Speaker 1: From Puduromedia and PRX. It's Latino Usa. I'm Mariaino Rossa Today.
Speaker 1: The story of the first Mexican American to register as
Speaker 1: a Holocaust survivor and the scars that stayed with him.
Speaker 1: In October of twenty ten, a man in his late
Speaker 1: eighties walked into the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington,
Speaker 1: d C. And then registered himself as a Holocaust survivor.
Speaker 1: His name was Anthony Acevedo, and on that day he
Speaker 1: carried with him items including a Red Cross armband, a
Speaker 1: Catholic prayer book, and most importantly, a tattered war diary
Speaker 1: with the pages still intact. Anthony was one of three
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty American soldiers who were imprisoned in a
Speaker 1: Nazi concentration camp during World War Two, but he chose
Speaker 1: to keep this part of his life a secret. Throughout
Speaker 1: our piece, you'll hear Anthony in his own words in
Speaker 1: segments of an oral history that he recorded at the
Speaker 1: Holocaust Museum back in twenty ten. You're also going to
Speaker 1: hear excerpts from his diary, which are read by an
Speaker 1: actor and so dear listener to commemorate the anniversary of
Speaker 1: Anthony A. Savedo's registration at the Holocaust Museum, and to
Speaker 1: honor Anthony's legacy and shed light on this overlooked aspect
Speaker 1: of history, We're going to bring back this story that
Speaker 1: originally aired in twenty eighteen. Producer Janis Emoca brings us
Speaker 1: the story now.
Speaker 2: Anthony Savedo grew up in a Mexican household in Pasadena, California,
Speaker 2: east of Los Angeles, and much of his childhood was
Speaker 2: pretty typical of the time. He played with his cousins,
Speaker 2: went to school, attended church. But then one day in
Speaker 2: the mid nineteen thirties, when Anthony was almost ten years old,
Speaker 2: he noticed that all his family's furniture had been packed up.
Speaker 2: So he asked his mom what was going on.
Speaker 3: What's happened?
Speaker 4: Where are you going?
Speaker 3: They said, no, we're all going, and he says where
Speaker 3: are we going? He says, we're going to Mexico and says,
Speaker 3: why is it? Because we were told to leave the
Speaker 3: United States.
Speaker 2: Anthony himself had been born in the US, but his
Speaker 2: parents they were undocumented, and at the time, many Mexican
Speaker 2: American families were being pressured to leave the US in
Speaker 2: something known as the Mexican repatriation in the nineteen thirties.
Speaker 2: Mexicans were the largest and most recent immigrant group to
Speaker 2: settle in the US, and following the Great Depression, they
Speaker 2: were scapegoats for the economic downturn. Historians say that somewhere
Speaker 2: between half a million and two million immigrants, as well
Speaker 2: as US citizen like Anthony, were forced out of the country.
Speaker 2: So Anthony and his family moved south to Mexico, to
Speaker 2: the state of Durango.
Speaker 3: Oh, they call me gringo because I was born in
Speaker 3: the United States and I know half English and half Spanish,
Speaker 3: and that was kind of difficult.
Speaker 2: But Anthony gets by, DAPs, grows up, and then World
Speaker 2: War Two starts, and right at the end of nineteen
Speaker 2: forty one, Japanese forces attack Pearl Harbor and the United
Speaker 2: States enters the war.
Speaker 1: No matter how long it may take us, the American
Speaker 1: people in their right, just Mike will win collab.
Speaker 2: By this point, Anthony is seventeen, and all of a sudden,
Speaker 2: the US is trying to enlist any men of fighting age,
Speaker 2: including Anthony, even though he'd been repatriated to Mexico.
Speaker 3: The Consul general the United States was after me because
Speaker 3: of my age. Getting ready to go back in the
Speaker 3: United States and serve your country.
Speaker 5: Yes, sir, he was drafted.
Speaker 2: So he packed his bags, said goodbye to his family,
Speaker 2: and headed back to the US to answer the call.
Speaker 2: He went to California and was trained to be an
Speaker 2: army medic, and then in the fall of nineteen forty four,
Speaker 2: he was sent to Europe to.
