Remembered and Blessed
Eighty years ago, it was a cold day in Germany at a prison camp called Stalag IXA. The date was January 27, 1945. Two days before, 1,292 malnourished, frostbitten, American infantrymen had been moved to this German Prisoner of War camp. Many of these soldiers had been captured during the famous Battle of the Bulge.
The leader of the prisoners and the top ranking infantryman of the group was twenty-six year old Roddie Edmonds, a master sergeant from Knoxville, TN. Roddie was a Christian, having been saved as a teenager in an old Methodist church. The verses that he had memorized had been a comfort and a directive to him during WWII.
The Americans were housed in five separate barracks. There was no heating, and the men crowded together for warmth on the cold night.
On January 26, 1945, the camp loudspeakers blared this message:
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Of the American prisoners, there were around 200 Jewish soldiers, and Roddie refused to allow them to be separated and possibly killed in Hitler’s purge of Jews.
That night, he met with all the barrack leaders and stated his plan. All 1,292 prisoners would form out on the parade line at morning roll call.
And that is what happened on January 27, 1945 at 6:00 a.m. Even the sick and injured prisoners made their way to roll call, some leaning on fellow soldiers for support, as they stood in the snow.
When the German leader, Major Siegmann arrived, he looked at the crowd of POWs and shouted, “Is this a joke?”
The German Major stormed over to Roddie and demanded, “Were my orders not clear, Sergeant? Only the Jews were to fall out! They cannot all be Jews!
Roddie turned and stared directly in the eyes of the furious German officer. “We are all Jews here,” Roddie said.
As their leader spoke, all the American POW’s took courage, and not a single man broke rank to expose their fellow Jews.
Stepping forward, Major Siegmann drew his Luger from his holster. He put the barrel of the pistol right between Roddie’s eyes. “Sergeant, one last chance,” he said.
Roddie held his ground with only silence, swirling snow, and the wispy breath of a 1000 GI’s.
At last Roddie replied, “Major, you can shoot me, but you’ll have to kill all of us-because we know who you are-and you will be tried for war crimes when we win this war. And you will pay.
The pistol trembled, then the enraged German officer quickly holstered it, and immediately left.
Two months later, on March 30, 1945, American tanks entered Stalag IXA and freed the American POW’s. The Jewish American soldiers had survived.
Roddie Edmonds came home without any recognition. He returned to duty in the Korean War, and later settled back in Knoxville, working and raising a family. He passed on to heaven on August 8, 1985, without any mention of his valor. None of the family even knew the story.
Then twenty years later, Roddie’s granddaughter began a history project at college, using Roddie’s WWII diaries. Her father began helping, and as he found many of the surviving Jewish soldiers, the hidden hero emerged.
Since then, for saving the life of over 200 Jews, Roddie Edmonds received in 2015, Israel's highest honor for non-Jews who risked their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust, “Righteous Among the Nations.” Of the five Americans who have received this award, he is the only one that was an active WWII serviceman.
God promised a blessing on those that blessed Israel. And one more blessing - Roddie Edmonds’ son, Chris Edmonds, became a Baptist minister. He later collected his father’s story into the book, No Surrender that was published in 2019.
