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GARY EICHTEN: Thank you, Karen. Six minutes now past 12 o'clock. Welcome back to Midday on Minnesota Public Radio. I'm Gary Eichten. Today's special broadcast of Holocaust Remembrance is supported by Interra Financial, parent company for Dain Bosworth, Dain Bosworth Investment Services and Investment Banking, serving investors since 1909.

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Today on Midday, a special Holocaust Remembrance edition of our voices of Minnesota interview series. We're going to hear the experiences of three people who were directly affected by the Holocaust during World War II. Leonard Parker was a 22-year-old Army Sergeant when he helped liberate one of Germany's biggest concentration camps.

Retired Saint Olaf College Professor Reider Dittman was a student in Norway when the Nazis occupied his country. We'll hear his account of his arrest and imprisonment. First, though, we're going to hear from Lucy Smith of Saint Paul. She was a child when the Nazis started rounding up Jews in Poland.

Her father fled to buy false documents for the family. Eventually, he got them for Lucy and her mother. But he and most of the other members of the family were killed by the Nazis. Lucy told Minnesota Public Radio's Dan Olson how she and her mother hid for the entire war.

LUCY SMITH: All those relatives were taken one by one and shot or taken to a concentration camp. And so, eventually, we were just two of us left.

DAN OLSON: You knew this was happening? The relatives were being taken. They had documents?

LUCY SMITH: No, no, they did not. We did not. We didn't have documents at the time, either. So we were taken into the ghetto. And we lived in ghetto.

DAN OLSON: This was a separate part of the city?

LUCY SMITH: It was like a neighborhood that was surrounded by fences or walls. So essentially, the neighborhood became a prison, from which we could not get out. And then from time to time, there were actions, which meant intensified energy with which Nazi were taking people around them and sending them to concentration camp or killing them right there.

And people were just in panic. They believed in all kind of documents that Nazi were giving if they work here or there, and that they would be safer or somewhat longer. And my mother never believed in it. We were hiding.

DAN OLSON: You didn't have enough food, I assume, or the food was of poor quality? Was there running water?

LUCY SMITH: Yes, we had one faucet in the kitchen. And sometimes, there were fights around that faucet.

DAN OLSON: But you lived in abject terror because I gather the Nazis were coming totally unannounced. As you say, you were living in what amounted to a prison, and they were just taking people away.

LUCY SMITH: Right. But It was not all the time. It was a special week, or two, or 10 days, or a period of time during which was that intensified action when they were going with dogs and getting into apartment. But we were usually hiding at that time.

DAN OLSON: Describe the hiding. What do you mean by hiding?

LUCY SMITH: Well, we were hiding even before we went to the ghetto. And the first time was really a Nazi who was an administrator assigned by Nazis for a business that used to be my grandfather's. And my grandfather was dead by that time, but the business still existed.

And my uncle would have been owner of the business. But he ran away toward Russia. And he was taken into Russia. But even if he wasn't, all Jewish businesses were taken.

And Jews had no right to own their businesses anymore. So they assign all kind of administrators for those businesses. Our happened to be an Ukrainian man. And I would like to tell his name because he was such a decent person. He was Eugene [? Sarap. ?]

And when the first action came and we didn't even know about it, he rushed very early into our apartment and told us to hide in the attic. And he stayed in our apartment to prevent anyone to come to the attic. He was just a decent person.

DAN OLSON: He knew this was happening?

LUCY SMITH: Yes.

DAN OLSON: He came to you and said, hide.

LUCY SMITH: Hide, right. And there were several more times where he was helping us that way.

DAN OLSON: And so what would you do? You would run to the attic?

LUCY SMITH: We ran to the attic. We stayed three days and three nights in this attic. And he was staying in our apartment because whoever would go to the attic would have to pass by the door of the apartment.

DAN OLSON: And he would lie?

LUCY SMITH: He would lie. He would lie, yes. When I'm going to school, I used that often, too, and ask people, what do you think? What is more immoral, lying or not lying? And because we have such a one-sided mind, and we don't look at our ethics from the point of view, what is really right and wrong?

