Veterans Get Victory Lap at Indy Parade-- Part 2: Bob Swift Enters a Death Camp

The smell overpowered Bob Swift first, "Like nothing else in the world."

What he saw was even worse.  There were stacks of bodies.  Swift was a medic with the 71st Infantry and was among the first to enter Gunskirchen, a Nazi death camp in Austria.  It was the waning days of the war in 1945 and Hitler's armies were everywhere in retreat.  Americans were liberating Nazi concentration camps.

Often, they were too late.  Prisoners were dead or dying.  "They were just all bones," and some of the survivors were even too weak to eat.

The sights and smells of the war are still in his memory and today the 90 year-old veteran tells his war stories to school children.  He brings props to get the kids' attention.  One is the head of Adolph Hitler.  Well, not actually the head, but a pretty good likeness bust that he "liberated" from a bombed-out office in Germany.

More On the Head in Next Post.  --GreGen