the Dachau concentration camp was recently re-created in Taunton by Hollywood director Martin Scorsese for scenes in his upcoming film "Ashecliffe." The Whittenton Mills complex was used for the movie, which will recount the U.S. liberation of the camp as a flashback in the plot. During the real liberation, Shiels said, he didn't see any German soldiers executed by U.S. troops, a scene expected to be shown in the movie. But, he added, "They were shot, I'll tell you that. I mean, there was a lot of shooting going on." When U.S. forces liberated the camp on April 29, 1945, they found more than 30 railroad cars filled with decomposing bodies, according to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. After U.S. forces liberated the camp, Shiels lived in Dachau for six months. "The people always said they didn't realize that there was a concentration camp two miles outside of town," he said. "All we kept saying was, 'How could you not know, when all you had to do was smell it? '" Shiels returned to the United States in 1946, at age 20, to his hometown of Medfield. In later years, he married his wife, Grace. Married for 48 years, they have two children, James Shiels Jr. of Franklin, and Claire O'Keefe of Norfolk, and three grandchildren. Shiels worked as a meat cutter for Stop & Shop Supermarket Co. for 35 years. In 2006, he went back to Europe and toured Normandy and Dachau with his son and grandson. The memories came flooding back. "I'll tell you, you never forget," he said.
Category : News

Also Try: