Today is Monday, September 11, 2023.
My name is Adina Langer,
Curator of the Museum of History and Holocaust Education
and I'm here in the museum with Hilbert Margol to record
a Legacy series interview
about his experiences during World War II. So
can you start please by telling me your full name?
Hilbert Margol.
And do you agreed to this interview? Pardon?
Do you agreed to this interview?
Of course. Excellent, thanks.
We always just like to get that recorded in as a back-up.
So, can you please tell me when and where you were born?
Jacksonville, Florida, February 22, 1924.
And what were your parents' names?
My father's name was Morris Margol. Originally Margolis,but
once he was in the United States,
he opened a small clothing store and he was
advised to drop the IS, which he did.
He originally came from
a little village in Lithuania, Pushalot, Lithuania.
Before that, he went to London to live with his sister
and brother. Came to the US,
ended up in Jacksonville, Florida.
My mother came to the US as an infant,
also from Lithuania, but a different town.
She ended up with her family, Baltimore, Maryland.
She ended up in Jacksonville,
Florida and they got married.
And do you have any siblings?
Did you have any siblings?
Yes. First of all,
I have older brothers,
three, just almost exactly three years older.
I also have an identical twin brother, Howard.
And younger sister, your Bernice ,
Wolfe, living in Tampa, Florida.
And you mentioned your father had a clothing store. What,
What kind of work did your parents do?
Well, my father ended up as
a peddler selling ladies dresses.
And from that, he made enough money to
open a small clothing store in
a black business teacher in Jackson.
And what was your neighborhood
like in Jacksonville? Your neighborhood,
What was it like? Living in Jack—. Yeah,
what do you remember about Jacksonville?
Oh, well, I remember every year on my brother,
and my birthday, it's February 22,
we used to have a parade downtown Jacksonville
honoring George Washington.
Because once we were old enough,
we thought it was a parade in
our honor since it was our birthday as well.
So I can just share, my birthday is actually February 20,
so, I also grew up thinking
President's Day was special for me too.
So, that's, that's funny,
I, I can commiserate. Well, I would, I would tell
you every year on our birthday,
our mother would remind us we were born on
George Washington's birthday, and we could
never tell a lie. So throughout our lives,
we tried honoring her request.
So, you mentioned that
your father's store was
in the black section of Jacksonville. Yes.
What, what do you remember about segregation in Jacksonville?
Well, certainly I remember because to visit[needs confirmation] our father,
operate the store six days a week.
Sunday was the only day it was closed. During the week
we never saw our father because he would leave.
He had to walk some miles to the store.
We were still sleeping.
And then he would come home,
close the store at 09:00 at night.
So, we were sleeping by the time he got home,
so if we wanted to see him other than Sundays,
we would have to get on our bicycles and go to the store,
which we would do on occasions
after school, sometimes on Saturdays.
And your neighborhood very
different from the area where the store was?
Did it look different or seem different?
Yes. We actually became
aware and acquainted with
some black business owners in stores,
especially across the street
fror my father's stores,
Anderson's Smoke Shop.
He sold every kind of tobacco products.
So he, my father would do his tax return every year.
In return, he would pay my father with cans of
tobacco for his pipe and boxes of teenagers [needs confirmation] cigars.
My father never smoked cigarettes,
always his pipe and cigar.
Next door was Vandora Jackson's cafe and bakery.
And I remember both of them very well.
Do you have a sense for what
your family's political beliefs were?
Were they supporters of President Roosevelt?
Oh, very much so. I think the country as a whole was
united and President Roosevelt
was highly respected at that time.
Everything is subject to change, I guess.
And was religious practice important to your family?
Yes! My family was very Jewish.
Although my father had the highest Jewish education,
he graduated from one of
the finest religious schools in Europe called the Yeshiva.
But business reasons, except for the high holidays,
that's the only time he would close the store.
Except one—midwife,
twin brother and I were born in a house,
not a hospital, 316 Jefferson Street, Jacksonville Florida.
And when the midwife called my father at the store and
said, your wife just had a boy, he said,
I know you called me a little earlier. Oh, no,
this is a second boy. That caused him to close the store,
shut the store down, put a sign on the door,
and he immediately came to the house.
So they didn't know that they were expecting twins?
Not in those days. Doctors didn't know and they didn't
know even when our children were first born.
Doctors still didn't know until
the child was born what sex it would be.
Do you have any memories of
experiencing anti semitism in Florida?
Well, we knew anti- semitism existed.
The neighborhood we lived in was just after,
maybe we were six or seven years old,
we moved to a different neighborhood
with the rest of the majority of Jewish families.
And it was a mix neighborhood.
Most of the non Jewish homeowners and renters,
were most people rented in those days.
And most of them were Southern Baptists.
But everybody seemed to get along fine.
So never experienced anything
anti semitic in that neighborhood that I remember.
And there were reasons for it, because we live
close to the synagogue and had there been,
there would have been some kind of
activity in that neighborhood.
But it wasn't. My twin brother has best friend,
his family was not Jewish.
His father especially was a very nice, but
hard on his children type father.
And he let it know that he would not put
up with anything that resembled anti-
Semitic. He had a dry cleaning agency,
he had a lot of Jewish customers, and
maybe that was the reason why it was a great experience.
One thing our mother reminded
us that I remember very well, and
she told my older brother,
and myself, and my twin brother, that
when we were out and about,
we would go downtown on Saturday to a movie.
She said you were walking,
just remember, you do not represent only yourself, but
you represent all Jewish people in the area.
Because if you do something wrong,
it's going to be a reflection,
not only on you, but all of the Jewish neighbors as well.
And that was something we always so we
were always on our best behavior anyway,
but that reinforced the way we conducted ourselves.
You mentioned that your parents
were both born in Lithuania.
Did they keep in touch with any family back in Europe?
Did they keep in touch with family back in Europe?
My father had a younger sister
living with her husband and three young children.
He had brought one of his brothers over,
also ended up in Jacksonville. His name was Oscar Margol.
The two of them tried to
arrange for the younger sister and
her family to come to
Jacksonville when the war first broke out,
when the Nazis first invaded Poland.
But they said no then, and they
wrote letters back and forth. And
they indicated in their letters that
Lithuania at the time was controlled by Russia,
so they'll say they're okay. Well, when
the letters stopped coming, then
my father knew that something bad happened.
It was later years that my twin brother was able
to go there and find out what actually did happen, when
they were all killed, not by the Germans. The
Germans hadn't arrived yet.
But there was a group called the Lithuanian bandits.
Similar I guess, to what this country,
we had the KKK. And before
the German army ever moved into Lithuania,
they rounded up all the Jews and pushed them out of
Lithuania,took them out in the nearby woods.
