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Oral history interview with George Hill Leonard

Oral History | Digitized | Accession Number: 2001.32 | RG Number: RG-50.106.0136

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    Oral history interview with George Hill Leonard
    Transcript
    This is a United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
    volunteer collection interview with George Leonard conducted
    by Esther Finder on January 10, 2001 in Rockville, Maryland.
    This is tape one side A. Thank you
    for doing an interview with me today.
    Let's start out by having you tell me
    when and where you were born.
    I was born in Malden, Massachusetts,
    on December 24, 1921.
    Is that where you grew up?
    I very rapidly got moved to Dorchester, which at the time
    was a tremendously in flux quasi slum of Boston.
    And I pretty much grew up in Dorchester
    until the army came along.
    Can you tell me a little bit more
    about this community other than the few words that you
    used to describe it so far?
    Dorchester was and maybe still is the largest burrow
    or in-city suburb of Boston.
    And it had originally been famous for being
    a seaport with the Puritans or Pilgrims
    or Lord knows what all, and lots of Indians around there.
    And as the community grew, it had its upper middle class
    and upper class and straight middle class areas.
    When I lived there, it was in such flux
    that it depended upon the block you were in, just
    like parts of Manhattan.
    And it went from when I was a little tiny kid, predominantly
    English background, to Irish, to then Mediterranean groups
    and Jews around the fringes.
    And by the time I left, say, in 1941,
    '42, it was a sad, sad community, not because
    of the influx of groups, but because
    of what was happening to the infrastructure
    and so on and so forth-- overcrowded,
    and the houses were dilapidated, et cetera.
    You're probably familiar with the three-decker houses
    in Boston.
    There were economic problems.
    Of course, it was the Depression, which
    impinged upon the whole thing.
    And there were economic problems with people.
    There were sociological groups against groups.
    The Irish were-- in my family, even
    though I have a quarter Irish from my real father, who
    had died four or five years after I was born.
    Even though I had quarter Irish, my mother and others
    in the community, the English community,
    were as rigid against Irish almost as they were the Jews.
    Nobody knew why.
    In fact, I didn't really know, for example, a Jew
    until I was very mature--
    mature child, I mean.
    But I played with Irish kids all the time.
    And my entire background was formed
    by playing with a wide variety of people--
    playing with a wide variety of children.
    Can you tell me what your parents did for a living?
    You mentioned you lost your father when you were young.
    I assume from that there was a remarriage
    and you had a second father?
    My real father died as a result of mustard gas
    in his lungs that caught up with him
    years and years after the First World War.
    I never really knew my real father at all.
    Most of the time he was in the veterans hospital
    in his final years.
    My mother married a pharmacist managing the Edward Everett
    Square Pharmacy in Dorchester.
    And after they had been married a couple of years,
    he went into Eli Lilly and became one of their detail men.
    And he ate and not drank himself to death,
    because he only drank beer, but he let himself go to pot.
    And before long, he died of a massive coronary
    in 1939, just on the verge of becoming New England
    manager of Eli Lilly.
    He brought with him to the marriage two girls,
    and my mother had two boys, and between them they
    had two children of their own.
    It was quite a conglomeration.
    I spent most of my younger years, from 12 to 17,
    lusting after my stepsister--
    the younger one.
    That's about it.
    Where did you go to school and what
    were your favorite subjects?
    You're talking about undergraduate?
    I mean, yeah--
    Elementary.
    Elementary, et cetera.
    Went to a little Quincy Street school for primary grades.
    There were only three rooms--
    the kind of a place that was really--
    you just couldn't believe it.
    They did away with it, of course, a few years later.
    And then I went to the Mather School from the fourth on up.
    The Mather School was on Meeting House Hill.
    It still is there.
    I visited about two years ago and was astounded.
    Now, the Mather School was the first general public school
    in the country.
    And they changed the building of course.
    The building I went to was built in probably the late 1800s.
    I'm not sure.
    It was a very strict, authoritarian, punishing
    environment.
    At the same time, it was known as a good school system where
    you learn by rote, at least, even
    if it wasn't any other way.
    We moved in my later teens to Roslindale,
    which was an up step, and everyone
    breathed a sigh of relief.
    And then we moved from there to West Roxbury,
    which was at the outer fringe of Boston
    on the Dedham-Norwood-Needham-Newton
    border out there.
    And this was even better, but that was just about the time
    my stepfather died, and my mother went back
    to her penurious way of living.
    I think I've said about the whole bit there.
    When you were growing up, what did you
    think you want it to be as an adult?
    A writer.
    What kind of writing did you want to do?
    I had fiction in mind, but after my government career
    when I retired, nonfiction proved
    to be my biggest boon, although I've done a couple of novels
    for publication.
    And right now, I'm doing a non-fiction book
    which is my whole reason for living the past 20 or 30 years.
    Would you care to talk about that for just a moment?
    Just a quick word.
    About 23 years ago, I was taken into a meditation
    group in Gaithersburg by some very sophisticated people.
    And I learned a lot in it.
    I learned a lot about basic Kabbalism,
    Sufism, and the Masonic rites, and lots of others
    that have been pulled--
    the mystic tradition.
    And they never went for gobbledygook,
    or what might be called just pure crap today.
    You go to the new age sections of the bookstores
    and libraries, and it's all crapped up with junk--
    stuff that a sensible person could never really digest.
    So at any rate, this was meditation
    from the point of view of letting your subconscious meet
    the--
    getting in touch with your higher self, et cetera, et
    cetera.
    So I went from one stage to another
    and felt that someday, I would pull together what I recognized
    as being the best--
    the most important strains in all of these traditions
    going back thousands and thousands
    of years, put it together in my own book,
    and I've just started that book.
    Did you come from a religiously observant family?
    My mother sent us-- made sure that we
    started in the congregational church
    when we were practically babies.
    Me and my siblings went to Sunday school
    and went to the Boy Scouts in the church later on.
    We did everything, but my mother never participated and neither
    did my stepfather.
    I was never particularly religious.
    Indeed, when I hit college, I did what most of us do--
    we lost our organized religious feelings--
    any that were left.
    And we formulated either our new ones
    or became pure agnostics, et cetera, et cetera.
    So I suppose I leaned toward being a total agnostic
    by the time I was in the army.
    But then, by the time I reached the army--
    but then I had some experiences in the army which threw me
    right back again into a world in which I knew--
    knew in quotes-- that there was, after all, a central source
    and lots going on in the universe, et cetera,
    that most of us didn't recognize,
    and that you're left to infer and to get on faith by being
    in touch with certain things.
    If you want, when this is over and you have five minutes,
    I'll tell you about an amazing experience or two
    I had particularly in the army that's
    irrelevant to the Holocaust.
    On a lighter note, when you were a child,
    what did you do for fun?
    Oh, boy.
    I was a typical kid from the point
    of view of playing marbles and Relievio and all the games.
    And it was an environment which was totally different
    from today's kids.
    There was no supervision of them playing.
    Nobody had play dates or anything like that.
    It was a question of you went out with the kids,
    and that was it.
    And your mother called you for supper and so forth.
    We learned to play all sorts of games together.
    We learned to roam all over greater Boston in packs
    with the kids.
    And we went to Franklin Park and the Arnold Arboretum in Boston
    and had favorite places to go.
    And in the summer, we knew where there were good swimming holes
    in certain small creeks that flowed through
    the Charles River, the upper Charles River,
    and Mother's Brook and West Roxbury and so forth.
    I became interested in writing in high school
    and did a lot of that fiddling around myself,
    and knew I wanted to be a writer.
    But skipping ahead quickly, the army changed me
    into one of these silly attitudes about,
    oh, I got to do something in a government way
    and change the world.
    And so I went and studied government and economics
    in school and went into government first.
    So I had a pretty good career in the public health service
    as an economist, planner, administrative person.
    And when I retired from that, I immediately
    picked up the writing again, although I
    sold a novel while I was in the public health service.
    What was the name of the novel?
    Are you ready for this?
    It was called Sexmax.
    It was a Brave New World type in which
    every single need that people had was satisfied
    by the government.
    And one of the mainstreams was that the women who
    were widowed at age 50 and 60 were
    able to apply to the government for assignment of a young man
    to them.
    And the young men were drafted for this purpose.
    Rather than being drafted to kill,
    they were drafted to make themselves useful.
    To make love and not war.
    What languages did you speak when you were a teenager?
    Just English?
    Languages?
    Just purely English.
    Studied French and Latin in high school.
    Did you witness much antisemitism
    when you were growing up?
    In spades.
    Do you have some examples?
    Examples don't immediately come to mind.
    It was so all-prevalent.
    Just words and looks and feelings
    on the parts of people who had pretty limited
    lives and didn't know where to put their frustrations.
    And you heard slights all the time, all the time.
    And indeed, when I met my wife--
    and I had come back from the army
    and met my wife, who was Jewish--
    Jewish family-- my mother, I suppose,
    did the best she could to be pleasant and like Phyllis.
    And there were times when it worked out fine.
    But generally speaking, particularly
    in the early stages, I got subtle chaff from my mother.
    I got less-than-subtle chaff from Phyllis's family.
    You know all the stories there.
    What do you remember hearing or reading about Hitler's rise
    to power and events in Germany?
    I assume you mean before I went into the army?
    Before the war.
    Very, very little.
    We recognized as being a threat to Europe peace,
    and everyone held their breath from that point of view
    in the late '30s.
    But it's Hitler's antipathy or singling out the Jews
    was a relatively new thing when I came into the army.
    I don't even remember hearing about Kristallnacht,
    for example, although probably I did, and it went right
    over my head.
    What was happening in your life in 1939 and 1940?
    I graduated from high school and went to a Sunday school teacher
    training at Durham, New Hampshire, the college town.
    And I said, my god, this is college?
    This is great.
    This is for me.
    Nobody in my family had ever mentioned it.
    So I started the low way.
    The only way I could do it was Boston University at night.
    I did that for a year, and then went
    to Suffolk University days, working two part-time jobs.
    And I'm starting to get emotional already.
    I guess my emotionalism is based more
    upon old memories in general than it
    is the combat and Mauthausen that I thought.
    I'm not sure.
    At any rate, I went to Suffolk days
    and worked two part-time jobs.
    And one of the jobs I had had my first year,
    when I was going to BU nights, was interesting,
    because my mother immediately sent me
    to her brother George, who was treasurer of the State Street
    Trust back in the days when banks were banks.
    You know what I mean?
    [INAUDIBLE]
    Huh?
    [INAUDIBLE]
    Big, big organizations, and being treasurer was something.
    Today, they have these little branches around,
    and everybody's an assistant treasurer.
    There are no secretaries and administrative assistants
    anymore.
    They're administrators.
    At any rate, she sent me to George,
    and I went into his walnut-paneled office,
    and he referred me to Esterbrook and Company,
    which is a very classy, upscale--
    the upscale stock brokerage on State Street,
    just right there off of Washington on State.
    And I became a board runner with messages
    around and so on and so forth.
    And I came across antisemitism there personally,
    because I remember an old-- a very nice woman--
    nice woman that I liked.
    And all of a sudden, I'm on the edge of a conversation,
    and she's saying something to the other woman.
    And she's saying something about,
    shh, you'd better be quiet, you don't know who is these days.
    And I realized from something else that
    came out a minute later that they were talking about me
    being possibly Jewish, and they'd better not
    go on with their probably insulting statements
    or touching statements, anyway.
    So that hit home.
    That hit home.
    I didn't, of course, react at all.
    And my step father-- bless his heart-- was with a guy--
    I'm going back years now beforehand--
    was a guy who was very rough around the edges
    and had lots and lots of problems.
    But bless his heart, he did lots of things for me.
    He gave me a male figure when I needed it.
    Even though I didn't have a close relationship with him,
    there was that male figure.
    And he bought one year a big, big saw and so forth--
    electric apparatus down in the cellar.
    And a friend of his was a Jewish pharmacist named Yarosh.
