Looking Back
From the William Davidson Digital Archive of Jewish Detroit History
accessible at thejewishnews.com
58 | SEPTEMBER 19 • 2024
J
N
I
heard an interesting story last
week. Bob Koski, an audio
expert and friend, was helping
me with a video that will introduce
the online version of the “Israel @
75” exhibit developed
by the Detroit Jewish
News Foundation last
year (coming to the JN
website soon!).
Bob told me a
story about his
father as we worked
on the recording.
It was a saga with
a profound lesson regarding the
Holocaust. Although the Shoah
was devastating for European Jews
and their families in the diaspora,
it also had a deep impact upon
many other people, including
American non-Jews. Case in point,
consider Bob’s father, Edmund T.
(Korczakowski) Koski (in 1954, he
shortened his last name to Koski
for easier spelling).
Edmund Koski was a second-
generation Polish Catholic from
Detroit who served in the 456th
Anti-Aircraft Artillery Battalion in
General Patton’s Third U.S. Army
during World War II. He landed
in Europe shortly after D-Day in
June 1944 and fought in five major
battles, earning a Purple Heart
along the way.
As much as his battlefield
experience changed Koski’s life,
another event had a more abiding,
lifelong impact upon him. He was
among the first American troops to
see the infamous Nazi death camp,
Dachau, after it was liberated by
the U.S. Army on April 29, 1945.
What Koski experienced at that
moment deeply affected him. For
the rest of his life, he was a strong
advocate for Holocaust education
for all.
Dachau was one of the first
Nazi concentration camps
in Germany. Originally built
in 1933 to imprison Hitler’s
political opponents, along with
Treblinka, Auschwitz and many
others, Dachau became one
of the infamous Nazi death
camps.
Long after seeing Dachau,
Koski impressed upon his
son, Bob, the horrors of the
Holocaust. Edmund had
acquired a handful of
official Army images
of Dachau from a 3rd
Army Signal Corps
photographer who
hoped the photos would
show people at home
the atrocities of the
Holocaust.
Bob said that after his
father showed him the
photographs, “Those
horrible images were
permanently etched in
my mind. I first viewed
them as a 12-year-old.
As my Dad showed them
to me, he explained in
detail the horrors he’d
personally witnessed. I’ve
never forgotten.”
In the 1980s, Koski donated
the photos directly to Rabbi
Charles Rosenzweig, who was on
his 20-year quest that resulted in
today’s Zekelman Holocaust Center
in Farmington Hills.
Mark Mulder, director of
Curatorial Affairs, explained that
the archival collections at the
Center have a number of images
and footage from Dachau: “As you
can imagine, the vast majority
of those photos and collections
come from U.S. soldiers
who were at the camp at
liberation or shortly after.
They are typically accompanied
by harrowing testimony of what
it was like for those soldiers to
be firsthand witnesses to Nazi
atrocities.”
The William Davidson Digital
Archive of Jewish Detroit History
also holds many stories of Dachau
on more than 900 pages. The
first reports related to the camp
were published shortly after its
liberation in 1945.
I appreciated Bob sharing the
story of his father and Dachau. It
is a sobering story, to be sure, but
one that illustrates that the effects
of the Holocaust are widespread
and still felt today, never to be
forgotten.
Want to learn more? Go to the DJN archives
at thejewishnews.com.
Mike Smith
Alene and
Graham Landau
Archivist Chair
LEFT: Edmund Koski at
Michigan Central RR Station,
Detroit, about to depart for
Europe, 1944. BELOW: Son
Bob Koski standing in the
same spot as his dad, 2024.
Never Forgotten