Took the infants and youngest children
held them by the feet,
swung them around, smashed them up against trees,
while the parents and the other siblings had to watch. I mean
that was one of the [needs confirmation] unknown stories,
I guess the things that happened by the Lithuanian bands.
And to this day, I
think the Lithuanian government has gone to
great lengths to keep stuff like that secret.
Because they don't want the world to
think Lithuanian citizens killed
a lot of Jews. That's how I learned.
There's definitely a lot of
politics in how this is remembered and, yeah,
you can see that in the way the
countries, the governments respond.
So, in general,
you mentioned your father was writing these letters.
Were members of your community
just following what was starting to happen in Europe?
The rise of Hitler and the Nazis
and ? Well, I remember very little of that.
I knew there was things
happening to the Jewish communities,
not only in Germany,
but in the countries that the Germans invaded.
But specifics?
I don't remember any specifics.
How did you and your family get your news at that time?
Well, there was no TV at the time
and usually the local newspaper
what the local newspaper
printed was what they
were, the publisher and the editors were interested in,
Plain and simple. You could go to
a movie and it
would show Fox Movie telling news before the movies started.
For the most part, they would show,
I remember even when I went into the army,
we would see Fox Movie telling news,
but mostly what they showed were combat pictures. Once
especially once the US entered the war.
Before that they showed news that,
I guess they thought
people throughout
the United States would be interested in.
That's pretty much how we got our news.
Radio, was it,
so. Did you own a radio?
Did your family have a radio at home? Oh, yes.
Radio, and a telephone, with a five line telephone.
So, tell me a little bit about
your education in Jacksonville?
Well, my brother and I went
to— kindergarten was unknown at that time.
So you started in the first grade when it was six years old.
So we went through grammar school,
they called it. From one to sixth grades was grammar school.
Then you went to what they called a junior high school,
which was seven through nine.
There you went to high school,
which is tenth, eleventh, and twelfth grades. And
we went through all of that.
And actually, if you're interested in education beyond that.
Pearl Harbor was December 7, 1941.
We were mid terms,
so we graduated high school
in about the middle of January of 1942.
We were home a week or
ten days and we both entered as freshman at
the University of Florida. At that time,
University of Florida was all male school.
The total student body was 3,000 students, all male.
They had a ROTC program.
So we joined the ROTC program,
which was horse drawn, light artillery.
105 millimeter howitzers, our uniforms,
riding pants. Job purses [needs confirmation]
what they called them, because we had to ride
on the horses and pull the howitzers.
We were both being trained as
gunners 105 millimeter howitzers.
The howitzers were real,
the horses were real,
our rifles were made out of wood.
So much ready for combat.
But that was late January of 1942.
October, I think the 23rd,
the Army officer came spoke to
the RPTC students and said,
if you join an Army Reserve unit,
there's a good chance the Army will let you
remain in college until you get your degree.
So we joined an Army Reserve unit.
That was late October of 42.
In early 43 they called our reserve unit
to active duty. That's how we ended up. But they did
let us finish the semester. Okay.
So we'll get into that moment.
I want to go back just a tiny bit
and ask just about Pearl Harbor.
Do you remember hearing about the attack on Pearl Harbor?
Yes, I remember it was
a Sunday. Everybody was listening,
was told to listen to the radio.
President Roosevelt was going to speak.
So of course, our family was huddled around
the radio listening to President Roosevelt.
Our older brother,
I said he's three years older.
He immediately tried to join the Army, but
he was classified 4F because he
had surgery on both ears
as a youngster. His hearing was impaired,
so they classified him 4F
So the military would not accept him,
and I remember all that very well.
And of course, the country as a whole,
everybody was doing something,
either joining the military
or working in some factory that converted to
making war material and serving,
helping soldiers, USO, Red Cross,
whatever. I remember all of that.
So then moving forward to when you were called to duty,
what kind of work were you assigned to do in the army?
Well, initially when we were called to active duty,
we didn't know what to expect.
At the age we were at the time,
18, 19 19 years old,
it was like going on a great adventure.
So we were somewhat excited, looking forward to it.
We had no idea what to expect.
I had no idea what real army life would be like.
Did you experience any anti semitism in the military?
Never, until after the war, on one occasion.
And that was a whole separate story after the war.
First of all, we went to Fort Brag, North Carolina for
basic training. Again training
being trained as gunners on 1
05 millimeter howitzers.
But these were mechanized, no horses.
After 13 weeks we were interviewed,
offered the opportunity to go
to Officers Candidate school.
I said what would that involve? They said
well you go to officer training,three months
and you both come out as second lieutenants.
They called them 90 day wonders in those days.
So we looked at each other and said,
well, if we do that,
they're going to split us up.
They're going to set us to two different Army divisions,
and aren't [needs confirmation] going to let us stay together.
So what else is a way?
They said, well, the Army just started
a new program called Army Specialized Training Program,
ASTP. And if you prefer
that we'll send you
to some college to take courses in engineering.
So I said, well, going back to
some college, that sounds like us. So
that's what we ended
up eventually going to Syracuse University.
We were there about four months
taking engineering courses.
Since we had graduated,
we had taking business courses,
accounting courses at University of Florida.
Engineering courses was all Greek to us,
but we did the best we could.
After about four months,
they transferred us to the University
of Illinois, Champaign, Illinois.
And after about four months there,
some general woke up and said they
got thousands of young soldiers in colleges.
They need them for combat.
So they disbanded the program.
And that's when the army split us up.
So where did you end up going
after the program was disbanded and they split you up?
Well, they sent my brother Howard to
the 104th Timberwolf Division and training
in the Mojave Desert in
California for the North African campaign.
They sent me to the 42nd Infantry Division in Oklahoma,
Camp Gruber, Oklahoma. Initially
so he was in Infantry Company Mojave Desert in California.
Initially, they put me in the Infantry Company in
the 42nd Division. In my case.
after about three months,
they woke up and realized on my training,
I belonged in the artillery,
so they moved me over to light artillery.
Once again, as a gun on a 105 millimeter howitzer.
Howard was not happy
because then they decided they didn't need any more help
in the North African campaign.
They moved his division to Colorado, Pike's Peak area.
He was marching up and down the mountainside carrying
a 45 pound motor base plate on
his back and leading the pack
mule [needs confirmation] with the rest of the motor and the ammunition.
He put in a request to transfer
three different times to his captain.
And so happened. After the third time, nothing happened.
He asked his captain what's
the status of his transfer request.
The captain told him his job was to train
him, not transfer him.
The officers of the division knew at the time that within
a few months they were going to be the first US.
Division to go directly from New York to France,
shortly after D-Day,
soon after D-Day because prior to that,
divisions had to go to England.
So he didn't want to lose
a well trained soldier like my brother
Howard to be replaced by
some kid fresh out of
basic training. that didn't have all that training.
Howard wrote a letter to
our mother saying that what happened.
