Eldon Nicholas collection
Contains letters, maps, postcards, photographs, newspaper clippings, and military paperwork related to the wartime experiences of Eldon Nicholas, an ambulance driver with the in the 548th Medical Ambulance Company of the U.S. Army, which helped to liberate the Vittel internment camp in France in September 1944. Includes letters in which Private Nicholas references a monkey puppet he had used to entertain children in the liberated camp.
- Genre/Form
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Letters.
Photographs.
Certificates.
- Extent
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3 folders
1 oversize box
1 oversize folder
- Credit Line
- United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, Gift of the family of Eldon G. Nicholas
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Record last modified: 2022-07-28 17:50:45
This page: https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn37940
Also in This Collection
Kiki the monkey puppet used by a young US soldier to entertain children in a liberated internment camp
Object
Monkey hand puppet named Kiki used by 23 year old US Army private, Eldon G. Nicholas, to entertain children in September 1944 at the recently liberated Vittel internment camp in France. The Germans established the Vittel camp in 1940 to imprison citizens of neutral or enemy countries for possible exchange with German prisoners. However, over 100 Jewish inmates were deported from the camp and killed in Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp. The camp was liberated by the 3rd Army on September 9, 1944. Private First Class (Pfc.) Nicholas served as an ambulance driver for the 548th Medical Ambulance Company of the United States Army in Europe during World War II. While at the camp, photographs were taken of Eldon with the puppet. In a V-mail to his father back home in Meadwataka, MI, Eldon wrote: “That’s where I had my picture taken with that little monkey, this woman made.”