Speaker 3: Meet the German drive Generalizeenhower. Here at Supreme Headquarters, resourcefuly
Speaker 3: regrouped his forces, giving key in.
Speaker 2: A group of soldiers he was with took a train
Speaker 2: to a small town in Germany called Phillipsburg. By this
Speaker 2: time it was late December of a really hard winter,
Speaker 2: and when they got out of the train, snow was
Speaker 2: wat deep in some places. A few miles away, the
Speaker 2: Battle of the Bulge was underway. It was a German's
Speaker 2: last major offensive of the war. It was difficult for
Speaker 2: Anthony to find the wounded. There were bullets buzzing through
Speaker 2: the air, and the calls of medic medic were lost
Speaker 2: in the echoes of the fighting taking place in the forest.
Speaker 2: But he found some of the injured soldiers, and one
Speaker 2: by one he tried to help them.
Speaker 3: While he was doing repair jobs. First aid sutures and
Speaker 3: sewing thumbs, cutting a leg off and throwing a turniquet
Speaker 3: and sewing up the leg the stump, doing this and
Speaker 3: that as a medica.
Speaker 2: The battle lasted for days until finally Anthony's unit ran
Speaker 2: out of ammunition. The Americans began destroying everything, equipment, firearms,
Speaker 2: anything that the Nazis could use against them, and they
Speaker 2: decided it was time to surrender, so a scout walked
Speaker 2: out and waved a white flag. It was January sixth,
Speaker 2: nineteen forty five. Anthony and thousands of other American soldiers
Speaker 2: were taken to a prison camp known as Stalic nine
Speaker 2: B in bad Orb, Germany. The prisoners were referred to
Speaker 2: by numbers instead of their names. Anthony was two seven
Speaker 2: zero one six. Then on February eighth, all the soldiers
Speaker 2: were commanded to line up.
Speaker 3: And the commander said, all American Jews with names Jewish,
Speaker 3: take two steps forward.
Speaker 2: Anthony says that at that point people who had any
Speaker 2: markers of their Jewish faith little star medals or dog
Speaker 2: tags with an H written on them for Hebrew, desperately
Speaker 2: began to try to get rid of him, but to
Speaker 2: no avail. That day, the Nazis selected about ninety Jewish
Speaker 2: soldiers and another two hundred and sixty soldiers labeled undesirable
Speaker 2: men who they simply thought look Jewish, consider trouble makers,
Speaker 2: or any type of other This included twenty year old Anthony.
Speaker 2: It could have been because he was brown skinned, or
Speaker 2: because he was Catholic, or they saw him as a
Speaker 2: trouble maker. We don't know for sure. They didn't need
Speaker 2: a reason. The following day, the Nazis put the undesirables
Speaker 2: on a train a box car.
Speaker 3: You couldn't kneel, you couldn't squat. For six days in
Speaker 3: those box cars, fellas couldn't defecate that all, they had
Speaker 3: to do it right there. And for six days you
Speaker 3: couldn't eat nothing. You could have nothing to eat, nothing
Speaker 3: to drink, but the snow that hit the from the cracks.
Speaker 3: You tried or punk your hand through the slot window
Speaker 3: to get the drops of water from the rain.
Speaker 2: Eventually they arrived at a concentration camp known as Berga.
Speaker 2: It was a subcamp of Buchenwald, one of the largest
Speaker 2: Nazi concentration camps.
Speaker 3: It was so snowy that you couldn't catch the glimpse
Speaker 3: very well, but you see like towers of houses.
Speaker 2: The men were divided into groups of sixty to eighty
Speaker 2: men per Barck. There were other prisoners in the camp
Speaker 2: as well, mainly European Jews, but they were separated from
Speaker 2: the American prisoners. The captured soldiers were forced to work
Speaker 2: in the camp. Many were put to work digging tunnels
Speaker 2: for underground fuel factories the Nazis were working on. Since
Speaker 2: Anthony was one of just a few medics in the camp,
Speaker 2: he was tapped with trying to keep the men alive
Speaker 2: as they worked. One day, the men were given a
Speaker 2: rare red Cross package and in it a couple of
Speaker 2: empty journals. So Anthony took one and began writing in secret.