    And he was one of the first-- this was back
    when I was younger.
    And he was one of the first mature Jewish men
    I'd ever seen.
    And I was so impressed back then with the delicacy
    of his features and his eyes and everything.
    The man was absolutely impressive as all hell.
    And i remember, we crowded around the door
    to look downstairs in the cellar to see what a Jew looked like.
    And as I remember him-- and I do have a memory of his face--
    he was a good example--
    and I don't know where you're coming from.
    It makes no difference to me as far as what I'm about to say.
    He was a good example of having one leg back
    in the greatness of the Jews thousands of years ago.
    I don't mean that they're not great today.
    I mean that they were once even more impressive.
    They came out of situations in Europe
    and Central Asia that is not in our history books--
    not in history books at all.
    And so as I say, I was very impressed with it.
    And then I became impressed with my stepfather,
    that he would have a friend like this.
    So you were finishing high school
    and starting college around the times
    that Austria was being annexed and Hitler
    was beginning to expand.
    I was wondering if you can remember how that was treated
    by the United States media or if it
    was discussed in any of your classes at school or anything
    like that.
    Do you have any recollection at all of those events?
    I don't recall it being discussed in school,
    because I don't think they figured
    they were prepared for it.
    And I never took a course on current events or anything
    like that.
    If they did say anything, it was offhand, and then I forget.
    Do you want me to turn up the heat?
    The papers reported pretty straightly--
    annexation and Chamberlain doing this and so on and so forth.
    And I remember that the personal feelings
    on my part, on my mother's part, and most people
    that I heard talk about it were always personal.
    We were afraid of being caught up in another war, particularly
    those who had--
    people all around me had one leg back in the First World War.
    And they were deathly afraid of this.
    My mother broke into tears many, many times about,
    oh, I don't want to see you boys go off
    and die like my husband did, your father did,
    et cetera, et cetera.
    So there was that.
    The Jewish theme was not played up in the papers
    particularly at all.
    Austria certainly wasn't.
    Poland-- no.
    Kristallnacht, as I said, I forget about.
    I don't really have a memory of that.
    Maybe I was too young.
    When was that? '33?
    '32-'33, which meant I was 10, 11 years old.
    And let's see-- you were about three years old, weren't you?
    At any rate, I think I've shot my bolt on that subject.
    I want to stress again the personal nature--
    people saw things through their own skin and their own eyes,
    which is true in the war, which is true everywhere,
    which is true now.
    I'm trying to understand if you're telling me that you
    were not particularly alarmed.
    Other than the possibility of American
    involvement when it came to the invasion of Poland,
    for example, in the onset of the war,
    am I understanding you correctly?
    Was that pretty much the extent of the reaction of yourself
    and the people around you, that when Hitler invaded Poland,
    the main concern was that America
    would become involved possibly?
    I would have to say that that was the leading feeling.
    I don't think that anyone was, in my circles
    or in my family or anything, for Hitler at all.
    I don't mean that.
    I mean they recognized him as being a monomaniac and war
    lover and so forth.
    But people pretty well personalized it.
    I just can't overemphasize that at all.
    It was a personal thing.
    I was afraid.
    I didn't want my young life interrupted
    with that sort of stuff.
    And my mother was deathly afraid of it, crying again.
    And--
    You mentioned the reaction toward Hitler.
    What about the reactions in this country regarding
    Stalin, because Hitler and Stalin had
    signed a non-aggression pact?
    Did that set up any red flags as far as you can remember?
    I remember it as being thought of as a stab in the back
    and two dictators getting together.
    I think that there was more feeling over those years
    anyway.
    Proceeding is against Russia probably because of propaganda
    on the part of some people and so on, and partly
    for very real reasons about what Stalin was doing.
    Although just like Hitler, the real stories
    of what would happen as a result of Stalin's influence
    and Hitler's influence didn't come out until
    much later, much later.
    When the time came for--
    when we were in the war, I think that fear of Russia--
    this was before the stuff about the camps ad become obvious--
    the fear of Russia was greater than the fear of Germany.
    Definitely-- a fear of Russia.
    During the period of time between the beginning
    of the war in September of '39 and Pearl Harbor,
    how did the war in Europe impact your personal life experience?
    Again, personal-- I had my own agenda,
    which was to get college and to be a writer
    and to have some kind of a life in addition
    to that, when all young men would want and engage in,
    et cetera, et cetera, going places, et cetera.
    For a long time in that period, I
    was social chairman of the young group at church.
    And so I threw dances that joined five churches
    in the West Roxbury Roslindale area in a group,
    and we invited them to the dances and so on and so forth.
    And we had trips from on the Provincetown steel pier
    ship and other events that we planned.
    I was caught up in these things.
    These things were, in the long run, more important to me,
    except for the fear of the headlines.
    I hate to sound shallow, but that was it.
    When you look back on your life before American involvement
    in the war, is there anything else
    that stands out in your mind about your life
    before World War II and the United States'
    involvement in World War II?
    Anything else?
    I can't think of anything that's worth putting out now.
    Minutia, but my life consisted of the things I said.
    And I didn't really snap to until some events
    during the war and afterward made
    a different person out of me--
    really, a different person.
    Not just more maturity, but changed me
    within the context of who I am--
    whatever I mean by that.
    All right, we're going to pause, and I'm going to flip the tape.
    The state's Holocaust Memorial Museum
    volunteer collection interview with George Leonard.
    This is tape number one, side B. When
    did you first learn about the attack on Pearl Harbor?
    Most people can say that they remember it quite vividly.
    When did you hear about Pearl?
    I remember the occasion very, very vividly,
    because I had been working that afternoon
    in the church mimeographing a newsletter to all
    the young people around.
    So I got hold of the news around two
    or three o'clock our time in the afternoon.
    And right away again, personal--
    what's going to happen to me?
    What's going to happen to me and my friends?
    What's going to happen to America?
    And a sidelight on this is that the one person I was closest to
    during the whole combat experience, Captain
    [? Kirkabou, ?] had been an enlisted non-commissioned
    officer at Pearl Harbor in the regular army.
    And he was a man without education
    and without any softening effects
    that you usually get in civilization.
    But he turned out to be not only a magnificent officer
    in combat, but a great guy who was--
    I don't-- do you want-- is it all right if I tell you about
    a scene in Mauthausen with him now,
    or should I let that go to later?
    Leave it for later.
    OK.
    We'll get to your experiences in Mauthausen with him later.
    But when you heard about Pearl Harbor, what
    was its immediate impact on your life?
    Impact in my life was--
    immediate impact was nothing except personal fear
    and wonderment, et cetera.
    The more long-range, that is in the ensuing months,
    and I don't recall exactly when, I
    enlisted in the enlisted reserve and expected them to take me up
    right away.
    But they said they have the right
    to do what they wanted to do with the enlisted reserve
    people, so they said, stay at Suffolk for a while, at least
    until you finish the year.
    So I finished the year, and then I wrote to them.
    And I said, here, here, come take me.
    I'm through.
    And they ignored me, and they ignored me
    until the fall of that year, which was 1942.
    When they did take you, what was your basic training
    and your initiation into the military?
    What was that experience like?
    It was pretty strong.
    I stayed at Fort Devens for a while, being bored,
    but then they sent me down to Fort McClellan, Alabama,
    which had been written about by Walter Winchell as being
    a hellhole of America, and had the usual basic training there
    in the cold mud, which in the long run was--
    I wouldn't want to do it again, but it was good for me,
    damn good.
    How long was your basic training?
    Started out at six weeks, but I think it went to closer to 12
    by the time they finished.
    From there, they shipped me to the sixth motorized division
    in the California desert, which was training to go to Japan,
    the islands, et cetera.
    All the training was motivated toward that.
    And I had been with them for a while
    in the desert, eating sand and so forth, and all of a sudden,
    a Jeep came up one day with a lieutenant and a sergeant
    in it.
    And the sergeant jumped out and said, are you George Leonard?
    And I said, yeah.
    And he said, you were ordered to go
    at oh-something o'clock tomorrow morning to Stanford University.
    This was almost the first I had heard
    of army specialized training.
    Do you know about it?
    Which was a program to train young men particularly
    for a long war.
    They feared that they were going to be light on officers
    and occupiers later on, and so they got this mammoth program
    of giving you a full semester of basic engineering
    or there were other--
    there was medicine, for example, with some lucky to get in it--
    basic engineering in three months.
    So I was there in the program.
    I went from Stanford to University of California
    at Berkeley, where I had the training.
    Stanford was only for a couple of weeks.
    And nine months, three full semesters,
    and then all of a sudden, they disbanded the program totally
    and sent us to--
    most of us in that particular unit
    in California-- to the 11th Armored Division, which
    was in Camp Cooke, California.
    I must say that one of the most important aspects
    of the training was not only the physics, math, and calculus,
    and stuff like that, and chemistry,
    but it was a course that they had,
    and most people just overlooked it completely,
    and they overlook it today.
    They don't really know what it must have been for.
    It was a course designed to teach us
    the sociology, psychology, geography,
    et cetera of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, all
    those Asian republics.
    And the purpose could only have been,
    well, these armored divisions are
    going to go on into Central Asia and take it all over.
    Then the rest of the story, of course,
    there is that in the fall of that year,
    we were shipped to England.
    And when the Bulge started, we were--
    Battle of the Bulge-- we were shipped across the channel.
    Tell me about the trip from the States over to Europe
    and then into the actual theater of war.
    When did you leave?
    We left for England sometime in the summer of '44,
    stayed in England until something like late November,
    and were shipped across the channel when
    the Battle of the Bulge occurred.
    The trip over on the boat was not a nice experience at all.
    I mean, we were down on the hull of the ship and the air was bad
    and the food was bad and everything.
    The only important thing that happened to me
    was that I asked one of the sergeants
    how you bet in shooting craps, and he told me
    to always bet against the dice.
    And I misunderstood, and I bet with the dice,
    and I won something like $1,000 and gave it
    to the first sergeant to keeping the company safe
    or for something or other like that.
    When I got to England, I sent about three quarters of it
    back to my mother, and then used the rest of it
    on splurges in London.
    When you arrived in England, what
    was your rank and your duties and your responsibilities?
    When I arrived in England, I was a private first class--
    a rifleman.
    I guess the military occupation specialty was 750--
    I forget.
    Rifleman with a subheading of machine gun.
    That was it.
    As a rifleman, I'd become expert in stripping down a rifle,
    putting it back together, cleaning it,
    et cetera, et cetera.
    Who was your commanding officer, and who were some
    of the members of your unit?
    Commanding officer was a guy named--
    don't recall his name now, but he's
    the one who, going up the hill after we first got
    bombarded by Tiger tanks in Belgium--
    he was the one that got the bullet right through the head.
    And the first lieutenant of the company,
    Lieutenant [? Kirkabou, ?] became immediately the captain.
    And when he couldn't find Labadie, the sociopath,
    he yelled for me to get him in the command half track
    and be his company runner.
    What does it mean to be the company runner?
    What exactly is that?
    Company runner-- it's a variety of functions--
    predominantly to stay close to the captain
    and maintain communications with the platoon lieutenants,
    or in our case, the platoon lieutenants
    get killed off too quickly.
    They were platoon sergeants--
    and to keep contact through walkie talkie type.
    And in the half track on the move,
    to get from division headquarters
    by radio, the code for the next day's march--
    translate that code, make sure that the captain got it,
    and advise him as the company moved forward--
    advising meaning the road signs, in many cases,
    were all bollixed up on purpose and things like that.
    And you had to use some ingenuity or sense
    to know which way you were going, things like that.
    And this was particularly important for us,
    because our company and battalion turned out
    to be the point, pretty much, of the division.
    And the division turned out to be the point of Patton's Third
    Army.
    The exception to that was when the 4th Armored,
    which was the most magnificent Armored Division in Europe--
    I have to give them credit.
    They had been through France and Italy and France
    and everything.
    The 4th Armored was superb.
    They were on a tangent with us like that moving forward.