DAN OLSON: Why do you think he did this?

LUCY SMITH: I believe he was born decent. I can't have other explanation because he had nothing out of it.

DAN OLSON: Did you get to know him? Did the family get to know him, at all.

LUCY SMITH: Yes, we trust him. And later on, one of my two uncles, who were both shot by Gestapo and had a store, which was kind of like a cosmetic part of a drugstore, since whole family was already taken away, my mother got keys to this store. And we were hiding there.

Now, in order to hide her, that was still before ghetto was started. We had to trust this man to lock us in because he came and he locked us in. So from outside, it would look locked. And we had to trust him to come back when it was safe and open the door.

He was also leaving a note for us by the window so we could take some information and brought us some tea. There was no water there, whatsoever.

DAN OLSON: You would hide for days at a time?

LUCY SMITH: Yeah, like a week or two.

DAN OLSON: And what kind of provisions did you have for hiding? You had the clothes you were wearing. What kind of food, what kind of water did you have?

LUCY SMITH: Some bread, usually.

DAN OLSON: And all around you, what was going on all around you as you were hiding?

LUCY SMITH: We could hear only-- that was later on when we were hiding in the ghetto in the cold cellar. So we could hear from that cellar dogs barking and assessment, screaming, shouting. But otherwise, we didn't know anything till we were getting out, and so many people were gone, absent.

DAN OLSON: You had numerous hiding places, then, besides the shop, the attic, a coal bin?

LUCY SMITH: Actually, not that many because we were just going back to the same hiding place. Mostly, this coal cellar, which had camouflaged door. Because in the same house that was in the ghetto, left an engineer. And he got some place equally dusty, old bricks, as the rest of the walls were made of.

And since in Poland, the main fuel, even to this day, is coal, everyone that lived in a house had a space for keeping this coal during the winter. So one of those spaces were transformed into hiding place by this engineer by building a-- camouflaging the door by building the same space throughout practically whole door, except for small space between floor and that upper part of that bricks that we used to get in on our bellies, kind of snake-like.

And the last person was pulling behind a box full of coal to camouflage that space. That was a very good hiding place.

DAN OLSON: This was a very elaborate and very ingenious hiding place.

LUCY SMITH: Right. However, the man who did it never succeeded to get into it. He was on his way when he was caught.

DAN OLSON: You were, by now, eight years old? And you had a clear understanding, I assume, of what was going on, that this was a life and death situation?

LUCY SMITH: Oh, absolutely, Because, for example, children normally play for a while at the very beginning of the life in the ghetto. I played with few remaining children on the ruins of synagogue that was right next to the house where we lived. A synagogue was basically new.

And population, Jewish population, was very proud of it because they just built it before the war. But the Nazi dynamited it. So there were just ruins. And we played on this ruins. Ruins are always very attractive to children.

But we were not allowed to do it too long because Nazi were shooting children when like rabbits on site. So it was very dangerous to play outside.

DAN OLSON: You mean just sniping away, shooting and killing children?

LUCY SMITH: Shooting and killing children. And old people were the first to be disposed of.

DAN OLSON: You had been living in the ghetto now, as you relate this story for months?

LUCY SMITH: It was almost two years. And then my father got his papers and managed to send us those papers to the ghetto. One day, my mother was called to the gate. And there was a man who gave her those papers.

DAN OLSON: The papers creating your new identity and your mother's new identity?

LUCY SMITH: And my mother got the papers. I also had a lot of lies. There was a delousing house, delousing house that was part way in the ghetto and part way on the other side of the fence. It was kind of house on the border on both sides of the fence.

And so we went there saying that we need to get deloused. And there were some people that were waiting for us on the other side and arranged that the door was open. So we just crossed the house and ran.

DAN OLSON: And that--

LUCY SMITH: It was in the evening, toward the evening. So they took us to the train station. And we went to Warsaw with them. We needed to get documents of registration, something that you still need to get in Poland.

When you arrive any place and stay for a while, even not long, you had to register in the police station. And you get this piece of paper that you did register. So we needed a false one saying that we registered much earlier than we really did.

