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Obama First U.S. President to Visit Buchenwald; D-Day Survivor Shares Story; Time Running Out to Find Air France Plane; FAA to Trim Weather Offices; Layoff Rate Drops; Student Studies, Diagnoses Own Illness; WWII Berga Survivors Finally Talking

Aired June 05, 2009 - 13:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: Tony, thanks so much.

We're pushing forward and looking back at a nightmare in history. President Obama lays a rose at Buchenwald, planting a stirring reminder about the legacies of war.

What happened to Air France Flight 447? Will loved ones get the closure they desperately need? The answers floating away by the minute.

A race suspect gets a beating. Vigilantes get a reward. We're showing you the video, and we're learning there may be more victims.

And you recognize this guy? Visiting the pyramids was like looking into a mirror for a certain president. What a sight to see.

Hello, everyone. I'm Kyra Phillips, live at the CNN world headquarters in Atlanta. You're in the CNN NEWSROOM.

"I will not forget what I've seen." President Obama's words at the site of one of the history's worse horrors. Just hours ago, he became the first U.S. President to visit Germany's Buchenwald concentration camp. Joining him, German chancellor Angela Merkel, also Nobel Peace prize winner and survivor of this vicious camp, Elie Wiesel.

The president laid a rose for the thousands of victims of Buchenwald and noted that a member of his own family helped free the survivors. He also says the Holocaust reminds us all of humanity's potential for evil, and no one should forget it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: To this day, there are those who insist that the Holocaust never happened, a denial of fact and truth that is baseless and ignorant and hateful. This place is the ultimate rebuke to such thoughts, a reminder of our duty to confront those who would tell lies about our history.

ELIE WIESEL, NOBEL PEACE PRIZE WINNER/BUCHENWALD SURVIVOR: As I came here today, it was actually a way of coming and visit my father's grave. But he had no grave. His grave is somewhere in the sky, which has become in those years the largest cemetery of the Jewish people.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIPS: Well, imagine this dark chapter in history, not as something that you read in a book or see on the History Channel in black and white, but as something that's all around you, all the time, in color.

CNN's Frederik Pleitgen grew up in Cologne, Germany. He joins us now on the phone from Buchenwald.

Frederik, let's just take your reporter cap off for a second, if you don't mind, and let's get a little personal here. I've asked you questions about this, and growing up in Germany. And when you were in school, is this something that you definitely were told about? And did you go and visit these camps, growing up?

FREDERIK PLEITGEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Sure. Hi, Kyra.

Yes, it's something that in German schools you're really confronted with all the time. I mean, a lot of times in history lessons, you learn a lot about all this. And, you know, growing up in that town, Cologne, Germany, we visited a lot of the old places. There were actually Nazi prisons in Germany, Gestapo headquarters in Cologne, as well. So these are certainly things that are ever present and that are taught to you in school.

And I think the way they sort of try to teach it at school is they don't try to -- try to force something like collective guilt, but they do try to install in you something like the feeling of responsibility to not ever let anything like this happen again.

And I have to say, you know, my final school trip sort of before I graduated was to the Auschwitz concentration camp. And me and the other students, you know, we were obviously very young, and we were having fun. And we were a little bit stupid, like little boys are.

But each and every one of us, once we entered the Auschwitz concentration camp, we were quiet from the moment we entered until the moment that we left. Because it is something that sinks in very deeply, especially of course, coming from the country that we come from, Kyra.

PHILLIPS: Were you horrified by your history as you learned about this growing up?

PLEITGEN: Well, you know, of course you're horrified by the history, but I think, you know, growing up -- being German and growing up in Germany, it's really something where you're horrified at a much more personal level.

Because, you know, the fact of the matter, and I can speak for everyone in Germany who's grown up after World War II, the question that I've asked myself so many times, as so many of us do ask themselves, is what would we have done if we were in that situation back then? You know, would we have been a part of this? Would we have tried to prevent this? Would we have tried to, you know, maybe prevent it in some sort of secretive way? Would we have tried to work against the system?

And I don't think that anyone who is German, or at least I can't give myself an honest answer to it. You know, I'm a very ambitious person. I try to get ahead. Would you have given up your entire career to be against all of this? I think that's a very, very difficult question. And it certainly has been plaguing me all my life and, I think, has plagued anyone who is of this nationality.

