This is the official U.S. Army report of the terrible conditions at the Dachau concentration camp in Nazi Germany and of the camp's liberation on April 29, 1945. It was written within days of that liberation and contains valuable photographs, sketches and first-person accounts. It includes an interview with a woman who claimed to have been Rudof Hoess's mistress at the Auschwitz concentration camp. Copies of the original report are hard to obtain. This is the first time it has been published as a book.
The independence you see reflected in the books I've written or edited for publication reflect a similar independence shown by one branch of my family, the Hallmarks of northwest Alabama. Struggling as farmers, when the Civil War came, they had no interest in supporting what they quite rightly considered a "rich man's war" for slavery. They would stick by that conviction with a courage and a tenacity that is nothing short of amazing.
If I imagine myself born into that branch of my family tree exactly a century earlier, I would have been a boy when the Civil War broke out. Here is what I would have seen.
Defying a state governor who said that all such "traitors" should be hung, four of my uncles slipped through Confederate patrols and enlisted in First Alabama Cavalry U.S. That "U.S." is important. These were Southerners, born and bred, who were fighting for the Union in an integrated, all-Southern cavalry. As testimonials from Union generals attest, the First did a marvelous job, using their knowledge of the land and people to help restore the Union they loved. When General Sherman made his famous (or infamous, depending on your point of view) march across Georgia to the sea, he chose the First to provide the cavalry screen for his army.
You can find out more about the First Alabama Cavalry U.S. at: http://www.1stalabamacavalryusv.com/
There's a short history of those uncles of mine on this page: http://www.1stalabamacavalryusv.com/roster/stories.asp?trooperid=863
In case the second link changes, here is what it says:
"George W. Hallmark was the brother of James Washington Hallmark, Thomas Frank Hallmark, and John Madison Hallmark. Although they were all born in Fayette County, Ala, they were living in Marion County at the time the war broke out. George, James, and Thomas joined up with the First together in 1862. The fourth brother, the youngest, John, was only about 15 when the war started. He joined the unit in 1863. He was the only one who survived the war and made it back home."
That's right. Four of my uncles went to war, but only one came home. That's sacrifice. Here's what that page says about one who would have been my father.
"There was also a 5th Hallmark brother who refused to join up with either side and hid out in the north Alabama woods for most of the war. The local home guard beat their father to death and shot and killed one of their sisters because of the brothers' decision to fight for the Union instead of the CSA."
That fifth Hallmark, Hopwood Hallmark, didn't go to war, because he had five children to feed, one of whom in this tale I pretend was me. For not supporting this war, the "Home Guard"--a precursor to the Ku Klux Klan--killed both his father, George Hallmark and his sister. His turn came in 1874 when he died under suspicious circumstances that some in the family believe meant he was murdered by the Ku Klux Klan in a year in which the Democratic party threatened to restore white rule by "bullets or ballots."
That's why, although I've written on many topics, a common thread runs though many of them from Untangling Tolkien, my chronology of Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, to my various books on eugenics and their modern counterparts. I focus on the same struggle the Hallmark's faced, the struggle of ordinary people to live their lives free of those who dehumanize and control. It's an unending war and one that each generation has to meet with the same sort of courage and conviction that the Hallmark family displayed so long ago.