    But other times, we were the point like that,
    and the foot infantry would be coming sometimes
    50 miles behind mopping up towns that we had bypassed,
    et cetera, et cetera.
    We just went like wildfire sometimes.
    And it was a hair raising experience,
    but at the same time, it was exhilarating,
    et cetera, et cetera.
    When you say the point, let me make sure I'm understanding.
    You're saying that you were the first to arrive?
    The point, meaning the division.
    The division might move ahead like an arrow,
    and the point would be responsible for meeting
    the enemy and dealing with it first.
    And the most dangerous job in the whole army,
    practically, was to be reconnaissance.
    And our combat command--
    there were two combatant commands in the reserve--
    combat A and B--
    our combat command had its own reconnaissance,
    which meant guys that would sometimes
    go forward not just in armored vehicles, but in Jeeps--
    we called them peeps--
    and go until they met the enemy.
    And more than once, we'd be going
    along a road as the point of the army,
    and find a wrecked Jeep with bodies on the road.
    You see how dangerous that job was?
    When they discovered the enemy, they'd usually
    be dead, that sort of thing.
    I met a few of these guys--
    the ones that lived.
    Phyllis and I met them.
    She came with me to the first reunion I've ever been to.
    Never went to an army--
    11th Armored Division reunion.
    We went to Reno last August, and it was very interesting.
    Were there any Jews in your unit?
    What?
    Any Jews in your unit?
    Yes, ma'am.
    I didn't know any of these guys and almost any in the reunion,
    because the ones I knew in my company had been killed off
    or were dead by then.
    But there were a few from recon and a few from the tanks
    and a few from artillery and so forth there.
    And the guy that befriended Phyllis and me, him
    and his wife--
    he was Jewish, and he had been an officer back then.
    And the officer-- and I think his name was Abrams--
    who commanded the 21st Armored Infantry
    Battalion when the whole battalion moved together--
    he'd get out in front of the tank--
    a Jewish officer, a colonel--
    and stand up in the turret and a gung ho guy.
    Let's go like this.
    He was magnificent.
    I can't praise him too much.
    There was a guy named Jacobson who
    had been my first sergeant in the States
    when I first joined the 11th.
    Jacobson-- he owned a taxi company in Albany.
    And he was a five striper, which was the typical rank
    for the platoon sergeants.
    There'd be lieutenant over them.
    Five stripes for-- he was a five striper.
    And he used to do things for me, and I wondered why.
    And it went on like this.
    He was favoritism galore.
    And something happened, and he said to me, you're not Jewish?
    he said.
    I thought you was a Heb.
    He really thought I was Jewish, which
    is why he had caught on to me.
    I must add that when the army specialized training
    guys flooded into the division and filled up the empty slots,
    that there were a lot of Jewish boys in that group.
    I wouldn't say a significant number,
    but there were quite a few.
    And they helped 11.
    Some of the notes I've made, as a matter of fact,
    show that our company consisted of three or four major groups.
    One is the old, hard-bitten, grizzled guy who had been with
    them since Camp Polk, Louisiana--
    was usually in his mid-upper 20s, sometimes early 30s.
    Tough-- I'm generalizing-- tough, et cetera.
    Another group consisted of the ASTP that came in,
    like me, who tended to be certainly
    more intellectual and capable, because you had
    to have a certain grade in the army general classification
    test in order to get into it, which is the only criteria they
    had for me when they came out in the desert and said,
    you're going to Stanford tomorrow morning.
    It was the AGCT test result. That was all.
    At any rate, there were those two groups
    plus the third group-- by the time the war ended,
    all of the kids that had come in from replacement depots
    and so forth, replacing the ones that got killed and wounded.
    So you had some major factions there
    which colored how Mauthausen was dealt with.
    Now, if you were in one faction, you
    tended to have one feeling--
    this is a big generality, a really big generality,
    but you can make some safe generalities.
    And so at any rate, if you were ASTP,
    army specialized training, you tended
    to have a greater understanding of what was going on
    with the camps, and you tended to be more oriented
    toward doing something consciously instead of trying
    to get out of something, et cetera.
    Did you witness any antisemitism in the army?
    Do you mean that personally, or--
    Did you see it?
    Did I see it?
    Yeah, but not much, nothing much.
    Coming back on the boat--
    I was shipped because I had a lot of points
    through a Bronze Star and a Purple
    Heart and a few other things.
    And I had more points than most in my division,
    and they shipped me to the 79th Infantry Division
    in Kitzingen, which was ready to go home.
    And coming back on that boat, I met and worked
    with a lot of guys who were Jewish, because at that point,
    they shoved me into a clerical situation
    because of a minimum of college I had had and so forth.
    And the 79th needed that, for some reason.
    And I found Jewish guys galore.
    And they were good-naturedly dealt with among that class,
    the clerical class.
    And good friends, and I never really saw antisemitism
    among those groups.
    I remember playing bridge with them
    on the deck, stripped to our waist,
    coming back in December, because of the warmth, because of the--
    what are the Zephyr breezes called
    coming up from the Caribbean at that time of year?
    I'll think of it in a minute.
    Before you got to England and then into the fighting,
    what did you know about the treatment of the Jews
    under Hitler?
    Before the fighting, very little.
    We've been told in army films, orientation films, something
    about it.
    We had been told that there was antisemitism
    and that they were losing their rights, things like that,
    and there had been uprisings like in Kristallnacht.
    I did find out about it then.
    But the camps were not really talked about or even
    much known.
    I'm sure that some people knew about it,
    but it didn't reach us.
    It didn't reach us.
    Now, I'm going to ask you to go through your combat experiences
    from when you got into the fighting.
    If you could please walk me through the steps
    that you took across Europe and some of the battles
    that you were engaged in.
    Well, the baptism of fire, I've mentioned it consisted of our--
    Company C was leading the division that day.
    And we hit the crossroads where the German Tiger
    tanks were zeroed in.
    And zeroing in, of course, is a process
    whereby they keep on shooting and a spotter
    with field glasses tells them with where they're landing.
    Go 20 yards to the right.
    Go third-- blah, blah, blah.
    So they zeroed in that point, and we came across there.
    They gave us all hell.
    And half tracks were getting hit, and so on and so forth.
    And I jumped out of the track, went over here
    into one of the early holes that had been made by the 88,
    and stayed down there with my face down.
    And when I came up something like 20 minutes later,
    that was the most horrible experience, of course,
    I had ever been in-- that one right there.
    I was to hit worse experiences than that,
    but that was it to that date.
    When I came up, the guy--
    one of the track drivers, a lovely, lovely guy
    who had loaned me his suitcase when
    I went home on furlough just before the company shipped
    out--
    he was up against a track with his head
    bashed in from a shell.
    Things like that.
    But we didn't have time for anything
    except jump in the track, a track that's functioning,
    and get out of there, and go on.
    And that was when we came up a hill and the real captain
    got a bullet through his head going up that hill.
    And then when going down another hill, the smoke screen, the one
    I told you about, and John Doles came in the picture.
    For four days and four nights, it
    was a question of going from one scene like that to another,
    and all night long staying up, grabbing naps
    with someone else, staying awake, that type of thing.
    And cold, cold, cold--
    this cold seeps in you when you live with it.
    And all you've got is some C-rations mostly,
    which is wrapped stuff.
    And after four days and four nights,
    they pulled us back and sent us to a place in Belgium
    where there were houses standing and it was relatively peaceful.
    And we just went around and sifted through the houses,
    taking rooms where we could.
    And we had a very delightful experience
    there with a mother and her daughter
    and a husband who were very sweet to us.
    And life became almost normal for a couple of days--
    three days.
    And then they shipped us off again,
    and this was just as hair-raising as the first--
    just as hair-raising.
    And there was one example where one of these jerky type higher
    officers came up from behind and said,
    we're going to attack in half tracks, which nobody had ever
    heard of.
    And the half tracks went in staggered situation
    over the brow of a hill, this one there,
    and then the next one come up, the next one come up.
    And Tiger tanks were off in the woods about 200 yards away.
    And they started-- and I was on the fifth track,
    the headquarters track, which had started out
    as the first one.
    But the three or four on the left had gone a little faster,
    and now they were one, two, three, and more.
    And the Tiger tank started picking them off.
    And I watched as the guy, our half track driver,
    put it in reverse quickly, as quick as he could.
    In the meantime, some of our guys
    are either dead, wounded, or being taken prisoner.
    And I watched a German motion to a couple of guys
    from the next track who had jumped out
    not to go that direction, but to go that direction with them.
    And that was a hair-raising experience.
    We lost permanently two or three tracks, I think.
    Couldn't be started again or the treads were ruined.
    And had to go on lower--
    what do you call it?
    No, I think we took from reserve.
    We took some half tracks from reserve.
    You always have a combat command A, combat command B,
    and a combat command in reserve.
    So we took two or three of their tracks.
    From there, we went toward the Siegfried Line
    after many, many days more mopping up.
    And we mopped up in one town--
    I think it Chenogne in Belgium, just beyond Bastogne, or just
    south of Bastogne.
    By this time, the guys who had been holed up there and kept
    by the Germans were all freed and the situation was normal.
    We took this town and stayed in it at night.
    And at about 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning,
    horrible firing occurs, and we run upstairs and look out.
    And in the darkness, we see the tracer bullets going over
    our heads.
    Tracer are the lit-up bullets--
    coming from up there, and the Germans are counterattacking.
    And boy, oh boy, did we get out of there.
    And as we went out, the 101st Airborne Division paratroopers
    are coming up in the darkness on either side of the street,
    trying to retake the town.
    And they retook it, but then we found out later
    that they had been brutalized and driven out again.
    So we went on toward the Siegfried Line
    after all of these experiences.
    And this is all a clear cut situation
    of just pure combat, no example of coming across civilians
    in distress, like in camps or anything like that at all.
    It's just pure combat.
    And we come in to [? Herscheid, ?]
    Germany, and we bunk up in houses.
    And I'm delivering messages for the captain.
    And it's pitch dark at night, and I'm delivering messages
    through the woody area, and I come across a single file
    of men with no helmets on.
    And you could barely see in the darkness like this--
    barely see-- starlight or something.
    And I go up to the rear one and touch him
    on the shoulder to ask him whether he's company C or what.
    And it turns out to be a German patrol.
    And I absolutely defecated in my pants,
    practically, and dived off the side of the road
    into the woods.
    And there was all kinds of shooting.
    And I kept on going like this, like this, like this,
    and came across a series of houses.
    Went into a house and found that it
    was the headquarters that night of an infantry division which
    was alongside of us.
    And they--
    I'm sorry, I have to interrupt you,
    because we're about to run out of tape.
    Just one moment.
    The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Volunteer
    Collection interview with George Leonard.
    This is tape 2, side A. And you have been telling me
    about encountering a German patrol
    and then making your way away from them.
    The Americans I contacted were not my own division or company,
    and they would not believe that I was an American because there
    had been many, many, many Germans, particularly
    back a few miles.
    And the experience of the Bulge, many Germans
    who had been found in American uniforms
    and speaking perfect English and confusing the situation
    terribly, and were responsible probably
    for many American deaths.
    Any rate, to make a long story short, they wouldn't believe me
    and they asked me questions over and over again,
    and they weren't satisfied with that.
    So I said, well, take me back to my captain
    and he'll identify me.
    Well, they did and Captain [? Kirkabeau ?] identified me.
    The next morning, we kicked off at around 4 or 5 o'clock
    in the morning in the darkness without any pre-bombardment.
    No artillery, no nothing.
    Just quietly.
    No vehicles, no nothing toward the Siegfried Line, the hill.
    And it was a terrible, terrible experience
    because they had booby trapped the entire side
    of the hill we were walking up in the darkness.
    And the booby traps were called bouncing Bettys.
    The bouncing Bettys, when you tripped a wire,
    would bounce up about three or four feet high and go off.
    And there were cries of medic, medic, medic,
    and so on and so forth.
