The Gate of Hell
Charles Johnson
Sun Apr 10, 2005 at 8:12 am PDT • Views: 283
Alexander van Straubenzee’s piece for the Telegraph is a disturbing, wrenching account of a British soldier’s encounter with pure evil; as a tide of delusional antisemitism and appeasement sweeps over Europe—again—it’s imperative that we never forget: The gate of Hell. (Hat tip: Ethel.)
Sixty years ago, on April 15, 1945, Lieutenant John Randall, then a 24-year-old SAS officer, was on a reconnaissance mission in northern Germany. He and his driver were heading down the road to Lüneberg when he noticed a large, imposing iron gate in front of a track leading off into the woods to their left. Curious, Randall decided to investigate, and so discovered one of the most horrifying aspects of Hitler’s Germany.
“We were totally unprepared for what we had stumbled across,” says Randall, now 85, sitting opposite me in the Special Forces Club in London. “I just drove through these gates because they were open. There were one or two totally dejected-looking German guards, but they made no effort to shoot. They didn’t even stop us.”
So when did it dawn on you that this was a concentration camp, I ask. “About 30 yards into the camp, my Jeep was suddenly surrounded by a group of around 100 emaciated prisoners,” recalls Randall. “Most of them were in black-and-white-striped prison uniforms and the rest wore a terrible assortment of ragged clothes. It was the state of these inmates that made me realise that this was no ordinary PoW camp.”
Read it all.
Frank says: