Horicon Reporter Article From 1945 To Be Included In U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum Archives
MITCHELL BRADLEY KELLER
It was a simple and concise headline on the front page of The Horicon Reporter (#27, vol. 62) from August 2, 1945: “Soldier Tells Of Murder Camp” The directness of the five-word headline only amplifies the horror, and the text that follows is sure to make some readers’ hair stand on end. The content, which is just more than 150 words, was recently deemed historically relevant for preservation by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s History Unfolded
project based in Washington D.C. The archived article opens with a preface from an unnamed Reporter journalist:
“In a letter to his parents, Mr. and Mrs.
Oscar Backhaus, Pfc.
Arthur Backhaus, who is with the army of occupation in Germany, substantiates the reports received in this country of the ‘murder factories’ operated by the Germans.”
Oscar Backhaus was born in New Fane (Fond du Lac County) and lived most of his life in Horicon. His obituary states that he lived on Barstow Street, and he worked at John Deere Horicon Works. Three of his five children, including Arthur, were residents of Horicon. Oscar and Arthur were both buried at Oak Hill Cemetery.
The Reporter, which was published by Harry E. Roate on the Aug. 2 print date, then shares two paragraphs from Arthur Backhaus’ letter home, which includes an eyewitness testimony of the aftermath of the Nazi-organized genocide: “We are guarding one of the German concentration camps now. The name of it is Dachau and this place had 130,000 people in it as slave laborers. When the Americans got here there were only 30,000 of them left, and they couldn’t account for the rest of them. In other words, they killed over a hundred thousand of these people and burned their bodies in a furnace.
“The whole works is here now and I have pictures of all of it, which you will see when I get back home. I have some pictures of the piles of dead people, trucks and wagons, and even boxcars filled with dead people. You just can’t imagine how rotten the Nazis have been.”
At some point following his return to the United States after serving in the Army overseas during World War II, Arthur Backhaus changed his last name to Backus.
The Horicon native’s harrowing description paints a picture of a soldier in disgusted awe of the mass murder camps that Allied soldiers discovered as early as 1944. The Soviet Red Army discovered Majdanek camp in July of that year. The largest of the camps, including Dachau, Auschwitz and Buchenwald, were found in 1945. The U.S. Seventh Army’s 45th Infantry Division liberated Dachau, the first camp established by the Nazi regime, on April 29, 1945.
The Reporter article was submitted by the
Dodge County Pionier to History Unfolded, a project that “asks students, teachers, and history buffs throughout the United States what was possible for Americans to have known about the Holocaust as it was happening and how Americans responded.”
Eric Schmalz, citizen history community manager for the project and the Holocaust Memorial Museum, in accepting the article submission to the database, emphasized the uniqueness of the first-hand account, especially for such a small, rural paper like the Reporter.
“ The Horicon Reporter piece that [was] discovered was an exciting find for the History Unfolded project team for several reasons,” said Schmalz. “This piece provides insights into what members of a small town in Wisconsin could have known about the liberation of concentration camps in 1945. The biographical information about the soldier and his parents also opens up the exciting possibility of doing additional research to learn more about the family and local history in the area.” At the time of publication, Horicon had a population between 2,000 and 2,600.
While numerous newspapers covered the Holocaust from New York to Los Angeles even as early as 1934 in Dachau (including reports of unwarranted killings, inhospitable living conditions and abuse), the inclusion of an eye-witness account on the front page of a small community newspaper in Horicon shows the extended impact the genocide had on the entire planet.
The preservation of the article, which was printed as part of the Pionier’s “Letters From Home” series on Aug. 22, 2019, includes the possibility for public display both at the museum and in future educational tours that are planned following the completion of the project in 2022.
Pionier publisher and National Newspaper Association President Andrew Johnson was thrilled to have Horicon Reporter archives included in the nationwide database.
“It is very exciting to have the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum consider using Horicon Reporter archives as part of the national historic record of those events,” remarked Johnson, adding that History Unfolded’s mission and inclusion of the Reporter article is a perfect example of newspapers’ role in accurately educating the public about history, the present and the years to come.
“This particular case shows the importance of newspapers role to inform people (print and digital) both at the time of publication and into the future as a permanent record of history,” noted Johnson.
For this reason, History Unfolded exits. In addition to creating an acute collection of breaking and first-hand news regarding the Holocaust, the database also serves as a resource to help educate people about how information was faciitated and received nearly 80 years ago.
The project, which is part of the museum’s Americans And The Holocaust exhibit sums it up best on the website: “Holocaust history raises important questions about what Europeans could have done to stop the rise of Nazism in Germany and its assault on Europe’s Jews. Questions also must be asked of the international community, including the United States.
“What did the U.S. government and the American people know about the threats posed by Nazi Germany? What responses were possible? And when?
“This exhibition examines the motives, pressures, and fears that shaped Americans’ responses to Nazism, war, and genocide.”
The Reporter article is not the only local example of regional Holocaust reporting, either. An even earlier letter home in the Otto A. Gehrke-published Mayville News came from Gehrke’s own son, Warren, who was stationed by the Army in Europe during World War II in 1945.
As part of his duties, he visited Buchenwald concentration camp sometime before the written date of the letter of June 9, 1945.
In his letter home, which was printed on the front page of the June 20, 1945 edition of The Mayville News (#20, vol. 55), Warren Gehrke wrote: “I made a trip to this Buchenwald concentration camp recently.
Most of the gory details have been erased for sanitary reasons, but if one has any sort of imagination, he can see what inhuman creatures these [Nazis] were. I saw what they did to our Americans at Five Corners near St.
Vith, Belgium, so Buchenwald was nothing new to me, although it must have been a hundred times worse.
“We had as our guide an English-speaking Hungarian, and his eyes told us the story of the brutality and savagery. He was there a year, but in that year he suffered abuses that a cur would not have put up with. In the torture room in a basement the marks are still one the cement walls where the prisoners made futile efforts to try to escape from SS tortures, fingernail marks, deep in that wall tell what they went through…
“…How is it possible for a nation, supposedly civilized, to harbor such crack-pots is more than I can understand and no mercy should be shown to [the Nazis].”
Going forward, it is possible that area residents could see these local newspaper clippings on display in nearby cities. The research and information gathering process will run through 2022, after which materials will be used as part of a traveling exhibit.
Until then, the archived article can be found at the History Unfolded website, specifically at this link: https://newspapers.ush mm.org/article/27272.
The Pionier is in the process of researching other articles related to Holocaust news coverage from The Mayville News and The Horicon Reporter archives. If you, or anyone you know, has newspaper clippings or full newspapers detailing the Holocaust from 1945 or earlier, please consider submitting the information for the historical record via History Unfolded, or contact the Pionier if you would like assistance submitting your findings.
A snapshot of the archived article. The article was on the front page of the Aug. 2, 1945 edition of The Horicon Reporter.
