Alabama’s Holocaust Day of Remembrance observance to be April 11
By Bob Blalock April 6, 2021
American prisoner of war Roddie Edmonds stood in front of more than 1,200 fellow POWs, the commandant of a German Stalag holding a Luger to Edmonds’ head.
Master Sgt. Roddie Edmonds. (courtesy of the Jewish Foundation for the Righteous)
The day before, the commandant had demanded that all Jewish POWs among the 1,200-plus noncommissioned officers captured during World War II’s Battle of the Bulge in December 1944 present themselves outside their barracks the next morning. Edmonds, a master sergeant from Knoxville, Tennessee, was the group’s ranking officer. He ordered all the American POWs to stand in formation, like they did every morning.