WEBVTT - The Diary of an ‘Undesirable’ 0:00:04.400 --> 0:00:10.120 From Puduromedia and PRX. It's Latino Usa. I'm Mariaino Rossa Today. 0:00:10.480 --> 0:00:14.680 The story of the first Mexican American to register as 0:00:14.720 --> 0:00:27.840 a Holocaust survivor and the scars that stayed with him. 0:00:27.920 --> 0:00:31.800 In October of twenty ten, a man in his late 0:00:31.880 --> 0:00:36.479 eighties walked into the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, 0:00:36.560 --> 0:00:41.160 d C. And then registered himself as a Holocaust survivor. 0:00:42.200 --> 0:00:45.559 His name was Anthony Acevedo, and on that day he 0:00:45.640 --> 0:00:49.479 carried with him items including a Red Cross armband, a 0:00:49.479 --> 0:00:53.920 Catholic prayer book, and most importantly, a tattered war diary 0:00:54.360 --> 0:00:58.920 with the pages still intact. Anthony was one of three 0:00:59.000 --> 0:01:02.480 hundred and fifty American soldiers who were imprisoned in a 0:01:02.560 --> 0:01:07.319 Nazi concentration camp during World War Two, but he chose 0:01:07.360 --> 0:01:11.400 to keep this part of his life a secret. Throughout 0:01:11.400 --> 0:01:14.800 our piece, you'll hear Anthony in his own words in 0:01:14.880 --> 0:01:17.959 segments of an oral history that he recorded at the 0:01:17.959 --> 0:01:21.280 Holocaust Museum back in twenty ten. You're also going to 0:01:21.360 --> 0:01:24.240 hear excerpts from his diary, which are read by an 0:01:24.280 --> 0:01:28.880 actor and so dear listener to commemorate the anniversary of 0:01:28.959 --> 0:01:33.480 Anthony A. Savedo's registration at the Holocaust Museum, and to 0:01:33.560 --> 0:01:37.679 honor Anthony's legacy and shed light on this overlooked aspect 0:01:37.720 --> 0:01:40.280 of history, We're going to bring back this story that 0:01:40.400 --> 0:01:45.040 originally aired in twenty eighteen. Producer Janis Emoca brings us 0:01:45.040 --> 0:01:46.600 the story now. 0:01:50.400 --> 0:01:54.120 Anthony Savedo grew up in a Mexican household in Pasadena, California, 0:01:54.200 --> 0:01:57.040 east of Los Angeles, and much of his childhood was 0:01:57.080 --> 0:01:59.640 pretty typical of the time. He played with his cousins, 0:01:59.680 --> 0:02:02.440 went to school, attended church. But then one day in 0:02:02.480 --> 0:02:05.720 the mid nineteen thirties, when Anthony was almost ten years old, 0:02:06.160 --> 0:02:08.960 he noticed that all his family's furniture had been packed up. 0:02:09.639 --> 0:02:11.600 So he asked his mom what was going on. 0:02:12.080 --> 0:02:12.720 What's happened? 0:02:12.800 --> 0:02:13.480 Where are you going? 0:02:13.560 --> 0:02:17.040 They said, no, we're all going, and he says where 0:02:17.080 --> 0:02:20.320 are we going? He says, we're going to Mexico and says, 0:02:20.400 --> 0:02:23.600 why is it? Because we were told to leave the 0:02:23.720 --> 0:02:28.240 United States. 0:02:29.720 --> 0:02:32.040 Anthony himself had been born in the US, but his 0:02:32.200 --> 0:02:36.600 parents they were undocumented, and at the time, many Mexican 0:02:36.600 --> 0:02:39.880 American families were being pressured to leave the US in 0:02:39.880 --> 0:02:44.639 something known as the Mexican repatriation in the nineteen thirties. 0:02:44.800 --> 0:02:47.800 Mexicans were the largest and most recent immigrant group to 0:02:47.880 --> 0:02:51.480 settle in the US, and following the Great Depression, they 0:02:51.520 --> 0:02:56.200 were scapegoats for the economic downturn. Historians say that somewhere 0:02:56.280 --> 0:02:59.240 between half a million and two million immigrants, as well 0:02:59.240 --> 0:03:02.160 as US citizen like Anthony, were forced out of the country. 0:03:03.320 --> 0:03:06.480 So Anthony and his family moved south to Mexico, to 0:03:06.520 --> 0:03:07.440 the state of Durango. 