By Lee Habeeb
Newsweek Columnist, Vice President of Content at Salem Media Group and host of "Our American Stories"
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January 27 is International Holocaust Remembrance Day, a date chosen to align with the fateful day in 1945 when Allied troops liberated the worst of the Nazi death camps: Auschwitz-Birkenau. Approximately 960,000 Jews were murdered there, and nearly 1.1 million lives were cut short in all.
But amid the tragedy and horror associated with the Nazi genocide, there were stories of hope and courage, too. One involved an American GI who helped save 200 Jewish-American GI’s from near-certain death. His name was Master Sergeant Roderick "Roddie" Edmonds, and the most remarkable part of his story wasn't his courage or the lives he saved. It was his humility. And the source of his humility and his courage: his faith in God.
Edmonds never told anyone about what he did, not even his son, Chris, a pastor in Tennessee and co-author of a book about his father’s exploits, No Surrender.
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"I asked him several times about his World War II experience and he would say, 'Son, there are some things that are just too difficult to share,'" Chris Edmonds told Our American Stories.
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His father died and took his secrets to his grave. It would take 20-plus years for his son to unearth his father's WWII story. Poking around on Google, he stumbled upon his dad's name in a New York Times story about a home that President Richard Nixon purchased in the 1970s from a man named Lester Tanner. In the piece, Tanner briefly noted that he had been saved from certain death at a POW camp during World War II by a soldier named Roddie Edmonds.
Chris was startled. Could that be his dad Tanner was talking about? So Edmonds did what any son would do—he tracked Tanner down like a detective and pieced together the rest of his father’s remarkable story.
"My dad was a part of the Battle of the Bulge," Edmonds explained. "They were sent to replace the men on the front lines and on December 17, 1944, the German forces overwhelmed his unit. Edmonds and the 1,200-plus soldiers eventually ended up in a camp called Stalag IX-A in western Germany.
When they got to the camp, Edmonds became the senior commander of the American GI’s. And that's when the story got interesting.
“One day, they got an announcement over the loudspeaker that asked for the Jewish POWs to fall out for the morning roll call,” Edmonds said. “Lester Tanner told me my dad immediately said: ‘We are not going to do that’ and sent orders throughout the barracks to have all the men fall out the next morning.”
What would they do? Would they risk their lives to protect their Jewish brothers in arms? Edmonds continued with one of the most harrowing accounts of mass bravery on or off the battlefield in WWII.
"So the next morning, all the soldiers and POWs fell out," Edmonds said. "There were approximately 1,275 men, and they were all standing there before the barracks and Lester says the commandant came over to my dad and was furious and said, ‘All of you can't be Jews.’ Then Paul Stern, who was standing close by, said that my dad responded, ‘We are all Jews here.’
Needless to say, the commanding German officer of the camp was not pleased. Edmonds’ son continued.
"The commandant was angry that this American had the audacity to disobey an order," Edmonds said. "He said, ‘I am asking you to command your Jewish men to step forward.’ My dad's response was simply this, ‘According to the Geneva Convention all that is required is name, rank and serial number.’ That again infuriated the commandant, who was a major. He pulled his gun out of his holster and pressed it to my dad's forehead and said, ‘You will have your Jewish men step forward immediately or I will shoot you on the spot.’
"Lester Tanner said that my dad said, ‘Major, if you shoot me, you will have to shoot us all.’ And then my dad added some more: ‘We know who you are and when we win this war you will have to stand for war crimes.’ Tanner said that the major blanched, turned blood red and, for what seemed like a very long time [but wasn't], stuck his gun in his holster and turned and walked away. They all went back into the barracks and cheered my father.’"
Stern, who was Jewish, told Yad Vashem, the official Holocaust Museum of Israel, seven decades later he could remember every detail of that day, and the five words that would save his life: "We are all Jews here."
Though Roddie Edmonds was their fearless leader, the contribution of the other American GIs in the prison camp can't be underestimated.
"Every one of those 1,200 men who stepped up all had the choice, and they made the right choice as well," Edmonds noted.
Two questions still lingered: Why didn't Edmonds tell anybody his story? And why did he risk his own life to save others?
"He wasn't one to brag, or share stuff like that," Robbie Edmonds explained. "Probably even today, if he were here, he'd be saying, 'What's the big deal? I did what I was supposed to do, I did what anybody else would do, and I’m glad it worked out.' He just wouldn't think it was a big deal."
It turns out Edmonds' sense of moral clarity—and sense of right and wrong—sprang from his faith, which was nurtured at a Methodist church in South Knoxville, where he gave his life to Jesus Christ as a young man.
"My dad was the real deal," Chris Edmonds said. "He lived by his faith in God, and it's even mentioned in his diary. He talked about how bad war is and how he wants to get back and serve God."
It wasn’t clear whether Edmonds had ever met a Jewish person until he enlisted.
“But to dad, people were people. People were God's creation,” his son explained. “And everyone was made equally in the sight of God. Everybody mattered.”
The Jewish men who served under Edmonds agreed with that assessment.
“He had no reason to do what he did, to stand up for us,” Stern noted. “That’s a real Christian that puts their life on the line for others.”
Tanner echoed his friend Stern’s words.
“Roddie could no more have turned over any of his men to the Nazis as he could have stopped breathing," he said. "He just couldn’t do it. He was a righteous man.”
For his efforts, the soldier was awarded the Righteous Among Nations Award—given to non-Jews who helped save Jewish lives during the Holocaust—by Yad Vashem.
Roddie Edmonds died in 1985 of congestive heart failure. But the story of his heart for people—and his heart for his God—will live on forever. On this day of remembrance, it’s worth knowing and sharing the story of this man–and those 1,000-plus soldiers–who risked it all to save the lives of 200 Jewish-American soldiers, save them for certain death in the Nazi death camps that American and Allied troops would liberate mere months later.
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