- Let's read a statement of purpose of the project.
- That is our project has four principal objectives--
- to locate World War II veterans now living
- in the greater Boston area who participated
- in the liberation of Nazi concentration camps,
- to interview these men about their liberation experiences,
- and to establish a permanent library consisting
- of tapes of the interviews and transcripts.
- We'd like also to say at the beginning of the interview
- that this is special subject matter coming up
- in the interviews.
- And we have a sense that it may be uncomfortable for some
- of the liberators, some of the men who were there,
- to talk about it, and we're trying
- to be as sensitive as possible to that,
- both in our questionnaire and through the interview.
- And I also want to emphasize that your personal viewpoint
- and experiences are very important,
- and are really the stuff of what the interview is
- going to be made of.
- And now some questions for the record.
- Your full name?
- Ellsworth E. Rosen.
- And your address?
- 24 Griggs Road, in Brookline.
- And your date of birth?
- December 31, 1923.
- Your age at the time of the liberation?
- Well, let's see, in '45--
- I was born in '23, so I was 21 or 22--
- 21 or 22 years old.
- And your respective profession at the beginning of the war?
- At the beginning of the war, I wanted
- to become an English teacher.
- At the end of the war, I knew I couldn't
- go into anything that academic.
- I wanted to become a writer, and did.
- We'll pick up-- we'll pick up one more of that.
- Were you drafted or did you enlist?
- I enlisted.
- I was in the college at the time,
- and we enlisted in the ROTC, which everybody did,
- which was a way to complete a little bit more of the college,
- and also to go to officer's training school, Which.
- I went to, but did not complete. ,
- And--
- Maybe the best thing that ever happened to me.
- Was not completing that?
- Yeah.
- All my colleagues got killed.
- But it turned out, I became a Sergeant,
- and led a platoon, which I would have been a Lieutenant if I
- had completed.
- So it worked out almost the same.
- What made the difference?
- What would have been the difference?
- If you would have completed, you would have been--
- I would have been--
- --an officer.
- But I couldn't do the push ups. So that was I like flunking--
- that's why I flunked.
- I couldn't do 25 pushups.
- Does our military really depend on doing pushups?
- Oh, absolutely.
- I had the highest marks of all the courses.
- I did everything else fine, but I
- couldn't do-- my physical was not up to snuff.
- And, of course, I ended up surviving
- much better than most of the guys who did the pushups.
- So, so be it.
- Was it just-- when you say that they--
- that most of them were killed, was there
- something about being a Lieutenant that was more risky?
- Oh, yeah, you had to be out in front,
- and you took different kinds of chances.
- And you couldn't-- you also were a better target if you wore
- a bar.
- And most of them didn't wear bars after a while.
- I didn't know that.
- I imagine-- when I think about it,
- I imagine, especially for sharpshooters,
- but I imagine, otherwise, too.
- The mortality rate of Lieutenants
- well, the mortality rate for everybody was high.
- I was-- I think I mentioned to you,
- I was one of three people in our outfit
- who was not killed or wounded out of about 180 people.
- So it was complete turnover all the time.
- But Lieutenants were-- somehow, went faster.
- And most of the time we were without a--
- we had a captain, but Lieutenants just
- weren't around.
- What was your military unit?
- I was with the 36th Infantry Division,
- which was the Texas Division.
- Don't ask me what a nice Jewish boy was
- doing in the Texas Division.
- I will ask you.
- OK.
- You got sent there, that's why.
- Uh-huh.
- And they needed replacements.
- I was a replacement, as everybody else was.
- And when were you sent to the Texas Division?
- Well, I went overseas in October of '44, around October of '44.
- And was sent--
- I had completed my army--
- I'd just flunked out of school, the OCS school,
- and they sent me over.
- And this was after D-Day, obviously.
- And then the Texas Division was already
- fighting in France at the time, and I joined them in France.
- So from-- and within a week I was on the front line.
- And then I was in combat for pretty much the rest
- of the war.
- So we had the record of the longest combat time.
- Our general was very hotshot.
- So we were pretty much on the line almost all the time,
- except for a week here or there.
- Who was your general?
- I think it was Walker.
- And then we were attached to the Seventh Army--
- Patch, I believe it was.
- We never saw a General, so that didn't mean anything.
- They don't show themselves on the front line.
- [INAUDIBLE]
- Some of them.
- But we never see them.
- What was your rank at the time of the liberation?
- I was a Staff Sergeant.