0:03:08.440 --> 0:03:12.120 Oh, they call me gringo because I was born in 0:03:12.120 --> 0:03:17.720 the United States and I know half English and half Spanish, 0:03:18.160 --> 0:03:20.200 and that was kind of difficult. 0:03:20.400 --> 0:03:25.120 But Anthony gets by, DAPs, grows up, and then World 0:03:25.200 --> 0:03:30.920 War Two starts, and right at the end of nineteen 0:03:30.960 --> 0:03:39.560 forty one, Japanese forces attack Pearl Harbor and the United 0:03:39.560 --> 0:03:41.120 States enters the war. 0:03:41.600 --> 0:03:45.080 No matter how long it may take us, the American 0:03:45.200 --> 0:03:49.640 people in their right, just Mike will win collab. 0:03:51.320 --> 0:03:54.440 By this point, Anthony is seventeen, and all of a sudden, 0:03:54.640 --> 0:03:57.440 the US is trying to enlist any men of fighting age, 0:03:57.680 --> 0:04:02.120 including Anthony, even though he'd been repatriated to Mexico. 0:04:02.640 --> 0:04:07.360 The Consul general the United States was after me because 0:04:07.360 --> 0:04:10.560 of my age. Getting ready to go back in the 0:04:10.640 --> 0:04:15.800 United States and serve your country. 0:04:15.960 --> 0:04:18.600 Yes, sir, he was drafted. 0:04:19.200 --> 0:04:21.440 So he packed his bags, said goodbye to his family, 0:04:21.480 --> 0:04:23.760 and headed back to the US to answer the call. 0:04:24.520 --> 0:04:26.599 He went to California and was trained to be an 0:04:26.720 --> 0:04:30.240 army medic, and then in the fall of nineteen forty four, 0:04:30.600 --> 0:04:32.120 he was sent to Europe to. 0:04:32.200 --> 0:04:36.160 Meet the German drive Generalizeenhower. Here at Supreme Headquarters, resourcefuly 0:04:36.200 --> 0:04:38.039 regrouped his forces, giving key in. 0:04:38.040 --> 0:04:39.760 A group of soldiers he was with took a train 0:04:39.839 --> 0:04:43.000 to a small town in Germany called Phillipsburg. By this 0:04:43.080 --> 0:04:45.240 time it was late December of a really hard winter, 0:04:45.839 --> 0:04:48.000 and when they got out of the train, snow was 0:04:48.040 --> 0:04:51.960 wat deep in some places. A few miles away, the 0:04:52.000 --> 0:04:54.840 Battle of the Bulge was underway. It was a German's 0:04:54.960 --> 0:05:02.080 last major offensive of the war. It was difficult for 0:05:02.120 --> 0:05:05.120 Anthony to find the wounded. There were bullets buzzing through 0:05:05.120 --> 0:05:08.719 the air, and the calls of medic medic were lost 0:05:08.720 --> 0:05:11.279 in the echoes of the fighting taking place in the forest. 0:05:12.839 --> 0:05:15.640 But he found some of the injured soldiers, and one 0:05:15.680 --> 0:05:17.760 by one he tried to help them. 0:05:18.160 --> 0:05:23.720 While he was doing repair jobs. First aid sutures and 0:05:23.760 --> 0:05:29.480 sewing thumbs, cutting a leg off and throwing a turniquet 0:05:29.560 --> 0:05:35.200 and sewing up the leg the stump, doing this and 0:05:35.279 --> 0:05:36.640 that as a medica. 0:05:37.880 --> 0:05:41.760 The battle lasted for days until finally Anthony's unit ran 0:05:41.800 --> 0:05:47.000 out of ammunition. The Americans began destroying everything, equipment, firearms, 0:05:47.040 --> 0:05:49.880 anything that the Nazis could use against them, and they 0:05:49.920 --> 0:05:53.600 decided it was time to surrender, so a scout walked 0:05:53.640 --> 0:06:01.159 out and waved a white flag. It was January sixth, 0:06:01.320 --> 0:06:05.760 nineteen forty five. Anthony and thousands of other American soldiers 0:06:05.800 --> 0:06:08.640 were taken to a prison camp known as Stalic nine 0:06:08.680 --> 0:06:13.120 B in bad Orb, Germany. The prisoners were referred to 0:06:13.160 --> 0:06:16.719 by numbers instead of their names. Anthony was two seven 0:06:16.839 --> 0:06:22.120 zero one six. Then on February eighth, all the soldiers 0:06:22.160 --> 0:06:23.640 were commanded to line up. 0:06:24.080 --> 0:06:34.720 And the commander said, all American Jews with names Jewish, 0:06:35.160 --> 0:06:37.680 take two steps forward. 