Lori Sturdevant: Lasting impressions from World War II

Today in Jerusalem, in the Hall of Remembrance at Yad Vashem, Israel's Holocaust museum, a Minnesota state legislator will be honored for his role in liberating a number of Nazi slave labor camps in 1945.

State Rep. Bernie Lieder, DFL-Crookston, is part of a 10-member legislative delegation touring Israel at its own expense this week to learn more about such 21st-century concerns as renewable energy and water conservation. But today the group will pause and reflect on some of the defining days of the 20th century, from the spring of 1945.

In winter 1944-45, at the cost of upwards of 20,000 American lives, Allied troops -- including the 21-year-old Lieder -- turned back a German advance in an effort known today as the Battle of the Bulge. Come spring, they had German forces on the run.

Lieder was a corporal in the famous 102nd Infantry Division that combed through northern Germany, routing Nazi soldiers, rounding up displaced persons and freeing slave laborers in a series of munitions-making camps. The slaves included Jews and political prisoners of many nationalities.

Most of the camps Lieder helped open -- Bielefeld, Ohrdruf, Krefeld, Gifhorn and Coburg are among the names he remembers -- were not sites of genocide. Lieder saw emaciated, ill-clad workers and smelled horrible stench in those places -- but only briefly. His unit would sweep into a town, open the camp, put Allied military police in charge and keep going.

But what he and his unit came upon in Gardelegen on the morning of April 15 was much worse. There, barely 36 hours earlier, Nazis had forced more than 1,100 slave laborers into a hay-filled, gasoline-soaked barn, and set it ablaze. Slaves who ran were shot. All but about 100 died.

The son of German-speaking parents from Hanover, Minn., Lieder was one of the few in his unit who could converse with the natives. That day, and repeatedly during months of occupation that followed, Lieder helped officers communicate with survivors and witnesses, and thus contributed to the preservation of the stories of Gardelegen and much more. (See tiny.cc/ZdYIF for the 102nd's account of what happened.) His role is much valued at Yad Vashem, a place dedicated to the idea that the sins of the past must be remembered, lest they be repeated.

Lieder went on to a career as Polk County engineer. At age 86 and serving his 13th state House term, he's the last World War II soldier to occupy a Capitol desk. What he witnessed as a young man still inspires his service.

"The one thing I learned is: You have to have government, and you ought to have the kind of government we have," he said before leaving for Israel. "We're raising too much heck with our government right now. We need to respect it. People complain that they don't like government, but without it, there's anarchy. I've seen that."

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When 23-year-old Navy officer Lynn Elling of Minneapolis walked the beach at Tarawa, three months had passed since a bloodbath over the tiny but strategically positioned Pacific atoll had put it under American control. Elling was disturbed to see the remains of Japanese soldiers still strewn on the beach.

"It was absolutely devastating to me how these people had been slaughtered," he recalled. He looked into a firebombed bunker to find six charred corpses. "I stood there thinking, 'How can the human family move on from this?' That scene never left me."

Elling came home to his bride, started a family and sold insurance. But he kept thinking about how he could help end war. Finding like-minded Minnesotans led him to the 1954 World Federalist conference in Japan, and to a resolve to promote world citizenship.

In the 1960s, he spearheaded the effort to get Minneapolis, and then Minnesota, to sign a Declaration of World Citizenship. In 1982, he founded the nonprofit group World Citizen and its "peace site" program. It has promoted nonviolence and respect for human diversity at more than 268 Minnesota peace sites, most of them schools.

"If we're ever going to have peace in the world, we've got to start with the children," Elling says.

This fall, Elling was among several dozen veterans honored in the Legislative Manual, state government's biennial "blue book."

Though at age 88 he's nervously watching what he fears could be a Vietnam-like quagmire developing for America in Afghanistan, Elling says he's hopeful. "I think our military can be a force for peace," he said. His story proves it.

Lori Sturdevant is a Star Tribune editorial writer and columnist. She is at lsturdevant@startribune.com.