Holocaust Testimony #2

The second interview that I listened to was by a man named William McKinney. He was interviewed on 31 March 1997. William was 74 years old at the time he was interviewed. He grew up in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania. He born in Union town, Pennsylvania. WIlliam McKinney was in the U.S. Army. He was a Sergeant for the army. His duty was to learn Morris code. He was sent to basic and spent most of his days just spending time learning Morris code, drilling over that. William didn’t have one said job, he was a combat supply and did a lot with weapons. One thing that the interviewer spent a lot of time asking about was how William McKinney was treated because he was black. William would travel from city to city in France. He said that the U.S. had a 205 mm that shoot accurately for 23 miles. It was very nerve racking for him knowing the weapon advances and being close to these weapon coming from the other side. When he was in Germany he went to the concentration camps and saw all of the things that were going on first hand. He saw where they would stand the jews on the hillside and shoot them to fall into the pits. There were thousands of Jewish refugees in these concentration camps. In the concentration camps he saw lampshades of human skin. He saw all sorts of people that were dying because of starvation. They were told not to give them K-Rations because they hadn’t had anything solid in so long that if an undernourished person ate it, it would kill them. McKinney saw two boys digging in the trash, he gave them food and they stuck to him for the two days that he was there. William said, “I wanted to adopt them.” They had orphanages prepared for them. The war finally ended on May 8th. When it did he said, “ I felt very exhilarated that the war had ended.”
Quotation: “I saw lampshades made of human skin.” “I felt very exhilarated that the war had ended.”