0:06:38.240 --> 0:06:40.960 Anthony says that at that point people who had any 0:06:41.000 --> 0:06:43.800 markers of their Jewish faith little star medals or dog 0:06:43.839 --> 0:06:47.080 tags with an H written on them for Hebrew, desperately 0:06:47.120 --> 0:06:49.040 began to try to get rid of him, but to 0:06:49.120 --> 0:06:55.360 no avail. That day, the Nazis selected about ninety Jewish 0:06:55.360 --> 0:06:59.840 soldiers and another two hundred and sixty soldiers labeled undesirable 0:07:00.640 --> 0:07:04.279 men who they simply thought look Jewish, consider trouble makers, 0:07:04.720 --> 0:07:08.800 or any type of other This included twenty year old Anthony. 0:07:09.279 --> 0:07:11.280 It could have been because he was brown skinned, or 0:07:11.280 --> 0:07:13.640 because he was Catholic, or they saw him as a 0:07:13.640 --> 0:07:16.680 trouble maker. We don't know for sure. They didn't need 0:07:16.680 --> 0:07:23.120 a reason. The following day, the Nazis put the undesirables 0:07:23.200 --> 0:07:25.000 on a train a box car. 0:07:25.480 --> 0:07:30.600 You couldn't kneel, you couldn't squat. For six days in 0:07:31.240 --> 0:07:35.920 those box cars, fellas couldn't defecate that all, they had 0:07:35.960 --> 0:07:49.800 to do it right there. And for six days you 0:07:50.440 --> 0:07:53.200 couldn't eat nothing. You could have nothing to eat, nothing 0:07:53.240 --> 0:07:59.040 to drink, but the snow that hit the from the cracks. 0:07:59.520 --> 0:08:05.640 You tried or punk your hand through the slot window 0:08:06.040 --> 0:08:09.280 to get the drops of water from the rain. 0:08:14.120 --> 0:08:17.640 Eventually they arrived at a concentration camp known as Berga. 0:08:18.520 --> 0:08:21.320 It was a subcamp of Buchenwald, one of the largest 0:08:21.400 --> 0:08:22.800 Nazi concentration camps. 0:08:24.600 --> 0:08:28.880 It was so snowy that you couldn't catch the glimpse 0:08:29.000 --> 0:08:33.800 very well, but you see like towers of houses. 0:08:34.600 --> 0:08:37.000 The men were divided into groups of sixty to eighty 0:08:37.040 --> 0:08:39.720 men per Barck. There were other prisoners in the camp 0:08:39.720 --> 0:08:43.520 as well, mainly European Jews, but they were separated from 0:08:43.559 --> 0:08:50.160 the American prisoners. The captured soldiers were forced to work 0:08:50.160 --> 0:08:53.080 in the camp. Many were put to work digging tunnels 0:08:53.120 --> 0:08:56.559 for underground fuel factories the Nazis were working on. Since 0:08:56.600 --> 0:08:59.040 Anthony was one of just a few medics in the camp, 0:08:59.360 --> 0:09:01.640 he was tapped with trying to keep the men alive 0:09:01.720 --> 0:09:05.680 as they worked. One day, the men were given a 0:09:05.760 --> 0:09:08.800 rare red Cross package and in it a couple of 0:09:08.840 --> 0:09:13.200 empty journals. So Anthony took one and began writing in secret. 0:09:13.880 --> 0:09:16.480 He sketched the places and the scenes he witnessed. He 0:09:16.520 --> 0:09:19.319 even sketched a couple of pinup girls, and to keep 0:09:19.320 --> 0:09:21.880 the diary safe, he tucked it under his belt. 0:09:23.120 --> 0:09:27.800 March twentieth, nineteen forty five, Yesterday our planes dropped leaflets 0:09:28.000 --> 0:09:30.719 as well as bombs. Six men were sent to a 0:09:30.720 --> 0:09:35.720 British hospital. Five more men escaped today. Goldstein's body was 0:09:35.760 --> 0:09:39.720 returned here today for burial. He was shot while attempting 0:09:39.760 --> 0:09:44.280 to re escape, so they say, but actually was recaptured 0:09:44.480 --> 0:09:45.520 and shot through the head. 0:09:47.559 --> 0:09:50.600 Anthony's diary became a record of daily life in the camp. 0:09:51.080 --> 0:09:55.760 March twenty second, nineteen forty five, Private Schultz died of malnutrition. 