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Late WWII Veteran Honored for Saving Jewish-American Soldiers from Nazis
(AP-U.S. News) Aron Heller - On Jan. 27, 1945, at the Stalag IXA POW camp near Ziegenhain, Germany, the Nazi soldiers ordered that Jewish American prisoners of war captured in the Battle of the Bulge in late 1944 be separated from their fellow brothers-in-arms. But Master Sgt. Roddie Edmonds, the highest-ranking noncommissioned officer held in the German POW camp, ordered more than 1,000 American captives to step forward with him and said: "We are all Jews here." He would not waver, even with a pistol to his head, and his captors eventually backed down. "My dad said: 'If you are going to shoot, you are going to have to shoot all of us because we know who you are and you'll be tried for war crimes when we win this war,'" recalled Chris Edmonds, who estimates his father's actions saved the lives of more than 200 Jewish-American soldiers. 70 years later, the Tennessee native is being posthumously recognized with Israel's highest honor for non-Jews who risked their lives to save Jews during World War II, the first American serviceman to earn the "Righteous Among the Nations" honor. "Master Sgt. Roddie Edmonds...had an extraordinary sense of responsibility and dedication to his fellow human beings," said Avner Shalev, chairman of the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum and memorial.