- And I had seniority at that point in my platoon.
- So I was the platoon Sergeant.
- So I was in charge of, theoretically, 30 men--
- 35 men.
- We were sort of all in it together.
- And I was in charge of a small unit, of a platoon.
- And what was your profession after the war?
- Well, I went into newspaper reporting
- and then public relations for Jewish community work.
- I've been in that for about 25, 30 years.
- Almost since the end of the war.
- Well, five years as a reporter, and then I
- went into Jewish community work, partially,
- I think, because of what I saw in World War II.
- I had a Jewish consciousness before,
- but it clearly became much--
- much sharper after seeing what happened to the--
- to the Jews in the World War II that
- were in the concentration camps, and what was happening
- to Jews anywhere, everywhere.
- And then, of course, the Israel factor of 1948
- was a very important part of our consciousness.
- So one thing, it was very easy to make the transition
- to this kind of work.
- When had you first heard about the camps?
- Did you ever hear about them in the United States?
- Very little.
- And this is, I think, one of the aspects that is--
- it's difficult to reconstruct.
- But I just in read in The Atlantic--
- I don't know if you saw the one on the "Kingdom of Auschwitz."
- It was in this month's issue--
- excellent article.
- Where they also described some of the liberating army,
- but this was a British one, and Russian.
- Even when you saw it, you didn't believe it.
- And because you-- and you also didn't really
- realize the magnitude.
- We knew that they were killing Jews,
- and we knew that there was anti-Semitism,
- and we knew there was all sorts of things.
- We had no idea of the dimensions of the Holocaust
- or of what was happening in the camps.
- None of the advanced propaganda had that, that I can remember.
- Maybe they did, but it didn't have any impact.
- And even when we saw it, we really
- didn't believe it, until the second or third go around,
- that it was happening.
- And that was probably--
- when you look back on history, how come the world didn't act?
- And how come they didn't bomb Auschwitz?
- And how come they--
- we didn't know.
- Even when we saw it, we didn't know.
- We thought-- we thought it was a prison.
- An a prison, well, so--
- so there are prisoners.
- But the fact that millions have been killed,
- and millions had been starved, we
- didn't even know, even after we saw the few,
- that it was in the dimensions that we were talking about, not
- until months later, when it all began to come out.
- And so that the liberating aspects of it--
- it was not a crusade with those of us,
- let's say, on the front line, that we've
- got to-- we're going in there to liberate the camps.
- We didn't even know they were there.
- Our crusade was that they were going to conquer us,
- and that we were saving America, and democracy, all that.
- But the camps were a byproduct.
- And it wasn't until later that we really began
- to realize what was happening.
- What had you been led to expect from the propaganda?
- That there would be tough laws, and--
- well, as a Jew, I knew that I'd be
- subject to all sorts of restrictions,
- and maybe being killed, not the camps.
- We certainly knew about the pogroms,
- and what was happening, and the Kristallnacht.
- And the fact that the--
- the whole Hitler approach to Jews,
- but we did not know of the dimensions of the Holocaust.
- I really went in as much because of the American syndrome.
- That I knew that if freedom wouldn't exist here,
- it wouldn't exist anywhere.
- And that if we didn't do it, they would take over the world.
- And fascism-- don't forget, I come from an era
- where Spain was a cause.
- And, therefore, there was the Spanish Civil War.
- This was a continuation of the same--
- Italy fascism, German fascism, all the other aspects.
- And so it was more ideological, rather than because I'm Jewish.
- And everybody sort of felt that way,
- that we were going to lose our freedom,
- not that we're going to get killed in the Holocaust.
- So it was a surprise, I guess, when--
- to most of us.
- The camps, themselves, when you came upon the camps.
- Do you remember the names?
- I don't remember the names.
- I remember that we talked about this over the phone,
- and it was difficult.
- My experience is, which I don't know
- whether it's unique or not unique, really
- boil down to probably two or three experiences.
- The first one was--
- I'm talking about near Ulm, in Stuttgart, Southern Germany.
- And that's where, obviously, we were.
- And the first one was a camp which
- was surrounded by barbed wire and guarded by SS soldiers.
- They had locked the doors of the camp.
- It was maybe like, as I recall, four or five houses--
- huts-- barracks.
- And it was burning.
- They had locked the doors and were machine gunning the people
- as they tried to get out.
- These were Russian gypsies, or gypsies, or something.
- They were not Jews.