0:09:56.760 --> 0:09:59.679 This is the fourth man to die. The weather is 0:09:59.720 --> 0:10:02.679 beauty and it looks like spring, which has finally come 0:10:02.720 --> 0:10:05.680 to Germany. By this time, back home, I'd be suffering 0:10:05.679 --> 0:10:06.360 from hay fever. 0:10:07.480 --> 0:10:10.640 We had got one hundred grams of bread per week. 0:10:11.679 --> 0:10:13.640 The one hundred bred brands of bridge is not much. 0:10:14.800 --> 0:10:23.120 It was a mixed of barley with sawdust, ground glass 0:10:23.160 --> 0:10:26.920 and ground sam. 0:10:26.160 --> 0:10:31.439 March twenty fifth, nineteen forty five, Palm Sunday. No chances 0:10:31.440 --> 0:10:34.719 of going to a church, but still our prayers are 0:10:34.720 --> 0:10:35.800 holding everyone up. 0:10:36.400 --> 0:10:36.920 This day. 0:10:37.080 --> 0:10:40.120 It reminded me of the hundreds of people attending Mass 0:10:40.120 --> 0:10:43.680 at the cathedral in Durango, Mexico. I wish I could 0:10:43.679 --> 0:10:48.880 be there now. March thirtieth, nineteen forty five, Good Friday. 0:10:49.559 --> 0:10:52.000 On this holy day, our thoughts are all at home 0:10:52.360 --> 0:10:55.400 and of the coming Easter Sunday. It is also the 0:10:55.400 --> 0:10:58.880 feast of the Passover for our Jewish comrades, and they 0:10:58.960 --> 0:11:00.680 also think of home and family. 0:11:02.440 --> 0:11:05.240 As the journal entries went on, the more Anthony wrote 0:11:05.280 --> 0:11:08.200 about the horrors in Berga, men from his unit began 0:11:08.240 --> 0:11:12.240 to die in greater numbers from alnutrition or beatings, or 0:11:12.280 --> 0:11:13.160 being overworked. 0:11:13.520 --> 0:11:17.680 April second, nineteen forty five, two more of our men 0:11:17.720 --> 0:11:22.280 died today, and one last night makes three plus sixteen 0:11:22.800 --> 0:11:28.439 makes nineteen. Living in unsanitary conditions, water must be boiled 0:11:28.480 --> 0:11:33.720 before it is drunk, no latrines. Deaths are increasing in 0:11:33.800 --> 0:11:37.360 great number. Men forced to work in the mind whether 0:11:37.400 --> 0:11:38.120 they are ill or not. 0:11:39.200 --> 0:11:41.880 Sometimes Anthony simply recorded deaths. 0:11:42.440 --> 0:11:48.679 Rogers March ninth, nineteen forty five, Young March twelfth, nineteen 0:11:48.760 --> 0:11:55.839 forty five, Goldstein March tenth, nineteen forty five, Goldberg March 0:11:55.880 --> 0:11:56.680 twenty fifth. 0:11:57.240 --> 0:12:01.640 I knew that maybe someday it would be a valuable 0:12:01.760 --> 0:12:08.520 thing for us to know that that there was important. 0:12:11.720 --> 0:12:13.559 I had a fountain ten with me that I was 0:12:13.679 --> 0:12:16.160 rising all the time with it, and I don't know 0:12:16.200 --> 0:12:19.280 how God gave me that. Ain't the less. 0:12:36.120 --> 0:12:40.200 Coming up on Latino USA, American forces inch closer to 0:12:40.240 --> 0:12:43.679 defeating the Nazis and liberating the men at Berga. 0:12:44.280 --> 0:12:48.120 Received very good news today. The Americans are two hundred 0:12:48.160 --> 0:12:50.600 and fifty kilometers from here and moving fast. 0:12:51.200 --> 0:13:07.839 Stay with us, Hey, we're back. And when we left off, 0:13:08.080 --> 0:13:11.720 twenty year old Anthony Esevedo was documenting his daily life 0:13:11.760 --> 0:13:15.679 as a prisoner inside a Nazi concentration camp known as Berga. 0:13:16.200 --> 0:13:27.600 Producer Jennie Yamoga picks up the story now, but it themples. 0:13:27.679 --> 0:13:30.439 I hear at shase that the next few days will 0:13:30.480 --> 0:13:31.760 be spent building up. 0:13:31.679 --> 0:13:34.600 Our forces east of the Rhine. By April, US troops 0:13:34.600 --> 0:13:37.880 had successfully crossed the Rhine River, one step closer to 0:13:37.920 --> 0:13:41.360 defeating Germany. Wile British and American troops were crossing the 0:13:41.400 --> 0:13:44.720 Rhine north of the Roar, the last German resistance west 0:13:44.760 --> 0:13:48.319 of the Rhine collapsed. They were nearing Berga, and Anthony 0:13:48.360 --> 0:13:50.640 and his fellow prisoners were hearing rumors. 