Baptist Pastor Unearths His Father’s Holocaust Heroism

Baptist Pastor Unearths His Father’s Holocaust Heroism in Wartime Diaries [LINK]

Master Sgt. Roddie Edmonds never spoke about his experiences as a prisoner of war during World War II. Captured during the Battle of the Bulge, Roddie survived an arduous march through frozen terrain and was interned for nearly 100 days at Stalag IXA, a POW camp near Ziegenhain, Germany.

“Son, there are some things I’d rather not talk about,” Roddie would tell his children, Kim and Chris, when they were young. “We were humiliated.”

When Roddie died in 1985, Chris, a Baptist pastor, inherited his father’s war diaries. The books are a chronological record of POW camp life...

 

Nice show of bipartisanship in the Senate


Senators Introduce Bill to Award Posthumous Medal to WWII Vet Who Saved Jewish Soldiers in German POW Camp [LINK]

JNS.org – Several senators have introduced a bill seeking to posthumously award the Congressional Gold Medal to Army Master Sgt. Rodrick “Roddie” Edmonds for his heroic actions in German prisoner-of-war campStalag IXA — actions that saved the lives of hundreds of Jewish-American soldiers.

The bill to recognize Edmonds, which was introduced by Sens. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), Ben Cardin (D-Md.), Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) and Tim Kaine (D-Va.), notes how Edmonds, as a senior noncommissioned officer responsible for the 1,275 US Army soldiers at the camp, orchestrated an incredible show of unity when he refused a German order to identify the Jews among them.

Edmonds stood together with the whole group, a moved that called a German officer to shout, “They cannot all be Jews!” Edmonds replied, “We are all Jews here.”