Speaker 2: He sketched the places and the scenes he witnessed. He
Speaker 2: even sketched a couple of pinup girls, and to keep
Speaker 2: the diary safe, he tucked it under his belt.
Speaker 5: March twentieth, nineteen forty five, Yesterday our planes dropped leaflets
Speaker 5: as well as bombs. Six men were sent to a
Speaker 5: British hospital. Five more men escaped today. Goldstein's body was
Speaker 5: returned here today for burial. He was shot while attempting
Speaker 5: to re escape, so they say, but actually was recaptured
Speaker 5: and shot through the head.
Speaker 2: Anthony's diary became a record of daily life in the camp.
Speaker 5: March twenty second, nineteen forty five, Private Schultz died of malnutrition.
Speaker 5: This is the fourth man to die. The weather is
Speaker 5: beauty and it looks like spring, which has finally come
Speaker 5: to Germany. By this time, back home, I'd be suffering
Speaker 5: from hay fever.
Speaker 3: We had got one hundred grams of bread per week.
Speaker 3: The one hundred bred brands of bridge is not much.
Speaker 3: It was a mixed of barley with sawdust, ground glass
Speaker 3: and ground sam.
Speaker 5: March twenty fifth, nineteen forty five, Palm Sunday. No chances
Speaker 5: of going to a church, but still our prayers are
Speaker 5: holding everyone up.
Speaker 3: This day.
Speaker 5: It reminded me of the hundreds of people attending Mass
Speaker 5: at the cathedral in Durango, Mexico. I wish I could
Speaker 5: be there now. March thirtieth, nineteen forty five, Good Friday.
Speaker 5: On this holy day, our thoughts are all at home
Speaker 5: and of the coming Easter Sunday. It is also the
Speaker 5: feast of the Passover for our Jewish comrades, and they
Speaker 5: also think of home and family.
Speaker 2: As the journal entries went on, the more Anthony wrote
Speaker 2: about the horrors in Berga, men from his unit began
Speaker 2: to die in greater numbers from alnutrition or beatings, or
Speaker 2: being overworked.
Speaker 5: April second, nineteen forty five, two more of our men
Speaker 5: died today, and one last night makes three plus sixteen
Speaker 5: makes nineteen. Living in unsanitary conditions, water must be boiled
Speaker 5: before it is drunk, no latrines. Deaths are increasing in
Speaker 5: great number. Men forced to work in the mind whether
Speaker 5: they are ill or not.
Speaker 2: Sometimes Anthony simply recorded deaths.
Speaker 5: Rogers March ninth, nineteen forty five, Young March twelfth, nineteen
Speaker 5: forty five, Goldstein March tenth, nineteen forty five, Goldberg March
Speaker 5: twenty fifth.
Speaker 6: I knew that maybe someday it would be a valuable
Speaker 6: thing for us to know that that there was important.
Speaker 3: I had a fountain ten with me that I was
Speaker 3: rising all the time with it, and I don't know
Speaker 3: how God gave me that. Ain't the less.
Speaker 1: Coming up on Latino USA, American forces inch closer to
Speaker 1: defeating the Nazis and liberating the men at Berga.
Speaker 5: Received very good news today. The Americans are two hundred
Speaker 5: and fifty kilometers from here and moving fast.
Speaker 1: Stay with us, Hey, we're back. And when we left off,
Speaker 1: twenty year old Anthony Esevedo was documenting his daily life
Speaker 1: as a prisoner inside a Nazi concentration camp known as Berga.
Speaker 1: Producer Jennie Yamoga picks up the story now, but it themples.
Speaker 5: I hear at shase that the next few days will
Speaker 5: be spent building up.
Speaker 2: Our forces east of the Rhine. By April, US troops
Speaker 2: had successfully crossed the Rhine River, one step closer to
Speaker 2: defeating Germany. Wile British and American troops were crossing the
Speaker 2: Rhine north of the Roar, the last German resistance west
Speaker 2: of the Rhine collapsed. They were nearing Berga, and Anthony
Speaker 2: and his fellow prisoners were hearing rumors.
Speaker 5: Received very good news today. The Americans are two hundred
Speaker 5: and fifty kilometers from here and moving fast. Received good news.