So we will be long-standing inhabitant of Warsaw. And we were waiting for this group of people to arrange this document. And as soon as my mother got it, she decided to slip away.

And so they would not know where we went because she was afraid of them. I don't know if it was rightfully or not. And she went out, and she simply rented a room based upon some advertisement on the wall, or sidewalk, or whatever. So we lived there for maybe a year or so.

DAN OLSON: How is it that you came to be blackmailed?

LUCY SMITH: Because there were people who felt that that was a great way of making money.

DAN OLSON: They suspected they knew you were Jews?

LUCY SMITH: If they suspected someone, regardless if it was or not, and they would follow us on the streets. They would come to our place and ask to see our documents, and examine us, and all that.

DAN OLSON: Who were these kids?

LUCY SMITH: The people, they were not kids. They were men, mostly, men that wanted to have something for drink or whatever. So with the little money we had, my mother usually gave them something and tried to get rid of them.

And she had very good way with people, even with Gestapo. A long time before we went to ghetto, we had a visit of two Gestapo men. And it was the same two who shot my two uncles on the street. So I was petrified.

And I was in a room. My mother was in the kitchen. I was with one. The other was with my mother. So here, again, I was not witnessing it. She told me later that he put a gun to her head and told her, where are your valuables?

Tell me where are your valuables because you will die. And she said, we will all die. You will die too. And you will regret your life in a moment of your death, as much as I will regret mine.

And somehow, she reached him because he put away his gun. And they left without harming us. So she used the same methods to whistle those blackmailers. And somehow, she managed to reach them.

DAN OLSON: In all of this, what emerges is the story of your mother. She must have been a remarkably brave and resourceful woman.

LUCY SMITH: She was very nervous, as they called. She was emotionally not always quite right. Before the war, relatives didn't keep her in very high esteem. So she was kind of subdued.

And then came war. And, oh, her ability, it was really her time. It was very strange, but she was quite special during the war. And all these relatives that didn't consider her so capable, they didn't manage it. She did.

So she was very, very inventive and imaginative. She was able to think on her feet, find the right word to say, and really was wonderful. But then the war ended. And here, she returned in her poor, helpless person kind of posture.

DAN OLSON: It's an adventure story. It's a story of survival. It's a morality tale. It's an amazing story. You were a child. And yet, you must have grown up very, very fast.

LUCY SMITH: I guess I did. Yeah. And matter of fact, when I came back, I was very bored with my peers. So I was mostly staying with grown ups because they were far more interesting.

DAN OLSON: Maybe one of the important lessons from your story is the will to survive. And what other lessons, what other things come out of the story, do you think?

LUCY SMITH: That we need to be very careful what we say. That words have great power. Matter of fact, I am going to schools with this story. And it kind of came recently.

I changed and develop it according to what feels right, feels right. But recently, I started to use-- I draw a picture that is usually used in during Halloween of a witch. Because it is a crooked nose and the chin up. And all that, people consider to be ugly.

And then I ask children, what is it? So, of course, they say, witch, witch, witch. And I asked them, what do you know about witch? So they come with all this usual-- she's mean. She rides a broomstick.

She can throw a spell on you and all those things. And then I proceeded telling them, listen, do you know that once ordinary women like your mothers, your sisters, your aunts, and grandmother, anyone, were accused of all those things, and they were burned for all those things?

And having been burned for about 200 years, but the story is still with us and accusations are still with us. So if we use this type of accusations and finger pointing against each other happened in Washington now, those things stayed. And it is not done in the name of goodness or morality. It really is evil.

DAN OLSON: When you have gone to schools, and have told your story, and your name has appeared in the paper, people have responded to you and including people who spread hate. What has happened?

LUCY SMITH: Well, I was interviewed after I was a guide for Anne Frank exhibition. And couple of days later, I got this envelope that says American Information Center has the following address. There is no other following address.

So what are those informations? Mostly the things that variety of literature stating that the Holocaust never happened, that it was an invention of Jews. And that there was no concentration camp. I think they were just baking bread there or something like that. Anne Frank is a hoax and things like that. So I called the journalist, and she got it too.

