The first hand account I personally heard was a man named Johnson, don’t recall his first name, but his son is named Eric and he was my high school history teacher, who also served as a green beret, the father was a medic, he was traveling with a British group of soldiers, he had to do triage at a camp, lost of details stuck out to me, the nazi staff threw grenades into the offices to destroy documentation, the train tracks had been blown out for days at least and there were carts full of human remains they were transporting to who knows where. When they were gathering all the survivors they found a man alive hung on a meat hook, and he said there were a single digit number of men who came up to them, did a nazi salute and explained they were in the camp mistakenly and wear always good obedient nazis. He focused a lot on a man carrying around his brother, he did triage and told the man his brother was only hanging on by a thread, his eyes were already dry was his main concern and he marked him as ‘‘aid last’’ basically, he likely wouldn’t survive under any circumstances. Then decades later he was commuting to work in SF where he lived, and stopped to by a paper got the train, and after he spoke a man he didn’t recognize stopped him and asked if he remembered the man carrying around his brother, and he did, the man was the brother who was carried, he somehow managed to survive and recognized his voice after all those years. They stayed in contact for the rest of their lives. And lastly a student asked him what the most shocking thing he witnesses, and he said the most shocking thing that he really still didn’t understand is that the people who survived the camps and walked out weren’t destroyed, even so soon after liberation they had the capacity for joy, love, and lived their lives. I’ve talked to two men who were American soldiers and witnesses the camps in that context, and believe me, just being there for a day or two was a burden they could hardly carry, it was a living nightmare. But people survived. Anyway, That’s all I remember about it, I haven’t been able to find anything on my own to point to, but that’s enough to at least connect the story to a person I know he talked about it publicly at some point.
Interesting do you have a source for this? I would like to learn more about the history. If not that’s ok I can try to search for it.
The first hand account I personally heard was a man named Johnson, don’t recall his first name, but his son is named Eric and he was my high school history teacher, who also served as a green beret, the father was a medic, he was traveling with a British group of soldiers, he had to do triage at a camp, lost of details stuck out to me, the nazi staff threw grenades into the offices to destroy documentation, the train tracks had been blown out for days at least and there were carts full of human remains they were transporting to who knows where. When they were gathering all the survivors they found a man alive hung on a meat hook, and he said there were a single digit number of men who came up to them, did a nazi salute and explained they were in the camp mistakenly and wear always good obedient nazis. He focused a lot on a man carrying around his brother, he did triage and told the man his brother was only hanging on by a thread, his eyes were already dry was his main concern and he marked him as ‘‘aid last’’ basically, he likely wouldn’t survive under any circumstances. Then decades later he was commuting to work in SF where he lived, and stopped to by a paper got the train, and after he spoke a man he didn’t recognize stopped him and asked if he remembered the man carrying around his brother, and he did, the man was the brother who was carried, he somehow managed to survive and recognized his voice after all those years. They stayed in contact for the rest of their lives. And lastly a student asked him what the most shocking thing he witnesses, and he said the most shocking thing that he really still didn’t understand is that the people who survived the camps and walked out weren’t destroyed, even so soon after liberation they had the capacity for joy, love, and lived their lives. I’ve talked to two men who were American soldiers and witnesses the camps in that context, and believe me, just being there for a day or two was a burden they could hardly carry, it was a living nightmare. But people survived. Anyway, That’s all I remember about it, I haven’t been able to find anything on my own to point to, but that’s enough to at least connect the story to a person I know he talked about it publicly at some point.
Not a direct answer, but the nazis created hierarchies inside the camps:
https://arolsen-archives.org/en/news/prisoner-groups-in-the-concentration-camp-how-the-nazis-stigmatized-their-victims/
It stands to reason that some of the prisoners thought they were better than the Jews.