Buchenwald liberator kept it all to himself

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By Barb Ickes | Wednesday, August 20, 2008 11:29 AM CDT | () comments

Barb Ickes/QUAD-CITY TIMES The gravestone of James Hoyt gives no indication he was one of the liberators of the Nazi concentration camp at Buchenwald during World War II. Buy this Photo

OXFORD, Iowa — Jim Hoyt was an honest-to-God hero.

But most of us never knew it.

On April 11, 1945, Pfc. Hoyt was one of four American soldiers who discovered the Buchenwald Nazi concentration camp in Germany at the end of World War II. He was a liberator. The estimated 21,000 prisoners at Buchenwald were so incredibly thrilled to see the four Americans that, despite their emaciated conditions, they managed to hoist Hoyt and the others into the air in celebration.

The jubilation ended there.

The corpses at Buchenwald were piled too high to count. The evidence of the atrocities against humanity littered the compound, as unashamed as trash on the highway. In his long life, Hoyt kept most of what he had witnessed to himself. He disclosed few details: the human hearts he saw that had been removed from live prisoners; the lamp shade that was made of human skin because a Nazi soldier’s wife had admired the tattoo on it.

Even to Hoyt’s family, the story of Buchenwald never was told. Maybe he especially wished to spare them.

For most of his 83 years, he lived just down the road from us — just past Iowa City — and I’ll bet there isn’t a handful of Quad-Citians who ever heard of him. It’s a safe bet that most of the folks in Johnson County who had their mail delivered by Hoyt for 30 years had no idea he was a hero, either.

Most believe he kept his secret in order to save himself. The memories of his heroism were too disturbing to recall. It was safer, he must have figured, to let his decorated past remain in the past.

On Aug. 11, Hoyt took those memories to his grave.

One week after his death, his wife, Doris, and sons, John and Jim Jr., tried to answer as many questions as they could. But much of the mystery belongs to them, too.

“He was only 17 years old when he went in, and he survived the Battle of the Bulge,” said Jim Jr. “He was 19 when they found the camp. He was kind of the grunt in his group. He was with the signal corps, which is why he was up front.”

The three other soldiers died before Hoyt. He did not stay in contact with them.

“I don’t think my husband ever talked to the other three,” his widow said. “It disturbed him to talk about it. He never, ever talked to me about it. He died the day he got sick, so there was no chance there.”

He was invited several years ago to the University of Iowa to meet one of the Buchenwald survivors whom he had helped free. But that meeting remained private, too.

Even when the U.S. Army called his home in tiny Oxford, Iowa, two or three times, offering to pay all expenses for a 50th anniversary return trip to Buchenwald in 1995, Hoyt declined.

When he retired from the U.S. Postal Service in 1992 (he delivered a 100-mile rural route), he spent some time at the Oxford American Legion. But the memories weren’t allowed to see daylight even there.

“I know nothing about his Army life at all,” said Bob Murphy, a fellow Legion member. “I’d heard he was the first person in a concentration camp, but he never talked about it.”

Doris Hoyt said, despite the decades her husband spent beating the memories back, they may have caught up with him.

“He was a gentle person,” she said, her grief as fresh as the funeral flowers on her kitchen table. “The older he got, the less gentle he became. It was eating at him.”

It is likely, she said, that the memories of Buchenwald quietly ate at Hoyt for most of his life.

“He never slept much more than two or three hours at a time,” she said. “He’d just go and read somewhere.”

The nightmares were one of few admissions Hoyt would make. He called them “horrific.”

Back at the farm in Oxford, he tried to surround himself with the simple pleasures in life. He and Doris had six children, but he always made room in the house for the stray cats and dogs that either wandered onto the farm or were dumped there by people who knew the Hoyts would take care of them.

He worked on cars in the garage with Jim Jr. When it was warm outside, they worked in the driveway, where a bean field lines the gravel.

Sitting at her small kitchen table, a painting of The Last Supper hanging behind her and a half-dozen cats underfoot, Doris Hoyt looked at her hands as she gave directions to Mount Calvary Cemetery. Her sons remained quiet, as the drip, drip, drip of the kitchen sink saved the room from complete silence.

“Just look for the fresh grave,” John finally offered.

Just a few miles from the Hoyt home is the grave of an American hero, the sod still brown from being pulled away from the earth for burial. The granite stone he will share with Doris makes no mention of his service. There is no American flag, no “Veteran” in proud, bold letters.

The liberator finally is free.

Barb Ickes can be contacted at (563) 383-2316 or bickes@qctimes.com.