So she wrote a letter to
President Roosevelt saying that she
would like us to be serving back together again,
when the two of us wanted to serve
together for the simple reason,
I'm thrown in together with a bunch of strangers.
My gun battery consisted of 100 men.
You don't know anybody.
It takes a while to live together before you do.
So if you have at least one person that you can trust,
regardless of where you're at,
what's going on, it makes a big difference.
So sure enough, a couple of weeks later,
she got a letter from the White House.
Not signed by President Roosevelt,
but signed by a gentleman
who was the President's aid.
The letter said, as a two star mother,
her request would be
granted. Because at the time that was against
military policy for brothers
to serve together, especially in combat,
because previously the five Sullivan brothers had
gone down on the same ship in the Pacific.
But President Roosevelt made an exception.
But it didn't say whether
I'm going to him or he's coming to me.
It just said her request would be
granted. Another couple of weeks later,
she got a letter from the War Department,
basically saying the same thing.
Finally, two or three weeks later,
she got a third letter from
the 104th Division headquarters saying
Howard was being transferred to
my outfit and that was caused for celebration.
So what happened then after you were reunited?
Well before we were reunited,
the Red Cross contacted my gun battalion
my division and said
our mother was very seriously ill in the hospital.
She had been bitten by
a rat and she
they didn't know if she was going to make it or not.
So they granted me a ten day furlough to go
home to be with my mother in the hospital.
They couldn't locate Howard because he was on
a train from Colorado to Oklahoma.
They had to change trains in Kansas City,
so they couldn't locate him.
So, when he reported to my outfit,
presented his transfer papers,
our Army serial numbers were almost identical.
They thought it was a typo error and it was me
coming back maybe four days or so after I left.
And they thought he was me coming back and acting
crazy saying that he was my twin brother.
Because if you act crazy,
you could qualify for a Section 8 discharge,
which means you could get out of the Army.
So they, he said they gave him
every dirty detail they could come up with,
thinking that it was really me playing games.
Of course, when I reported back then they realized
there was two of us, especially, you know,
we were identical twins,
both wearing the same Army outfits.
So that was what happened.
But we ended up both as gunners.
We had four howitzers in our gun battalion.
He was gunner on number two and I was a gunner on number three.
And that's how we remained through combat.
And so you shipped out to Europe in 1944?
Well, I we were
very fortunate for a number of reasons.
Well when the Battle of the Bulge broke out in Belgium,
our infantry companies,
three infantry companies were immediately rushed
over as fast as they could to get them involved.
They left the entire rest of
the division . The division consisted of 15,000 men.
The rest of us were all still in Camp Gruber, Oklahoma,
until some big wheels from Washington could
come and verify that the
rest of the division was ready for combat,
which was somewhat of a joke. Just a wast of time.
So we got to orders,
finally to board troop
train. So our infantry comp[needs confirmation] regiments,
three of them got in
the last couple of days of the Battle of the Bulge.
What happened afterwards
before we arrived, they were attacked by the German army.
And supposedly in a quiet area.
They had heavy ca, lot of
casualties. Wounded, killed, and captured.
So there again, we we got there
we left New York Harbor.
I guess it was day after New Year's.
A15 day voyage in
a large convoy because they couldn't go straight,
they had to zigzag.
So that's why it took 15 days
for us to land in Marseilles France.
Well, again, I said we were somewhat
fortunate because by the time
the rest of the division arrived,
we had them been transported us to
an area north of Marseilles called CP
2, Command Post
Two. Extremely cold. The coldest weather
in Southern Frances in 100 years.
Extremely cold, rocky barren misery. But
we had to wait there until
the empagy[ needs confirmation] companies could get replacements.
So we they got, received replacements,
we had to go like on maneuvers like we were in Oklahoma,
in training to train the embigesew [needs confirmation] new replacements,
especially some officers that had to deal with
the artillery following reserves and so forth [needs confirmation].
So there again, that delayed us from going into combat.
But finally, either the end of February or
the first of early end of January
or early February we went into combat.
Actually we went
into a position close to midnight one night,
so we thought we were still on the lose.
The only difference was they told us to dig in
our houses and put up camouflage nets.
We'll that was new. But then at break of dawn the
next morning and shells start flying over our heads.
Oh this must be a real thing.
And then we learned the first day or two, that
we were in a village called Wingen sur Moder, France.
Village of Wing on the Samota river[needs confirmation].
We were on one side of
the river, the other side of the river.
well, the river itself, they called a river,
to us, it was like a creek.
On the other side was what they called a mountain,
we called it a very high hill.
The Germans were dug in on
the other side of the high hill.
It took better part of two days.
You could learn by the difference in
the sounds which shell's flying overhead,
The Germans had fired targets behind us,
and which the 155 millimeter howitzers behind us,
and the heavier 240 millimeter howitzers,
the shells they were firing
over the high hills to the German targets.
By the difference in the sound,
you could tell what was incoming and what was outgoing.
We used to say after a little experience,
we weren't concerned about
those warts[needs confirmation]that had your name on them.
We were concerned about those big ones
that said, to whom it may concern you. So,
you were there in in
the Ardenned Mountains after that, is that right?
Well, we moved after maybe four or five days,
we moved north into France,
different towns different villages.
And the way it worked, since we were in direct support of
the 222nd Infantry Regiment, 222nd Company,
we never set up our houses
inside any city, town, or village.
We were always on the outskirts because
the infantry guys were trying to capture thode towns,
cities, villages. We were on the outskirts,
firing at targets that were impeding, their advances.
So it depended on the situation.
Sometimes our four houses were quite a distance apart.
Other occasions they were fairly close
together. Just depended on the terrain for the most part.
So once that city, town,
and village was under control,
the Germans had retreated,
then we would ride on a truck through
those same towns and villages and saw damages.
Some had to be from our firing shells,
some was from aerial bombardment, whatever.
And that pretty much was repetitive
over and over until we got into
a more mountains area in
the heart Mountains and snow days, whatnot.
The way we operated,
we each had a sleeping bag.
We could never be
more than a few feet or yards from our houses.
24x7! Whether it was snowing, sleet, cold rain,
whatever. Because we could get
fire emissions at any time during the 24 hour period.
So that was pretty much the way we operated.
So
we're into winter 1945.
And you're —when do you
find out that you're going to be going to Germany?
Well, we crossed over the river into Germany. And
the first town of
any consequence was called Dahn, D A H N Germany.
And that was towards late March 1945.
I had an interesting experience there that I made.
Once Dahn was under
control and the German soldiers had retreated,
our division 42nd Infantry Division
was given a two day rest period.
One of our division chaplains was
named Rabbi Eli Bowman[needs confirmation]Province, Rhode Island
He happened to be a favorite of
our commanding General Harry J. Collins,
Major general. Rabbi Bowman and my brother and I,
became very close with him for a number of reasons.