Speaker 5: Americans are only two high hundred kilometers away from here,
Speaker 5: which means they're excellent news today. Americans are only one
Speaker 5: hundred kilometers from here. Said that our boys were sixty
Speaker 5: kilometers from us.
Speaker 2: The Nazis evacuated the sub camp and forced the remaining
Speaker 2: soldiers on a death march that would last three weeks
Speaker 2: and over two hundred miles.
Speaker 5: April ninth, nineteen forty five, we marched ten kilometers. Today.
Speaker 5: We're supposed to go to the town of hof but
Speaker 5: we arrived to a big barn for our air corps
Speaker 5: were bombing that town continuously. We started out with three
Speaker 5: hundred and four men from Berga. We now have two
Speaker 5: hundred and eighty seven men.
Speaker 2: Many of the men died on the march. Their bodies
Speaker 2: were left by the side of the road.
Speaker 5: Stuart April fifth, nineteen forty five. Vogel April ninth, nineteen
Speaker 5: forty five.
Speaker 2: Weeks went by. Then suddenly, very early in the morning,
Speaker 2: the men heard firing like thunder in the distance. The
Speaker 2: Americans were getting closer. The Nazis wanted to continue marching
Speaker 2: and threaten the men that they shoot them if they
Speaker 2: didn't continue, but Anthony and another medic stood their ground,
Speaker 2: and the Nazis, afraid of the advancing troops, fled.
Speaker 3: We started hearing the rumbling getting closer, and we all
Speaker 3: started to run towards the highway.
Speaker 2: When they got to the highway, they found the eleventh
Speaker 2: Armor Division. The men were finally free again.
Speaker 5: We were liberated today April the twenty third, nineteen forty five.
Speaker 2: Out of three hundred and fifty American soldiers, about half
Speaker 2: of the men's ur y Berga, and many of the
Speaker 2: remaining men were close to death. When Anthony was first captured,
Speaker 2: he weighed one hundred and forty nine pounds. By the
Speaker 2: time he was set free, seven the surviving men, including Anthony,
Speaker 2: were taken to hospitals, and by June they were on
Speaker 2: their way back home to the US. But there was
Speaker 2: one condition, one that the former captives didn't quite understand,
Speaker 2: so we.
Speaker 3: Had to sign it up and David where we had
Speaker 3: to swear that we never were in a condition or
Speaker 3: suffered in a condition that we had got through by
Speaker 3: the Germans.
Speaker 2: The war was still going on and the US military
Speaker 2: wanted to keep exactly what went on inside the Nazi
Speaker 2: prison camps a secret, since they had soldiers being held
Speaker 2: as prisoners of war and believed information getting out could
Speaker 2: put them at risk. Some men like Anthony, were told
Speaker 2: they had to sign this document.
Speaker 3: They threatened us to be jailed federally by the United
Speaker 3: States government.
Speaker 2: The National Security or not. For the men who survived Burka,
Speaker 2: it felt like they were being told to keep their
Speaker 2: trauma a secret, like they didn't have a choice. So
Speaker 2: Anthony signed the document and for years he didn't talk
Speaker 2: much about what he saw in Berga. After the war,
Speaker 2: Anthony went back to Mexico then settled in California. He
Speaker 2: got married and he started a family, and he worked
Speaker 2: as an engineer in the aerospace industry for many years.
Speaker 2: Here's his son, fer Nando A. Savedo.
Speaker 7: I just remember sitting at the table and it was
Speaker 7: being a kid that's real picky about what they're eating.
Speaker 7: And I just remember my dad stating when I would
Speaker 7: leave the edges of the bread when I was a
Speaker 7: prisoner a war, that's all I had to eat, And
Speaker 7: that just stuck with me.
Speaker 2: Fernando is one of Anthony's four children, and he says
Speaker 2: his father did a pretty good job of hiding what
Speaker 2: he'd been through.
Speaker 7: If you look at my dad in those years, you
Speaker 7: could not tell he had gone through anything that was
Speaker 7: an extreme in nature, because I mean, he hid his
Speaker 7: PTSD so well.
Speaker 2: Still, it was impossible to hide everything.
