(upbeat music)
- Hello and welcome to In Wisconsin.
I'm Patty Low.
Each week we bring you stories about the people
and issues in our state.
This week, a time to remember the liberation
of World War II concentration camps
as told firsthand by Wisconsin veterans.
Travel into the North Woods for a rare glimpse
of a hibernating mama bear and cubs.
(sniffing)
And find out what motivates this couple
to volunteer for an all night shift
the trolling of secret location along the Wolf River.
We'll have these stories plus the trip to a state park
on the rugged Door County Shoreline in Wisconsin.
- Major funding for In Wisconsin is provided
by the people of a lion's energy who bring safe, reliable, and
environmentally friendly energy to keep homes, neighborhoods,
and life in Wisconsin running smoothly,
a lion's energy, offering energy-saving
ideas on the web.
This year is the 60th anniversary of the liberation
of Nazi concentration camps in the days following World War II.
But the liberation came too late for millions
of people who died in those camps.
Many Wisconsin soldiers were part of the liberation force
that first discovered the Nazi atrocities.
This story from the Wisconsin Public Television Documentary
World War II stories Europe recalls the vivid memories
of some of those veterans.
- I was in a medical battalion headquarters
supervising ambulance companies.
We're going through this little town of Orderiff, our conboy,
discovered that General Eisenhower Bradley and Patton
had arrived shortly before we came through the town
to go through this first concentration camp
that had been overrun.
So we joined the group.
There was approximately 200 GIs that went through that
camp with the high command.
The objective of the SS troops that were operating the camp
was to kill off all of the prisoners
and eliminate as much of the evidence
that they could before the camps were overrun.
That was orders that Hitler had given.
It was estimated that there had been over 3,000 people killed
this machine gun down.
I know as we went through the camp,
there were bodies scattered all over the grounds.
Never forget to stand in the group.
I was with right behind Eisenhower and Patton
when the MP opened the door of a body
shed near the Crematorium.
General Eisenhower's comment was,
"This is the damnedest thing I've seen in all my life."
And Patton's comment was, "The dirty sun's a bit just."
If there was any question as to why that war had to be fought,
it was removed when you got into one of those camps.
I was put first in a heavy weapons company
and then an anti-tank company.
We ended up in Munich.
Dachau was outside Munich and Dachau had not been
well known, of course.
It had been kept secret.
I was never there and I wasn't really too eager to go there
and see that place because it had all the ovens
where they were, of course, cremating people.
But the prisoners there at Dachau
that were in the best of shape came into Munich
and they were walking around wearing these striped suits
and they'd come up to you and they had pictures
of their family that they had been carrying with them.
Some of them had been in these concentration camps
for five years.
The ones that were still in Dachau, of course,
many of them were in the process of dying.
They had, I don't know how many concentration camps
across the country, but Dachau was perhaps the most infamous.
- Buchenwald, Dachau, and Auschwitz
that are probably the best known,
but within Germany they had about 180 of
these slave labor camps and occupied territories.
They had over 200.
So there was close to 400 slave labor camps,
mostly Jews, of course, but they had everything
from college professors to political people that
were believed dangerous to the Nazi system.
- But I guess the worst time to end up the war
was before I came back to go in the concentration camp.
It was just so unbelievable.
I can still see those people crawling around
and we had the crematoriums there
and where they hung them and then they tell us their stories
and they'd show us their numbers.
They had numbers in their arms.
And then there were some nurses, German nurses
from the little towns.
They'd round them up.
They had to come in and help us.
I didn't treat them very nice, but I felt you're
to blame for this.
People that were in concentration camps,
of course, they were trying to get back to their homeland.
Well, when they would get back there,
they would usually find it wasn't there.
The houses and everything had been burned down
and there must have been a lot of cases of people that,
well, they were very happy to be released,
but they were in bad shape, health wise.
They had no jobs or anything.
In our Army chal lines, we would be outside usually
in the summertime and you'd go through with your mess kit.
And then at the end of the thing was the place
you could dump your garbage and all.
Well, there were always people standing there
that took the stuff out of the garbage.
There was tremendous numbers of German casualties
that had been wounded and hadn't had any medical care
because there was a young SS officer.
I remember he was early 20s, 22, 23 years old.
Spoke a bit of English, but he had been
hit by an artillery shell and the shoulder.
His arm was blown off, his right arm.
He hadn't had any medical care, he was badly infected
and terrible condition, but he was still conscious.
Surgeon took a look at him and told the technician,
if we have any chance of saving this guy,
he's gonna need whole blood and he's gonna need it fast.
