NJ WWII Veteran, 104, Shares Story Treating Concentration Camp Survivors

GALLOWAY, NJ — A 104-year-old South Jersey World War II veteran told Stockton University students and community members this month about the conditions he encountered while treating survivors at Buchenwald concentration camp in 1945.

Sgt. Andrew “Tim” Kiniry, of Minotola, spoke April 16 in Galloway during a program moderated by Stockton adjunct professor Doug Cervi and sponsored by Stockton’s Sara and Sam Schoffer Holocaust Resource Center, the Jewish Federation of Atlantic and Cape May Counties, and the Board of Jewish Education of Atlantic and Cape May Counties. According to Stockton, Kiniry’s testimony was recorded as part of the center’s mission to share the history of the Holocaust and the life stories of Holocaust survivors of southern New Jersey.

Kiniry served as a combat medic with the 45th Evacuation Hospital. Stockton said he landed on Omaha Beach on June 16, 1944, and later participated in the Battle of the Bulge. He told the audience that what he saw at Buchenwald on April 28, 1945, stayed with him.

“We were put in the back of trucks and not told anything, which was the Army’s deal – you never knew where you were going,” Kiniry said. “I didn’t know the first thing (about Buchenwald concentration camp). We pulled inside the gates and we came across an odor of which I can never describe. It was terrible.”

Kiniry said he spent two weeks treating about 21,000 survivors at Buchenwald in Germany after U.S. forces liberated the camp from the Nazis on April 11.

“We saw the people standing there and I thought, ‘Are they real? Are their clothes real?’ Because a lot of their clothes were tattered,” he said.

He described the first efforts to clean survivors and the fear many carried into that process.

“But we had a problem getting them to go in these tents. They were afraid of being gassed,” he said. “Some of them had to be washed by hand, but you had to be careful because without much trouble you could push their bones through their skin. They were just skin and bones. It was terrible.”

Kiniry also described the care required when food was reintroduced.

Andrew 'Tim' Kiniry, of Minotola, signs a baseball card of himself after the 104-year-old World War II veteran spoke to a group of students and community members at Stockton University on April 16.

“Some of them got a hold of some food and they ate it, but it killed them. They just took too much, too quick and their stomachs couldn’t handle it,” he said. “We had to give them chocolate milk, eggnog and candy bars to build them up, which did help.”

The event drew more than 100 students and community members, according to Stockton. After the presentation, Kiniry was made an honorary Jewish war veteran by Jewish War Veterans Garr-Greenstein-Friedenberg Post 39 in Margate.