- And we couldn't believe that as the-- as we were advancing--
- this was like March or April of '45--
- that they would be doing that.
- And it was unbelievable that--
- and a few prisoners had gotten out, but most
- of them were just like--
- like cord-wood in the doorway, trying to get out of the fire.
- And this was maybe a few hundred.
- I can't even remember anymore.
- But I do remember, don't forget, that they
- were shooting at us at the same time,
- and we were shooting back.
- Where were the Germans?
- Where was the SS during this time?
- Well, they were--
- In the huts, themselves?
- No, no.
- No, the huts were being burned.
- The huts were being burned.
- And as the people were trying to get out
- the doors and the windows, they were shooting them.
- So they were just stacked up.
- And in the meantime, we come around the camp.
- And we were out to get the--
- to get the SS.
- And we didn't take any prisoners, of SS,
- for a couple of weeks after that.
- The other soldiers, I must tell you, were GIs.
- We felt-- the normal soldiers, well, they were good fighters,
- and they were just schmucks like we were.
- And we would take--
- they were surrendering at that time
- by companies and battalions--
- fine.
- The SS, we treated differently because of what we had seen.
- A couple of days later, we are in the middle of a field.
- And there is a train, blocked.
- And these were-- and, of course, I read about it since.
- We opened the doors.
- These were all Jews, who had been being transferred
- from one camp to another.
- The train got on a track where they had bombed the track,
- and they couldn't move anymore.
- They'd been just sitting there.
- We opened it up.
- About-- they had been there for about six days, no food
- or water.
- And they were already emaciated to begin with.
- And we opened it, the doors.
- And about a third of them were dead.
- And we're probably talking--
- I can't remember-- 8, 10 boxcars on one trainload.
- Had you just-- had you just come upon the train?
- Yeah, we came upon--
- And so, no one--
- no reports of what was in the train?
- What it was?
- We were the first troops.
- I mean, who else was to report?
- And we didn't even know what was in the train.
- It could have been freight.
- And we had no inclination that we--
- nobody had ever told us we'd even find this.
- And we opened it up, and I was about the only guy
- in our outfit who could talk to them.
- I spoke a little Yiddish.
- And my French was better than my Yiddish,
- so we spoke French more than Yiddish.
- And we gave them everything we had, all the food, water,
- chocolate bars.
- I can imagine that when you haven't eaten--
- we gave them one of the army rations.
- And we only carry a day's supply,
- two day's supply of food.
- So it was nothing big.
- But everybody had his own water canteen and food.
- So we shared with it.
- And so these were the most vivid memories of what I saw.
- And later on, we came upon some other camps, when
- we went back for a rest once.
- And we saw-- again, I can't-- it was near Stuttgart.
- We saw some other camps, where the second echelon was now in.
- And where-- I think the most vivid memory I have is--
- this is like three days later, or four days later,
- after the liberation, where some of the people
- were carrying their friends and relatives in wheelbarrows
- because they couldn't walk.
- And they would wheel them around to different places
- to get food or water.
- And the Americans, at that time, didn't
- know what to do with them and put them
- right back in the camp.
- They gave them food.
- But they're prisoners.
- They must have done something wrong.
- For what was called processing also.
- Yeah.
- It took, I think, several weeks before they really
- knew what was happening and how to deal with it.
- But it was-- those first few days-- and don't forget,
- I'm still on the front line, and we're
- going on to the next battle.
- So the people in the next echelon
- already had a different perception of what they saw.
- But the-- I guess, the memory of these guys with
- the wheelbarrows--
- a few-- they were stronger.
- They maybe weighed 90 pounds, as opposed
- to being 50, 60 pounds that the others weighed.
- They were really walking skeletons.
- And it was, obviously, something very traumatic to see.
- Not all of them were Jewish.
- This was another camp, smaller camp.
- Another small camp.
- In the Stuttgart area.
- Right.
- But also, just to contrast it, in one
- of these-- with this week rest that I took,
- got to meet some Belgian prisoners, who
- were not in a concentration camp, but in a work camp.
- Now they suffered too, but not in the same way.
- But I got an--
- they knew what was happening.
- And I got to speak to them at some length as to what
- happened--
- five or six people in one room, in a dormitory room,
- separated only by a blanket.
- That's the next room.
- The whole family together, very little food, long hours.
- So that you get a sense of the whole--
- the whole economy dependent on this either slave labor
- or semi-slave labor.
- Clearly, different from the people in the concentration
- camps.