0:13:51.120 --> 0:13:54.960 Received very good news today. The Americans are two hundred 0:13:55.000 --> 0:13:58.360 and fifty kilometers from here and moving fast. Received good news. 0:13:58.600 --> 0:14:01.520 Americans are only two high hundred kilometers away from here, 0:14:01.600 --> 0:14:04.880 which means they're excellent news today. Americans are only one 0:14:04.960 --> 0:14:07.720 hundred kilometers from here. Said that our boys were sixty 0:14:07.800 --> 0:14:08.840 kilometers from us. 0:14:09.120 --> 0:14:12.360 The Nazis evacuated the sub camp and forced the remaining 0:14:12.400 --> 0:14:15.560 soldiers on a death march that would last three weeks 0:14:15.800 --> 0:14:17.440 and over two hundred miles. 0:14:17.640 --> 0:14:21.960 April ninth, nineteen forty five, we marched ten kilometers. Today. 0:14:22.360 --> 0:14:24.600 We're supposed to go to the town of hof but 0:14:24.800 --> 0:14:27.400 we arrived to a big barn for our air corps 0:14:27.400 --> 0:14:32.960 were bombing that town continuously. We started out with three 0:14:33.080 --> 0:14:35.600 hundred and four men from Berga. We now have two 0:14:35.720 --> 0:14:36.960 hundred and eighty seven men. 0:14:37.520 --> 0:14:40.240 Many of the men died on the march. Their bodies 0:14:40.240 --> 0:14:41.840 were left by the side of the road. 0:14:42.440 --> 0:14:48.480 Stuart April fifth, nineteen forty five. Vogel April ninth, nineteen 0:14:48.640 --> 0:14:49.240 forty five. 0:14:49.640 --> 0:14:52.640 Weeks went by. Then suddenly, very early in the morning, 0:14:52.880 --> 0:14:59.280 the men heard firing like thunder in the distance. The 0:14:59.320 --> 0:15:05.880 Americans were getting closer. The Nazis wanted to continue marching 0:15:06.280 --> 0:15:08.280 and threaten the men that they shoot them if they 0:15:08.280 --> 0:15:12.200 didn't continue, but Anthony and another medic stood their ground, 0:15:12.560 --> 0:15:16.120 and the Nazis, afraid of the advancing troops, fled. 0:15:20.520 --> 0:15:24.840 We started hearing the rumbling getting closer, and we all 0:15:24.920 --> 0:15:26.960 started to run towards the highway. 0:15:27.720 --> 0:15:29.800 When they got to the highway, they found the eleventh 0:15:29.920 --> 0:15:33.200 Armor Division. The men were finally free again. 0:15:33.800 --> 0:15:38.800 We were liberated today April the twenty third, nineteen forty five. 0:15:44.800 --> 0:15:47.960 Out of three hundred and fifty American soldiers, about half 0:15:48.000 --> 0:15:50.480 of the men's ur y Berga, and many of the 0:15:50.520 --> 0:15:54.840 remaining men were close to death. When Anthony was first captured, 0:15:55.080 --> 0:15:58.000 he weighed one hundred and forty nine pounds. By the 0:15:58.040 --> 0:16:04.640 time he was set free, seven the surviving men, including Anthony, 0:16:04.720 --> 0:16:07.200 were taken to hospitals, and by June they were on 0:16:07.240 --> 0:16:09.920 their way back home to the US. But there was 0:16:09.960 --> 0:16:14.160 one condition, one that the former captives didn't quite understand, 0:16:14.680 --> 0:16:15.040 so we. 0:16:15.040 --> 0:16:17.440 Had to sign it up and David where we had 0:16:17.480 --> 0:16:24.920 to swear that we never were in a condition or 0:16:24.960 --> 0:16:30.480 suffered in a condition that we had got through by 0:16:30.480 --> 0:16:33.000 the Germans. 0:16:34.160 --> 0:16:36.440 The war was still going on and the US military 0:16:36.480 --> 0:16:39.080 wanted to keep exactly what went on inside the Nazi 0:16:39.080 --> 0:16:42.240 prison camps a secret, since they had soldiers being held 0:16:42.240 --> 0:16:45.320 as prisoners of war and believed information getting out could 0:16:45.320 --> 0:16:48.640 put them at risk. Some men like Anthony, were told 0:16:48.680 --> 0:16:50.320 they had to sign this document. 