DAN OLSON: The feelings are still out there?

LUCY SMITH: Yeah, feelings is definitely out there. And we really need to be more courageous because people are composed of really decent people, really evil people, and the masses and masses of neither people who are doing well. They don't do any evil deeds, but they are afraid to stand up against someone that does those things.

And I don't know how, but we really need to keep educating, keep talking, and keep encouraging that masses to take stand for something decent and learn the difference between good and evil because it is still the same kind of an old plate that is being replayed again, and again, and again through history. And I don't know if there is any hope, but I hope that there is.

DAN OLSON: Lucy Smith, thank you so much. Nice to talk to you.

LUCY SMITH: You're welcome.

GARY EICHTEN: Lucy Smith of Saint Paul, talking with Minnesota Public Radio's Dan Olson. This is a special Holocaust Remembrance edition of our voices of Minnesota interview series on Midday. I'm Gary Eichten.

Leonard Parker, a 22-year-old US Army Sergeant in 1945, was among the first Americans to open the gates of Dachau, Germany's second largest concentration camp. Parker is now a Twin Cities architect. He supplied a copy of the letter he wrote to his parents, as he put into words, what he and the others saw.

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VAUGHN ARMSWORTH: May 1st, 1945. Dearest mom, dad, and Jackie, there is so much I must write you about. I know you've been worried about me, but the very fact that you have this letter should assure you that I am still well and trusting in God.

A little tired and worn out, perhaps. And maybe a little older now than my 22 years, but well, nevertheless. Since the last letter which I wrote to you from Nuremberg, we have come a long way in just a short while. Many times since I have come overseas, while miserable in a wet foxhole, or sweating out a Jerry artillery barrage, or lying out in the rain pinned down by enemy small arms fire, I have asked myself what it is all about?

Why am I here, why, why? After what I saw the past few days, it seems easy now to answer what had seemed unanswerable. You see, three days ago, we freed a German concentration camp, the second largest in all of rotten Germany at Dachau, just outside of Munich.

At one time, there were 150,000 prisoners there, Jews, Poles, Russians, Czechs, and German political prisoners. Now, there are barely 13,000 left. When our company first approached the camp, we came upon a railroad on which there were many boxcars, all of them filled with dead bodies.

And the stink was terrific. There were young children, and women, and men who had been lined up and machine gunned to death by the SS just a few days previously. And why? Because they couldn't be taken along by the retreating Nazis.

We took no German prisoners that day. All that we captured, and there were 50 SS, we killed. They are no better than swine. And we treated them as such. We saw and smelled the crematorium where they cremated the bodies after removing the shoes and any other valuables the people might possess.

We saw the quarters where these people stayed. Some had been there as long as 12 years. We heard from the lips of the prisoners themselves as to how they had been beaten, and starved, and made to work anywhere from 12 to 18 hours in one day.

We listened to countless stories of cruelty and the inhumanity of the Nazis. And it made one want to tear the eyes out of the next German soldier you saw. When we liberated the prisoners, well, maybe I'd better go into more detail. You see, that day our company was spearheading, and my squad was scouting up ahead of the column.

We came upon the camp enclosure. And out of the gate, came three prisoners dressed in the blue and white striped suits that they all wore. The first one yelled at me, boy, are we glad to see you?

And you could have knocked me over with a feather because I hadn't expected anyone to yell at me in English. He was a US Army captain who had been parachuted into France three months before D-day on a secret mission and had been captured by the Gestapo and sent to Dachau.

I guess the rest of the prisoners had been waiting to see if we were all right because there then came a flood of human skeletons out of the gates, mostly Jews, some Poles, and others mixed in. The captain was the only American in the bunch. Mom, these people fell on our necks and kissed us, crying for joy.

They fell on the ground at our feet and kissed our boots and grabbed for our hands and kissed them. There were women, and children, and men alike. Those that were able to walk, all crying, half mad with happiness.