The big question is, you know, we can talk all about this in 20/20 hindsight, but what would you have done if you were on the spot in that situation? I think that's something that Germans think about a lot. You know, is it this something that could have only happened in Germany? And what would you have done if you were in the situation back then?

PHILLIPS: Well, I sure appreciate the personal insight. Frederik Pleitgen, you know how much I respect you and your work. And I just appreciate you sharing that with us. Thanks, Fred.

Well, so many lives lost and so much pain. The horrors of Buchenwald must never be forgotten. About 250,000 prisoners were held there over an eight-year period ending in 1945. An estimated 56,000 were killed.

Key parts of Buchenwald, one of the biggest concentration camps on German soil, have been preserved as a memorial. They include the main gate, two guard towers, a hospital, and a crematorium.

Now, President Obama's great uncle, Charlie Payne, was among the American G.I.'s who liberated a nearby labor camp just days before U.S. troops liberated Buchenwald on April 11, 1945.

And then after the war, occupying Soviet forces used the camp to hold political prisoners.

Now, another legacy of the war that we never want to forget: 350 American soldiers enslaved at a camp near Buchenwald. They were beaten, starved, some of them worked to death. Now the survivors are reuniting after more than six decades of repressed pain. One of them joins us this hour live. His story won't be easy to hear, but we need to hear it, and he needs to tell it.

The legacies of the war are very much alive today in people's hearts, minds and in their loved ones. Just ask our Susan Lisovicz, whose 91-year-old uncle, Leonard, was part of that D-Day invasion. The sights, the sounds, the smells of that beach in Normandy, France, are still pretty vivid in his mind. And usually, Susan covers business news for us at CNN, but today her business is sharing Uncle Lenny's story.

I'm so glad that you went out and did this, Susan.

SUSAN LISOVICZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Kyra, and I am, as well. All my life, I've known my Uncle Lenny is a war hero, and all my life, I've known he didn't want to talk about it. Yesterday, after numerous phone calls and pleas, he opened up for the first time at length about what it was like as a young lieutenant to storm Omaha Beach.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LT. LEONARD LISOVICZ, WORLD WAR II VETERAN: They had to pinpoint. It was just like shooting ducks on a pond. Your comrades, artillery busted, a hand flying here, a leg there, guts laying out on the ground, just asking for help, and you couldn't help them. You had to move. You just had to push them aside.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

S. LISOVICZ: Kyra, my uncle was part of the 1st -- the Army's 1st Infantry Division, the famed Big Red One. They were supposed to secure the beach and then meet the U.S. paratroopers who landed behind enemy lines. But they needed air support to get off the beach, and they got it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

L. LISOVICZ: At times there were so many planes in the sky you couldn't see the sky. Now, where in the world did they all come from? You could see them forming from all directions coming into one pattern. And that's how we got off the beach, darling. This is after we landed.

They bombed nine miles long, three miles wide. And that's how we got off the beach. And we found the paratroopers. But they were all dead. They massacred them in the field.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

S. LISOVICZ: Kyra, that was just the beginning. My uncle made it all the way to Germany. By that time he was acting captain.

His Silver Star for his extraordinary courage on the battlefield in Germany says that he skillfully deployed men and weapons and held the enemy at bay until supporting troops arrived. It also says that, on several occasions, he, quote, "further jeopardized personal safety by crossing exposed terrain to administer first aid and evacuate casualties."

And by the way, Kyra, that is his uniform. He asked if he could put it on.

PHILLIPS: I -- that was my question. I'm looking at the jacket. I'm thinking is that his original uniform?

S. LISOVICZ: I didn't even know he had it.

PHILLIPS: Really? And it fit him perfectly.

S. LISOVICZ: Fit him perfectly.

PHILLIPS: Oh, my gosh. What did it feel like for him to put it on? I mean, I don't -- did he react? Did he... S. LISOVICZ: You know, my uncle, he was -- he was hollering about doing this. I swear to you, Kyra, until I got to his house in Houston, yesterday, I was not sure he would do this. And I warned the crew. I said, "Be prepared. He may get up. He may come back. He may not."

But once he sat down, he was in the moment. And I think -- I think his interview speaks for himself. Sixty -- 65 years ago, his memory is crisp, and it is painful.

