WorldWarIIHero.doc

World War II Hero HOWARD CWICK: Thank you, guys. BRIAN TODD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Despite a recent foot injury, Howard Cwick is a spry, cheerful 81-year-old. Hes exceedingly friendly, even when asked about the dark day 60 years ago, when this self-described mommas boy from Brooklyn suddenly grew up. Spring 1945, U.S. Army Corporal Howard Cwick is a demolition expert with a company that has just fought its way into Central Germany. One day, he hops a ride on a Jeep he thinks is taking him to headquarters. Its the wrong Jeep. The driver says hes seen something he needs to investigate. They come upon a huge complex of buildings and barbed wire, with an unlocked gate. Soon joined by a few other soldiers, they go inside. HOWARD CWICK, WORLD WAR II VETERAN: As far as the eye can see, like from one end of the world to the other, there were dead bodies. TODD: Cwick is among the first Americans to stumble on to Buchenwald, one of the largest, most notorious Nazi concentration camps. CWICK: Bodies and bodies and bodies. Every so often, you would find a live one, but it was hard to tell if he was alive. He barely moved. TODD: Cwick moves through the camp, encountering shell-shocked survivors. When he tells them hes an American soldier and a Jew, hes mobbed. CWICK: They began feeling my jacket and my coat, my rifle. Two men grabbed my hands and started to kiss them. I couldnt move. The guy was hanging on to my leg like his life depending on it. TODD: Cwick later comes upon a fellow American G.I., poking at what Cwick calls a pile of white stuff, bones and ashes. CWICK: I looked at the pile and I wondered, a pile four feet high, how many fathers, how many brothers, how many sons were in that pile. I broke. I still cry. I still cry. TODD: As the war winds down, Cwick and his company move through Germany, coming upon countless enemy soldiers and civilians. Ordered to take prisoners, but so shaken by his experience at Buchenwald, he never again commands someon