Faces of the Holocaust: Delbert Cooper, Liberator

Del Cooper was born in Dayton and graduated from Fairmont High School in 1941. As a soldier with the 71st Infantry Division in 1945, he was among the first Americans to enter and liberate Gunzkirchen, a satellite of the notorious Mauthausen concentration camp. Today, his most vivid memory of that harrowing experience is the sickening smell of dead bodies - “the odor of evil,” he calls it. After seeing the camp, the next day he wrote a detailed account to his wife Joan and this letter is now part of our exhibit. He also took part in the capture of some German soldiers and an SS officer. After the war he worked until 1972 at the Defense Electronic Supply Center in Kettering and lived in Beavercreek. He and Joan had one daughter.