PHILLIPS: Wow. Ninety-one years old. And I think, if I remember right, this is the Uncle Lenny that you've talked about that's still pretty much of a hell raiser. Isn't he? Doesn't he still like to drink a few beers and throw down at the honky tonks?

S. LISOVICZ: He -- I went to see him with my cousin and nephew this Memorial Day weekend, just a couple weeks ago, and the previous one. Yes, and among other things, we went to the rodeo, we played pool, we drank beer, we went to the honky tonk. We were going to go to a firing range, but you had to bring your own gun, and my uncle is the only one who packs heat among us. So...

PHILLIPS: Imagine that. I love that Uncle Lenny. Well, a shout out to him. He's literally the Clint Eastwood in "Grand Torino," isn't he?

S. LISOVICZ: He's -- many people have compared him to that, Kyra.

PHILLIPS: I love it. We love you, Uncle Lenny. What a fabulous, fabulous report today, Susan. Thanks so much.

S. LISOVICZ: Thank you for sharing it.

PHILLIPS: Thanks for taking a break from the stock exchange.

S. LISOVICZ: Thank you.

PHILLIPS: It meant a lot to us.

Well, no doubt about it, the legacy of World War II is alive and kicking, and we want to hear more of your war stories, as well. Send us your pictures. If you've got someone like an Uncle Lenny, just go to iReport.com. We'd love to share them with our viewers.

Well, we're also mourning the loss of a noted World War II vet. Remember this guy? You might not recognize the name, Charles Donald Albury. But you'll know what did he now, if he didn't know yet. Albury co-piloted the plane that dropped the atomic bomb on Nagasaki, Japan, on August 9, 1945.

An Orlando, Florida, funeral home confirms that he died last month after years of heart problems. And we're just hearing about it.

It's estimated that that Nagasaki bombing ended up killing around 75,000 people, but Albury says it also prevented an even bigger loss of life from an all-out U.S. invasion. Charles Donald Albury was 88 years old.

Well, the clock ticks on the search for a missing Air France jet. If it's not found in the next three weeks or so, it could be lost forever. And apparently, modern technology is no match for the size and the depth of that ocean.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PHILLIPS: Just getting word now about that serial arsonist. You may remember, back in 2006, there were the -- there was that brush fire that was lit, and authorities thought that they knew who had done it, because he had done it in the past. And it spread throughout the Riverside area. That's about 90 miles east of Los Angeles.

You may remember that when that fire was started, it killed a number of firefighters in that area. Actually, five firefighters were killed trying to work that brush fire.

Well, we're just getting word now that that serial arsonist who was convicted, Raymond Lee Oyler, 38 years old, we are being told now that he is sentenced to death. That happened today by a Riverside County superior court judge. He is sentenced to death.

We'll follow up on this as we get more information.

Take a quick break. More from the CNN NEWSROOM straight ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PHILLIPS: Well, debris believed from the missing Air France Flight 447 proved to be a false lead. The Brazilian air force says what they found in the Atlantic was not from that plane. So right now we're long on theories and short on answers.

No answers, no solace, just grief and confusion right now for those families of the 228 people on board. A service was held yesterday in Rio de Janeiro. Our John Zarrella is in Rio with the latest on the search and the investigation.

John, obviously, time is running out for searchers to try and find something. Yes?

JOHN ZARRELLA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: No question about it. They had 30 days to find the black box, the cockpit voice recorder, the data recorder. And it doesn't appear, at least today, that they're any closer to finding the main body of the wreckage of Flight 447 than they were earlier in the week.

And as you mentioned, some of the debris, the debris they picked up yesterday turned out not to be from Flight 447.

The way it transpired was this. They had been identified with radar over the last few days and by eyeballing it from their C-130s, debris on the ocean surface, but they had not picked anything up physically, because their first priority was to search for possible survivors and then to search for bodies. Well, they turned their attention yesterday to going after the debris that they had been identifying. Well, those first pieces they picked up, one turned out to be a wooden pallet that you would put cargo on, but it was not from Flight 447. Another piece they picked up was a flotation device, not from Flight 447. Apparently, just sea junk that had been lost from other ships that had been passing by, you know, in the last God knows how long.

But they still believe that the other areas they had identified contain things like wiring, because they saw a lot of wiring on the surface. And they saw plastic on the surface. And they saw, as you recall, earlier in the week they identified a seat that they saw.

