John Cullum, James Agee, John Ward, Patricia Neal, Clarence Brown, Harvey Broome, Mary Costa are just a handful of the luminaries who once walked the halls of Knoxville High School. Another is a kid from South Knoxville, Roderick “Roddie” Waring Edmonds, who graduated in 1938.
Edmonds, who died in 1985, never talked about the thing he did back in 1945. A thing that he mentioned in diaries that were passed down to his son, Chris, after his death. A thing which led to some of his fellow prisoners of war in World War II being interviewed on behalf of Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Museum in Jerusalem.
Like most young men in the early 1940s, Edmonds ended up in military service during the war, enlisting in 1941. A master sergeant, he arrived with his unit (106th Infantry Division, 422nd Infantry Regiment) just in time for the Battle of Bulge in the Ardennes Forest. Much of the division was overrun, and Edmonds was taken prisoner by the Germans on Dec. 19, 1944. He eventually found himself at Stalag IX-A in Ziegenhain, Germany along with nearly 1,300 other American POWS. As the senior non-commissioned officer among them, he was in charge of looking out for their welfare.
Master Sergeant Roddie Edmonds of South Knoxville
I will not recount here all the horrors of the Holocaust, which you should know already, and if you don’t, shame on you. But the ‘othering’ of Jewish people wasn’t just for areas fallen to Nazi rule. Sometime in January 1945, the POWs at Stalag IX-A were informed that all Jewish American soldiers were to report the following morning. It was known that the Nazis would separate out the Jewish POWs and send them to concentration camps or outright kill them.
According to witness accounts collected by Yad Vashem, Edmonds ordered all the POWs to report that morning, not just the Jews, and stand together. The German officer overlooking the crowd said “they cannot all be Jews.” Edmonds replied “We are all Jews.” The master sergeant then threatened Edmonds with his pistol. He did not waver:
“According to the Geneva Convention, we have to give only our name, rank, and serial number. If you shoot me, you will have to shoot all of us, and after the war you will be tried for war crimes.”
Oh, those pesky Geneva Conventions. The German officer turned and walked away.
Edmonds returned to Knoxville after the war, serving again during the Korean conflict. He worked some for my former paper, The Knoxville Journal, as well as working in sales in several industries, seemingly living a quiet life without sharing this particular piece of his life story. He is buried in Berry Highland Memorial Cemetery.
In February 2015, the State of Israel bestowed upon Edmonds the honorific Righteous Among the Nations, given to non-Jews who risked their own lives to spare Jews from extermination in the Holocaust. In 2020, a historical marker honoring Edmonds was placed at 618 Market Street at the East Tennessee History Center.
There have been efforts in the past to honor Edmonds with the Congressional Gold Medal by former Rep. Jimmy Duncan, former senators Lamar Alexander and Bob Corker and current Rep. Tim Burchett. Burchett and democratic Florida Rep. Jared Moskowitz just last week introduced the Master Sergeant Roddie Edmonds Congressional Gold Medal Act. One would hope this is a bi-partisan effort that everyone could get behind.
Beth Kinnane writes a history feature for KnoxTNToday.com. It’s published each Tuesday and is one of our best-read features.
Sources: Yad Vashem- World Holocaust Remembrance Museum in Jerusalem, Tennessee State Library & Archives, The Associated Press, The Holocaust: An Encyclopedia and Document Collection – Bloomsbury
Follow KnoxTNToday on Facebook and Instagram. Get all KnoxTNToday articles in one place with our Free Newsletter