By that time, the rest of the company had caught up. And we gave them our cigarettes, which they grabbed up like drowning men might grab at the air. They fought like mad dogs amongst themselves over the rations that we passed out.

You see, they had been on a diet of 10 grams of dark bread, what they called water soup, and one potato each day. It tore our hearts out to see people who had suffered so much. And many of us had eyes overflowing with tears.

A Jewish man came up to me and asked me if it were true that there were Jewish soldiers in the American army. I told him that I was a Jewish unteroffizier. And he nearly went mad. I soon had about 50 Jewish men and women around me, hugging me and kissing me.

They were starved also for [NON-ENGLISH] And I wanted so much to make them happy that I sang some for them. One asked me if I wouldn't write my Jewish name for him on a piece of paper. Soon, I scribbled it down for them all on dirty scraps of paper that appeared in their hands like magic.

They all wanted it as a souvenir from the first American Jewish soldier they had ever seen. I saw firsthand the things that I have read about and which I had never quite believed. Now I know what this war is all about. Now I know why we are fighting.

To me, all the suffering and misery I've had to put up with these past eight months, has been well worthwhile. Just to see the joy on the faces of these tortured and suffering people, repaid all of us that saw 1,000 fold. Maybe all this doesn't sound like me. But dear mama, you would have to see for yourself to understand what it is.

I'm proud to be one of the many who finally helped free those poor souls who have been through a hell that the decent mind cannot imagine possible here on God's own Earth. We guarded the camp for three hours until the American military government moved in to take over. And then we moved onward to Munich.

You probably know by now that Munich is in American hands. We all believe that the war can't last much longer. The more optimistic, say, a week. I'll give it another month.

Like the other large German cities we have taken, Munich is in rubbles. Just the outskirts maintain their former beauty. This letter has been a long one, but I wanted to let of how our people have suffered and that we are bringing light into their hearts and maybe into the homes that they may have again, someday.

I have hopes that you'll feel as I feel, that the anxiety, and worry, and heart suffering you are going through is for something to stamp out the poison Hitler and his kind have spread over the world. I will write again when I can. I love you all and miss you very much. Regards to all our friends. Still your same devoted, Sammy.

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GARY EICHTEN: A letter written by Leonard Parker, when he and other US military personnel liberated Dachau. The letter was read by Minnesota Public Radio's Vaughn Armsworth. This is a special Holocaust Remembrance edition of our voices of Minnesota interview series coming to you on Midday.

Reider Dittman and thousands of other Norwegians protested the Nazi occupation of their country during World War II. The retired Saint Olaf College professor now lives in Northfield. But during World War II, Dittman was a young man getting ready to take his university entrance exams.

He and hundreds of others were in an auditorium ready to take the oral and written tests. Dittman had neglected his studies to protest the German occupation. And he told Minnesota Public Radio's Dan Olson he knew there was a good chance he'd fail the test.

REIDER DITTMAN: And I was going to say, gentlemen, I believe I will try to take this examination next year. And I said, gentlemen, I-- and at that moment, everything had been focused on me, you know, from the audience and everybody waiting for what I was going to say.

But everything shifted because, into the auditorium from the back, and from the side, and in the entry area, streamed German soldiers with their bayonets bared. And an officer jumped up in front of me on the stage. And he shouted out, [SPEAKING GERMAN]. Everybody is under arrest.

And so I found myself in the strange position of being saved by the Germans from failing my exam. And I knew perfectly well that this third arrest would lead to nothing good on my part. And so the Germans had decided that on the 27th of November, at 11 o'clock in the morning, they were going to surround the university and apprehend everybody on the premises in this net sweeping or picking up underground, important underground people.

I suppose that they were right in this assumption. They arrested 4,500 people. And we were all shipped to an assembly camp in South Norway, where all of us, again, were subjected to interrogation. And you can imagine my coming in there.

They already had a file on me that I had very little chance. But in the course of three weeks until Christmas, they sifted these people out. And a great many were released. And a great many were transferred to camps in Norway.

And then, ultimately, we were 348 left. And on Christmas Eve of that year, we were told that we were to be shipped to Germany. And came to Oslo, and boarded the prisoner transport ship the Danube and sailed through the Skagerrak and Kattegat to Stettin in North Germany.

