The Kitchigami Regional Library System (KRLS) is presenting “Liberators & the Holocaust” from 6 to 8 p.m. Tuesday, May 9 at the Armory Arts & Events Center in Park Rapids.
The presentation is part of a tour by historian Arn Kind, who is also visiting Wadena, Pine River, Walker, Brainerd, Longville, Blackduck and Bemidji between May 8-13.
Kind tells the tragic story of the Holocaust through first-person narratives of American soldiers – including Minnesotans – who liberated the prisoners in Nazi concentration camps in the waning days of World War II.
As GIs moved east across war-torn Europe, they came across Buchenwald, Dachau, Bergen-Belsen and scores of other camps. As Allied soldiers liberated the last victims of what would come to be called the Holocaust, the sick and emaciated inmates who were strong enough rose to their feet, crying with joyful disbelief.
Kind will relate the tragedy of how the Nazi Party perpetrated the Holocaust, and how a cultured people with a proud heritage could allow and even carry out the worst genocide in world history. For many of the soldiers who liberated the camps, this experience changed their lives forever.
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As a KRLS press release warns, those who do not learn their history are condemned to repeat the mistakes of the past.
This free Legacy program is funded at least in part through a legislative appropriation from the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage fund.
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