So now what they have to do is start going after those items and grabbing those items and picking them up. But they're having trouble out there today, Kyra. The weather conditions are not very good. The sea -- the sea surface is rough, and it's windy and rainy out there -- Kyra.

PHILLIPS: Got to be tough. And even tougher for those families that want answers. John Zarrella, appreciate it so much.

Well, it's 2009, and we've got GPS systems that can pinpoint your location to the centimeter. So you'd think that a jetliner with a really sophisticated GPS system would be easy to find. But that's not the case.

We're going to talk to an expert pilot about this. Patrick Smith wrote the book and the column called "Ask the Pilot."

Patrick, you've worked for five airlines. You know the cockpit inside and out. Why is the plane's GPS proving so useless at this point?

PATRICK SMITH, AUTHOR, "ASK THE PILOT" (via phone): Well, that's a good question. I believe there could be more sophisticated flight data recorders and cockpit voice recorders that would allow a more timely recovery. Why don't we have them, I don't know.

This is aviation. Things tend to progress slowly. Regulatory process tends to be rather ponderous. And there's a strong resistance to change.

In any case, you know, this isn't really the crux of the issue here, you know. Whether or not the black box is recovered, we don't know, but you know, why did the plane crash? That's what we have to focus on.

PHILLIPS: And what are the theories that are out there now? And is it possible that, if it exploded in the air, that you may not find any remnants of this aircraft?

SMITH: Well, the exact details of the crash might never being known. But I think the gist of it appears to be clear, which is that the crew was victimized by a terrible storm. Now, how they got into that storm, why they got into that storm, and what exactly happened when they were inside are the fascinating questions.

PHILLIPS: And with regard to the black boxes that everybody keeps talking about, they ping for about 30 days. Right? Why has it been so difficult to track that? Is it the depth of the water?

SMITH: It's the depth of the water. Apparently, the devices are under, I've heard, up to 15,000 or 20,000 feet of water, and that's really remarkable. Above and beyond that, they're apparently lodged amid undersea mountains.

And, you know, long recovery times are not unheard of. Back with the Air India accident, I guess it was, the bombing back in 1983, it took a very long time to locate that wreckage. I think the -- there was a South African Airways crash in the Indian Ocean a decade or so ago. Same thing. When airlines disappear under thousands of feet of water, it's not an easy task to find these black boxes.

PHILLIPS: We'll keep tracking it. That's for sure. Patrick Smith, appreciate it.

SMITH: Thank you.

PHILLIPS: Safety in the skies. A big concern for critics who are blasting a plan that would close weather offices at most of the regional control centers in the U.S. The plan, part of an FAA cost- cutting move, calls for shutting down 20 offices and relying on just two central offices.

CNN meteorologist Chad Myers joins us.

Chad, is this a smart thing to do?

CHAD MYERS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: They're not doing it yet. They're going to put it on a nine-month trial with the existing plan still running. They're not going to just close down 18 places. But you can find this in the Washington Post.

Here's what the current product looks like. If you're flying through Atlanta weather service area, that's Atlanta. There's Indianapolis. There's Boston. There's D.C., blah, blah, blah. Twenty of these different ones. They say they're going to get rid of them all. They're not going to put meteorologists here anymore. And they're going to run them out of two offices, one in Maryland and one out of K.C.

And we're going to see how it goes. We're going to see if we can be just as safe with just two offices -- FAA can be.

Why they're doing this is, because when this whole 20-office thing was set up, we only had a few radars. We didn't have Doppler radar yet. We certainly didn't have something like this, where I could touch on the turbulence and see it at a moment's notice. The Internet didn't exist. You have to remember, this was 1970s, in the middle '70s.

There's surface turbulence. I can look at it right here. Forty- one thousand down to about 30,000 feet. That's OK turbulence, moderate turbulence. Then we can go see icing. Do you think there's going to be icing today? Probably not; it's summer. Got you wrong. There it is: icing right there in the northeast, from 13,000 feet to 22,000 feet. As planes descend through that or fly through that area, there could be icing today.

They would not have known that in the past, because they'd have had to call somebody and say, "What does it look like?" Or send it through the old wet fax machine to show you what other things look like.

Where is the convection? You can see it clearly right here down across parts of Florida.

And this is all part of the weather office and the lead forecaster that talks to all of these offices here and these centers. There's the Denver center right there. There would be a lead forecaster in there. There'd be a lead forecaster in there. One, one, one, one. There would be 20 of them. Anchorage, you're not going to get affected at all. Still going to be the same.

