Robert “Bob” Bain was born in Minnesota and worked as an insurance agent for 38 years. Beyond his career, he played a major role in developing Bismarck: he promoted hockey, served on the City Park Board and City Commission, and volunteered with the United Way.
Bain worked for Byrne Insurance before buying the agency and renaming it Bain Insurance. He was active in advertising, and his photo appeared in a newspaper ad on this date in 1980. These contributions were well-known locally, but his service to his country was less widely recognized.
Bain served in World War II as a soldier in General George Patton’s Third Army. He began combat service on June 10, 1944, and continued through the end of the war in Europe on May 8, 1945.
At just 19 years old, Bain helped liberate a Nazi concentration camp on April 4, 1945, as Patton’s Third Army advanced through central Germany. Intelligence had indicated that Germany was constructing an underground communications center near Gotha in case Berlin fell to the Russians. Patton’s reconnaissance unit, unaware of a nearby slave-labor camp, discovered the camp at Ohrdruf, a sub-camp of the larger Buchenwald concentration camp.
The S.S. guards had fled before U.S. tanks arrived, forcing prisoners to march toward Buchenwald, leaving behind the dead and evidence of horrific cruelty. Private Bain and his fellow soldiers were appalled by what they saw. Ohrdruf was the first concentration camp liberated by U.S. troops, and its shocking images left a lasting impression. Bain later admitted that he initially “pushed the war and the atrocities into the back of his mind.”
By the 1970s, Bain began speaking openly about the Holocaust. He emphasized the reality of what he witnessed: “The atrocities did happen… [and] for the people that think… it didn’t happen—[well]… it happened.” Bob Bain was an eyewitness to history, and his testimony remains a powerful reminder of the horrors of the Nazi regime.
Dakota Datebook written by Dr. Steve Hoffbeck
Sources:
- “Bob Bain,” Byrne Insurance, Inc., advertisement, Bismarck Tribune, April 14, 1980, p. 27.
- Greg Turosak, “TV Program Stirs Bismarcker’s Memories of Death Camps,” Bismarck Tribune, April 22, 1978, p. 21.
- “Obituaries: Robert Bain,” Bismarck Tribune, February 2, 2019, p. A9.
- “Pfc. R.D. Bain, Headquarters Company, 2nd Battalion, 354th Infantry Regiment,” The 89th Infantry Division, 1942-1945 (Washington, D.C.: Infantry Journal Press, 1947, p. 233.
- “Ohrdruf,” Holocaust Encyclopedia, U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, ushmm.org, accessed March 30, 2026.