0:16:50.680 --> 0:16:55.120 They threatened us to be jailed federally by the United 0:16:55.120 --> 0:16:56.400 States government. 0:16:56.400 --> 0:16:59.560 The National Security or not. For the men who survived Burka, 0:16:59.800 --> 0:17:01.480 it felt like they were being told to keep their 0:17:01.480 --> 0:17:05.520 trauma a secret, like they didn't have a choice. So 0:17:05.640 --> 0:17:09.000 Anthony signed the document and for years he didn't talk 0:17:09.080 --> 0:17:20.520 much about what he saw in Berga. After the war, 0:17:20.720 --> 0:17:24.159 Anthony went back to Mexico then settled in California. He 0:17:24.200 --> 0:17:27.160 got married and he started a family, and he worked 0:17:27.160 --> 0:17:30.160 as an engineer in the aerospace industry for many years. 0:17:30.440 --> 0:17:32.080 Here's his son, fer Nando A. Savedo. 0:17:32.400 --> 0:17:34.480 I just remember sitting at the table and it was 0:17:34.560 --> 0:17:38.600 being a kid that's real picky about what they're eating. 0:17:38.680 --> 0:17:41.120 And I just remember my dad stating when I would 0:17:41.160 --> 0:17:43.439 leave the edges of the bread when I was a 0:17:43.480 --> 0:17:46.600 prisoner a war, that's all I had to eat, And 0:17:46.800 --> 0:17:47.760 that just stuck with me. 0:17:48.440 --> 0:17:51.240 Fernando is one of Anthony's four children, and he says 0:17:51.240 --> 0:17:53.040 his father did a pretty good job of hiding what 0:17:53.080 --> 0:17:53.680 he'd been through. 0:17:53.960 --> 0:17:57.560 If you look at my dad in those years, you 0:17:57.560 --> 0:18:00.920 could not tell he had gone through anything that was 0:18:01.280 --> 0:18:04.719 an extreme in nature, because I mean, he hid his 0:18:05.240 --> 0:18:06.679 PTSD so well. 0:18:07.040 --> 0:18:09.720 Still, it was impossible to hide everything. 0:18:10.160 --> 0:18:12.359 Oh, my dad would just take off, he'd be gone, 0:18:13.240 --> 0:18:15.200 I don't know where he went. And then I'd hear 0:18:15.200 --> 0:18:18.879 my mom go out there and it's like where everybody go. 0:18:18.960 --> 0:18:20.240 And then I'll see you out there and I hear 0:18:20.280 --> 0:18:24.080 my dad crying. I would see my mom massage in 0:18:24.080 --> 0:18:26.080 the back of his head and I would ask, you know, 0:18:26.160 --> 0:18:29.399 what's wrong with what's wrong with Poppy? And she would 0:18:29.400 --> 0:18:37.440 say he's going through something traumatic. And then my dad 0:18:37.480 --> 0:18:41.240 would say, I'll be okay, I'll be okay. And that 0:18:41.320 --> 0:18:42.080 happened often. 0:18:48.680 --> 0:18:52.240 Fernando also remembers how at home his father always kept 0:18:52.280 --> 0:18:54.920 his war diary on the nightstand. It was small and 0:18:54.960 --> 0:18:58.159 greenish gray, with a red outline of a lion and 0:18:58.240 --> 0:19:01.760 the words a wartime log on the cover. It was worn, 0:19:02.000 --> 0:19:04.760 a little beat up, like it belonged inside a glass 0:19:04.800 --> 0:19:05.840 case in some museum. 0:19:06.840 --> 0:19:09.399 He had it at the nightstand at the end of 0:19:09.440 --> 0:19:12.200 the hallway, and it was just sitting there. 0:19:13.400 --> 0:19:15.680 For Fernando and his siblings. It was just an old 0:19:15.680 --> 0:19:19.159 book filled with his father's handwriting, some sketches, and a 0:19:19.200 --> 0:19:20.080 few empty pages. 0:19:20.560 --> 0:19:24.480 Even our older brother kind of doodled in the back 0:19:24.520 --> 0:19:27.520 with crowns. Thankfully we didn't mess up all the really 0:19:27.560 --> 0:19:30.199 important pages. It was in the back where there was 0:19:30.280 --> 0:19:32.680 just blank pages. 0:19:32.720 --> 0:19:35.040 And for a long time the diary just sat there 0:19:35.119 --> 0:19:39.240 on the nightstand, holding Anthony's secrets within its yellow pages. 