And this man feebly raised his left arm.
And as the doctor, he said, what kind of
blood is it going to be?
The doctor said, well, what difference does that make?
He said, well, if it's Jew or Negro blood, I don't want it.
And the doctor threw the sheet, he said,
set this man aside as people here
that want to live more than he does.
But it was just hard to comprehend the degree
of racial prejudice that was indoctrinated into those people.
I'll never forget, I thought only the America
people could see, but we're seeing
here, it was a shock.
And the Nazis, you know, they'd say, well, those Nazis.
Of course, my husband was as German as I'm Irish,
but I had no hatred, but some of the nurses did,
they say, you lose all crowd kids,
they'll start another war in 20 years.
Well, you know, they were looking at us,
and they wanted candy bars and gum.
And you know, they were sweet little children,
and I couldn't hate them, but something didn't.
They said, what do you bother with those kids?
Their parents started the war.
That's why you're here.
Little things like that were said.
Wisconsin Public Television is broadcasting
a special three-part series called Auschwitz
inside the Nazi state.
Viewers of Wisconsin Public Television
can watch the first installment tonight at 11 p.m.
The second installment of the series
airs Wednesday, January 26th at 8 p.m.,
and the third airs Wednesday, February 2nd at 8 p.m.
Viewers in the Milwaukee and Duluth Public Television areas
can check their local listings for air dates.
You can find more information about the series on our website
at wpt.org/inwisconsin.
We switch gears entirely now to bring you a story
that's connected to one of Wisconsin's winter traditions,
ice fishing.
Every February, a particularly primal ice fishing season
opens up on Lake Winnebago.
It's the Lake Sturgeon Sparing Season.
It's only open for a short window of time,
due to concerns about overharvest of sturgeon,
but it's very popular.
The season lasts for just a few days in February,
but the sport remains possible, due in large part to
a springtime activity.
One that reporter Art Hackett found
may even be more popular than Sparing Season itself.
There is no catch and release tradition
among Spirors who populate shanties on Lake Winnebago
during February's brief open season on sturgeon.
Once the spear is thrown and hits home,
there's no going back.
The only way a spear can ensure there
will be fish in the future is to make sure
sturgeon produce as many baby sturgeon as possible.
Well, I've been spearing since I was a little kid
when I first started out in the '50s.
When the water warms up and the sturgeon
starts spawning in the spring, Keith Schrader of Lake
Puygon stops being a spearer and starts being
a sturgeon patrol.
And when they started the sturgeon patrol,
well, I kind of got into it when I could.
Well, now I've been up here about every year
for the last 10 years.
The sturgeon patrols were started about 30 years ago
by the conservation group Sturgeon for Tomorrow.
The volunteers helped the DNR guard the fish's
spawning grounds along the Wolf River.
Todd Schaller is a DNR warden.
He's earned the nickname the sturgeon general.
What we're worried about from an enforcement standpoint
is during this spring run, the fish are so concentrated
and very shallow, they really don't pay attention
to what's going on around and they're obsessed with
somebody who can walk down, pick one up, take
them illegally.
Schaller says the volunteer patrols
have made poaching a rare event.
We really don't see the problems we've had
several years ago.
But occasionally we used to probably four or five years ago.
We still had a case where people in this spring run
took some sturgeon and they were apprehending.
The guards now include a number of people
like Richard Bates of Children who don't spear
fish in the winter.
Probably the most amazing fish we'll have in this area.
Prehistoric, the takes along from the start to reproduce.
The sturgeon run is turned into a spring festival
in New London, Shaocton and Shauno.
Walkways have been built at several points
so people can observe the fish.
Probably the saffron one at the peak there was probably
around 5,000 people here.
All the parking lots, the highways, the build dead.
Police officers, directing traffic in and out.
There is a bunch of them up.
And locations along the highway being a sturgeon patrol
means doing crowd control.
At secluded backwoods locations, it's the Wisconsin equivalent
of swimming with dolphins.
But just getting a chance to be a sturgeon guard
anywhere along the river is like winning the lottery.
Spawning starts when the water reaches the right temperature.
It's difficult to predict when that will be.
I've wanted to do this for probably five years now.
Dunn Thompson of Otoma and his wife Priscilla
have signed up before.
And they canceled it like about 12 dollars before we came.
And this year they called and said that it was on for today.
So here we are.
The Thompson's got their assignment at the sturgeon camp,
just north of Shaocton.
Well, steamberg's real important.
It's their shallow.
They're in their 100s.
OK, that's right.
There's hundreds there.