He had told us that when he was
introduced originally to General Collins,
Collins told him first of all,
he was not going to address him
as chaplain or lieutenant.
He was going to call him padre, which in Spanish, is father.
And he also told him that if he ever witnesses
or hears about any anti semitic event,
General Collins wanted to know about it immediately,
and he would take appropriate action.
Such a kind of person General Collins was.
We knew that because Rabbi Bowman was the one
that told us this.
Now Rabbi Bowman looked at his Jewish calendar
and he said the next evening,
which I think was either March 24 or 25th,
was going to be the first night of Passover.
If at all possible,
he would like to have some kind of Passover service.
General Collins, liked the idea. He gave permission,
Chaplain Bowman to go back two trucks to France
and acquire whatever he could. So he was able
to contact the Jewish War Board in France.
They arranged for freshly killed chickens,
vegetables, wine, French wine.
He also acquired a small prayer book
which called Haggadah, a passage, a
Seder brought it all back to down Germany.
And sure enough, we had a Seder
the next evening in an old school building.
Well, Chaplain Bowman had this little Haggadah, a number of pages,
it's a prayer book all in Hebrew.
He found a, he found a mimeograph machine.
It was dusty and dirty.
They went looking for rags to clean it.
All they could find was a Nazi flag.
That's what they used to clean that mimeograph graph machine.
They made about 800 copies
because we had about 800 soldiers show up.
Not only from our division,
from other units within a 30, 40 mile radius.
General Collins was there in attendance,
made a very nice speech.
Our Assistant Division Commander,
General Henning Linden was there.
And it turned out to be,
as far as we were concerned,
a historic event that to be held in Germany as a seder,
and I remember it very well. That's amazing.
As a Jewish soldier,
had you had trepidation about going into Germany?
Well this thought's on
probably every soldier's mind was,
number one, do your job with best of
your ability and try and stay alive.
That's that's what they are thinking.
Do you remember hearing about
the death of President Roosevelt in April?
I remember it very well
because each gun had a field telephone.
That's how we communicated with
our second lieutenant in the command post for
filing commands
and any other messages.
So one night, maybe 09:00 at night,
the telephone rang. Our sergeant answered the phone.
We were hoping that that
meant the news was the war is over.
So we were waiting Then they tell us,
what was that call about?
And he hung up and they told us
President Roosevelt had died and that's what I remember.
What about the death of Hitler?
There was only a few—.
Well, you know, everybody was deflated, so to speak,
to learn that President, because
we didn't know he was sick. We had no idea.
So people were upset about Roosevelt's death?
Yes. What about Hitler?
Did you hear about the death of Hitler?
About what?
The death of Adolf Hitler.
When Adolf Hitler died,
that was only a few weeks later.
Do you remember hearing about that?
I'm sorry?
Hearing about the death of Adolph Hitler in Germany?
No, we didn't hear about that.
That wasn't immediate news at the time.
So then tell me about how you came to
be present at the liberation of Dachau?
Okay. You know, we had caps at
the division and captured Wurzburg, Schweinfurt, Nuremberg,
and after Nuremberg,
the next military objective was Munich.
So, it was very early
one Sunday morning. We were riding on a two lane road,
country road like towards Munich.
Then we were 8 or 10 miles north of Munich. Then
we knew where we were at only because we saw
the road sign. Number one at the top
it said Dachau. Below that were different,
like one pointing to Munich,
how many kilometers it was to Munich. So
that's how we knew where we were at.
Shortly thereafter, we got
orders to pull over to the right side of
the road. Wooded area
just enough of a clearing to accommodate our four howitzers.
The closest our four howitzers had ever been in combat.
Well, everybody smelled a very strong odor.
One of our jeep drivers came over and he said,
there must be a chemical factory in the woods on
the left side of the road, very strong odor.
My brother Howard, being very close, came over to me,
and he says he don't think it's a chemical factory;
the odor reminds him over when we were young children. our
mother would go to a kosher meat market
to buy a freshly killed chicken,
take it home, hold it over the gas flame of
the stove in the kitchen to
burn off any remaining pin feathers.
And so doing it would burn some of
the skin and the fat of the chicken.
He said that's the odor that reminds him of.
So I asked my gun sergeant for permission for
Howard and I to go through the woods,
find out the source of this very strong odor.
He said, go ahead
but don't stay long because we don't know,
we had a law[needs confirmation] on fire emissions. He said,
we don't know how long we're going to be here
in order to pull out the .
[undecipherable] I went, only took us about 15 minutes
the woods and there was a clearing,
the first thing we saw was a line of railroad box cars.
We crawled over between two
box cars. We got on the other side.
Right on our right,
was an open box car with the leg of a person hanging out.
We looked and there were
other box cars that the doors were open,
but this was the only one that had a leg hanging out,
so that was distinction of
one particular boxcar. We had a couple of weeks earlier,
we had delivering a little brownie box camera [needs confirmation].
The only film was the film that was inside the camera.
So we were very careful taking any pictures. But
we took a picture of that particular box car
because it was different than
the others that we could see.
Then we noticed another 42nd Division soldiers
going through a gate,
there was a building there and there was a gate.
We followed them through the gate. Of course,
the gate said famous German words that
meant work makes you free,
Arbeit macht frei. So we followed
them. We walked in.
First of all, there was a very large open area.
Then we saw buildings on the right
and on the road, and there was a lot
of buildings that sort of looked like barracks to me.
Similar to work buildings in camps in the U.S.
Different but similar.
Everything was quiet.
Soldiers were just walking around,
we saw different areas,
we saw a stack of dead bodies and we,
like cordon one[needs confirmation] area,
another area. That made
us realize that's where the odor was coming from,
because these were not only
the dead bodies in the box railroad boxcars,
but there were bodies lying in
different areas. This what we were witnessing. Now
we didn't realize at
the moment. We didn't understand what we were seeing.
What caused all of this. We had no idea.We didn't know.
So we knew we had to get back to our gun position.
So maybe we were inside the camp maybe 20 ,
25 minutes total. And we turned around and left.
Of course, what we learned after the fact,
that must have been the Dachau prisoner camp.
Because we saw the sign Dachau which was Dachau,
for the town.
The city of Dachau ,not camp or camps, whatever was there,
and that was pretty much our experience.
There was no firing, no combat, but
we learned what happened when
our first infantry guys arrived,
it was how, it happened after the war and we learned
because our division every year used to have
a reunion in a different city
in the United States every year.
So we got to meet some of the infantry guys and
learn what they experienced when they first arrived.
That's how we first learned from
their experience following the years as well.
So what day was this?
This was Sunday morning,
early Sunday morning, April 29, 1945.
And when you learned from the other infantry members,
had they, they arrived earlier before you?