Put into boxcars, and we were transported farther down into a rather devastated Germany. And in the dark of the night on New Year's Eve, we arrived in this place that nobody had ever heard about. And to the sound of the baying of dogs and the roaring of guards, we were hustled out of the boxcars and moved forward.

And beacons spotlights were playing on us. And in the light of the spotlights, I could see the gateway to what I assumed was a camp. And above the gateway, emblazoned in brass letters, was the motto of the camp. And it said "Recht oder unrecht-- mein Vaterland," right or wrong, my country.

I didn't know then, but learned later that wasn't a German phrase at all but that was an American phrase. It was said by Stephen Decatur in the early part of the 1800s when he lifted his glass to his fellow soldiers and he said, my country, may she always be right.

But right or wrong, my country, thereby, issuing forth one of the most immoral statements ever made, one that we have been struggling with in America ever after, where we put patriotism ahead of our own moral responsibility. And the Germans found it such a beautiful sentiment that it perfectly suited the establishment of a concentration camp.

DAN OLSON: Was there widespread knowledge, do you think, in Norway, even across Europe, for that matter, of the existence of the death camps?

REIDER DITTMAN: Of the death camps, initially, no. Of concentration camp, yes, and of the fatal result of being incarcerated in the concentration camp. When my parents learned about three weeks afterwards that I had been transported to an unnamed camp, they did not think they were going to see me again.

And in my camp, which was Buchenwald, from 800 to 2,000 people died every day. And it would have been sheer arrogance to believe that you would not be one of them. So we decided that we were going to die there. Once, having decided that, we tried to live one day at a time.

DAN OLSON: What was life like one day at a time?

REIDER DITTMAN: It may sound almost callous to say it, but I suppose that life from one day to the next was extremely boring. There was no way-- there were 40,000 in my camp. I was number 32,232. And there was no way that they could put all of us to meaningful labor.

There were some who worked in the munitions factory. There were others who were sent to mines. We as Norwegians, you know, pure Germanic material, were not sent to those bad spots.

And we were blessed with having our own barrack. It's very difficult to convey what that would mean. But in Buchenwald, we were 16 different nations represented. An individual who would come from Bulgaria may be put into a camp, into a barrack where nobody spoke his language.

It would be terribly hard. We were surrounded by our own people. We could speak our own language. We could take care of each other in whatever way was possible.

And I'm sure that part of our minimal death rate out of the 349, 28 died. There were young people, 28-- 18 to 22 years old. But that was a low rate. A Polish prisoner had a life expectancy of three weeks, a Russian about the same.

And, of course, the Jews had no life expectancy. Jews came to camp to be annihilated. That was it. They never entered the register of the camp. And I, of course, witnessed that sort of thing.

DAN OLSON: This is what those of us who live outside that time and can only look back on it, I suppose, cannot comprehend--

REIDER DITTMAN: It becomes very abstract, I think. And I can understand that because even having witnessed this from one day to the next, when I now have the distance of time, and history, and geography before me, it becomes, somewhat, abstract to me, as well. And you asked me at the outset if I would mind talking about it, and I don't mind talking about it.

Because I think it's important to be talked about. And I can do it with authority without feeling deeply involved, although I was involved.

DAN OLSON: On the day you learned you would not be killed, how did you learn it? And what did it make you feel?

REIDER DITTMAN: We, in Buchenwald, and I'm sure in other camps, were very apprehensive about the final days because we thought with what we know, will they let us get out. They have annihilated hundreds of thousands of people, millions.

And it wouldn't be hard for them to annihilate the rest of the occupants of Buchenwald. So we thought that we were in danger. Everything that happened in camp was announced on the public address system. And it started out like this, "Achtung, Achtung," attention, attention. And then they give a number like 32,232.

If that were in there, I would be called to the gate area. And that would mean I would be executed. And then on the 18th of march, 1945, the public address system crackled, and it said [SPEAKING GERMAN]. That meant all the Norwegians to the gate area.