    And gradually, we kept on going through.
    Miraculously, I didn't trip any wires nice
    had no problem in that regard.
    And finally, we got to the side of the hill
    that we were going to dig in on.
    And there were lots of prisoners being sent back at that point
    to get to the rear, just down the road,
    with their hands on head.
    Nobody had the time to usher them or anything.
    And the Germans we found there were particularly
    glad to be out of it.
    They weren't going to make any trouble.
    They were wrecked pillboxes on the Siegfried Line.
    They were wrecked because the Air Force
    had bombed them repeatedly.
    And the company took up a wrecked pillbox
    as its headquarters, and one for medical cases, wounded.
    And we dug in, started to dig in, and shale rock.
    And when dawn came, there were still
    guys that weren't anywhere near dug in
    yet because of the hardness and shale,
    and it was cold and miserable.
    The side of the hill that we were on
    was a defilade position, meaning that as you
    go to it toward the top of the hill,
    you could see over the surrounding countryside,
    but we were down and back of that, which
    means a defilade position.
    And the 88s, most of them, the 88 Our artillery--
    it was not artillery.
    It's a tank gun shells used by the Germans--
    would mostly go over the top of the hill and away, down back.
    But enough of them landed right alongside side of the hill,
    there whereby we were constantly getting bombarded,
    constantly having casualties.
    And the captain was getting increasingly
    furious over not having tank support
    or anything at that point.
    Radioed back, and the tanks did not
    want to come up because they were
    afraid of getting lambasted with the German equivalent
    of the bazooka, which was a very strong anti-tank shell.
    The bazooka looked like one of those big musical instruments,
    a long, hollow tube, and it rested on two men shoulders
    in order to fire.
    At any rate, Captain [? Kirkabeau ?]
    was so angry that he said that he
    was going to go back and fight with the battalion headquarters
    over not having proper--
    this was after two or three days, by the way,
    after two or three days of taking constant mortar
    and fire, what we call Screaming Mimi fire, which
    I keep motioning with my hands.
    I'm sorry.
    Screaming Mimi fire, which is a particular rocket,
    which made a weird sound as it came down.
    And General 88 and small arms fire a machine gun fire,
    and Germans creeping on their stomach up toward us.
    At any rate, he told me to make sure
    that I got to all of the platoon sergeants and lieutenants,
    and tell them--
    and he gave me specific instructions
    to each one about what they were supposed to do--
    and to tell them that he would be back up later after fighting
    with the commander of the battalion
    to get some tank support and other support.
    So I started going from hole to hole.
    I had reached the third platoon hole with one
    to go when a mortar fire came in and small arms fire
    at the same time.
    And I jumped into the hole, practically
    breaking the leg of a sergeant that was in there,
    and started telling him about the instructions.
    It was daylight at that point.
    And he turned me around and he said,
    you've got blood on the back of your jacket.
    I said, well, I don't feel anything.
    He said, well, let me look.
    And he looked and he said, well, you've
    got some sort of a penetrating wound there.
    And he said you've, got shrapnel bits over parts of your skin,
    which I didn't feel either.
    So he said, well, you better go to the aid station, which
    is the wrecked pillbox about 50 yards over there.
    So I said, OK, I will, but I got to get this fourth message
    to the last platoon and it's on the way.
    Oh, no problem.
    It's on the way.
    So I did it, got to finally reach the aid station.
    The aid station had a Jeep coming up
    with two other guys in it, and they stuck me on the back
    and they took off for a rear town,
    where I got hot food and everything.
    It was great again.
    The doctor said something about-- well,
    he said it's a penetrating wound,
    but we don't want to take any chances with it.
    And they picked out some of the shrapnel bits that
    were here and there, and it was no big deal at all.
    And I found out later that the sergeant
    I'd been talking to in the third platoon
    had put me for the Silver Star with the words,
    "without regard for"--
    I'm laughing here, not crying--
    "without regard for my life," et cetera, et cetera.
    I did this, that, and the other thing, which I candidly
    say was not really true.
    I felt a little bit better when the awards committee--
    I found out later, when we were in Australia
    at the end of the war, the awards committee
    felt that they had not enough--
    what do you call it?
    Corroboration.
    Corroboration is exactly the right word.
    Corroboration, so they knocked it down to a Bronze Star,
    and I was happy anyway.
    So I was off the line for seven weeks.
    And when I came back, the division,
    our battalion, anyway, was in the German city of Worms.
    Worms, W-O-R-M-S, on the Rhine.
    And we stayed there two or three days
    and then kicked off again for Frankfurt, Darmstadt,
    and other points.
    At that point, it became a different war.
    It was not a question of slogging
    horrible, horrible battles, in which it was practically--
    I never experienced man to man fighting, thank God,
    but it was the closest thing to that, where you actually
    saw the Germans and you were getting fired on,
    and it was really wicked.
    Now it became a question of getting out on the highway
    and stopping and having a run and gun fight
    and getting shells, and so forth,
    but you weren't holed up for three or four days in a row
    in miserable weather, and things like that.
    We went up, as I remember, to Erfurt, Gotha, those cities,
    in the northern part of just above Bavaria.
    And all of a sudden, we had some opposition there
    in each one of those places.
    And then we turned quickly down a little bit
    over toward the Czech border, and then
    down to Graff and [? Mor, ?] and so forth,
    and ultimately Passau, German city,
    before we went into Austria.
    The fear was always great.
    We had problems at night of counter attacks.
    We were counterattacked in Oberhof
    and in the [? Thoringenvald. ?] And the counterattacks
    are fearful because you never know where they're coming from
    or never know in what way they, what
    form they're going to take.
    And I had an experience in Oberhof,
    not only the experience of my guide mentor,
    John Doles, tapping me on the heel
    and helping me come through it.
    But we were there two days, and on the second morning,
    I heard from the--
    most of our squads were all around the town, ringing
    in the town, protecting the tanks,
    protecting against counterattacks.
    The captain and I were holed up in a house, where
    we heard about a house nearby where 30 or 40 German kids had
    been sent to get them away from the Ruhr
    and other bombing centers, Dresden and Ruhr,
    places like that.
    Just like in England.
    They sent the English kids to places in the country.
    And so it seemed logical.
    The captain supported the idea of filling my helmet
    with C-rations, chocolate, things like that.
    And I went over and knocked on the door,
    and this very hostile, stiff, young lady answered.
    And I told her who I was.
    She was like a governess to this group.
    And she said, come in.
    So I went in, dumped the chocolate on the table.
    And the kids were brought in and they all stood around,
    and she said something to them, a signal.
    And they all said, Heil Hitler, with their hands raised.
    And I just turned and walked out,
    and that was the end of that.
    So there was still feeling on their part,
    on some of their part, particularly
    some of the younger people.
    We went into a town north of Passau,
    where the captain and I and the driver and the big radio
    operator, Lucas Sevich, were billeted.
    And usually, we were told, in no uncertain terms,
    to kick the people out regardless.
    Just get rid of them.
    No civilians in the house with you.
    But there were five or six young women,
    who later it came out that they were either the wives
    or mistresses of SS officers, high ranking SS officers,
    who had been brought down from northern areas.
    And one of them was a Dutch young woman,
    beautiful, absolutely gorgeous.
    So the captain said, well, they can sleep in the attic.
    So then we made up plans for guard duty,
    and I had the first shift of two hours.
    By then it was about midnight.
    Two hours, 12:00 to 2:00.
    And I'm on guard duty and everyone else is sleeping.
    And the Dutch girl tiptoes downstairs and tries
    to inveigled me to come up.
    And I am absolutely--
    I tell this anecdote to show the fear
    and frozen this that you can go through.
    Even if I had been willing to, I wouldn't
    have been capable of even making love with her or anything
    by having sex, and I just dismissed her and told her
    to get her neck back upstairs.
    Then we went down to Passau.
    And by then, all along the road, we
    were getting signs of the Holocaust.
    We were getting stripen clad people on the road,
    begging, climbing all over the half-track, looking for food.
    We gave them what we had, which, as I said before,
    was not a good idea because of their real needs.
    You have to be careful, of course, with people who
    have been starved or something.
    But these people were not starved like the ones
    in the concentration camp.
    These were ones who were real work camps.
    They were generally healthier, but just plain hungry
    because they had flowed out of their camps
    with the coming of the Americans,
    and the SS were starting to save their skins and leave.
    It got worse and worse and worse.
    I mean, more and more were on the road,
    and orders came that we would not, under any circumstances,
    let them come in the track.
    We were not to give them food because there already
    had been word passed back to echelons to bring up
    extra kitchens and bring our best nurses.
    I've got to say, and I'll say this later again,
    as a group, the most magnificent group I came across,
    if you've got it categorized by group and make generalizations,
    were the American nurses.
    Several miles west of Mauthausen,
    somewhere in between Passau and Mauthausen,
    word came by radio that Mauthausen existed.
    They described what they could of the camp,
    that is, many, many, many thousands
    were in there they knew and it had
    the reputation of being one of the three worst death camps.
    The 41st cavalry and reconnaissance groups
    in our division, with some moving armored vehicles
    and the usual Jeeps and everything,
    had come across some SS men leaving.
    Saw them a few miles away.
    They engaged in a running gunfight,
    and they took loads of prisoners.
    The prisoners were sent back in some way.
    I forget how they were dealt with.
    At any rate, the reconnaissance wanted
    to make sure that we understood that the camp was
    there exactly where it was, and the fact that the SS seemed
    to have left.
    We got the word because, again, we're
    point of the whole division.
    And I don't know why our battalion was
    the point of the whole division so much, but it was.
    We were told to regroup down the road a ways from Mauthausen
    and make a military presence, and go in there
    and restore order.
    The 41st cavalry, and others up there on the scene,
    had said that they couldn't do anything.
    They weren't equipped to do it.
    And all they could do was go on and protect the area
    like reconnaissance, reconnoiter,
    like they'd been doing.
    So our job was to go up there and bring order and bring those
    who had been spilled out from the camp back into the camp,
    release the immediate environs.
    So we did it, and there was three tanks
    in front of the half-tracks.
    OK, we're back.
    We had a brief interruption when someone came to your door.
    You were talking about the three tanks in front of a half-track
    and then the door stopped.
    When the division got word of the presence of Mauthausen,
    the orders were being given us by radio from battalion.
    The tracks and tanks behind us were all
    stopped along the road, and Captain [? Kirkabeau ?]
    made sure that two or three tanks
    came up ahead of the half-tracks and that all of the men
    dismounted from the tracks.
    And they were ordered to march up to the camp,
    holding their rifles at port arms,
    to make sure that everyone understood
    that it was a military situation and that the Russian explosion
    in the camp, which we had heard about, was to be quelled.
    In other words, the Russian prisoners in the camp
    were taking over things and then exploding
    and being authoritarian, et cetera, et cetera.
    So all these considerations, plus the possibility
    that there were some SS or other guards left behind,
    had to be planned for and dealt with.
    I want to skip this for one second.
    I go back to tell about something that happened
    between Passau and Mauthausen.
    The captain and I were holed up in a house with no other person
    present.
    The driver was taking care of his half-tracks in place,
    and so on and so forth.
    Well, we were alone, and a knock came at the door, one
    that we least expected.
    Because although we had a firefight the day before,
    we did not dream that there was anyone, any of the enemy,
    within two or three miles at least.
    It turned out to be a middle ranking SS
    officer and his aide.
    And the aide said that the SS officer had
    the tattered remains of an SS division out in the woods
    and they wanted to surrender to the Americans.
    We knew from radio reports that the Russians
    were coming some miles to the east
    and that they weren't far away.
    And we knew, putting two and two together,
    that the SS divisions and others were
    being squeezed in the middle and they wanted to surrender to us.
    The captain said, OK, surrender.
    And the man said, the middle ranking German officer
    said, very stiffly, that under no circumstances
    could he surrender to an American officer of less
    than equivalent or superior rank.
    And the captain struck him very hard in the face
    and knocked him down and told him
    to get his ass back to the woods where his men were.
