White, Stanley W.

Liberator
Hadamar, Nordhausen, Cuxhaven, Buchenwald

Mr. Stanley White was born in New York, New York in 1917.

He enlisted in the Army in October, 1940. From December, 1944 through May, 1945 he was a major sergeant in the Judge Advocate Section of the 1st Army.

In March of 1945, he crossed the Rhine and investigated the Hadamar Murder Mill. Bodies were dug up and autopsies performed. Medical Major Alper was in charge and found poison in the bodies. People were killed with needles and dumped into a pit.

This was in Limburg on the Lahn River. A Detroit Free Press article called this the “Legacy of Horror.”

Then Major White’s group went to Nordhausen near Kassel. This was near the Dora plane factory where Werner Von Braun worked. They found prisoners laying on the ground. Row after row of human filth, skeletons, starving and an enormous stench. The soldiers took over a row of houses and laid out the biscuits (small mattresses) they had with them. They tried to feed the prisoners. An old man with a horse and wagon took away some bodies.

Dora was no better. In April, 1945, he sent mail to his wife, describing what he saw: thirty bodies in Cuxhaven, decomposed, each with a bullet wound behind the right ear. Willy Wexyl performed the autopsies.

Then on to Buchenwald. Entering, he saw a two foot high box, filled with wedding bands. He was there as a court reporter to write what he saw. He had no contact with the prisoners who could not speak because they were too weak.

Completely unprepared for what he saw, Major White couldn’t stop smelling the odor. He returned home in May of 1945.

He previously thought that Germans were good fighters and a capable people. He wondered how they could possibly have followed “der Fuhrer.”

He helped himself to an autograph of Hitler he found in a German house. He hated hearing that the German civilians knew nothing. He has nightmares and was upset for years afterward, not being able to understand the mistreatment of people against each other.

Mr. White went back to work for General Motors in Pontiac, Michigan while living in Clarkston. No one wanted to hear his stories. Whenever he sees a striped uniform, he gets upset but feels that it’s important that the facts be graphically illustrated.

As a young child, growing up in Manhattan, he complained that his Jewish friends had more holidays than the Christians.

Interview information:
Interviewer: Rabbi Charles Rosenzveig
Date: August 10, 1992
Length: 0:33 minutes
Format: Video recording