Her great-grandfather helped liberate Buchenwald; 80 years later, the CWU grad student makes it her mission to show the full scope of WWII vets’ experiences

Alicia Callahan’s research took a turn when she read a dark passage in her great-grandfather’s diary.

Thomas Hackler was part of the Sixth Armored Division of the U.S. Army. When Callahan learned that he helped liberate Buchenwald Concentration Camp in 1945, her great uncle shared with her Hackler’s diary. It revealed overlooked, complicated truths of World War II, including when American soldiers shot their fellow soldiers amid mental breakdowns.

“That’s when it hit me. We always focus on battle strategies and tactics, but every soldier had their own experience,” Callahan said. “We tend to lump them together, but each one has a unique story.”

Friday marks 80 years since American forces liberated Buchenwald, revealing the horrors of the Holocaust to the world. With World War II veterans like her great-grandfather no longer here to share their stories, Callahan has made it her mission to carry their voices forward, preserving the truth of what they experienced.

Her passion for veteran memory began at Washington State University, as she tailored her honors thesis to her familial connection to the Sixth Armored Division. Eager to hear from veterans, she joined its Facebook page in 2022. The response was overwhelming.

“I have war uniforms. I have the Nazi camp flag from Buchenwald that (soldiers) took when they liberated it,” Callahan said. “These children of the soldiers (were) so anxious to get these stories out, and that’s when I realized, there are so many stories that are going to be forgotten if we don’t write them down.”

Buchenwald was one of Germany’s largest concentration camps, located roughly 5 miles from the town of Weimar. From 1937 until its liberation in 1945, more than 55,000 people died there at the hands of the Nazis.

A Central Washington University grad student, Callahan focuses her research on preserving veteran stories to combat historical amnesia and challenge the idea that war memory is all about patriotism, bravery and the “Greatest Generation.”

“This almighty pedestal we put them on doesn’t give them room to come to terms with what they may have done that they may regret now,” she said. “You call them heroes, and they’re like, ‘I used German bodies to put my machine gun on.’ ”

A woman with a mission

Callahan’s knack for history didn’t come naturally. The 24-year-old from Royal City, Washington, grew up dreading her high school history classes. It wasn’t until she took a World War II history course with WSU history professor Ray Sun that she found her passion.

She remembers Sun, an expert on Holocaust and genocide studies, focusing on the humanization of individual Jewish prisoners. He taught the class not only to think of them as part of the 6 million murdered, but as people first.

“He said, ‘I don’t want you to think about that number; I want you to break that down and think of how many people had a favorite food, a dream career, someone they loved,’ ” Callahan said.

If students are shown photos of Holocaust victims without any context of who they were or what they liked to do outside of the war, that continues the perpetration, Sun said. So, he tries to find pictures of Jewish communities in everyday life.

“They have children, they’re going on picnics or hikes, they are fully human, which shows what the Nazis had to do to strip away their humanity,” he said.

Callahan went from hating history to falling in love with it in two months. She switched her major from elementary education to history and asked Sun to be her adviser as she began working on her honors thesis.

“I tell people constantly, ‘Ray changed my life,’ and I will forever be indebted to that man,” she said.

Sun’s unique teaching style – centered on personal stories and forgotten histories – influenced Callahan’s thesis, which stood out for its focus on individual experiences and earned her several awards.

“She is a woman with a mission,” Sun said. “You don’t find many people who are 24 with a passion to talk to 90-year-olds. That just doesn’t happen, right?”

It does.

“Heaven forbid I discovered this 10 years down the road and all these veterans had passed away,” she said. “I would have missed their friendship, their first-hand accounts and their oral histories.”

According to the National World War II Museum, less than 1% of the 16.4 million Americans who served during World War II were still alive as of 2024.

“I’m maybe one of the last people that get to hear their stories that they have only been sharing for a couple of years,” she said.

For Callahan, interviewing veterans in their 90s gave her a rare glimpse into stories they had often kept buried for decades because of trauma. She hopes to turn her graduate thesis into a book after graduating in June.

“I just think about doing these stories justice and these men who trusted me to do it,” she said. “Not only are they veterans, they’re my really great friends.”