0:19:49.080 --> 0:19:51.040 As an adult, Fernando took a job at the same 0:19:51.080 --> 0:19:54.520 company as his father, and eventually, during their long commutes, 0:19:54.760 --> 0:19:56.840 his dad told him the story about what he went 0:19:56.840 --> 0:20:01.399 through about World War two, about getting captured Berga. But 0:20:01.520 --> 0:20:03.800 since the story of the soldiers at Burga hadn't been 0:20:03.800 --> 0:20:07.359 officially recognized by the US Army, even though ANTHONYA started 0:20:07.400 --> 0:20:09.680 to talk about it here and there with people at 0:20:09.680 --> 0:20:12.960 work or at the veterans hospital, many didn't believe him. 0:20:13.359 --> 0:20:17.679 Throughout my years, I do remember my father telling me, 0:20:17.800 --> 0:20:19.840 you know, he would shake his head and he felt 0:20:19.920 --> 0:20:20.440 very hurt. 0:20:20.520 --> 0:20:21.840 He was very hurt. 0:20:22.800 --> 0:20:28.080 Even the amount and the extremness of his PTSD, people 0:20:28.119 --> 0:20:29.280 would even question that. 0:20:29.800 --> 0:20:32.879 Fernando knew his father's story needed to be told and 0:20:32.960 --> 0:20:35.600 wanted to share it on a larger scale. In two 0:20:35.640 --> 0:20:38.280 thousand and six, he reached out to CNN, and two 0:20:38.320 --> 0:20:40.920 years later his father did a public interview. 0:20:41.160 --> 0:20:44.080 He says, I can't believe this. Nobody knows about us. 0:20:44.320 --> 0:20:47.160 At eighty four as all who shares the diary, no 0:20:47.160 --> 0:20:49.720 one was supposed to see. Two more of our men 0:20:50.000 --> 0:20:56.360 died today and while lost last night makes three. 0:20:57.440 --> 0:21:01.120 As a result, one man named Martin Vogel found out 0:21:01.119 --> 0:21:03.639 what happened to his brother Jack, who was in Burgo 0:21:03.720 --> 0:21:05.359 with Anthony and died there. 0:21:05.880 --> 0:21:07.720 My brother was a year and a half older than 0:21:07.760 --> 0:21:10.720 I was, but we were very, very close. He had 0:21:10.760 --> 0:21:15.320 finished two years of college. The draft board called him 0:21:15.359 --> 0:21:18.560 and said, your name has come up. You have to 0:21:18.600 --> 0:21:21.840 go into the army. And by the time I was eighteen, 0:21:22.080 --> 0:21:25.080 I went into the army, and when I came home 0:21:25.520 --> 0:21:28.679 they told me that my brother had died in a 0:21:28.720 --> 0:21:30.000 prisoner of Rock camp. 0:21:30.720 --> 0:21:33.919 And for sixty three years Martin had no idea what 0:21:34.000 --> 0:21:37.199 happened to his brother, But when he read that CNN article, 0:21:37.640 --> 0:21:39.760 he saw that Anthony wrote his brother's name and his 0:21:39.800 --> 0:21:41.560 diary as one of the deaths in. 0:21:41.520 --> 0:21:45.600 Berga Vogel, April ninth, nineteen forty five. 0:21:46.000 --> 0:21:48.520 It was the first time, after years of searching, that 0:21:48.600 --> 0:21:52.800 he finally learned about his brother's final moments. His brother 0:21:52.840 --> 0:22:03.399 had died in Anthony's arms. Martin still finds it hard 0:22:03.520 --> 0:22:04.639 to talk about his brother. 0:22:05.200 --> 0:22:10.560 It brings back memories. After all, we only lived He 0:22:11.040 --> 0:22:15.439 was nineteen when he went into the service, and we 0:22:15.520 --> 0:22:19.280 had only nineteen years together. So it wasn't that long, 0:22:19.600 --> 0:22:23.640 but we had a wonderful relationship. Just talking about it now, 0:22:23.720 --> 0:22:29.480 I find it difficult to continue a coherent conversation because 0:22:29.720 --> 0:22:31.280 I get so upset. 