Scar & Reflections - Ralph Hauenstein



The Germans had satellite concentration camps that they put women in. And we ran into one of those, it was like a huge big barracks, and they were for women. So we went in to the women, and I went into that place with the women. They were just crazy to see. One of them grabbed my hands, and one, she just kept grabbing, scratching. She made my hand bleed. I carried that for a long time. But they had those camps where they put different prisoners in there. I don't think anyone can go through four years of overseas war without having viewed probably the worst part of that war. I think probably the early arrival into the concentration camp, at Dachau was something that seems to stay with me more than most anything else. I had other events that happened, of course, and that's natural in war time. But somehow, this was so different in life to see what man can do to his fellow man, and what a nation can do to its own people as something that is so, so great and so profound in memory that it probably is the most vivid event that I do remember out of all of the various things that I've been a part of. It doesn't come back to me very often, for no particular reason at no particular time. I'm not haunted by it, but I'm guided in some things in my life by what did happen there and what does happen.