Speaker 7: Oh, my dad would just take off, he'd be gone,
Speaker 7: I don't know where he went. And then I'd hear
Speaker 7: my mom go out there and it's like where everybody go.
Speaker 7: And then I'll see you out there and I hear
Speaker 7: my dad crying. I would see my mom massage in
Speaker 7: the back of his head and I would ask, you know,
Speaker 7: what's wrong with what's wrong with Poppy? And she would
Speaker 7: say he's going through something traumatic. And then my dad
Speaker 7: would say, I'll be okay, I'll be okay. And that
Speaker 7: happened often.
Speaker 2: Fernando also remembers how at home his father always kept
Speaker 2: his war diary on the nightstand. It was small and
Speaker 2: greenish gray, with a red outline of a lion and
Speaker 2: the words a wartime log on the cover. It was worn,
Speaker 2: a little beat up, like it belonged inside a glass
Speaker 2: case in some museum.
Speaker 7: He had it at the nightstand at the end of
Speaker 7: the hallway, and it was just sitting there.
Speaker 2: For Fernando and his siblings. It was just an old
Speaker 2: book filled with his father's handwriting, some sketches, and a
Speaker 2: few empty pages.
Speaker 7: Even our older brother kind of doodled in the back
Speaker 7: with crowns. Thankfully we didn't mess up all the really
Speaker 7: important pages. It was in the back where there was
Speaker 7: just blank pages.
Speaker 2: And for a long time the diary just sat there
Speaker 2: on the nightstand, holding Anthony's secrets within its yellow pages.
Speaker 2: As an adult, Fernando took a job at the same
Speaker 2: company as his father, and eventually, during their long commutes,
Speaker 2: his dad told him the story about what he went
Speaker 2: through about World War two, about getting captured Berga. But
Speaker 2: since the story of the soldiers at Burga hadn't been
Speaker 2: officially recognized by the US Army, even though ANTHONYA started
Speaker 2: to talk about it here and there with people at
Speaker 2: work or at the veterans hospital, many didn't believe him.
Speaker 7: Throughout my years, I do remember my father telling me,
Speaker 7: you know, he would shake his head and he felt
Speaker 7: very hurt.
Speaker 5: He was very hurt.
Speaker 7: Even the amount and the extremness of his PTSD, people
Speaker 7: would even question that.
Speaker 2: Fernando knew his father's story needed to be told and
Speaker 2: wanted to share it on a larger scale. In two
Speaker 2: thousand and six, he reached out to CNN, and two
Speaker 2: years later his father did a public interview.
Speaker 3: He says, I can't believe this. Nobody knows about us.
Speaker 3: At eighty four as all who shares the diary, no
Speaker 3: one was supposed to see. Two more of our men
Speaker 3: died today and while lost last night makes three.
Speaker 2: As a result, one man named Martin Vogel found out
Speaker 2: what happened to his brother Jack, who was in Burgo
Speaker 2: with Anthony and died there.
Speaker 4: My brother was a year and a half older than
Speaker 4: I was, but we were very, very close. He had
Speaker 4: finished two years of college. The draft board called him
Speaker 4: and said, your name has come up. You have to
Speaker 4: go into the army. And by the time I was eighteen,
Speaker 4: I went into the army, and when I came home
Speaker 4: they told me that my brother had died in a
Speaker 4: prisoner of Rock camp.
Speaker 2: And for sixty three years Martin had no idea what
Speaker 2: happened to his brother, But when he read that CNN article,
Speaker 2: he saw that Anthony wrote his brother's name and his
Speaker 2: diary as one of the deaths in.
Speaker 5: Berga Vogel, April ninth, nineteen forty five.
Speaker 2: It was the first time, after years of searching, that
Speaker 2: he finally learned about his brother's final moments. His brother
Speaker 2: had died in Anthony's arms. Martin still finds it hard
Speaker 2: to talk about his brother.
Speaker 4: It brings back memories. After all, we only lived He
Speaker 4: was nineteen when he went into the service, and we
Speaker 4: had only nineteen years together. So it wasn't that long,
Speaker 4: but we had a wonderful relationship. Just talking about it now,
Speaker 4: I find it difficult to continue a coherent conversation because
Speaker 4: I get so upset.
