Liberation - The Story of Runyon Peterson

I’m writing this just hours after the surviving Israeli hostages were released by Hamas and returned to their families. Each were taken on October 7 two years ago in the worst mass murder event of Jews since the Holocaust. I am happy for the liberation of the hostages and hopeful for an end to this war. I am sad thinking that, even though there are tears of joy right now, uncounted thousands will carry the trauma of the war that started on October 7 for the rest of their lives. I find myself thinking of two local men who liberated the Ohrdruf concentration camp on April 4, 1945.

About twelve years ago, I interviewed Loren Helmeke in his apartment. Loren was a retired Georgetown rural mail carrier who, during World War II, was one of the first American soldiers to witness the end result of Nazi antisemitism. Loren told me he had “liberated” a camera from a German civilian sometime earlier. He used that camera to take some of America’s first photographic proof of the Holocaust. Our historical society has copies of the pictures, as does the Holocaust Museum.

“I remember the day I walked in that place just like it was yesterday,” he told me as a man in his 90s. “I guess after I saw what happened over there, I thought it was the last good war, if there is such a thing as a good war. But at least there was a reason for this one.”

I never got to meet his friend Runyon Peterson, a Dilworth railroad engineer who was also at Ohrdruf that day. There is a 1981 interview with him archived on the website of the US Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Peterson was a veteran of plenty of fighting by April of 1945. “We smelled burning flesh a long time before we got to Ohrdruf,” he said. “We knew what that smelled like.” Runyon described the photos he took with a small camera he brought from home. The “beating shed.” The piles of burned bodies. The guard that was beaten to death by newly liberated prisoners. “By this time, I had seen so much stuff that at the time, it didn’t bother me…” He paused to bow his head and wipe away tears. “But now…” Tears turned to sobs.

American soldiers had heard rumors of death camps liberated by their Soviet allies, but they didn’t really trust them. How could it be true? Then they saw it at Ohrdruf. The first American tank came in to witness Nazi SS guards choosing to spend the last moments of their lives killing as many prisoners as possible before they were shot down. American soldiers forced the townspeople living nearby to walk through the camp to witness the horrors that occurred in their backyard. The following day, the city’s mayor and his wife committed suicide.

Runyon Peterson would go on to liberate both Dachau and Buchenwald concentration camps. Among the people he helped liberate at Buchenwald was a Romanian Jewish kid named Elie Wiesel. Wiesel would later write the acclaimed Holocaust memoir Night and win the Nobel Peace Prize.

After he retired, Runyon Peterson gave talks around the area about the Holocaust that he saw with his own eyes. I could tell Loren Helmeke believed it was his duty to share his photographic proof. Both men have passed away. There are few Holocaust survivors left. In a way, I’m glad that soon no one will remember death camps when they close their eyes. No one should be haunted by real nightmares like that. But as we lose our witnesses, we cannot allow these horrors to be forgotten or denied. If a witness entrusted you with their story, it’s because they want you to tell others. Honor them by doing so.

To learn more about Runyon Peterson's experience:

Interview with Runyon and other camp liberators:
https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn513306

​Interview with Runyon on his time with the Northern Pacific:
​https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVxePxu5jQE