So we're going to cut this down the middle, half and half. See how it goes. Run it for nine months and see if the forecast is just as good.

They use these lead forecasters if a plane gets in trouble and needs to be driving around or moving around some airplanes and moving around, probably, some weather. Weather today like New York City, Philadelphia, down through D.C. and Charlottesville, heavy, heavy rainfall there.

What I'm more concerned with today is going to be this area of severe weather center just to the east of Denver and into parts of Nebraska. We're going to keep watching the airports for you. They've been slowing down, although they've stuck at about an hour 45 for La Guardia, JFK, Newark and Philadelphia at this point in time. Northeast corridor a little bit slow on this get-away Friday. But I'm not sure too many people get in the way. I wish I was, but I'm not. I wish I were.

PHILLIPS: All right, Chad. Always checking your watch.

MYERS: See if I can get out of here in time.

PHILLIPS: All right. Don't worry, we'll let you out on time. All right.

Straight ahead, a World War II horror story that wasn't told for decades. Uncle Sam swore the players to secrecy. Now finally, we hear their story. It's about soldiers, slavery and survival.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PHILLIPS: Well, his attorney says that he was brainwashed in a Yemeni prison. The man accused of killing one soldier and wounding another at an army recruiting center in Little Rock was in court again today. Abdul Hakim Muhammad has pleaded not guilty in Monday's shootings.

Muhammad is a convert to Islam. He traveled to Yemen a couple of years ago. His attorney says that he was tortured by radical Islamic fundamentalists while in prison on a visa violation.

Preparations are under way in Kansas for the funeral of Dr. George Tiller. The abortion provider was shot to death last Sunday while he was handing out programs at his church. He'll be buried tomorrow.

The man accused of killing Tiller, Scott Roeder, says that he's being treated as a criminal, even though he hasn't been convicted of anything. Roeder is charged with first-degree murder.

A teenager suffering with an undiagnosed illness. We're going to tell you how she solved her own medical mystery.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PHILLIPS: New unemployment numbers. We're going to talk about those in a second. But first, Dow Industrials up 44 points right now as we check the Big Board there at the New York Stock Exchange.

OK, let's talk about those new unemployment numbers that are out. And the news is pretty mixed. The jobless rate actually jumped to 9.4 percent last month. That's the highest in more than 25 years. But here's some good news. The pace of layoffs has eased with employers cutting 345,000 jobs in May. And that sounds like a lot, but it's the fewest since September and much lower than had been expected. Six million people have lost their jobs since the recession began 18 months ago.

General Motors has reached a deal to sell its Saturn brand to Penske Automotive Group. That sale is part of GM's strategy to shed its four noncore brands as it restructures the company. Penske is headed by former racecar driver Roger Penske, who owns NASCAR and IndyCar racing teams in addition to his own dealership chain. Penske says that he plans to offer all of Saturn's 350 dealerships new franchise agreements.

And three former execs of Countrywide Financial now facing charges of civil fraud. Angelo Mozilo headed the company, which was a major player in the high-risk subprime mortgage meltdown. Well, yesterday, federal regulators charged Mozilo and the others with deliberately misleading investors about the company's risky lending practices. Mozilo is also charged with insider trading. His attorney calls the allegations baseless.

A teenager in Washington state battled for months with an illness no one could diagnose. Then the high school student began studying her own case in a science class. Shockingly, she discovered the answer that eluded all her doctors for so long. Here's the story from our Charlotte Starck, from our CNN affiliate KOMO.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JESSICA TERRY, DIAGNOSED OWN ILLNESS: I think I'm going it find it soon. This is the one.

CHARLOTTE STARCK, KOMO-TV CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Finding the secret to Jessica Terry's sickness isn't easy. Pathologists missed it.

TERRY: I was very sick. I missed actually almost half of my middle school.

STARCK: She suffered from fevers, vomiting, anemia and abdominal pain that sometimes dropped her to her knees. But high school homework changed her life.

TERRY: These are the slides, and you can see the tissues on them.

STARCK: It happened in histology class at East Side High School. The assignment? Study tissue diseases. Jessica's group chose the intestines because of her undiagnosed problems.

TERRY: There were just no answers anywhere. And once they diagnosed me with like irritable bowel or colitis, it was kind of an answer, but we knew it was worse than that because I was always very sick.

