It was all a dream

The Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum is hosting an exhibition titled “The Secrets of WW 2”. So I went there hoping to learn about the bravery of our soldiers risking their lives fighting the Nazis.

The museum website says, “Explore the wild, strange, and sometimes shocking twists that seem like fiction.”

I hoped to learn about the role Ronald Reagan played in helping to liberate various Nazi concentration camps when he saw action in Europe as part of the US Signal Corps in World War 2.

As I wandered around the different machines on display, I kept looking for photographs of Reagan as he filmed the camps and helped liberate the survivors. However, I was unable to find one

picture of the future president rescuing inmates.

I know that Reagan participated in the liberation of the camps because in November 1983, during Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir’s visit to the White House, the president went on for almost an hour explaining why he was pro-Jewish: it was because, being in the Signal Corps in

World War 2, he visited Buchenwald shortly after the Nazi defeat and helped take films of the camp.

Reagan repeated this story the following day to an Israeli ambassador. He also told this story to others including Holocaust survivor Simon Wiesenthal.

You can imagine how disappointed I was when I returned home and did some research. It turns out that President Reagan was absent from any of the displays because he was never stationed in Europe. He spent the war in Culver City, California. He never saw a concentration camp or left the safety of Hollywood making morale-boosting movies for the armed forces.

Actually, I’ve never been to the Reagan Library. Maybe

I’ll drive down to Simi Valley one day and pay a visit.

Art Sirota Lancaster