Liberator
THE
Alexandria developer was a World War II hero
By Karen Tolkkinen Staff Sgt. Leander Hens, a farm boy from Belgrade, Minnesota, had no way of knowing what lay in store for him and his men that on that wet, cold morning in 1945. As members of the Army’s 11th Armored Division, they were assigned to check all the roads, bridges and enemy soldiers in the area so that an American force could liberate an Austrian city from Nazi forces. But Hens and his patrol stumbled onto a series of Nazirun concentration camps, that one Army major described in a book as “emanating wretched human misery and rank with the stench of death.” The main camp was called Mauthausen, and among its
For the liberated, it brought tears, comfort, joy and peace. I can still hear them, ‘We are free. We are free.’ LEANDER HENS Staff Sargeant and WWII hero
100 or so subcamps were three particularly barbarous camps called Gusen I, II and III, where prisoners were worked to death in a rock quarry and in underground factories. German SS officers had just fled, leaving Austrian troops in charge of gas chambers, piles of bodies and thousands of starving, brutalized people of many nationalities and political persuasions—Gypsies, Poles, Spaniards, Jews, intellectuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses
Leander Hens served in Europe during World War II. He was 22 when his patrol liberated several Nazi concentration camps in Austria. (Contributed) and criminals, according to the books “Spaniards in the Holocaust,” and “St. Georgen Gusen Mauthausen,” each of which mentions Hens. Estimates of those who died during the seven years of Mauthausen’s existence at anywhere from 122,000 to more than 300,000.
Hens’ patrol was one of two that came across the camps that day. They liberated the prisoners and left, lacking the food, medical supplies and numbers to care for them. In the following days, American doctors and nurses arrived. Still, hundreds of former inmates continued to die every day from the trauma they endured. Hens died in 2003. However, his words describing that morning are inscribed on the back of a granite bench at Alexandria’s Veterans Memorial park. “For the liberators, the day brought grief, misery and a dangerous venture. “Memories are the sight, odor and hunger of the detainees. “I’m sure, in speaking for all 41 of us, who were there that day, we were grateful
The inscription on this bench came from Leander Hens’s note in a flyleaf in a book about the camp that quoted him, and which he gave to grandson Randy Roers.
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