The Hotel Tacloban
Anthony Acevedo was one of 350 U.S. soldiers held at Berga an der Elster, outside Buchenwald concentration camp. The soldiers, working 12-hour days, were used by the German army to dig tunnels and hide equipment in the final weeks of the war. Less than half of the soldiers survived their captivity . But the worst was yet to come." We had to sign an affidavit ... [saying] we never went through what we went through. We weren't supposed to say a word," he says.
The initial reviews were great. Critic Paul Bach called it "A soldier's fascinating story of wartime survival and betrayal...a shocking denouement." James Kaufman at the LA Times called it "A very true book and a story well told, chilling in its accumulation." As I mentioned, there has been steady interest in Hollywood. But the powers that be, in industry and government, can kill any book, especially one that reveals their crimes. The closest I ever got to official confirmation was the letter to left from the curator at Ft. Hood, Rudeford Norman. But as my father and I learned the hard way, the only truth is official truth, even when the official truth is a Big Lie.
In the 26 September 1984 Christian Science Monitor, reviewer Thomas D’Evelyn said, "After the dust settles, The Hotel Tacloban will be there, bearing witness to man’s inhumanity to man, to the impotence of pain, and to the durability of the love of father and son. It sheds light on these dark times. Read it.”