Yes. And and what was their experience?
Well, they said the first guys that got
close to the entrance gate were fired upon.
They later learned, we all
did, before any of us arrived
there, a representative from
the Swiss Red Cross had arrived
in the morning of 27th or 28th of April.
He had meetings with
the SS officer in charge of the huge German Army Camp,
which was the SS training camp as well,
which was next to the prisoner camp.
They control the prisoner camp.
Told the SS officer in charge he had a choice to make.
The American Army was coming close.
He could either stay and fight
against overwhelming odds or
arranged for a peaceful surrender of
both camps and save a lot of lives.
The Ss Officer apparently was not done yet.
He said in that case,
you'll arrange a surrender,
take his SS officers
and go to fight in the German soldiers soldiers and go to defend Munich.
It turned out to be totally untrue
because the record shows that what his intention, and
what he did. He and
all SS left together with about 2000 Jewish prisoners,
the healthiest ones available on a forced march,
intending to end up in the Austrian Alps..
He knew the war wasn't going to last much longer,
so he wanted these prisoners
to be slave labor in the Austrian Alps.
So they left. He left one SS junior lieutenant
In charge to arrange the surrender.
And we left and we were there early that Sunday morning.
We went there that long and we
left. General Henry Linden from the
42nd Division arrived with his several Jeep Lords [needs confirmation]
body guards, whatever to
arrange the surrender of the prisoner camp.
That was his orders. With him
he had Margaret Higgins which was
a world renowned war correspondent,
several other people and they were widely dispersed,
dispersed picture of them arriving with
this SS lieutenant carrying
a pole with a white flag on its cylinder.
And that was about 02:30 that afternoon.
By that time we were well on our way to Munich [needs confirmation].
That pretty much happened.
What I learned from others in first hand experience,
that is another story.
So, do you remember for you
the end of the war? The VE day?
Yes. A few days
before the war was actually declared over
we knew the war was over
because my particular unit bypassed Munich.
wasn't necessary [needs confirmation] because there was
no real combat in Munich.
Germans did very little,
and then they retreated out of Munich.
So now we're on again on a two lane road.
We had a short journey
somewhere along the German autobahn,
didn't last too long.
Then we were back on a two way road
headed to the Austrian border.
Every, everything was backed up.
Convoys ,trucks, tanks, jeeps, you nam it.
And it was 20 minutes of
sitting and two Ts [needs confirmation] of moving forward.
And I remember very
distinctly when we went through several villages,
German civilians in southern Germany
lined on both sides of the road,
because the houses that
had second stories of buildings,
had white flags and the
civilians, it was like a rehearsed chorus.
By that time, my brother and
I both could speak pretty good
German. Because growing up our parents
spoke Yiddish in the house and
Yiddish is really similar to German.
A lot of words are the same,
a lot of them are very similar.
So it was easy for us to pick up German. So the civilians,
amazingly, in German were repeating the same message.
The war will not be over until you defeat the Russians.
They were scared to death of the Russians.
It was the Russians in revenge mode, so to speak.
Wherein [undecipherable] allied forces were
welcomed knowing they would
get better treatment than they would from the Russians.
So, that was what they were saying over
and over again. That's fascinating.
So, having seen the prison camp at Dachau
did that change your impression of, of the war at
all or was it something you kind of knew was happening?
Not really because as I said, we didn't understand.
We didn't know about headquarters offices. They all knew.
They knew about the camps.
The camps were not military objectives.
There was no plans to trip any camps.
Concentration camps,
there were just not military objectives.
So, what did you and your brother do after VE Day?
Did you stay in Germany?
No, we were in Germany for a few days.
Then they moved us into Austria.
And a few days after being in Austria,
they moved back into Germany because they decided
the French troops would
take over all positions in southern Germany.
Once the French arrived,
then we relocated to an area near Salzburg, Austria.
And that became, we became
the Army of Occupation in Southern Germany.
For the first time,
my gun battery was able to take
over a couple of civilian two or three story houses.
And for the first time we were able
to sleep in a real bed.
Most of these houses had elderly house trials, or
if it wasn't a house trial,
it was a couple, elderly couple, too
old to be involved in combat or whatever.
So they moved them out to live [needs confirmation]
in with some other neighbors so that we could
take over those few houses for our100 men, gun diner [needs confirmation].
And at that time we
were, the war was over so we were each soldier was
allotted, each week we could get one carton of
cigarettes contain ten packs cigarettes.
A carton was $0.50.
That means each pack was only a nickel.
And in our K rations and C rations,
we had little packets of four cigarettes.
We're also allowed two candy bars
a week, 1 bar of soap a week.
That's what we used to pay the house drive [needs confirmation] to come in
every day to make up our beds, wash our uniforms,
our clothes and underwear, our socks,
whatever. Cleaning the house if needed
cleaning. And that was we paid her in cigarettes,
candy bar or whatever it took.
Did you interact with any displaced persons
while you were as part of this occupying force?
Any civilians? Civilians but
specifically DP's, displaced persons. Only that occurred
we knew that nearby that nearby Munich,
there was a displaced persons camp that was arranged.
We also knew in one of those displaced persons camps,
there were a lot of Russians,
especially civilians,
that the Germans had used as slave labor also.
And we also learned there was railroad tank cars
containing jet fuel,
because the Germans were the only ones
that had jet ,jet airplanes.
The Russians got into it and they thought it was vodka.
And unfortunately,
there were a lot of dead Russians
from drinking that stuff.
We learned about that.And
that was no real contact.
The contact came later in the Austrian war.
And that was during the army occupation.
So, tell me about that.
Well, it just so happened,
after the war ended,
the last concentration camp
that was liberated was in Ebensee Austria,
which is a sub camp of Mauthausen.
They were liberated two days before the end of the war.
Our division was ordered a
150 army trucks to go to Ebensee Austria,
load up with the survivors,
about 1,500 survivors. Transport
them to Bad Gastein, Austria.
Bad Gastein consisted of luxury hotels.
Before the war, they were
one of the finest spas in all of Europe.
People came from around the world because
the hotels had radium baths in the basements.
Water that was piped in from inside the mountains,
they claimed would have radium in it.
I guess similar to Hot Springs,
Arkansas, in this country,
and they claimed it would cure whatever
ails you. So people came to spend time there in these radium baths.
So anyhow, during the war,
the Germans used these hotels as
convalescent facilities for wounded German soldiers.
That's why they kept the civilian help, out of there.
So when the war ended, they moved out,
the US military moved the German soldiers out to
whatever health facilities were
available for recuperation.
So the hotels were empty.
That's why the Washington decided that
the survivors should be relocated from Ebensee.
to these empty hotels.
It just so happened that every US.
Army division in Europe formed a football squad.
I heard about it then I applied,
made an application, and I was accepted.