STARCK: She asked pathologists for her own slides. For days she studied them. Then, she spotted it.

MARY MARGARET WELCH, TEACHER: Then all of a sudden, Jess goes, I think I found something. And it's like, what? And she says, Ms. Welch, Ms. Welch, come over here?

TERRY: So, this is the immune response around it.

STARCK: Granuloma are dark-centered cells, indicators of Crohn's disease. The autoimmune disease attacks digestive cells and prevents the absorption of nutrients.

WELCH: In 24 hours, all of a sudden, Jessica has a confirmation from her physician.

STARCK: Her pathologist was embarrassed, but Jessica doesn't hold a grudge. She focuses on her future.

TERRY: As I get older, the disease can get worse.

STARCK (on camera): Jessica's now taking the lesson she learned in class and telling her story in a children's book that she hopes will help other kids and parents understand a truly painful disease.

TERRY: It's weird I had to solve my own medical problem.

STARCK (voice-over): Her research gave her the diagnosis and now the confidence to attempt medical school.

(END VIDEOTAPE) PHILLIPS: Well, Crohn's disease is a painful digestive illness, and there's no cure, but there are therapies that can help. Find out more on the symptoms, causes and treatments at CNN health.com.

The world's top scientists are holding talks today on the swine flu, but the World Health Organization insists that the meeting does not mean it's raising the pandemic alert level to phase six, the organization's highest level indicating a global pandemic. Health officials say that the H1N1 virus has killed 125 people worldwide. Nearly 22,000 people have been infected, and more than half of them in the U.S.

A record breaking rap sheet that has us saying "What the...?"

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PHILLIPS: Well, stay home from work and still get paid. Sweet deal if you can get it. But what we're not so sweet on is the case of Charlene Schmitz. The ex-high school teacher's doing 10 years in the federal pen, convicted of enticing a student with sexual text messages. But even though her job's long gone, her paycheck isn't. She's still pulling a $51,000 a year paycheck. Under Alabama law, she's entitled to collec her old salary while she appeals her firing. Hey, lawmakers, anybody looking into this loophole?

And this story struck a chord on our Twitter page. Stine50 says, "Oh, isn't that rich? She should not be paid and collect if she wins her appeal or should at least pay room and board to the state while in prison." Ozifah's right there with you: "That teacher should pay part of the cost of the penitentiary from her salary, no? Will take some burden off taxpayers." And from Arman05, "Amazing, but not surprising."

Well, if you want to weigh in, send us a tweet at kyracnn.

This arrest record has to be a record. Meet Paul Baldwin of New Hampshire. His wrap sheet, well, about as long as Warren Buffett's balance sheet. Police arrested Baldwin for the 153rd time -- let me repeat, 153rd time -- this past weekend. Yep, 153 strikes and he's still not out.

The most recent bust for punching some guy. Well, it came a week after he served a year for stealing a beer. Baldwin's record began in the early '80s, everything from trespassing to theft. Sometimes he was tossed in jail overnight just to sober up. Just like Mayberry had Otis Campbell, Portsmouth has Paul Baldwin.

Straight ahead, true heroes. American soldiers told to keep quiet about their personal horror in World War II. Well, they're finally getting their due, thanks to one of our reporters bring it go to everyone's attention.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PHILLIPS: You see President Obama toured Buchenwald in Germany. He's the first American president to visit that camp, where the Nazis killed some 56,000 people. It's an infamous stop on the World War II -- or the World War II map, rather.

And about 60 miles away, a camp and a horror that history's nearly forgotten, Berga. Do you remember that name? It's where American soldiers were turned into slaves and came out survivors. Thelma Gutierrez has their story, a story that only recently has been told.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

THELMA GUTIERREZ, CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): These men, now close to 90 years of age, haven't seen each other in 64 years. As young soldiers, they were captured by the Nazis and held as slaves at a concentration camp. Few people ever knew the horrors they endured. They were sworn to secrecy by the United States government.

But six decades later, the U.S. Army now acknowledgings that these American soldiers, known as the Berga survivors, were held in a Nazi slave camp. This is their story.

ANTHONY ACEVEDO, WORLD WAR II BERGA CAMP SURVIVOR: "That morning our last (INAUDIBLE)."