0:22:38.520 --> 0:22:42.080 Anthony's diary also caught the attention of Kira Schuster, a 0:22:42.160 --> 0:22:45.600 curator at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, who reached 0:22:45.600 --> 0:22:46.360 out to him. 0:22:46.480 --> 0:22:48.280 And that was a big part of why I did 0:22:48.320 --> 0:22:51.080 reach out to them, was because I wanted to see 0:22:51.080 --> 0:22:54.080 if maybe we could acquire his diary for our permanent collection, 0:22:54.280 --> 0:22:58.399 because at that point we had no original artifacts in 0:22:58.440 --> 0:23:00.600 our permanent collection from the Burke Camp. 0:23:00.840 --> 0:23:04.080 In twenty ten, Anthony and his family visited Washington, d c. 0:23:04.640 --> 0:23:07.879 And he formally donated the items he saved from his captivity, 0:23:08.600 --> 0:23:12.160 a red cross armband, a small palm cross, a Catholic 0:23:12.200 --> 0:23:17.560 prayer book, some personal photographs, and most importantly, his diary. 0:23:17.760 --> 0:23:20.120 The museum has more than two hundred diaries in its collection, 0:23:20.720 --> 0:23:23.679 but this diary, it was the first written by an 0:23:23.720 --> 0:23:26.240 American born survivor of a concentration camp. 0:23:26.840 --> 0:23:30.200 I speak for all my buddies, it with her. Yeah, 0:23:30.200 --> 0:23:37.320 I do this with honor. I turned this over to the. 0:23:37.320 --> 0:23:43.159 Halla Fartusium Kira says the donation received quite a bit 0:23:43.200 --> 0:23:46.040 of press and led to many other survivors of Berga 0:23:46.160 --> 0:23:49.880 or their families also donating materials, including three other diaries 0:23:49.880 --> 0:23:53.480 from the camp. During his visit, Kira introduced Anthony to 0:23:53.560 --> 0:23:57.000 a Holocaust survivor who was a volunteer at the museum. 0:23:56.600 --> 0:23:59.200 And so I introduced the two of them, and he 0:23:59.400 --> 0:24:02.800 was so taken aback and surprised, and he looked at 0:24:02.800 --> 0:24:04.239 me and he was like, thank you so much for 0:24:04.280 --> 0:24:07.280 introducing me to her. I've never met a Holocaust survivor before. 0:24:07.560 --> 0:24:09.879 And I said, but you're a Holocaust survivor. 0:24:15.920 --> 0:24:18.920 But until that moment, he never thought of it that way. 0:24:27.040 --> 0:24:29.800 It's a sensitive topic. Who should be considered a Holocaust 0:24:29.840 --> 0:24:32.960 survivor and who isn't. So many suffered during the war, 0:24:33.800 --> 0:24:36.439 but the prisoners of war held at the Burga concentration 0:24:36.600 --> 0:24:40.240 Camp were used as slave laborers, and their living conditions 0:24:40.280 --> 0:24:43.880 were so horrific that scholars consider them survivors of the Holocaust. 0:24:46.600 --> 0:24:50.240 Anthony registered as a Holocaust survivor in twenty ten. 0:24:50.440 --> 0:24:53.880 And I can confirm Tony was the first Mexican American 0:24:53.920 --> 0:25:01.800 Catholic Holocaust survivor to register with the museum. 0:25:02.000 --> 0:25:06.320 Anthony Azevedo died on February eleventh, twenty eighteen. He was 0:25:06.400 --> 0:25:16.399 ninety three. Before Anthony shared his story in a big way, 0:25:16.960 --> 0:25:20.040 he visited a local school in California and spoke to 0:25:20.080 --> 0:25:23.159 a group of junior high students about his experience in 0:25:23.200 --> 0:25:26.320 a Nazi concentration camp. It was one of the first 0:25:26.320 --> 0:25:29.240 times he shared his story, and he was taken aback 0:25:29.480 --> 0:25:32.399 that the students they didn't really know anything about the 0:25:32.440 --> 0:25:33.760 soldiers held at Berga. 0:25:34.440 --> 0:25:39.680 You see tears coming down. It affects them, but they 0:25:39.720 --> 0:25:42.679 all say, why didn't my father tell me about this? 0:25:42.840 --> 0:25:45.320 And why did my grandma didn't tell me about this? 0:25:46.119 --> 0:25:48.160 Why didn't the school tell us about this? 0:25:54.960 --> 0:25:57.840 Anthony's own story came close to not being included in 0:25:57.880 --> 0:26:01.320 this history until, with the help of a little gray 0:26:01.400 --> 0:26:04.760 green diary and a fountain pen, he wrote himself. 0:26:04.400 --> 0:26:15.720