Leo Hymas gives voice to his personal memories to help shape the collective consciousness of a new generation.

Hymas, who speaks at Hyla Middle School Jan. 14, was one of four soldiers who first entered the Buchenwald concentration camp at the end World War II.

Those soldiers had no idea what they had stumbled upon.

“There was no one in sight,” Hymas said. “We thought it was a POW camp and we might find a few of our men.

“But there was a terrible smell.”

Eighteen-year-old Hymas had never before left his rural Utah hometown when he was drafted in 1945, one month before D-Day.

“When Pearl Harbor was bombed, I didn’t even know where it was,” he said.

Trained as a heavy machine gunner and assigned to the 97th Infantry Division of General Patton’s Third Army, Hymas was shipped to Le Havre, France.

Hymas’ division was first to invade at Remogen, crossing the Rhine on a floating bridge thrown together by army engineers.

Despite heavy casualties – including Hymas’ best friend – the troops pushed on. “We battled our way into Dusseldorf,” Hymas said. “That was the way with Patton – keep going forward, keep going.”

Moving rapidly through the Black Forest, the troops arrived on April 5, 1945 at a hill overlooking the small town of Weimar.

Through the woods, the company commanders could see barbed wire surrounding rows of barracks-like buildings.

Hymas and three other soldiers were ordered to check it out.

“We ran toward all these big buildings – and SS officers came out firing,” Hymas said.

When Hymas and his fellow soldiers had killed or captured all 14 SS, they were shocked to find more than 18,000 emaciated camp inmates huddled in terror inside the barracks.

“And then we saw the hundreds and hundreds of bodies stacked against a building with a big chimney, waiting to be burned,” Hymas said. “And in the autopsy room, on a table, tattooed skins.”

“I cannot tell you the horrors.”

When Hymas returned home to the States, he buried those memories – until his children encouraged him to dig them up.

Seven years ago, Hymas was invited to a conference on the Holocaust held every year in Provo, Utah.

“My children knew about it and they encouraged me to go,” he said. “That’s where they gave us the name ‘Liberator’ and honored 22 of us soldiers who were first to enter the camps.”

At the conference, Hymas met representatives from the Washington State Holocaust Education Resource Center, a Seattle non-profit founded in 1989 to preserve and disseminate information about the Holocaust. Hymas was invited to join the center’s 35 speakers, who reach more than 20,000 students each year.

“I started talking about it and it became a healing experience for me,” Hymas said.

“And I love the kids. I tell them good and evil have been in combat since the beginning of time – and they still are.

“Now our enemies are spiritual enemies: lying, cheating, stealing, and, most of all, intolerance and hatred of ‘the other.’

“Those kill your spirit like the shell killed my friend.”

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Leo Hymas of the Washington State Holocaust Liberation Center speaks about his experience liberating Buchenwald, 7:30 p.m. Jan 14 at Hyla Middle School. Information: 842-5988.