GUTIERREZ: In this tattered book on pages that have yellowed with time are memories that Anthony Acevedo kept to himself for decades.

ACEVEDO: We weren't supposed to say what we suffered through, what we were dying of.

GUTIERREZ: Acevedo and 350 other American soldiers were captured in the Battle of the Bulge. Many were sent to Berga, a subcamp of the Buchenwald concentration camp. They were used as slaves to dig tunnels for the German army to hide their secret weapons.

ACEVEDO: I go back to the books and say, I can't believe this. Nobody knows about us.

GUTIERREZ: At 84, he shares the diary no one was supposed to see.

ACEVEDO: "Two more of our men died today."

GUTIERREZ: Acevedo was a 20-year-old medic who sewed up wounds and comforted the dying. He sketched atrocities and horrors he says he witnessed, and cataloged the deaths of his comrades.

ACEVEDO: "Rogers, cardiac. Wells (ph), pneumonia. Goldberg, malnutrition."

GUTIERREZ: While many starved to death, the rest ate what they were given.

ACEVEDO: We had rats, cockroaches.

GUTIERREZ (on camera): In the soup.

ACEVEDO: In the soup.

GUTIERREZ (voice-over): In two months, Acevedo went from 140 pounds to 87 pounds.

ACEVEDO: Lice just ate us up. They crawled all over us.

GUTIERREZ: By April of 1945, the Allied forces were closing in. The Nazis forced the prisoners to flee with them.

ACEVEDO: We were put on a death march, 217 miles.

GUTIERREZ: On the march, Acevedo witnessed men, women and children too weak to walk shot and killed. Then he heard American forces in the distance.

ACEVEDO: "We were liberated today, April the 23rd, 1945."

GUTIERREZ: This weekend, six of the 20 Berga survivors who are well enough to make the journey will be honored in Orlando, Florida. But Acevedo, who lives in California, won't be there. He says he'll stay behind with some of the other survivors.

As a young medic, he never left his men behind. He says he won't start now.

Thelma Gutierrez, CNN, Yucaipa, California.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

PHILLIPS: Well, you heard in Thelma's story that the Berga survivors were sworn to secrecy. Well, after Thelma enterprised that piece, a congressman saw it on our show here at CNN and got together with other lawmakers to make sure that these men would finally be recognized and their stories committed to history.

Spencer Bachus from Alabama's 6th District is with us. And it's our honor to have one of the Berga survivors with us, Morton Brooks, he's joining us live from Orlando, Florida.

And Morton, let's start with you. How does it feel to finally be able to talk about this?

MORTON BROOKS, BERGA SURVIVOR: Well, we've just been having a wonderful get-together. We are fellows who are glad to see one another. We're just a band of brothers. And that's all what I can tell you.

PHILLIPS: And, you know, take me back and tell me why you were sworn to secrecy. I think a lot of people are still wondering why the U.S. government said, don't tell anyone about this.

BROOKS: You ask a good question. I have never found out. But I just know that it happened.

PHILLIPS: Wow, really? You've never been given an answer?

BROOKS: No, I have not.

PHILLIPS: Where did you get the command not to say anything? Do you remember when that happened or how that happened?

BROOKS: Well, many of us got discharged from different places. I was discharged from a hospital, and I was just glad to get out. And there were little booklets that were given about not talking about our experiences. Some fellows had to sign documents that they wouldn't talk. So, it varied depending on where the fellow got discharged.

PHILLIPS: Wow. So, when you were captured, and you were put into this camp, Morton, if I'm reading it properly, you were all lined up and questioned about your names and where you were from. Do you remember that, and did the Germans know you were Jewish?

BROOKS: Yes, they asked specifically. And they threatened the group that if the fellows didn't acknowledge their being Jewish, that they would kill six of their buddies. So, nobody wanted that to happen, and those who were Jewish generally did acknowledge it. So, we ended up in a separate barracks known as the Jewish barracks known as the Jewish barracks.

PHILLIPS: So, you were separated then once they knew you were Jewish?

BROOKS: Yes, we were.

PHILLIPS: And Morton, how did they treat you?

BROOKS: Well, it didn't seem to be much different that be the other fellows. This was in Stalag 9B. Many of the fellows were from the Battle of the Bulge, and so we just accepted what was going on. It seemed that the food given out to all of us was pretty much the same, but they did make fellows in our barracks sometimes stand longer in the cold weather and mistreat us that way. But that was nothing compared to when we were shipped to Berga.