So that's how I ended up in one of
those hotels in Bad Gastein, Austria.
That was our training camp.
We used to fly, drive
around Europe playing other division teams.
Well, one afternoon after practice,
my roommate who was not a member of the football team,
he was an equipment manager. He was my roommate,
and he and I were walking around,
Bad Gastein and coming towards us were
four of these survivors. For a particular reason,
I recognize one of them. Stopped.
to say hello, how are you doing,
glad that you're okay,
things like have you been taken care of?
As we walked away, it was very brief,
as we walked away, my roommate,
he didn't know I was Jewish.
He said, well, it looks like Hitler didn't get him on.
Of course he didn't realize. I said,
look I'm sorry, you just offended me.
I happen to be Jewish.
He didn't know what to do.
He just quickly walked away from me.
And even though he was my roommate,
he tried to avoid me as much as possible,
wouldn't talk to me. Finally about a week or so,
I said, look, let's sit down and talk.
I have some questions I'd like to
ask you. So I asked him, I said,
help me understand what caused you to say
what you said? He
told me that he was born on a farm in Nebraska.
Occasionally, he would go with
his father on a wagon into town, the
nearest town, to buy provisions and some clothes,
sometimes for family members,
take it back to the farm.
So he said they would go into this clothing store,
his father would select certain things.
Then they would go to another store for provisions.
Thise stores had to be owned by Jewish families.
He says every trip on his way back to the farm,
his father would tell him the same remarks.
Those Jews, they had life so easy. Us poor farmers,
we worked so hard.
We make very little.
And they have life so easy,
they make so much money off of us
poor farmers. He said he
never had any conversation with any Jewish person
he never really knew any Jewish person.
That, that was his upbringing
and that was behind what he said.
After that, everything was okay, fine, and
we got along. That was that story.
So, tell me then about your return to the U.S.
and discharge from the army.
Well, we were in the army of occupation
in Austria for about nine months.
We left there in March,
middle of March, 1946,
and we were on a liberty ship by
SS Manor [undecipherable]. And we
I guess it was a seven day trip.
And of course when we saw the Statue of Liberty again,
we were all cheering on deck,
cheering, hollering, very happy.
So we disembarked and they sent us back to Fort Bragg,
North Carolina for discharge. And
after processing, they put us on a train.
My brother in law went back to Jacksonville [needs confirmation].
We ended up in Jacksonville where
[undecipherable] to train station.
And we were back home again.
So one thing I realized I didn't ask you about when you
were still in the army of occupation,
do you remember hearing about
the dropping of the atomic bomb on ,
excuse me, on Hiroshima and Nagasaki?
Well, there again, that's something
easy to remember because we had already
been told to start
preparing our howitzers and our Carbide rifles.
which is [undecipherable] something like similar to vasaline.
We had to put them, which we had to do it in
the states as well before we went
overseas to cover the howitzers and firearms so that
the salt water from
the ocean voyage would
not affect them. Ofcourse we had to clean them off
when we got overseas to prepare for going to the Pacific.
So they were already preparing us and
some soldiers had already
boarded ships heading to the Pacific.
Not in our division,
but in other, we were aware
that other divisions were already on the way.
So when we got the news about the first atomic bomb,
believe me, we said,
we hope that ends soon. And
we were very pleased believe me. Yeah.
So, going back then or
forward to April of 1946 when you are home again,
what were your hopes and dreams for
the future at this point in time?
Well, after being home.
And that was April 9, 1946,
the immediate thought, enter summer school back at
the University of Florida to try and catch
up much as we could to try and get our degrees.
So that's what we did.
And did you at that point,
did you take advantage of the new GI bill?
Very definitely, yeah.
We were pleased that [needs confirmation] when we had
the GI bill available, it made life easier.
We didn't[needs confirmation] discuss talk about military experience at all.
Because first of all,
my personal opinion was during the war,
we realized we had family, friends,
neighbors that became involved
in the war effort in some manner. Some feel
they had their own stories to tell. So I'll tell them our stories.So
we never told them. Never told my wife.
Never told my children until some years ago. In 1948
do you remember, do you have
memories of the creation of the State of Israel?
I'm curious whether that was important in your community.
Yes. It just so happened what I learned after the war,
I had a first cousin in Richmond,
Virginia, who got into the Air Force.
I also learned I had my favorite uncle,
seven uncles and I had contact
with six in the Virginia, Maryland area [needs confirmation].
one more in Jacksonville.
My favorite uncle was involved,
I won't go into a lot of
details of how he became involved [needs confirmation]
He ended up getting groups together. Put up money.
Number one, they bought the with my uncle in charge.
they gave me [needs confirmation] an old ferry boat
sitting in a harbor in Virginia. They bought it,
they had it remodeled,
had it sail to Cyprus.
That ship ended up being the Exodus.
He also arranged, he got involved
with a personal airplane. But
my man [needs confirmation] couldn't understand what he need airplane.
We found out later it was to enable
him to learn something about airplanes.
He ended up together with a group he formed
by three surplus US.
Constellation passenger planes.
Had them all taken apart, put wooden crates,
marked [needs confirmation] machinery, parts shipped to Israel,
which became three airplanes.
The original Israeli Air Force. Things like that.
So how did you come to settle in Georgia?
Business reasons. Because early on,
before my brother and I, we were last year in college,
I mentioned our older brother is was 4F.
we had these uncles in Virginia that
were all during the war
they were in the house to
house ,before and during the war,
they were in the house to house business,
selling housewares and credit door to door.
So that's where my older brother went.
He went to work for them.
He learned the business.
Came back to Jacksonville when we were seniors in college.
And got together and said,
let's start the same business in
Jacksonville. So especially on weekends
that's when Howard I would come back to
Jacksonville and that's what Howard did.
On Saturdays and Sundays
I would go door to door selling housewares, linens,
bed linens, blankets, silverware pots and pan,
aluminum pots and pans.
On credit Dollar [undecipherable]. find them home.
So by the time we graduated college, I
dream of going to Wharton School of Finance,
University of Pennsylvania,
getting master's degrees and becoming CPA's.
We threw all that aside and said we got a business already.
So that's what we did back home,
we spent our time developing, and
increasing the size of the business.
Then from that, after a couple of years,
three years, we decided the future of that [needs confirmation] business,
We can add one to neighborhood shopping centers,
followed by two star, two car families.
They didn't need us anymore.
So we flipped into selling furniture.
That's how we ended up getting into
furniture business. We got together with
two brothers from Ohio.
They previously worked for
us in the house to house business.
One of them had left,
the other one left to go in the Navy.
They both ended up, and
the other one was in the Navy in Jacksonville.
That's one of the big Navy things.
So he moved to Ohio to join his brother.