Wardens keep track of where fish are spawning.
Isolated locations are known by the name of a land owner
or a unique aspect of a particular site.
We're going to have you go to site which is called
colors. It's on the Wolf River.
Thompson is getting lucky, drawing a site
well off the beaten path.
Right across the map there's a lane, a fire
number lane going back.
There's water in the road.
You can drive on the road.
OK, here there's three cabins in here.
The water's real high and they're actually
coming coming up into the yard.
And indeed they are up into the yard.
The wolf is near flood stage.
Several inches of water cover the grass well
beyond the river's banks.
And you can literally walk amongst the sturgeon.
[water splashing]
They seem gentle.
Like they're in a different kind of state I suppose.
What would've been the most memorable thing
you've seen out here?
Petting the fish because I got to pet them up by the rocks.
Just watching them the size of them how big they are.
They're just gigantic.
You don't get a chance to see them like this.
You never do.
You've never seen this many fish.
No, never.
Not like this ever.
There must be thousands of them in this river today.
They're just everywhere.
Sometimes when you see them spawn like that you'll see
six, eight, ten, you know, 15 just picked down here
in the bank of the river.
Splashing around.
Done and Prasowa have a chance to watch them all night.
So when people ask you what you did over the week and you say
spent the night with sturgeon.
That's right.
Yes, that's right.
Told a lot of people.
And what do they think of that?
Well some of them have a reaction like I guess
you know what's wrong with you and other people.
A lot of the friends I have are sports people.
A lot of them are spear and a lot of them are like
you know good for you.
Something different.
It's fun.
We have food, water.
And the fish.
Watching the fish.
Just to see what they're doing.
They say sometimes during the night that
they get really going.
You get really loud and noisy.
That'll be something to see I think.
It'll be an experience.
We'll never forget.
[Music]
Our next story takes us from the banks of the Wolf River
to the woods of Forest County.
That's where a UW Green Bay research team is tracking
and studying black bears.
It's estimated there are more than 10,000 black
bears in Wisconsin.
And wildlife biologists continually track and test the
animals to, among other things, monitor their health.
The trick for the Green Bay team as producer Joe
Angera discovered is that in order to do their
research the team has to ignore that old rule of
let's sleeping bears lie.
February. Forest County.
I think he's in there.
And his search is underway.
Deep in the woods they find it.
That's not the mother-loat.
Veterinary, criscats of two rivers relays the
news to the research crew.
Come here.
Yeah, it's a cubby deer.
The object of their search, their slumbering subject,
180 pound female bear.
Den below a foot of snow has babies.
And how do you approach 180 pound bear with babies?
Quietly. And keep that light right there.
Okay, we got a good injection.
Good injection.
Where's the time?
In five minutes the slumbering bear is a sedated bear.
And cats in the crew.
Co-researcher Dr.
Bob Howe of the University
of Wisconsin Green Bay.
Dr. Amy Wolf.
Andy Heinek.
Dr. Chris Aaron Wunderland.
And veterinary student Nicole Wallachewski.
Dig in to grab as much information as they can
during the roughly hour-long window of anesthesia.
First up, check the change in the soundtrack.
[crying]
Different than the nursing cell.
She's fallen asleep to come to realize
something's not quite right.
Sometimes she'll go from nursing to screaming,
so she's like that side.
A shirt of his safety, Aaron descends into the den.
She's right.
She's young.
That's fine.
She'll young.
Don't sweat the ony.
And the extraction begins.
First out, the babies.
I move like a big boy.
Allie under your coat.
How you doing?
You are.
Unhappy babies.
Many babies.
Here's you.
Hi. Hello.
And that's for...
A baby.
I'm loving a four-cup den.
I am loving this.
Anymore? We're gonna stop it
for her hurts going.
The cubs are portable.
It takes a little more muscle to move mom.
Now you just do the airway.
And I can get her out.
Ready, one, two, three.
[crying]
And the helping, one, two, three.
This is a mother-loat.
And nearly everyone, including the TV crew,
is pressed into service.
Cubs sitting.
While the researchers begin to work on mom.
Do you get a restoration of her?
Can you get a good one?
10? What follows is
the knowledge grab.
The knowledge gain for this BlackBale Research Project.
A cooperative venture between the US Forest Service,
the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, and
Veterinary in Crescats.
Works. Okay, excellent.
To reel in this data, they cast a wide net.
They garnered basic information.
Weight is...
One, one, eighty.
They go for the high tech.
You can do her temperature and her pulse,
in a mile.
In a research first.
You have a pulse, of 91?
Love in that.
