Marblehead doctor, decorated WWII vet dies

MARBLEHEAD – Dr. William Haley Jr., who practiced medicine for 40 years in Marblehead and was an eyewitness to the horrors of the Holocaust, died Saturday at the age of 93 at the John Bertram House in Salem.A graduate of Harvard College and Tufts University School of Medicine, Dr. Haley was a medical officer in World War II. He received the Purple Heart, the Distinguished Service Cross and, more recently, the Legion d’ Honneur from the French Government.When he was interviewed by The Item in 1997, Dr. Haley’s most vivid memory of World War II was the hour he spent touring the Buchenwald death camp April 21, 1945, less than a week after it was liberated.He was chosen to be a witness to the dark side of history. He was serving as a surgeon with the 102nd Recon Squad, a New Jersey-based unit who called themselves “The Cavalry.” At the time they were encamped near the death camp and the doctor drove there with a captain from the 102nd and a Belgian officer.It was Army policy. “When we opened up the camps as many men as possible from every unit (paid) at least a brief visit so he would be a verbal witness to what happened,” Dr. Haley said.What he saw was horrific but no surprise. Three of his instructors at Tufts Medical School were Jews who had fled to America from Germany to escape the Holocaust.He saw a few survivors as their Jeep entered the camp. Some walked slowly for exercise while others leaned gingerly against the barbed wire fence lining the road.Inside the camp hundreds of bodies lay neatly stacked, heels aligned along a footpath. They were waiting to be transported to the furnaces, but the furnaces stopped and the operators fled when the Allies reached the camp.”They were all pretty spare, pretty thin, they didn’t have much musculature,” he recalled.”To a doctor, both the living and the dead showed evidence of plenty of disease and illness.”At the time of the interview there were people who denied that the Holocaust ever happened. After sharing his observations Dr. Haley called those people “misinformed.””What more can I say,” he said. “I believe it happened.”