And they had opened two furniture stores. So
we were already selling furniture and
Credit [needs confirmation] so we got together with them and
decided there two stores in Ohio,
our store, we opened
a regular furniture store in Jacksonville [undecipherable] into the stores.
We form a partnership
to expand and open more furniture stores. So
after we opened Indianapolis,
Indiana together, we decided to
open a furniture store in Atlanta, Georgia.
That's how we ended
up with a furniture store at Atlanta, Georgia.
One thing led to another.
My twin brother Howard first decided to move
his family to Atlanta for him to operate. Now as that store
was doing extremely
well and the manages we had couldn't handle it.
Then as we expanded further,
I used to go to Atlanta and spent two weeks at
a time in that store and back to Jacksonville.
And then we went upto another totally different partnership
that was quite different.
And then I decide, better
move my wife and my mother in law to
Atlanta. That's how we ended up at the business reasons.
Sure. And was this, what yearish was this?
Well, I see, that would have been 1984.
Okay.
Myself, my wife and my mother in law,
we moved to Atlanta, Georgia and we are area[needs confirmation ]in 1984.
So, in that interim time between when
you finished college and you came to Atlanta,
you're still in the South
but you're kind of in different places,
did you have a sense
for what was going on in the Civil Rights movement?
Did that affect you or did you notice? Well,
first of all, Jacksonville,
Florida has youngsters. There was segregation.
There was segregation throughout.Since we
we certainly are well aware of
the black families because of our [undecipherable ]experience with
our father's store. In fact,
I mentioned Anderson Smoke shop
across the street from my father's store,
he also owned a black baseball team.
The first professional baseball game I ever
saw was between two black teams.
My father, coming from Lithuania,
didn't know baseball from beans.
But Mr. Anderson gave him some tickets to some of the games.
So that's how my father got
introduced to baseball and became
a baseball fan. Things like that.
So we sympathize and we
understood the situation with black families. We had,
since my mother would work in the store,
she hired a black female named
Annie to come to the house every day,
take care of the house.
Mother taught her how to cook
certain kosher dishes and whatnot.
She made great pies.
But we had contact with
Jack, Black families all that time.
So that was a common thread because there was a lot of
common threads between the Jewish population
and the Black population
during that period. One experience I had in Jacksonville,
which you can consider Anti Semitic,
we would discount is[needs confirmation] in furniture.
Simmons Bedding did not sell
us because we were discounters,
but through our partners in Columbus, Ohio,
there was a major department store in Indianapolis,
Indiana that sold Simmons Mattresses.
Their inventory got out of whack.
They were out of inventory on the beauty rush line [needs confirmation],
which is the highest price line.
They had too much inventory of the cheaper Simmons beddings,
so they wanted to sell
a few trailer loads of
Simmons Mattresses. The partner found out about it,
ended up, he made arrangements to buy three trailer loads.
One trailer load was delivered to Jacksonville, Florida.
All we wanted to do was sell that Simmons
bedding a little above actual cost and
turn it back into money.
We ran a big full page ad in the local newspaper.
All this Simmons bedding at lowball prices.
I got a phone call from
the editor of the local Jacksonville newspaper,
calling e to come to his office,
which I arrived there, he said,
look, you not be a liar [needs confirmation]
to run that kind of ad in my paper.
What's wrong with the ad? He said, I'm sorry,
that's the edict. Well, we
sold off enough of that
bedding, didn't have to run another ad.
Pricing was arranged just to at least pay for the,
ad, get our money back.
So I found out he was a member of a Country Club.
No Jews, no blacks,
and no dogs allowed.
He got complaints from
his fellow country Club members about that,
ad, because they sold Simmons bedding,
and the fact that we were under selling
them, they got upset. So
you could classify that as anti
That's fascinating.
So we're going to wrap up pretty soon, but I have one kind of
one last, just thinking about the 20th century question.
So you, you said when you went into Germany,
the civilians were saying to you,
the war is not over till you defeat the Russians.
You know they were worried about the Russians.
World War Two of course ends,
but then the United States and
the west ends up in a Cold War with Russia.
Did you have any thoughts on that? impressions?
How that affected your life?
Well the best answer. I can give you would
be President Reagan's trust. But verify [needs confirmation].
You'll never trust it unless you can
verify it. Just so happened in Jacksonville growing up,
we had one man,
a Jewish man,
he was missing his trigger finger.
Well the story was he was living in Russia.
He took a gun and he shot his finger off,
his trigger finger, so he wouldn't have to go into
the Russian army. And that we knew about.
So if that gave you an indication
it wasn't pleasant to get in the Russian Army.
We were aware of things like that.
So tell me about your family?
Kind of, I know your son is here with us today.
Well, my wife and I are very,
very fortunate because our three children,
our son and two daughters all
live in the Atlanta area close by.
We have eight grandchildren,
six of them live very close by . And now there are
two of them, one is Jerry's son, Adam.
He's a psychologist in Chicago area.
His daughter is Adam[needs confirmation]
Daughters, Sons [needs confirmation]
his daughter,
Kelsey who lives in Brooklyn, New York.
She works for a corporate headquarters.
The others are here,
we have three great granddaughters close by,
so we get to enjoy them as well.
So we're very fortunate. And we're getting ready,
November 7, we would
celebrate our 75th wedding anniversary.
So your wife is someone that you
met in college or right at[needs confirmation] when did you meet your wife?
Well, I met my wife at an early age,
but I can tell you it was not love at first
sight because I was 12, she was 7.
So it took some years before we got married.
She was 19 at the time.
And what's her name?
Betty Ann.I would tell you,
mentioned one quick thing.
Yeah.
In combat in a bombed out area,
a lot of rubble and stuff,
I stumbled on something. And I looked down to see what it
was and what it
turned out to be was an artillery shell casing.
I picked it up, it was dirty, dusty, muddy.
And since I was in the artillery and I
knew it was artillery shell casing, I took it with me.
I cleaned it up and
realized it was a solid brass shell
casing from the First world war,
a French 75 mm. My mother had gotten
as a wedding present a solid brass lamp tape
made somewhere in Europe. And I said,
boy, this could be used as a flower vase with
great brass lamptape.
So I boxed it up and I shipped it home to my mother.
When we got married, my mother gave it to my wife and said,
this really belongs to you.
It has all kind of artwork,
an oriental woman, a couple of birds,
some roses in two initials, B.A.
My wife's name is Betty Ann. It was meant for me to find it.
I had to go on Google to find the story of
what this, what is this thing about?
Because my, one of my grandson's teacher
told me they were getting ready to study World War Two,
so he told the teacher his grandfather
was in World War two and lives in the area.
Of course, I got a phone call when
I come and talk to the kids.
So my grandson says, Papa,
you have to take that shell case and
show it to the kids, the students. Which I did.
So I went on Google,
put in French 75 millimeters shell case.
I got the story called trench art.
And it said that First World War was trench warfare.