And we thought now we have had a reasonable life here in Buchenwald. But now they're going to start by choosing us to be the first. So we thought we were going to be executed. And we shuffled up to the roll call area with its gallows in the center, and its gas chamber, and its smokestack.

And there were two young men in dusty blue uniforms, quite unfamiliar to us together with the commander in chief of the camp. And he came up and walked along our ranks. We always lined up 5 by 5. In Buchenwald, you always lined up 5 by 5 because then they could count you fast.

We were counted twice a day. They counted 40,000 people twice a day. If the number didn't turn out, we stood on a pelvic all that until it worked out. Sometimes, you could stay there at attention for six, seven hours. But anyway, we lined up 5 by 5.

And command the pistol came in front of us. And they said, how are you, my Norwegian friends? The saying that if he is your friend, you need no enemies really worked out well.

He said, I have somebody here who would like to talk to you. And one of the young men stepped forward. And he said, [SWEDISH]. That's Swedish. I've come to take you to Sweden.

And he expected a riotous reception because Sweden was neutral. To be taken to Sweden would mean that the war was over for us. Of course, there wasn't a soul among us who believed this.

And there was no reaction, whatsoever. What had happened was this, the Count Folke Bernadotte, nephew of the King of Sweden and the International Vice President of the Red cross, had negotiated with Himmler. And he had received Himmler's written permission to go to all camps and pick out Scandinavian prisoners, on the condition that we would be interned in Sweden until the end of the war.

And so with this blanket authority, he sent buses and personnel in all the camps and picked us up. But the condition was also this, that everybody has to be assembled before they move out of Germany. And so we were all brought to a concentration camp again in Hamburg called Neuengamme, a very bad camp, no better than ours.

But, at least, we thought that we were on the way. Because as we were there, there were more and more Danes and Norwegians coming in the camp. There were all these incredible reunions happening every single day. And six weeks later, on the 30th of April, they came from Denmark, a colossal fleet of white buses.

Now, Denmark was still occupied. But the Danes were occupied under somewhat different circumstances. And all the bus owners in Denmark had volunteered for this activity. And so they shipped. They stowed into their buses 32,000 prisoners on their way to Sweden.

We traveled through Denmark, where people still occupied, where people stood along the side with bouquets of flowers and food for us. We were just showered with wonderful attention. We get to the coast of Denmark, and the ferry boats were waiting for us.

And at 10 o'clock in the morning of the 1st of May, I set foot on Swedish soil. And the war was over for me. As you know, the war was over a week later. And that was the end of it. At that time, there were 85,000 Norwegians in Sweden as returning prisoners and refugees.

It had been impossible for the Germans to monitor 1,500 miles of borderline between Sweden and Norway. So Sweden became a center of refuge for us. I often get the question, you know, how did the Norwegians feel about the Swedes being neutral during the war?

And some Norwegians didn't feel too great about it. And in the early first year of the war, 50,000 German troops traveled unobstructed through Sweden to the Norwegian battlefield. But it was very important for Norway to have this neutral country right nearby so that people, under pressure, important members of the resistance, could get across to Sweden. And from Sweden, they could get to England and join the Norwegian forces in exile.

DAN OLSON: Evil just seems too simple a word to try to convey what it was. Was this industrial effort to exterminate, to annihilate a group of people, the Jews, and for that matter, other groups of people, too. As you reflect back on it and think about the mindset of human beings who organize that kind of extermination, what kinds of conclusions have you come to?

REIDER DITTMAN: It's a very difficult question to answer. I know, for instance, for a fact that the existence of concentration camp and the existence of death camps was a known fact in German circles. No matter what they say today, it was a fact that they knew because we were on working columns in the city of Weimar, and were received with mocking, and spitting, and the throwing of pebbles at us.

So they knew that this happened. I don't know what makes an entire nation subscribe to these kind of supremacist ideas. But, you know, we have it around us here, as well, only that it hasn't been blended with straitened economic conditions, which were a fact in Germany in the 1920s.