    We found out later that probably they had
    been picked up by the Russians.
    Going on ahead to the military presence
    that we were asked to give, going into Mauthausen,
    the men walked in military formation
    up the road to Mauthausen.
    The captain and I jumped on the first tank.
    He asked me to join him.
    And we had been used to sitting on moving tanks anyway,
    going through the forests of Belgium,
    and so on and so forth.
    When we reached the general area of the camp,
    we saw that the situation was rather almost hopeless, as far
    as restoring immediate order, because so many
    had burst out of the camp.
    They were all over the place.
    And we saw dozens and dozens of badly clad individuals
    with these striped uniforms, et cetera, stumbling about.
    We saw them dying, dying on the road actually.
    And the gates were already opened, the big swastika
    above the gate, big soaring gate, and everybody
    clustered around us.
    And the captain tried to make sure
    that they understood that they were
    to back off and give us room.
    And he singled out somebody that clearly spoke English and asked
    him to relay orders that we were there to help them only.
    We were there to help them only.
    This was stressed over and over again.
    The captain gave orders to the one lieutenant that was left,
    and the platoon sergeants, as to what they were to do.
    And he said, come with me, and we took off running.
    He led the way through every single cubicle and space
    around there.
    We went first to the oven, and the oven door was open,
    and the bodies were like cordwood inside.
    We went to a woman's sick ward, to a men's ward,
    where they smiled weakly at us from bunks, and waved.
    Some of them waved.
    We went out into the main enclosure
    and began listening to people.
    And the captain wanted to see some more,
    so he asked an English-speaking person
    what else he should immediately see in order
    to get a grasp of what the camp was like.
    And the English-speaking person said, I'll take you.
    And I don't recall what it was after the men's
    ward and the woman's sick ward, the general sleeping
    ward, and the eating places.
    High smells everywhere.
    I mean, the odors were absolutely terrific.
    It was what I had come to recognize,
    going through Europe, as the smell of death.
    Even though that was a figment of my imagination,
    because although death was where I was in Europe,
    the smells only became associated
    with the smell of death because they were there also.
    For example, the gunfire, the smoke from burning buildings,
    these things.
    At any rate, we kept on running around,
    running around, running around.
    The captain was the most inquisitive person
    that I had found anywhere in my company or division.
    He wanted to know, and he wanted to
    with a great feeling of empathy, because he cried.
    The reason I am taken by surprise by this
    is because he was a guy with no education, particularly, who
    would come up the hard way in the Army Command.
    But he was a very neat guy.
    When this two-hour period was over--
    I say two hours because some of it's blank in my mind.
    I don't remember everything.
    I really don't.
    I was absolutely so stunned that I can remember the highlights
    and that's all.
    I do recall that he was bellowing into a radio
    when a half-track came up with a command radio,
    bellowing about making sure that enough
    kitchens in the area and medical groups in the area.
    But he had been assured already that this
    had been put in process, but he wanted to make sure.
    And he suggested to me that I go down into the town.
    Oh, OK, a very important step.
    He gathered, quickly, a couple of the technical sergeants
    of platoons and asked them to get up a group,
    picking from each patrol, to go into the town
    with rifles and bayonets fixed and order all healthy civilians
    to come up with shovels and other equipment
    of that nature--
    spades, shovels, pitchforks, et cetera.
    The idea was to show, first of all, everyone
    in the town what had taken place next to them,
    if they did not know it.
    Most of them did.
    The other thing was to get some work done
    because bodies had to be buried, et cetera, et cetera.
    He immediately started them on a vast, vast burial spot
    out on the grounds.
    By this time, battalion had come up.
    Battalion approved of what he was doing.
    As a matter of fact, they emphasized it.
    And more people were brought up from the town,
    able-bodied people, women, older children, men on up to age 80
    or 90, et cetera.
    Some of them, of course, showing their--
    Let me just stop the tape.
    I'm out right now.
    [INAUDIBLE]
    Yeah.
    This is a continuation of the United States Holocaust
    Memorial Museum Volunteer Collection
    interview with George Leonard.
    This is tape 2, side B. And you were
    talking about bringing civilians in for the burials,
    and I would like you to please continue along those lines.
    The captain suggested to me that I go down into the town
    and find billets for them.
    And another matter he wanted to take care of was they had--
    this was later in the day.
    I'm skipping ahead a little bit.
    Later in the day, they found out that there
    were what was being called werewolves,
    which Nazi fanatics were up in the hills making trouble.
    And it came to light, I guess, during the day
    because some stray shots had come into the town, snipers.
    So another duty, another task he wanted to accomplish
    was to get a group to go up and dig them out, which he did.
    My part in that was simply to get some of the guys
    to agree to go up.
    No matter how horrible the war had been for us,
    you always get some who are willing to take on more.
    Not through some sort of a selflessness,
    but because it was their nature.
    They were needed for this job, and they did
    a good job of digging them out.
    Within days, there were no problems
    of outside interference from werewolves.
    I went down into the town.
    There was a street, a dead ending,
    at the bottom of the slight hill, which we could clearly
    see from the grounds of the camp.
    And I went to that street--
    I'm going to skip ahead to getting a house first
    before I go to the first house.
    I got a house for us, the third house.
    It was a dentist and his family who lived there,
    and I told him to get out fast.
    And then I went to the first house--
    I'd gone there first, actually--
    to discover that five young ladies were in it,
    and they were obviously camp prisoners, inmates,
    who had broken out early in the game,
    probably when the SS officers first left.
    And they had taken over a house that some of the SS officers
    had lived in with their families,
    for one family or two, I'm not sure what.
    At any rate, the five girls consisted of,
    in my writings I've said three Czech.
    I think it was two Czech and one French.
    Two Czech, one French, one German-Jewess, and one Dutch.
    Ellen Luz-- Luz, Lus--
    had been sent to a camp, with her husband to another camp.
    Had been sent there because they were running messages
    in the German police dog mouth, trying
    to salvage some of the Jews.
    The French girl was a very, very advanced person.
    I liked her, and so did the American major
    that I brought in.
    Two Czech girls, and Gazella.
    Gazella.
    Gazella was the German-Jewess.
    She was 15 years old.
    Had been in the camp for something
    like three to four years, and had
    been repeatedly saved from the gas chamber
    by Ellen, the Dutch girl.
    She had resolved early that--
    I found this out from one of the others--
    that she resolved early that she would do everything
    in our power to pull Gazella through.
    I have no right to cast illusions here, suspicions,
    but I want to make it clear that what ran through my mind
    soon after I got to know them was that there
    must have been some kapo--
    K-A-P-O-- stamp on at least one of them.
    Probably Ellen, but I don't know.
    The kapos were the ones who did jobs for the SS.
    They were prisoners who did jobs for the SS
    and had authority and lived better than the others.
    I think, in the long run, that although I was capable--
    and I want to put it right up front, I don't mind saying--
    I'm perfectly capable of having an intimate relationship
    with one or more of them.
    I avoided it almost totally because of fears, not
    only health fears, but fears of what I said.
    I did not want to have anything to do
    with anyone who was a kapo.
    The next day, there were some people
    in the town who started to give us stories
    about there's an SS man still here
    and there, and blah, blah, blah.
    And I was part of a small team.
    There were two or three of us that
    entered the house in response to one woman's complaint,
    that there was an SS man living there.
    And the young man was in there, hardly 19 or 20,
    and denied it utterly.
    And the woman who hat ratted on him
    went into the house and upstairs and brought down
    a Nazi uniform, et cetera, et cetera.
    So it became almost a clear cut case.
    The American Company C pretty much had sway in the town.
    There was no other company from the battalion or division
    living immediately in the town.
    We were the occupiers there, and we
    had our mess, our kitchen on the waterfront of the Danube
    in the heart of the town.
    It was a delightful spot.
    We enjoyed it.
    Every so often a boat would come in
    and the Americans would take it over.
    Of course, outright thievery was going
    on all the time under the guise that because they're the enemy,
    it doesn't count as thievery.
    A boat came down the Danube loaded.
    The hull was loaded with 120 bass accordions,
    and it didn't take them long to put all the accordions up
    on the dock and pass them out to anyone who wanted one, any
    of the soldiers who wanted one.
    I mean, soldiers were passing it out to the soldiers.
    Certain things stand out my mind,
    hit me emotionally, tremendously.
    The young German, the Austrian people,
    were much more harmed by and affected by
    and astounded by the hill, what went on on the hill,
    than the adults.
    I suspect that maybe some of the adults
    tried to keep word from the young people,
    I mean the teenagers, although I don't really
    see how it was very possible.
    I think maybe they were kidding themselves.
    But to make a long story short, there
    was a small handful of teenagers,
    led by Trudy, who was a very intelligent,
    delightful young lady, who they just sobbed and sobbed
    for days, and said they were never
    going to have anything to do with their families again.
    Trudy and two other girls took up living in a rat-infested--
    I say that, I'm probably exaggerating--
    empty house or building on the Danube,
    but they lived apart from their families.
    I think she ultimately went with an American soldier
    back to the States, but I'm not sure.
    I didn't see the other, but I just
    saw the claims of the statements of the two
    involved, the girl and the guy.
    I would like to talk about the American nurses, [INAUDIBLE]..
    The American nurses were fantastically empathetic
    and hard-working group.
    I'd see them for days and days and days
    on end working their heads off to accomplish what they could
    to save those who were teetering on dying
    and to improve those who were just plain ill and starved.
    I got to know many up there.
    I used to go up in my spare time to talk to people.
    I talked to a harbor master from the Danube up in Hungary.
    I talked to many people.
    A Polish man gave me his cigarette case,
    which had his girlfriend's names stenciled--
    not stenciled, but in metallic raised letters
    all over the case.
    And I knew it meant a lot to him,
    but I felt that he really wanted me to have it,
    and I still have it.
    When I first saw the girls in the camp
    at that house, the five girls, I tried
    to get a medical person down, but they said,
    are you out of your mind?
    I mean, look at what we're faced with up here.
    So I knew that it was a hopeless situation for the first couple
    of days, but gradually I got an American major, physician,
    to come down on a theory that it wasn't very far
    and that it needed medical state,
    that it should be an outpost of the camp.
    I had put a makeshift thing up, saying
    that this is an outpost of the camp by order of Captain
    [? Kirkabeau. ?] The major finally came down,
    and after talking to the young ladies and making arrangements,
    he agreed with it and put his own name on the sign.
    He said I did the wrong thing by giving them food, which I knew,
    in retrospect, I had.
    But they were better off than most anyway.
    And he called for a hot meal to be sent out to the house
    daily to them, and made other arrangements.
    I think he took up with the French girl later himself.
    In all honesty and practicality, I
    have to say that people have these things on their mind
    all the time and it never leaves.
    I have some specific questions that I would like to ask you.
    I'll give you a moment to compose yourself.
    I'll let you clean up some of the details from some
    of the things you've already told me.
    Please tell me the date and the time of day
    when you entered Mauthausen.
    I'd like to have the date on that.
    I think it was May 5th, which was the--
    good Lord.
    I'm going to check this for you.
    Not right now because it would take me time to find it.
    I think it was May 5th, which was right around the corner
    from the end of the war.
    As far as the time of day was concerned,
    I think it was mid-morning.
    Do you have any knowledge of how many prisoners were liberated
    in the camp at that time?
    The TO strength of the camp was something
    like 20,000 to 30,000.
    Many had died.
    There had been a big push to have the ovens going full-time
    before we came.
    Many ran out into the countryside and died.
    but probably, there had to have been, above 20,000.
    But I could check that more conveniently and easily.
    Do you want me to?
    You said the TO strength?
    Table of organization.
    [INAUDIBLE] It's what was expected.
    TO means table of organization.
    Like the TO strength of a division
    was something like 14,000.
    At the end of the war, it was something like 3,000 or 4,000
    of the original numbers.
    Would you please describe for me the people that were there?
    When you came in, was it just men?
