Fred Roberts Crawford memoir

Dr. Fred Roberts Crawford was born in 1924 in San Antonio, TX. He was a fighter pilot with the Fourth Squadron, and was stationed in North Africa in 1943, and, in 1944, flew bombing raids over Italy, France, and Romania. In June 1944, Crawford was shot down by friendly fire over Hungary; captured and beaten by Hungarian civilians who believed him to be Jewish, he was saved by a policeman, Ferenc Felsovari, who took him away from the mob and brought him to prison in Budapest. There, Crawford witnessed the arrival and execution of Jewish civilians. In July 1944, the German occupying forces found Crawford in the prison and removed him to the Stalag Luft III POW camp. On January 27,1945, the prisoners of war were forced to march to Stalag Luft VII-A, where the conditions were much more difficult. Stalag Luft VII-A was liberated by the British on April 29, 1945; a few days later, Crawford joined a unit touring the nearby Dachau concentration camp, which was newly liberated. Crawford earned his PhD in sociology from the Universtiy of Texas at Austin in 1957. Much of his research throughout his career focused on military combat experience. In 1966, Crawford became a professor of sociology and Director of the Center for Research in Social Change at Emory University in Atlanta, GA. In 1978, he was a member of a televised panel discussing the recent made-for-television movie "The Holocaust," when a caller asked why he should believe that concentration camps existed. Crawford decided to collect eye-witness accounts from American soldiers who liberated or toured the concentration camps as a way to combat Holocaust denial. He founded the "Witness to the Holocaust" project, collecting oral and written testimonies. Dr. Crawford passed away in 1982.

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, Gift of Gwenyth Crawford Dixon

Gwenyth Crawford Dixon donated a copy of her father's memoir to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 2013.