Speaker 2: Anthony's diary also caught the attention of Kira Schuster, a
Speaker 2: curator at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, who reached
Speaker 2: out to him.
Speaker 8: And that was a big part of why I did
Speaker 8: reach out to them, was because I wanted to see
Speaker 8: if maybe we could acquire his diary for our permanent collection,
Speaker 8: because at that point we had no original artifacts in
Speaker 8: our permanent collection from the Burke Camp.
Speaker 2: In twenty ten, Anthony and his family visited Washington, d c.
Speaker 2: And he formally donated the items he saved from his captivity,
Speaker 2: a red cross armband, a small palm cross, a Catholic
Speaker 2: prayer book, some personal photographs, and most importantly, his diary.
Speaker 2: The museum has more than two hundred diaries in its collection,
Speaker 2: but this diary, it was the first written by an
Speaker 2: American born survivor of a concentration camp.
Speaker 3: I speak for all my buddies, it with her. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I do this with honor. I turned this over to the.
Speaker 2: Halla Fartusium Kira says the donation received quite a bit
Speaker 2: of press and led to many other survivors of Berga
Speaker 2: or their families also donating materials, including three other diaries
Speaker 2: from the camp. During his visit, Kira introduced Anthony to
Speaker 2: a Holocaust survivor who was a volunteer at the museum.
Speaker 8: And so I introduced the two of them, and he
Speaker 8: was so taken aback and surprised, and he looked at
Speaker 8: me and he was like, thank you so much for
Speaker 8: introducing me to her. I've never met a Holocaust survivor before.
Speaker 8: And I said, but you're a Holocaust survivor.
Speaker 2: But until that moment, he never thought of it that way.
Speaker 2: It's a sensitive topic. Who should be considered a Holocaust
Speaker 2: survivor and who isn't. So many suffered during the war,
Speaker 2: but the prisoners of war held at the Burga concentration
Speaker 2: Camp were used as slave laborers, and their living conditions
Speaker 2: were so horrific that scholars consider them survivors of the Holocaust.
Speaker 2: Anthony registered as a Holocaust survivor in twenty ten.
Speaker 8: And I can confirm Tony was the first Mexican American
Speaker 8: Catholic Holocaust survivor to register with the museum.
Speaker 2: Anthony Azevedo died on February eleventh, twenty eighteen. He was
Speaker 2: ninety three. Before Anthony shared his story in a big way,
Speaker 2: he visited a local school in California and spoke to
Speaker 2: a group of junior high students about his experience in
Speaker 2: a Nazi concentration camp. It was one of the first
Speaker 2: times he shared his story, and he was taken aback
Speaker 2: that the students they didn't really know anything about the
Speaker 2: soldiers held at Berga.
Speaker 3: You see tears coming down. It affects them, but they
Speaker 3: all say, why didn't my father tell me about this?
Speaker 3: And why did my grandma didn't tell me about this?
Speaker 3: Why didn't the school tell us about this?
Speaker 2: Anthony's own story came close to not being included in
Speaker 2: this history until, with the help of a little gray
Speaker 2: green diary and a fountain pen, he wrote himself.
Speaker 1: In In two thousand and nine, a year after Anthony
Speaker 1: did a public interview with CNN, the US Army finally
Speaker 1: recognized that three hundred and fifty soldiers held as prisoners
Speaker 1: at Berga sixty four years later. This episode was produced
Speaker 1: by Janis Yamoca and edited by Annie Avilis. It was
Speaker 1: mixed by Stephanie Lebau. The Latino USA team also includes
Speaker 1: Julia Caruso, Jessica Ellis, Victoria Streva, Renad Junior, Andrea Lopez Grussado,
Speaker 1: Luis Luna, Glordi, mar Marquez, Marta Martinez, Nor Saudi and
Speaker 1: Nancy Trujillo. Peri Lei Ramirez is our co executive producer
Speaker 1: along with myself and I'm your host marieo Josa. Join
Speaker 1: us again on our next episode. In the meantime, I'll
Speaker 1: see you on all of our social media see you
Speaker 1: on Instagram by note Bayas.
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