    Was it just adults?
    Can you give me an idea of the people that were imprisoned?
    There were large numbers of all sexes.
    I say all sexes because the Germans
    regarded the homosexuals as being among the worst.
    So there was this homosexual contingency.
    There were loads and loads of men and women,
    even younger ones as witness, Gazella.
    And they were factions galore, ethnically.
    One of the largest and overpowering factions
    were the Russian prisoners of war.
    For some reason or other, they had
    used Mauthausen to stash an awful lot of these prisoners.
    And I was party to observing-- and sometimes helping out
    in a very minor way, such as giving directions and that type
    of thing--
    the large number of groups that came in to help
    and to repatriate.
    The Ukrainians, the Russians, the Poles, et cetera,
    all sent in repatriation teams.
    I saw them everywhere.
    I remember speaking to a young lady who
    was reading a book in the square of Vocklabruck,
    a town several miles away, where I had an Austrian girlfriend
    later in the game.
    And this young lady, I said to her, you're Ruski?
    And she got furious.
    She said, no.
    She said, I'm Ukrainish.
    I realized then that there was a split,
    that the Ukrainians did not consider themselves
    as Russians.
    The Russian prisoners had taken over much
    of the camp much of the time late in the game,
    and the other prisoners were cowed by them.
    One of the most moving sights I've ever seen in my life
    was in back of the house that Captain [? Kirkabeau ?]
    and I were billeted in, on the street that dead ended right up
    there at the camp grounds fringe,
    there was a gravel road going from the camp
    down to the railroad station into the town.
    And the time came when the Russians were moving out,
    the first contingency, the Russian prisoners.
    Captain [? Kirkabeau ?] and I stood
    on the back grass of the dentist's house
    we were in, looking down on the gravel road where the prisoners
    were marching down.
    They came down, marching in formation,
    singing at the top of their lungs, lustily.
    It was very, very moving.
    And the captain beside me was very moved, too.
    It was his idea that we watch.
    He became even more moved when he saw some of the groups
    that he sympathized more with, because there
    was great prejudice at that time against the Russians,
    just as there was against the German military
    and German officials.
    The feelings that the American soldiers had toward Germany
    changed totally along toward Passau and into Mauthausen.
    And most of the members of our company,
    save for a few ultra egocentric guys,
    were very, very, very consumed with hatred for the SS
    and very sympathetic with the people that they saw,
    the people who were hurt by it.
    Were there any children in the camp?
    By children, I assume you mean like under pre-teen.
    There were from hearsay, but I never saw them.
    Did you personally witness any acts of revenge or retaliation
    from the inmates to any individuals and Germans
    who might still be around, or even the camp itself?
    Did you see any acts of violence or hostility
    on the part of the people who had been prisoners?
    Several days following the liberation.
    It was the situation on tenterhooks,
    ready to burst out.
    And yes, I saw isolated examples.
    And on the second or third day, a minor--
    not a minor, but an under commandant
    of the camp, whose name I don't remember,
    had been caught by the prisoners,
    and his head was put on a pole.
    I didn't see him beheaded, but I saw the head.
    I saw striking and I saw mauling and I saw crowds
    around one individual.
    And I'd call, quickly get some of my fellow GIs
    to get them to pry apart the group
    and see to it that it stopped.
    Yes, that happened quite frequently.
    That happened quite frequently.
    It wasn't just the Russians that there were problems with,
    but it was with the prisoners, kapos, that developed hatreds.
    And there was much of this.
    That's one of the reasons I think that those girls took
    that house, but I have no right to say
    that that's true because I don't know it to be true.
    Is it all right to say that?
    OK.
    Did you, by any chance, happen to witness
    the prisoners taking down the Nazi symbol
    from the camp, the swastika?
    I guess it was over the gate.
    Did you happen to witness that?
    Not close, no.
    I saw it right after it happened, but not close.
    No.
    You had been telling me before about the burials and civilians
    being brought in to help.
    Were you there for the actual burials?
    Right after our men had gone from house
    to house bringing up as many as possible,
    I went up to see what was developing.
    I wanted to give a report to the captain.
    And yes, I saw it beginning, and I saw some of the adults.
    I saw a couple of women getting sick and ill.
    Everyone I saw was pitching in through either fear
    or compassion, one or the other.
    Probably a lot of fear, mostly fear, mixed in.
    I think a lot of them were afraid of what
    would happen to them if they didn't play ball.
    So yeah, I saw them working.
    With these burials, were the bodies prepared in any way?
    Did anybody speak over the graves?
    Can you give me an idea of the actual process
    of burying the bodies?
    There were no great formalities, but I
    did see at least two examples of individuals
    speaking a foreign language over the group.
    That's as far as I can go on that.
    I don't believe that we had any chaplains up there
    at that time, but I'm not sure.
    And were these graves marked in any way, the burials?
    Were the graves marked?
    They weren't marked individually because they were mass graves.
    And yes, the answer is that the mass grave is marked.
    [INAUDIBLE]
    We're going to pause.
    We're just going to pause for one minute
    and let you take a break.
    OK, we're back now after a brief break.
    I had asked you about the burials.
    Did you see any evidence of the mass graves that
    were left there by the Germans before your arrival
    in the camp?
    I had like a camera.
    I remember taking some pictures, which
    most, if not all but one or two, have somehow disappeared.
    I did see lots of graves, but I have
    difficulty now distinguishing in my mind the vast grave that I
    knew was dug by the townspeople, and other smaller ones.
    I remember seeing a grave with hundreds and hundreds
    and hundreds of bone-white, chalk-white skeletons,
    just tossed in.
    I don't remember, frankly--
    I'm inadequate on that-- whether this
    was what we discovered when we went there
    or whether it was the later.
    I can't help you.
    You mentioned that you took photos.
    Were there any official photographs or moving pictures
    that were taken, that you are aware of,
    to document what you were finding when you came in?
    Yes, in the 11th Armored Division files,
    there are quite a few of these.
    I did not go out of my way one at this last reunion,
    the only one I've ever attempted to take any away with me.
    I remember sending home some pictures that
    had been taken by official groups
    while I was there in Mauthausen.
    And as I said, I also had taken a few of my own.
    I recall some pictures of graves that probably
    had been dug for the ones killed in the ovens
    before we got there, but I can't swear to that.
    I can't at all.
    The whole thing is a blur in my mind now.
    I think that I did not try to process this information
    to keep it.
    So emotionally staggering was it.
    Could you remember if you found--
    you individually or the group of you--
    if you found any records or photos left by the Nazis?
    I have to apologize and go back to your previous question,
    and say that the gas chamber was the best evidence of a grave.
    Not a permanent grave, but one that
    existed before we got there.
    So if you're looking for evidence
    that existed before we got there, that nobody could have
    tampered with, the captain and I were the first ones
    in that gas chamber of any American alive, any outsider.
    Because the 41st cavalry did not go in and do these things.
    They were engaged in firefights outside.
    Again, were there any records or photos left by the Nazis
    that you're aware were at the camp?
    Because Mauthausen, there were other camps around
    and that was often a place for records to be kept.
    Do you remember if any were found,
    or were you aware of any that were found?
    No.
    OK, I think I'm to take this opportunity to pause and change
    tapes.
    So let's not go any further now.
    The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum volunteer
    collection interview with George Leonard, and this
    is tape three, side A.
    When you were physically in the camp,
    did you have an opportunity to see
    the parachutist cliff or the death steps
    or that part of the camp that has become notorious?
    The parachutist cliffs doesn't ring a bell,
    and I feel inadequate--
    the so-called death steps, sure, I saw them many times,
    and I was familiar with them, although if you
    were to ask me right now what quadrant
    of the outside of the camp they were in,
    I wouldn't be able to answer.
    Yeah, I saw them, and I saw people
    scrambling over them because of the historic importance.
    And later in the game, I saw photographers
    from all sorts of news groups and so forth
    taking pictures, but not parachutist cliffs.
    I just don't remember it.
    I remember the road going in the direction of the--
    well, I remember that the railroad
    station where the freight cars came in
    and they'd be taken up to the camp--
    if you want to steer me here, you can do so.
    Just whatever you were--
    remember whatever came to mind.
    But if something more comes to mind, you can add it anytime.
    That's fine.
    I wanted to get back to something
    that you had alluded to earlier in the interview,
    and you had talked about the Russians that
    were prisoners being very active and being in charge.
    How did the different ethnic groups within the camp
    get along during the period of time
    when the Americans were administering the camp?
    During the time that--
    Yeah, while you were there.
    There were squabbles constantly, and the importance
    of the American presence was shown in that.
    The camp gradually, as two or three weeks rolled by,
    became quieter.
    And people went about their business
    more to accomplish jobs and so forth.
    And you had people in the camp, the healthy ones,
    were buckling down to communicating and solidifying
    friendships with their own groups and others.
    And I think that the only major antipathies
    that I remember clearly and was a witness to
    were the kapos being set upon by the ordinary inmates
    and the Russians against the rest of them--
    the Russians against the rest of them
    primarily because they wanted to be boss.
    They were the biggest group, et cetera.
    And the Russians hated the Jews.
    There was that, too.
    And you had enough of a preponderance
    in the rest of it.
    Like I said, probably 75% to 95% of the remainder,
    outside of the criminals and the Russians, were Jewish.
    That's my estimate.
    I talked with vast numbers of them
    and looked over vast numbers of them.
    And I was experienced in coming to the conclusion that this
    was primarily, outside of the Russians,
    a death camp for Jews.
    And I'm on good ground here when I
    say that not many people know it, or they don't care
    to know it, but Hitler was a profound dabbler in the occult.
    Did you know that?
    And he had someone advising him.
    It was a pure nut, I think.
    And in this occult, he dabbled with this rather
    silly, unsupported information about Jews.
    And I really shouldn't carry it any further
    than that because what I just said,
    I know, but I don't want to say anything I don't really know.
    Another thing that you had mentioned before, very briefly,
    in passing, was that you looked around and you took it in,
    but you didn't process it yet.
    My next question has two parts.
    How long were you physically in that area?
    And how did you begin to process during the time
    that you were there in the camp, in the area around Mauthausen?
    I think it was in late July that we were moved to--
    mid-late-July, we were moved to Spital am Pyhrn
    in the mountains, which, by the way,
    was a delightful experience.
    So we had something like five to seven weeks, I dare say,
    in the Mauthausen area.
    I got to add a statement about Spital.
    We were billeted in Spital with a rushing mountain river
    at the eastern edge of us.
    And just to the other side of that eastern edge
    were the Russians.
    So there was a reason for that, too--
    first of all, to prevent the Russians from coming down in.
    And secondly, maybe we were going
    to use that as a venue ourselves to go out and go east.
    But there it was.
    I remember I used to be a damn fool.
    I did some awfully foolish things.
    I used to go all alone onto the road,
    going into their territory, and just take long
    walks talking with any Russian soldier who
    could speak English.
    And I found them to be amiable and ignorant-- ignorant
    in the ordinary sense of the word,
    meaning not well versed in things.
    And I used to hate them.
    For one thing, they'd throw hand grenades in the river,
    and the trout would come belly up.
    And I love trout.
    And you just don't do that to trout.
    During the five to seven weeks that you were in Mauthausen,
    how did you begin to process what you had found in the camp?
    You said you just took it in and you didn't process it
    when you first arrived, but you were there for weeks and weeks.
    How did you begin to deal with the reality of what
    you had found?
    I started taking notes.
    And I don't have them anymore, I'm sure.
    I took voluminous notes that I have.
    Even if I could find them, I don't even
    think I could read them.
    They were taken in such a bad handwriting which I have.
    The teachers changed me when I was in kindergarten,
    the left to the right.
    And when I was in Kitzingen, I really took up the idea of--
    Kitzingen was in the 79th Infantry
    Division on my way home.
    And I had a few weeks there, and I had access
    to a typewriter in an office.
    And I used to go in three hours a day and try to--
    once I started a novel.
    Another time I started a non-fiction book.