Some of the trenches had,
during quiet periods, they had artisans in the trench,
some of them had crude tools.
They took these empty shell cases
which they were plentiful around [needs confirmation], and
put different works of art.
And that was the story. Told me the whole story.
That's amazing. So after this,
we actually have an exhibit on
the other side about World War One,
and we have some trench art on display.
So if you're interested in seeing it on
your way out, we can show that to you.
So my last couple questions, the first is,
why do you think it's important for
students to learn about World War Two and the Holocaust?
Well, because there's a lot
of history there that has to be told.
I mean, every year, twice a year,
history teacher at Roswell High School used
to originally invited me and my brother.
Then when he became too ill,
I was solo. Last year
suddenly I didn't hear from,
couldn't understand his cell phone
was working, no answer.
I was able to contact the school and
find out he had died.
Maybe from Covid, I don't know,
because he wasn't that old.
Probably somewhere in his '40s.
So my mission when I'm getting ready to
do is to contact Roswell high school again
to see if they have
a new history teacher that's going to
teach course in World War Two.
So if there are, I'll go there and talk to the students again.
With this other material that I have,
I'm also going to contact
Woody High School as the same question [needs confirmation].
So what do you think that students should take
away specifically from your story,
from your family story? What lessons?
Well, I can answer that based on
the questions I normally get from high school students.
And I spoke to stu— more recently,
I spoke to students at St.
Pious X Catholic High School,
also Marist Catholic High School.
And sometimes I get the same questions
that I've gotten from the public high school,
so I know how to answer the questions.
And as my oldest daughter said,
when she took me to St. Pious High School,
the students were all ears.
I mean, you could hear a pin drop and nobody moved.
And I find
the same thing when I spoke to the students in public highschools.
They were fairly interested.
And of course the questions they asked were also,
you know good questions. Because as I told them
my combat experience, or my experience going into
the Army 18 years old
is the same age as some of them are.
So when I spoke to the students in Lamar County,
Georgia, Anchorage [needs confirmation], Georgia, similar situation.
They're very attentive, very interested.
What do they want to know from you?
What kind of what questions do they ask questions? Kind of questions? Yeah.
Number one, how did you feel going into the army?
Number two, how did you feel going into
Dachau?That pretty much most of the questions.
Yeah. I mean ones that were uniform.
Where did you think we saw dead bodies in Dachau?
The answer is simple. It wasn't
the first time we saw it, dead bodies. It
was the first time you see, there was German soldiers on
the sides of the road or in the roads or
whatever. Dead hor a lot, of dead horses.
It was a weird shock. After that,
It's repetitive. So you never get over it.
But the initial shock by the time we got to
Dachau, you know it's like last week's newspaper.
So is there anything that I haven't
asked you about that you'd like to share with us today?
Anything else you want to share with us today?
Anything else?
Yes.
Well, I can tell
you when we were in Austria occupation [needs confirmation]
we lived in an old monastery.
They gave us what they called details.
The first detail we had close
by was a former Austrian stockade.
The US military filled it up with captured SS officers.
We had to perform guard duty around that stockade.
24x7.s Snow days in January,
December, January of 45,
even November snow days.
We had to tromp around in that snow, walk around, in
that snow 4 hours,
2 hours on and 4 hours off,
before you had to go back another 2 hours.
Not happy soldiers.
Then each morning we would take the German soldiers,
the German SS officers, put them in trucks,
take them up into the mountainsides,
chop down trees, cut up the trees for firewood,
take the firewood down into Salzburg.
First hand it out to
the bakers to fire up the stores to bake bread.
Bread for number one, the US.
military. Number two for the prisoners.
Number three, for civilians.
That was every day occurrence.
Every day, we had our C rations and K rations for lunch.
They brought for the prisoners
the easiest thing for them to prepare,
which was like a liquid soup, supposedly chicken soup,
and what the Germans,
what we call today Matzo ball soup,
similar but different because all they had was
some seasoning with flour to make
these round balls and the soup
tasted like they may have dipped a
chicken in it for 2 seconds and pulled it out.
But that's what the prisoners had every day for lunch. So
that was one experience that we had.
I had a personal detail with
another soldier to go to Genoa, Italy.
We were transported to Genoa,
Italy where the first thing we saw when we got there,
was a coal ship from America bringing cold.
We I found, when we found him and I found out it was an American ship,
we went aboard. And we were invited to remain for dinner.
We had dinner aboard that American ship, which was nice.
Then the next morning,
a grain ship arrived either from Canada or the US,
and that was our, the reason we were there.
They pumped the grain into these railroad cars,
hopper cars. In the middle of that train,
they had one boxcar. That
was our home for the trip from general,
through the Brenner Pass,
first the Po Valley in Italy,
and then the Brenner Pass
into Salzburg Austria
and we were to ride [needs confirmation] shotgun on that train to make
sure it got back to Salzburg okay.
And the grain was delivered in Salzburg,
there again, to be delivered to bakers to bake bread.
Everything went fine.
We got a first look at the Po Valley. Train
I remember, stopped one time
we had our C rations and K rations.
We had two folding
cots. I took a picture of the inside of it.
And that was our home for that trip.
But one time the train stopped to get more
cold and we noticed a lot of tomato plants.
So the tomatoes looked ripe,
so him and I jumped off the train and
we picked the ripest tomatoes.
So we had tomatoes to eat with
our C rations which added made it better to eat.
I remember that. I took pictures through
the Brenner Pass, and I had right when I developed the pictures [needs confirmation].
This is pictures of the Brenner Pass
because you know, it's just like a mountainside.
But I remember that very well.
Another, if we have another few minutes? Sure.
Another thing that I remember very well.
We used to go to Salisbury.
They would take us to a movie one night a week.
Now, the civilians learned
quickly what the soldiers
do when they come out of a movie theater.
Those that smokes light up
a cigarette. The soldiers that
smoked cigarettes as I said was a nickel a pack.
Some of them didn't take
that many puffs, throw it down.
The civilians would be in groups of
two or three civilians following all the soldiers.
As soon as they would, a soldier
would throw a cigarette butt down,
the civilians would leap on them like dogs,
to grab that cigarette butt,
the cigarette butts to take the
remaining tobacco for two reasons.
Number one, to make,
they had paper to make cigarettes for their personal use,
to make cigarettes to barter.
But to me, especially
since I was, brother and I were not smokers,
it was so degrading to watch
those civilians fight like dogs to capture that tobacco.
Very degrading to see human beings in that situation. Yeah.
I remember that very well. Yeah, that post war recovering economy
I know there was a lot of
barter going on because the money hadn't recovered yet.
Yeah, that's fascinating.
Well, thank you so much for
sharing all of your stories with us
today and for your time
and for becoming a part of our Legacy series.
We really appreciate it. Thank you so much.