Concentration Camp Liberator Speaks Of Horrors {VIDEO}

Alan Moskin minced no words when he described his World War II experiences to Albertus Magnus High School students. He warned at the outset of his remarks there would be graphic parts. Moskin told the 502 students they were the last generation that would be able to hear survivors of WW II battles and concentration camps speak in person.

“I speak here today for my buddies and for those poor souls as my lieutenant called them,” he said. “I’m their messenger and I want you to be my messenger. You’re going to be the last generation who can hear people like me.”

Moskin, 86, served as a combat solider in General George Patton’s Army and was introduced by Social Studies Teacher Tom Anderson as a member of the “greatest generation.” Before Moskin spoke on Thursday, a three-minute video played with him retelling his experience as an Army Scout and his encounters with Hitler Youth. During the viewing, Moskin sat with his head bowed and students sat silent.

The Nanuet resident then told students he tried to block the experiences from his memory but he had nightmares.

“I’m sure I had PTSD,” he said.  “We didn’t know that in World War II, never heard of it.” 

He kept silent for more than 50 years until he began hearing about Holocaust deniers. In June 1995, he began sharing his wartime experiences. Moskin received a draft notice when he was 18, went into basic training where he encountered racism as a Jew and for having black friends.  He left from Camp Shanks in Orangeburg abroad a Liberty Ship on a 10-day trip across the Atlantic Ocean to Liverpool then to France and to the front lines where he joined Patton’s Army and saw combat. 

“It’s like being to hell and back,” he said, explaining that on the second day his best friend was killed during fighting and another friend lost an arm.

From there, the unit went to Poland and freed Royal Air Force prisoners at a POW Camp. They told the 71^st Division soldiers about a “camp for Jews” nearby.

“On our level, we didn’t anything about ‘camps for Jews’,” said Moskin.

When they started walking through the woods to find the camp, an overwhelmingly stench reached them before they saw the barbed wire of the camp.  It was a sub-camp of the Mauthausen Concentration Camp, and a place he described as “horrifying.”

“It was just unbelievable horror,” he said. “We couldn’t believe what we were looking at.”

The Jewish prisoners, he described, had no flesh, sunken eyes, almost no hair, lice and sores on their bodies. Moskin said he spoke to other GIs who liberated other camps and told him about the crematoriums and gas chambers.

Moskin told the students the Nazis killed millions of Jews, Catholics, Gypsies and gays.

“All these people were murdered and slaughtered by the Nazis,” he said. “I don’t want anyone to forget the Holocaust.”

Rockland Independent Living Center (RILC) Executive Director George Hoehmann said after the organization honored former Marine Barry Fixler in 2011, they decided to do more with veterans. During the summer of 2012 Clarkstown North film teacher David Kaminski worked with RILC staff and volunteers and videotaped interviews with six veterans including Moskin about their experiences for the Veterans Living History Project at the National Archives. Hoehmann, also a Clarkstown councilman, has been working with Moskin to bring him to Rockland schools and he is speaking at Clarkstown South High Schools and the Rockland Country Day School and expects to speak at Clarkstown North and Nanuet high schools.

Dozens of students lined up to thank Moskin and ask him questions.

I thought it was very inspirational and emotional too,” said 11th grader  Stephane Joseph of New City.

Brian Reardon of Stony Point said he read Four Perfect Pebbles, a Holocaust story, in eighth grade but hearing a first hand account was dramatically different.

“It does imprint you more meeting a person than reading a book,” said the 11^th grader.