PHILLIPS: Tell me what they did to you at Berga.

BROOKS: Well, at Berga, we were put into a forced labor situation, and the order for 350 came from the SS group who supervised the camp at Berga. So, they were getting the political prisoners weakening and not able to work, so they needed labor. And we 350 were the labor force.

But we didn't understand about their "work to death" program. But that's what it was. We got very little to eat -- it's been estimated at maybe 400 calories -- and worked ten-hour to 12-hour days with pneumatic drills drilling into this rock wall.

And then after the German munitions expert blasted the wall, we went in to dig the rock and put it into the cars, the mining cars, and then push it out to dump it into the river. And that's what we did all day long.

PHILLIPS: And I can't -- what about when you saw the other Jews? Not your fellow soldiers, but the other Jews and the condition that they were in and how they were being treated, how did that affect you, Morton? And did you try to help them in the midst of all of this? And, you know, in addition to yourself and also your fellow soldiers?

BROOKS: Well, they were in different mine shafts. They had a lot of mine shafts. They were working on some project that I think connected with atomic energy at the time. I believe from what we can piece together that we knocked out the heavy (INAUDIBLE) facility in Norway, and they were trying to replace that. That's one of the theories. But we know that they were preessing to try and get that done in the hopes of being able to win the war. Certainly the SS was working very hard to do that.

PHILLIPS: Congressman...

BROOKS: But we were...

PHILLIPS: Go ahead, Morton.

BROOKS: Well, that was it. We were the labor force. We were not anxious to help them. And so we were subject to the beatings on a daily basis. Sometimes we tried to sabotage a project and bore the brunt of their anger. But they were extremely cruel and had no feeling for us as soldiers. When we brought up the Geneva Convention, they laughed in our face. So, that's the circumstances under which we worked.

PHILLIPS: Oh, Morton.

Congressman, I know you saw the piece that aired on our program, and now you've had a chance to meet some of the other guys like Morton. And, you know, when you heard about this, tell me why you responded. What touched your heart, and why did you want to do something to recognize these guys?

REP. SPENCER BACHUS (R), ALABAMA: Well, Thelma on CNN did such a good job at just -- it's struck me and Joe Baca, a California congressman, at the same time. And he and I got together, and we researched this. We interviewed several of the veterans. And we found, among other things some of the things Morton hadn't mentioned -- there was so much -- is that the average weight was, say, 60 to 80 to 90 pounds when they got out.

And over about 40 percent of them did not survive. They were fed sawdust on some occasions, cat and rat soup. That sounds awful, and it is awful. What also struck me, though, were some German citizens and even guards on occasions passed them food, and on at least one occasion, a German guard was beaten for doing that.

PHILLIPS: So, when you listened to Morton's story, and even within this interview, what do you say is just so remarkable about him and the other men?

BACHUS: Well, the fact that for years they had to keep this secret, and there was actually a two-page document that we've discovered that they had to sign. They were under penalty of severe punishment to even talk about this. So, to keep all this bottled up for so many years and not have answers, but Secretary Geren committed, Pete Geren, to making this right, and I think he's done an outstanding job. And I just thank Morton, and I do thank CNN for bringing this to peoples' attention.

PHILLIPS: Yes. Well, we're -- it meant a lot to us, too. Believe me. And I know it meant a lot to Thelma Gutierrez to tell the story.

Morton, we are just so honored to talk to you and have you on our air. And you've lived such a remarkable life. So brave. Thank you so much for spending the afternoon with us. You deserve everything that you've received today.

BROOKS: Well, thank you. We have had a wonderful morning with Lockheed Martin. They've honored us, and it was a thrilling morning. So we'll have our banquet tomorrow night, and we'll wind up the weekend.

PHILLIPS: Well, it's well deserved. Morton Brooks, we honor you, and Congressman Spencer Bachus, thank you for making sure that it happened.

BACHUS: Thank you.

PHILLIPS: Well, the history written 64 years after V-E Day. You can read more about the Berga survivors and their stories on cnn.com. Our online will be posting the diary of a survivor on their site.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PHILLIPS: Well, it should be impossible to buy U.S. military hardware and sell it to hostile countries and terrorists, so why is it so easy? Scandalously easy? We're pushing that forward next hour.