    And I couldn't take it even back then.
    Gradually, I just drew off from it.
    But in answer to your question, I
    processed it by trying to write about it
    and collect it in my mind and so forth.
    And it just didn't work.
    And I tried two or three times over the years to write a novel
    or a non-fiction book on the subject, and I can handle--
    maybe not like some of the finest writers,
    but I can handle fiction and nonfiction
    well enough so that I should have been able to.
    But emotionally, I couldn't do it.
    I just had to duck off.
    You can't avoid processing, because your mind takes over.
    Your mind-- your subconscious mind and your conscious mind--
    are working all the time.
    And you think about things, and you think and think and think.
    I had another way to process, and that is I
    got tied up with a girl from Vienna,
    a schoolteacher named Bertha [? Bittel. ?] And she--
    Phyllis knows about her, so there's no problem.
    And Bertha [? Bittel ?] was a product of a Nazi childhood.
    But she asked questions and wanted to know,
    and it was the fact that she of her background that
    led me not to get serious enough to make plans with her.
    But at any rate, she wanted to know.
    She'd ask me questions about it, about the Holocaust,
    about Jews.
    Is it really true that blah, blah, blah, blah, blah?
    And I'd say, Bertha, and we'd talk about it.
    So she spoke good English because one of her subjects
    was teaching English.
    And I'll tell you something amusing about that.
    May I?
    I used to go to Vocklabruck to see
    her, which is a beautiful town on a little river,
    not too far away.
    And there was a supply truck that
    left our town, particularly of Spital, when I was there,
    to go into Vocklabruck.
    So I used to hitch rides with them
    and see her because I had always-- first of all,
    I went with them to do a job and I met her
    on the bank of the Vocklabruck River.
    From then on, I used to hitch rides with them
    and get a ride to see her.
    And just before I was about to ship out,
    I knew that I was going to-- no, before that,
    I knew I was going to--
    well, I wanted to see her, and I had no truck.
    And I took a jeep, and I overestimated
    my sense of worth and power in the company and took the jeep
    and went to see her and have a great weekend.
    I got back, and the first sergeant,
    who was not a friend of mine and who
    had been behind the whole war and then came up
    at the end of the war, said, I'm going
    to see that you get shipped out to a group that's
    going to Japan.
    So I went to the captain.
    I said, are you going to let this
    happen after we dug foxholes together and everything?
    Certainly not, he says.
    Tell the sergeant to give you two days' extra duty
    and let it go.
    So I did that.
    But then the outfit I would have been shipped to Japan
    went home when the war ended, and they all
    got discharged weeks earlier--
    just a little sidelight.
    I was hoping you could also speak a little bit
    about the reactions, not just of yourself,
    but of the other Americans that were there, the other GIs,
    especially if there were any Jewish GIs.
    Did you have any conversations among yourselves
    in the face of what you found at Mauthausen?
    I don't recall specific conversations
    because it just wasn't done.
    Even if you worked side by side with somebody,
    looking at a bad situation, there might be a quick passing
    statement, and that was all.
    You just went ahead and worked.
    I can tell you, though, according to the factions
    I was telling you about that were split
    up entirely, a lot of the ASTP guys were more empathetic,
    and--
    army specialized training, the colleges--
    more empathetic and feeling, and knowing how
    this fit into the world, et cetera, et cetera.
    One of the most selfish lot I found
    was the new young kids coming in who would just come in
    from replacement depots.
    And they hadn't seen much, if any, combat.
    And I didn't know them because I was with the captain, mostly,
    and they'd be replacing someone in the third platoon, blah,
    blah, blah.
    And I wouldn't even get to see them much.
    If I went to the third platoon, it
    was to talk to the sergeant or the lieutenant.
    But in Mauthausen, I saw a few of them.
    And one of them was a guy who found an SS horse.
    And all that was on his mind--
    nothing to do with the camp, nothing to--
    he could have been anywhere.
    He could have been in Maine or Vermont.
    He just lived the horse, and he was a very self-centered guy.
    And another one, the same type, lived in a house next to me,
    and he was a young man who was a fatuous jerk who
    would say things to the dentist's daughter like, Hilda,
    Hilda, I'm a Catholic, too.
    You know what I mean?
    No understanding of the fact that these daughters
    and the family lived there right in the shadow of Mauthausen,
    and the father probably worked on SS teeth
    and so on and so forth and probably pried gold out
    of the Jews' teeth, for all I know.
    But there was no realization of anything like this
    at all, this kind of a mindset.
    And there was a lot of that mindset among the young fellows
    coming in.
    Let me see if I have another group there
    that I want to talk about--
    replacements, ASTP, the original cadre, and the sociopaths.
    I've already talked about that.
    I told you about the guy who came up to the line them
    up and shot prisoners whenever he could,
    [? Wachter, ?] didn't I?
    And I told you about [? Labede, ?]
    who was a sociopath.
    I hate to use that word over and over again, but it fits them.
    Aside from the things that were given to you
    by some of the people there, did you take any artifacts,
    or did-- not just you personally, but did
    the other GIs, did they take any artifacts or anything
    like that?
    And the other part of the same question was--
    From the camp, you mean?
    From the camp.
    There was nothing from the camp to take, really.
    I was given a present by a Pole, a cigarette thing.
    But I don't imagine that there was much of that that went on.
    Who had much personal--
    you know?
    Did you happen to see the American flag
    that some of the women had made for the Americans?
    No, it was a surprise to me.
    Did you-- you never saw it?
    No, that was a surprise to me.
    You told me about it or I saw it written or something.
    Oh, when you gave me your notes, yeah.
    In a totally different vein, were you
    aware of the subcamps, the other camps around Mauthausen,
    and did you see any of them?
    Yeah, I was aware of quite a few of them.
    And I went to Gusen once and found out
    that it was a predominantly a work camp, although they did
    not have it nice, of course.
    But it was a work camp, and the end result there was not death
    unless they didn't behave and work, in which case
    they might have got shot in the head or the back or something.
    There were other camps around, work camps
    were of a lighter nature than that and Bertha
    and I used to walk around to one particular camp
    because there were a lot of Poles in it
    who had accordions and other musical instruments.
    And they used to have dances in the evening,
    and it became quite a joyous place to go.
    Bertha and I used to dance a little bit there.
    I don't think I can say anything more about the surrounding
    camps except to say that they're just like you read.
    Did any military brass or investigative teams
    come and visit the camp that you're aware of?
    Galore.
    In the ensuing days and weeks, every sort of group imaginable
    came in.
    I saw and talked with Red Cross groups.
    I saw and talked with other kinds of voluntary groups
    giving food and help.
    I saw a commission from SHAEF headquarters,
    Eisenhower's quarters, come in.
    I never had a chance to talk to them, of course.
    Then, of course, there were all the repatriation teams
    from the different countries.
    The camp became very quiet after a few days--
    after a few weeks because, when you moved out,
    a few vast contingencies--
    you would get down to the nub of the still-existing serious
    cases.
    And I'm trying to think of the second group that
    moved out after the Russians.
    I think there were some Polish nationals in that group, too.
    There weren't necessarily Jews.
    And there were some groups who were--
    there was a small group there who had fought
    and the Russian army but who were Jews.
    And they took it on the chin in the camp.
    When you say they took it on the chin, you mean during the war
    or after, during the period that the Americans were
    administering it?
    I can't speak about during the war.
    I can only speculate.
    But after the Americans came in, there were two problems.
    The main problem there was that after liberation, they could be
    and in some cases were victims of Russian authoritarianism
    and hatred.
    What happened before we came in with those Jewish Russian
    prisoners, I only heard, and I can speculate
    that they were treated badly.
    And some of them were thrown over into the Jewish category
    and not Russian Jewish.
    Two questions have come to my mind.
    You mentioned relief organizations
    that came to help besides the Red Cross.
    Can you remember specifically any other organizations
    that came?
    It was one big group with a big name in America.
    And I don't recall whether the Ford Foundation existed
    then or not or one of those others,
    but it was an American group.
    Did the Ford Foundation exist then?
    I'm not sure.
    I'm sorry.
    There was an American, privately-funded foundation
    that was there.
    There were Jewish groups there.
    There were--
    Did any other nation send--
    besides repatriation groups, did any other nation
    send any assistance to the Americans
    in the administration of this camp,
    to the best of your knowledge?
    My first answer is I didn't see any evidence of it.
    The second answer is that there was small amounts of help
    from Switzerland.
    And you know about the Hafliger case, don't you?
    Didn't I tell you about that?
    Some Swiss named Hafliger with the Swiss Red Cross, some weeks
    before the war ended, had been sent by the Swiss Red Cross
    with seven or nine trucks, Hafliger heading it up,
    to go to Mauthausen and do what he could to, quote--
    and I have the exact quote upstairs--
    do what he could to ameliorate the situation, et cetera.
    It became a ridiculous situation.
    Nobody expected what would happen at all.
    But the commandant tried to surrender
    the camp to Hafliger and then Hafliger
    had some weird ideas of--
    I guess it got to him-- his own ideas
    of being a big leader there or something.
    And the commandant swore up and down
    that he'd give up the camp if only
    he'd get grace after the war ended because the war was
    approaching an end, et cetera.
    None of that worked out, and I think that Hafliger crept away
    with his tail between his legs.
    But it was a weird situation and a beautiful situation
    for someone who has a lot of energy
    and a good writer to dig it out and come out
    with a best-selling book, non-fiction.
    I'm serious.
    It would really go.
    Was the liberation of Mauthausen uncovered
    by reporters for Stars and Stripes
    or any other publication that you were aware of?
    Stars and Stripes, certainly.
    Someplace upstairs, I've got some stuff on it,
    but they're usually superficial and just
    revert to the same old stuff of another death camp,
    et cetera, has--
    although one of them did make the point
    that it was among the worst that they had seen,
    but I don't recall who said that.
    During your time in Europe, with the fighting and everything
    else, how easy or how difficult was it
    for you to get your hands on an issue of Stars and Stripes?
    During the war-- during our coming across,
    we got our hands on nothing.
    We were 50 miles ahead of any civilization
    that was close to us most of the time.
    When we had a week break in Belgium, some of the stuff
    came to us, but then we were fairly close to civilization.
    In Worms, a little bit, but from Worms on, it was a blank.
    No mail came up, no nothing.
    Did I tell you about that guy I was going to tell you about?
    I started, a few minutes ago, to tell you
    about a young man who was in army specialized training
    with me-- a very bright guy and normal in every respect,
    a decent soldier, et cetera.
    But I couldn't understand him, and I'll tell you why.
    In the anecdote I told before about coming down the hill
    with the smoke bomb in back of us, in front of us,
    so that we were pretty well hidden,
    when I got to the bottom of the hill, still untouched,
    I sank down behind a hedgerow.
    And there is this guy, whom we'll call Andy, beside me,
    sitting back to the farmhouse.
    And I'm looking at the farmhouse through the hedgerow,
    and a lieutenant from my company is very foolishly
    running up to a window, and he's getting a burp gun
    right in the throat, and he turns around and faces us.
    And blood is spurting out, and Andy
    is sitting, calmly, in the middle of everything,
    opening a C-ration can and eating it.
    And I just couldn't believe it.
    This falls into the category of what I don't know.
    How many persons were still at Mauthausen?
    How many survivors were still at Mauthausen
    by the time you were sent away to your next stop?
    I'll have to guess.
    And I'm going to emphasize again that this
    is a speculative guess, an educated guess based
    upon subtracting so many from the Russian prisoner category,
    so many from those who kept on dying, so many
    of those who were repatriated in other directions.
    The Poles had been in, for example,
    and the Ukrainians had been in, repatriating.
    I dare say that it must have been down to 4,000 to 6,000
    by the time I left.
    Is there anything about your experience
    with the liberation of Mauthausen
    that we haven't covered that still stands out in your mind
    that you'd like to discuss before we
    go on to the next topic?