They brought a portable EKG machine
to test the effectiveness and safety of different anesthetics
on these animals in the wild.
I'm going to start running EKG strips.
They draw blood.
It's pressure off the net.
No, you keep it there.
And the samples will be sent to nine different labs
across the country and tested for 21 different diseases.
Because bears are the big omnivores of the forest,
they may be particularly vulnerable
to environmental contaminants, like lead, arsenic, or mercury.
Those tests will be added to the vast tally
taken on this animal.
And if we're going to do this research,
and if we're going to lay this bear down
and have to disrupt this whole thing,
we're going to get as much information as we can this time.
We're not going to have five studies
that are going to go on for 25 years
and disrupt these bears all the time.
So we're going to get all of our blood data.
We're going to do our EKG data.
We're going to check the Schirmer tier test.
We're going to put the GPS collars on
and get good equipment, get good data,
and do it once and do it right now.
Good equipment, like these GPS collars.
One, one, six, eight.
Another high-tech advance.
It takes a reading every two hours
and leaves an electronic trail of the bear's movements.
Cats believe and hopes the study will show
that unknown to us, black bears and people,
cross paths quite often.
And as a bear researcher of many years standing,
he believes that intersection need not be a fearful one.
Bears know how to live in the forces,
people that have problems sometimes
when they move into places like this.
And they're not used to bears.
And they always have to do a teach them about bears
and how you can live with bears.
And I think they'll be able to coexist very easily.
His best advice to keep bears at bay?
Don't invite them to dinner.
Keep your yard clean.
Bird feeders, they love bird feeders.
They love garbage, they love dog food.
If you can keep those few things out of your yard
and keep your garage closed so that they
can't get into your garage, you're not going to have bears.
And if they do arrive, disenvite them.
A bear comes into your yard because everybody runs
into the house and hides.
And then it's like, wow, this is pretty easy.
Foods here, people run away.
It's great.
So he comes back because it's probably sweet and
the slices are thick.
But if when he shows up in the yard,
you get out there with some tennis balls,
and take the tennis rands, smack them tennis balls in them,
clang some pads and pans together,
chase them out of there.
He's not going to come back.
He's going to go, well, I'll find something somewhere else.
The collar will track the rambling of this
mom and her family.
It's an infallible research tool and one that cost
thousands of dollars.
A tough price tag for this all-volunteer project,
with a shoestring budget.
So all privately funded, we don't get any money
from the department and natural resources.
The project is paid for by people like Ali Delacoletti.
Yeah, oh, uh.
Who donate money and in return, get a chance to visit one
of the rare places on Earth, an occupied bear den.
This is really a unique experience.
You know, you can go to, you can go to Rubar,
you can go to Mazatland or something.
You can go there any year.
But coming out here and doing a bear den
is really pretty interesting and pretty unique.
I can't get it tight enough.
This is leverage.
It's truly a place.
Very few people go.
The bear human intersection made possible through this project.
For Ali, it was money well spent.
I actually got the money through a well.
My mother passed away from cancer a couple years ago.
And she's always been interested in wildlife.
And I took some of the money that I got from her
and decided to donate.
I've always been interested in, you know, nature
and stuff like that.
And my mom has always been interested.
So this is just kind of an, um, an inch to her.
I actually brought tears in my eyes.
I mean, how many times am I going to get to hold
a little tiny bear cub?
I just kept thinking of my mom and kept thinking,
"I wish he could be here."
The cubs are returned.
The den is covered.
One final task remains.
The last thing we do is thank the bear for letting us come in
and disrupt his winter sleep.
This is a Native American tradition of gifting of tobacco.
And we put a small bit of tobacco in the center
that represents our bear.
And we make a circle of tobacco around that,
representing the knowledge that we currently have of bears.
And we have some spots outside.
The circle, and that's where we're hoping this
bear will take us to one of those points of knowledge
beyond the circle.
We first brought you that report last winter.
This year, producer Joanne Garrett plans to work with
veterinarian Chris Katzen his team to follow up on
the mama bear and her cubs to see how they're
doing one year later.
We'll bring you that report later this spring.
And that's our program for this week.
Thanks for joining us.
We leave you with some winter scenes from Newport
State Park in Door County.
For in Wisconsin, I'm Patty Lo.
See you next week.
[Music]
Major funding for in Wisconsin is provided by the people of a
Lyon Energy who brings safe, reliable, and environmentally
friendly energy to keep homes, neighborhoods, and life in
Wisconsin running smoothly.
A Lyon Energy, offering energy-saving ideas on the web.
[Music]