May 07, 2008
Private Galione
A foul odor drifted into the camp of the American 104th Infantry Division. Private John Galione, resting with his unit on the front lines in Germany, told his sergeant the smell troubled him and suggested it was coming from a rumored labor camp in the area. He asked if he could organize a scouting party to follow railroad tracks in the direction of the odor. Permission was denied because of an ambush threat.
With a growing sense of urgency, Galione ignored the order. About 9 p.m. on April 5, 1945, he slipped out of camp on foot and into the blackness of night. Several hours later fatigue, hunger and a nagging leg wound began taking a toll. Just as Galione thought of quitting he felt a nudge from behind. He turned but saw no one. Then the force grabbed his elbows, pointed him in the original direction and gave him another push. Instantly his strength returned and pain disappeared.
Five days later the tracks led Galione to the mouth of a tunnel carved into the Harz Mountains. Hidden inside was the Nazi's top-secret V-2 missile factory. To the right of the tunnel was the Mittelbau Dora Concentration Camp. The discovery by this lone soldier set in motion the liberation of prisoner camps across Europe and impacted the future of America and the world.
Initially, Galione was unsure of what he had stumbled upon, although he was confident the God of Israel had guided him to this location. As he approached the tunnel he spotted a train car filled with naked corpses, which he learned later was bound for the nearby Buchenwald crematorium. Galione was spotted by a German guard and gunfire was exchanged before the guard, for an unknown reason, fled the area. Bullets had whizzed past Galione as he scrambled for cover above the tunnel. He marveled that he was not killed or wounded.
Galione then turned his attention to the camp and came face-to-face with prisoners at the front gate. These emaciated laborers – Jews and non-Jews – worked under brutal conditions in a labyrinth of caves, manufacturing the world's first ballistic missile, which the Nazis planned to aim at Britain and the United States. Unable to break in, Galione left but returned in a Jeep with two other soldiers. Before sunrise on April 11 the men broke the lock and drove slowly into the compound. Twisted, discolored corpses littered the ground. A gaunt prisoner approached the soldiers, pointed to the infirmary and said weakly "there are people in there." The driver pulled the Jeep close to the door, stepped inside and witnessed another horror scene: about a hundred living skeletons lying motionless in beds, barely breathing. "We were so frightened we put the Jeep in reverse and drove out backward real fast," Galione said. "We didn't know what was going on in there and we didn't want to end up like the people we saw. The German guards had abandoned the prisoners, but we didn't know that. To be safe we wanted to bring more men."
The soldiers who joined Galione were from another platoon. Galione, who had walked more than a hundred miles to reach the camp, took a three-hour Jeep ride back to his unit. He told his sergeant he'd located the camp and described the gruesome scene. At first the commander was reluctant to respond because he feared an ambush, but relented and ordered Galione to radio other troops for assistance. "I was so happy," said Galione, who led an infantry division to liberate Dora the next day. "The people were in such bad shape. I don't think they had another day left to live."
The Third Armored Division sped toward Dora to provide cover for the arriving infantry but got lost and located another camp, Nordhausen, by accident. It held more than 400 dying prisoners. When Galione's detachment entered Dora, many battle-hardened soldiers, encountering Holocaust victims for the first time, wept and vomited. Galione said the laborers "looked like the walking dead. They were skin and bones. The people were so happy to see us. They were tugging our clothes, feeling our uniforms between their fingers like they were gold." Some were so weak they died before they could reach the gate.
The Pentagon ordered the immediate search for other prisoner camps, motivated largely by the discovery of Nazi weapons. Galione had beaten the Russians to Germany's rocket technology by mere hours, a coup that helped America grow into a superpower. The missiles and German scientists were transferred to America and the knowledge base helped develop high-tech weapons and the space program. Galione never pinpointed the source of the odor. Camp Dora was ruled out because it was more than a hundred miles from Lippstadt, where the 104th had paused to rest. Galione said he encountered the odor on other occasions near train cars.
The son of an Italian immigrant, Galione had always prayed to the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob but did not acknowledge Yeshua (Jesus) as Messiah until the 1970s. He returned from the war undecorated because his story was silenced by the Army. But God honored him a different way – seven children and grandchildren were born on the liberation dates of concentration camps that had sent Jews and non-Jews to Camp Dora – Nordhausen, Buchenwald and Dachau. One of his daughters was born without vital signs but revived by a doctor. It was April 15, the anniversary of the liberation of Buchenwald and Nordhausen.
According to another daughter, Mary Nahas, her father believed God had spent a lifetime building a memorial through these births. Galione wanted Holocaust survivors to know that the LORD was behind their rescue and that He loved them and never wanted them to suffer and die in camps. Galione confided to a family member before his death in 1999 at age 80 that his one regret was not arriving at Camp Dora sooner to save more prisoners. With her father's permission and a signed affidavit from his sergeant, Nahas broke the silence by writing a book entitled The Journey of Private Galione. She was interviewed by Sid Roth on the radio in March. You can listen here.
Posted by Jeff King at May 7, 2008 10:16 AM