    I'm sure that 10 minutes after you leave this house,
    I'll think of 60 things, but the answer is no.
    After you left and you went to your next post
    that you've told me about already,
    how much longer did you stay in Europe
    before being sent back to the States?
    I spent until something like the last week in November
    in the 79th division in Kitzingen.
    And suddenly, I was put in a jeep
    with a driver who was going to Marseille.
    And in one fell swoop, he drove in rather cold weather,
    in an open jeep, 60, 70 miles an hour,
    from Kitzingen down to Marseille.
    When I stepped out of that jeep, I was absolutely frozen stiff.
    I couldn't move a thing.
    Did you ever experience anything like that?
    So we boarded the ship in Marseille,
    and I was home by December 15 and discharged
    within a couple of days.
    I'm going to pause now and fix the tape.
    We're just about done.
    During that period-- this is not relevant, but--
    Oh, let me change the tape.
    Just one moment.
    United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
    volunteer collection interview with George Leonard,
    and this is tape three, side B. And you
    wanted to add a postscript to your comments
    about being discharged.
    I wanted to tell you what Mauthausen did for me besides,
    I think, making a better person out of me in many respects.
    As soon as I came home, shortly after December 15,
    I started applying for colleges.
    I applied to Northeastern and Boston University in Suffolk.
    And all three turned me down.
    with the word that we're so mobbed with applications
    from new returning vets that we can't fit you in.
    I could understand it anyway because my stepfather had
    died in my senior year of high school,
    and I sort of fell apart.
    And I got some grades that I had never been capable of before.
    Before that, I had been an excellent student.
    To make a long story short, that I immediately
    applied to Harvard, and the guy called me.
    He says, write an essay.
    I don't know why that affects me about your experiences.
    And I did, and I was immediately accepted.
    So that's what Mauthausen did for me.
    Do you, by any chance, still have that essay?
    I never had it.
    I didn't make a copy of it.
    I did not make a copy of it, and I never got a copy back.
    By the way, it was primarily about the administration
    of Mauthausen.
    And I went into all sorts of group human relational
    theories, from the functions of the executive, which
    I had been reading.
    And I'm sure you read about that, read about that.
    And by the way, it was by someone
    who had had experience in Tulelake
    with the Japanese, which they didn't feel guilty about back
    then, but they do, of course, now.
    But there were certain administrative policies
    that had been brought to light about getting along
    with large groups and functioning with large groups,
    such as hearing, airing out, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
    And I put all this stuff in there, and Harvard loved it.
    When you were discharged, what was your rank,
    and what medals and honors had you received?
    I had been promised a rating by the captain and by others
    toward the end of the war, particularly after my--
    what do you call it-- was going through my Bronze Star medal.
    And they said that they'd give me
    an honorary squad with a rating of staff sergeant or higher.
    The captain said this.
    And then I took the jeep, and the first sergeant
    said that, well, he'd go along with two days,
    what do you call it, but under no circumstances
    would he back a sergeancy after that.
    So I was on my way home, practically anyway,
    and I just shrugged and said, to heck with it.
    My honors were the Combat Infantryman Award, three battle
    stars, a unit citation--
    I think, given by the French or the Belgians, I forget which--
    the Bronze Star medal, and the Purple Heart.
    When you arrived home, what did you
    tell your family and your friends about your experiences
    over in Europe, specifically about the liberation
    of Mauthausen?
    I answered questions, but that's--
    and then very limited.
    I didn't talk much at all.
    I just had the feeling, and I went around
    like this for a long, long time, that nobody could possibly
    understand anything I said.
    They were so far from it.
    When you came home, did you have any flashbacks or nightmares
    of experiencing that?
    No, I had no--
    I did not suffer from any problems like that at all.
    I did suffer from one thing, a jumpiness, which
    I put in one thing I wrote.
    I couldn't study.
    And I used to go take some books, Harvard books, that I
    was supposed to be reading or studying,
    and get on a streetcar in Boston and ride forever around,
    buying newspapers in one station,
    discarding it, buying another newspaper in another station,
    doing like that.
    And that was one of the best things that
    happened to me because I met Phyllis at a streetcar stop
    at Coolidge Corner in Brookline.
    And Phyllis is-- you referred to Phyllis several times--
    would you please tell me who Phyllis is?
    My wife.
    She's my wife, yeah, coming from a very Jewish family.
    You had mentioned very much earlier
    in the interview about your aspirations
    when you were a child and how the war changed
    them a little bit.
    When you came home from combat, what
    aspirations-- what did you want to do with your life?
    My first one was to be a diplomat.
    I changed that along the way, and I
    don't recall what changed me.
    I'll tell you about another.
    I wanted to be a diplomat, and I changed along
    the way to wanting to be a functionary in a government
    agency.
    Let me tell you something after that.
    Yeah, let me ask you a few other questions
    that we can put on the record.
    Did you follow the Nuremberg trials?
    Yeah.
    And along those same lines, with respect
    to following the Nuremberg trials,
    did you feel that justice was done?
    It was done, but not enough, yeah.
    In other words, I thought that there were probably
    some fringe people there that should
    have got more than they got.
    I don't recall their names right now.
    But generally speaking, if I had to say was I satisfied or not,
    I'd have to say I was satisfied.
    Did you follow the Eichmann trial,
    and did you think that was just?
    I know I followed it.
    Yeah, yes, I thought it was just.
    What have you told your family about the things
    that you've told me today?
    How much of this does your family know, your friends,
    or how much of this do you talk about?
    This family or my family back from my childhood?
    Both.
    My family back-- my brothers and sisters and my mother,
    et cetera, there was no use.
    They had made a polite attempt at listening,
    that sort of thing, and blah, blah, blah.
    Phyllis, of course, has been a very, very great supporter.
    And my kids got caught up in--
    from a childish point of view, seeing the box of a Nazi dagger
    and all of the stuff, the artifacts I brought back,
    and that sort of thing.
    And they were caught up.
    And when I sold my first novel, I
    got a $2,000 advance, which was a big deal back in 1963 or '65.
    And we took the $2,000 and put it
    in a trip with round-trip trip airfare to Amsterdam
    and a fully-equipped microbus with camping
    equipment and everything for five people
    with a tent that zipped on the side and all the stuff.
    And we took that for three weeks and went around Europe.
    And I found myself following the route of the 11th.
    The kids were excited at it, particularly Jeff, my oldest
    son, particularly.
    He was, like, 14 at the time, I guess.
    And we went to Bastogne.
    And everyone laughed at seeing the Nuts hot dog stand, "Nuts"
    being what McAuliffe had said to the Germans.
    When asked to surrender, he said "nuts," a thing like that.
    Do you speak publicly about your experiences,
    and have you ever been interviewed before?
    No.
    And why have you decided to do an interview right now?
    I didn't decide.
    It crept up.
    It crept up.
    I didn't, any one day, say, hey, I'm going to do an interview.
    All of a sudden, Dan said to me that he
    had turned my name into the Holocaust Museum
    as being someone who had been there and helped
    liberate a concentration camp.
    Who's Dan?
    Lednicer, Dan Lednicer.
    He's a very fantastically intelligent man, a Jew,
    fervently Jewish, but not religiously so.
    And I know you know what I mean by that, culturally, et cetera.
    And he just shows brilliance.
    He was a chemist--
    is a chemist.
    And he has turned out three or four tomes that thick--
    and they publish them as fast as they get them from him--
    on chemistry, chemical solvents and compounds,
    and so on and so forth.
    I just can't conceive of anyone doing what he does
    and remembers it all up here.
    Dan is a brilliant guy, and he was
    over here a few weeks ago having dinner with us, him and a girl.
    We didn't talk about this at all,
    but I did tell him that you guys had called
    and were going to interview.
    When I was called about the interview,
    which I didn't expect or know about, particularly--
    I just knew that I was giving testimony of some sort
    to the what do you call it--
    I shrugged and I thought, well, it's
    a good chance for me to see what I know and don't know
    and remember or don't remember.
    And it's a good chance to see if I
    can get through this because I haven't
    been able to in the past.
    Have you had interviews with others?
    Liberators?
    What would you say is the lasting impact
    that your experiences had on your life?
    The most lasting impact?
    The most lasting impact has to do with understanding
    what man is capable of.
    And that amazes the heck out of me,
    and I don't know how to process that.
    I don't know what else to say.
    How do you react when you hear Holocaust deniers?
    How do you react when you hear Holocaust deniers?
    It does upset me, of course.
    I don't know what to do about it.
    I don't think that anyone can do much about it.
    If you fight it, you're wrong.
    If you don't fight it, you're wrong.
    There will be-- again, we're talking
    about the extent to which people can
    be incredibly stupid or bestial or whatnot,
    and this is another example.
    There is one bit of unfinished business
    I wanted to make sure I tied up before we conclude.
    You said that you had a seven-week recovery
    period after you were injured.
    Can you put that in a time frame?
    When were you--
    I was wounded February 7.
    I came back to the company toward the end of March.
    And I want to put it on the record that--
    I don't know why, but during that time,
    the company went through one of the most horrible experiences
    that they had gone through to date,
    and that was crossing the Kahl River.
    I have a picture of the makeshift bridge over the Kahl
    River upstairs.
    And the reason this was so bad was
    that they were exposed, crossing it, wading it
    with rifle held up and taking fire with no cease at all.
    And that's when my first sergeant that I liked
    got the bullet through the hand.
    And my being off the line during that period
    was, I hate to say this, but a godsend.
    Would you be willing to share with me the names of the novels
    that you've written?
    The first one I named Horn of Plenty,
    but Warner Books changed it to Sexmax
    because it was a business of helping everyone
    through government.
    The government filled in what any person
    was lacking in this novel.
    The other another one was Alien, which I had named originally
    The Flying Saucer Murders, which I and my wife liked better.
    But Playboy Press decided to make
    it Alien to build on the reputation
    that the other Alien had had.
    Then I wrote a book called Somebody Else Is
    On the Moon, which gave me the greatest monetary return
    and name and everything else.
    It was published in five different languages
    and made a French book club, and I was a Japanese fan
    club and everything else.
    And I'm still living through the reverberations of that.
    I decided, after that book, to go into meditation
    and find out what life was really all about.
    And that's where I am now.
    Is there anything else that we haven't discussed
    that you would like to add before we
    conclude the interview today?
    Is there anything that we haven't covered?
    I realize, after I leave, you'll come up with 10 things.
    But is there anything that comes to your mind
    right now that we haven't covered
    that you'd like to include?
    Yeah.
    I'm going to be personal and speculative,
    and I'm talking about--
    the Holocaust was, in the final analysis, a Jewish story.
    You don't deny that, do you, first and foremost?
    And I'm thinking that, from a genetic and a practical point
    of view, comma--
    because I am aware of the magnificence
    of the Jewish stock, comma--
    I'm thinking of the need which should have started earlier
    of breaking out the Jewish gene pool
    and having that good blood spread around.
    I'm serious about this.
    Phyllis knows how I feel.
    Yeah, I believe that.
    I would like to thank you for doing the interview with me
    today, and I know it was difficult
    for you, and I personally, and as a part of the museum.
    We appreciate it.
    Thank you very much.
    My daughter got married, and I know you were in the wedding.
    This concludes the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
    interview with George Leonard.

    Overview

    Interview Summary
    George Leonard, a concentration camp liberator born on December 24, 1921 in Malden, Massachusetts, describes his childhood; his training in Alabama and California before he and his unit went to England; becoming the company runner, staying close to the captain and lieutenants; translating codes and delivering messages while at war; his memories of the fights at the Siegfried Line; receiving the Bronze Star after being wounded; traveling through parts of Germany along the Czech border and getting ordered to the Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria; helping to give the victims a proper burial; staying in the Mauthausen area for about six weeks until he went to Spital am Pyhrn, Austria in late July; leaving for America on December 15, 1945; getting married; and teaching at Harvard University after the war.
    Interviewee
    George H. Leonard
    Interviewer
    Esther Finder
    Date
    interview:&nb