You know, it cost 5 million marks to send a letter from Hamburg to Munich. The inflation was horrendous. And Hitler came with this notion that all of this misery is not your fault. It's the fault of the Jews.

So the Jews became a convenient scapegoat for Hitler. And he could do this because Germany had a long history of anti-Semitism. I've been working at a Lutheran institution for 50 years. But one of the most rabid anti-Semites in German history was Martin Luther, who said, as much as this, that they should be annihilated.

So this re-echoed with an appealing tone in the hearts and minds of the Germans. Every German living in the city, at any rate, had a neighbor who was a Jew. There's no question about that. And they disappeared. And the neighbor or the city itself got their belongings and enjoyed this new well being that they experienced as a result of their neighbors and friends being sent off to death camps.

I don't know what does it, but I do know that in clusters, even here at home in America, extremist things happen. And we don't know. The principal Nazi song was this [SPEAKING GERMAN].

That means, today, we march in the West. Tomorrow, we march in the whole world. This notion of conquering the world and ruling over everybody else was an age-old German notion. And the system allowed this to happen.

GARY EICHTEN: Retired Saint Olaf College professor Reider Dittman. Our Holocaust Remembrance was produced by Dan Olson with Mike Pengra and Vaughn Armsworth.

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Today's special broadcast of the Holocaust Remembrance is supported by Interra Financial, parent company for Dain Bosworth. Dain Bosworth Investment Services and Investment Banking, serving investors since 1909.

We'd like to remind you that we will be rebroadcasting this program at 9 o'clock tonight here on Minnesota Public Radio, a second chance to hear the broadcast, 9 o'clock tonight. Also, for those of you with access to the internet, you can find this program at our website.

If you'd like to listen to the program, again, maybe hear some parts that you missed or simply pass along to friends that they can hear the program, you can find it at www.mpr.org, www.mpr.org. And one other related reminder, Dan Olsen and the Jungle Theater will be presenting a special program, Holocaust Witness, the Legacy of Anne Frank tonight at 7 o'clock at the Fitzgerald Theater in downtown Saint Paul.

It's a 90-minute family oriented assembly, featuring a short film, a dramatic reading from Anne Frank's diary, and a conversation with Lucy Smith, who you heard at the beginning of this program, Saint Paul resident and Holocaust survivor.

That's at 7 o'clock tonight at the Fitzgerald Theater. Dan Olsen and the Jungle Theater will be featured in that presentation. It's called Holocaust Witness, the legacy of Anne Frank.

Related news item today, an 11-agency US government report out today says that Switzerland's business as usual attitude in dealing in gold looted by the Nazis prolonged World War II and supported Germany's capacity to wage war. The study also reported conclusive proof that gold, jewelry, coins, and melted down dental fillings of concentration camp victims were taken by the Germans, mixed with plundered bank gold, and re-smelted into bars that were traded abroad.

The report, however, found no evidence that neutral countries, such as Switzerland, knowingly accepted those gold bars. The report was compiled under the direction of Commerce Undersecretary Stuart Eizenstat. In an introduction to the report, Eizenstat harshly criticized both the Swiss and US governments, Switzerland for using its neutrality as an excuse to do business with Nazi Germany and American officials for not doing more after the war to force the Swiss to make reparations.

Eizenstat writes, "in the unique circumstances of World War II, neutrality collided with morality. Too often, being neutral provided a pretext for avoiding moral considerations." He noted that many neutral countries dealt with the Nazis out of fear that they, too, would be overrun. He said Switzerland and others ignored repeated Allied entreaties to end their dealings with Nazi Germany.

Whatever their motivation, the fact that they pursued vigorous trade with the Third Reich had the clear effect of supporting and prolonging Nazi Germany's capacity to wage war. Most inexplicable, he added, was the persistence of a business as usual attitude by Switzerland. As for the US, he says, there was a demonstrable lack of senior level support for a tough US negotiating position with the neutrals.

Well, that does it for our Midday program today. Gary Eichten here. I'm so glad you could join us today. And I hope you'll be able to tune in tomorrow. Tomorrow, it's off to the Minnesota meeting for a debate over for-profit education companies.