An angel in khaki
Published: March 29, 2006
Army Sgt. Conley Shirley never considered himself a hero.
Nevertheless, Shirley and other American troops who risked their lives during World War II to free those enslaved in Nazi concentration camps will be honored by the Jewish Foundation of Greater Oklahoma City. The organization’s annual Holocaust Remembrance Program will also remember camp survivors and more than 6 million Jews and 5 million other victims who were murdered during the war.
This year’s event is April 23 at the Freede Wellness Center on the Oklahoma City University campus.
Shirley, a decorated paratrooper with the U.S. Army’s elite 82nd Airborne Division and a native of Ada, Okla., was on a routine reconnaissance mission near Wobbelin, Germany, on May 2, 1945, when he stumbled upon a concentration camp.
The last German SS guards had retreated only hours earlier as Allied troops advanced. The horror they left behind shocked Shirley and others who came to the survivors’ assistance.
“Fifty-five years later and I still have nightmares about that day,” Shirley said back in 2000. “Corpses were piled around the camp. And those who had survived were only skin and bones — walking dead. It was sickening. I still struggle with the disturbing images.”
One of the Jewish survivors at Wobbelin was 14-year-old Gene Meisels, who later became a U.S. citizen. After Meisels’ death in 1990, his son David, a New York City attorney, began a search for the American soldiers who had liberated the camp.
Officials at the 82nd Infantry Division Museum at Fort Bragg, N.C., directed David Meisels to Shirley. The two met at Ada in 2000.
“Conley is a hero to me,” David Meisels said. “As far as I’m concerned, Americans like him saved western civilization by stopping Hitler. Conley had the courage to enter the camp alone (Shirley didn’t know the Germans had fled). The surviving Jews named him the ‘angel in khaki.’ He was awarded many medals, including six battle stars, but more importantly to me, he saved my father. I wouldn’t be here if wasn’t for him.”
As much as he wanted to forget the gruesome scenes at Wobbelin, Shirley understood the need to remember.
Both Conley Shirley and Gene Meisels have passed on, but the Jewish Foundation of Greater Oklahoma City is making a positive effort to honor their memory.
Conley Shirley never considered himself a hero. Of course, that’s the way it is with heroes — they never believe their courage makes them special, not even when they’re known as an “angel in khaki.”
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