- This was a work camp, a prisoner of war camp, as it were--
- altogether different.
- But by that time, we knew the difference.
- And we were very much aware of what they were doing,
- but not the dimensions.
- We were aware of specifics, but I had no idea--
- if you had asked me 6 million, I never would have--
- I'd have said it's impossible to believe.
- And, again, some of those distinctions
- get somewhat muddled too, when you
- have those from the concentration camps, who
- were laboring, and were shipped to other camps and labor camps,
- and then shipped back again.
- And some of those in work camps, who were later
- found to be political prisoners and were
- shipped to concentration camps.
- These are-- the three we went through fairly quickly
- because those do stand out, but they're
- so unusual in what we've heard before.
- Because much of what we've heard has
- been from people who were more on the second or third echelon
- of coming into, most of the time, the larger camps.
- We have not heard any of these incidents before.
- And so if we could go back and try to reconstruct,
- as much as possible--
- Don't forget, most of them were not on the front lines.
- Less than a tenth are on the--
- I hate to sound chauvinistic about it, but having survived
- it, it was--
- it was certainly-- there's certainly a marked distinction
- in my mind.
- They were all necessary, but we used
- to kid the artillery as being way in the rear echelon.
- Because once you're on the front line,
- within eyeball distance of the enemy,
- it's different than being back two or three miles.
- And it requires 10 people behind you
- to bring up the supplies, and the ammunition, and everything.
- So it's nothing unusual.
- But at the same time, those who were on the front line
- consider themselves in the middle of things.
- And it has to be different from those coming
- in, the medical units, for example,
- or the supply, or the Signal Corps, and the others.
- Also, what is exceptional-- we can try to reconstruct
- this too-- is seeing the SS, which
- most of those in the second and the third echelons didn't do.
- Because the SS was already either killed or--
- Or changed uniforms.
- Or changed uniforms.
- We've had stories-- several stories like that.
- Or they just ran.
- They'd pick up and leave.
- Did you come through France into Germany?
- We came through Alsace-Lorraine, near Strasbourg, Colmar.
- Yeah.
- There was the large battle taking place in Strasbourg,
- at the end of '44.
- They also had a little thing called
- The Bulge, in which we participated in,
- on the southern part of that.
- And then we were attached with a French unit.
- So we had an American and French unit working together
- in Southern Germany.
- And it worked very well.
- They were good fighters.
- The French?
- Yeah.
- Did you-- did you hear or see anything of the concentration
- camp near Strasbourg--
- Natzweiler?
- No.
- It's fairly--
- Don't forget, the communication was zero.
- There wasn't-- The Stars and Stripes was meaningless
- in terms of communication.
- It was a nice for morale, but it didn't have news.
- And they wouldn't publish those things in there.
- Most of it was rumors, but we wouldn't
- know what was going on in the next company.
- So news of the grand design was completely out of our realm.
- Very little in the way of orientation and knowledge
- of the total picture.
- So you went from Alsace-Lorraine, then you--
- We were fighting over in Cologne,
- and then came down the southern part of Germany.
- We ended up in Austria, which one little thing, which I
- have no objection to telling.
- In Austria, every village, every town had a huge sign,
- coming and going, such and such village
- is Judenrein, printed in letters like this.
- And I did not see that in Germany.
- And the Austrians went out of their way
- to make sure that this village is Judenrein.
- And it was something that I have never forgiven them for.
- The Germans are bad enough, but the Austrians didn't have to.
- That's interesting.
- This is a clear distinction then between Austrian villages
- and German villages--
- Yeah.
- --in doing that.
- Yeah.
- I hadn't heard that.
- And we ended up in--
- our division captured Goering in--
- in Kitzbuhel, which is now a lovely ski resort.
- And we were in the mountains of Kitzbuhel,
- where all these chalets and beautiful Austrian things,
- and we were hunting SS at that time.
- And there's nobody here, but us farmers.
- And then we saw the SS boots under the table.
- So we found them.
- Going back again, to coming into Germany, going through Cologne,
- and then going down toward Stuttgart, what was--
- what did you hear was your task then?
- What was--
- At that point, we knew the war was coming to an end.
- Our last big battle was, I would say, in March, on the Rhine--
- a little bit beyond the Rhine, one of the tributaries.
- And then it started--
- the Germans started falling apart.
- So we knew the end was coming.
- We were advancing 10, 15 miles a day.
- We'd be taking tanks and trucks, and we'd
- move 15 miles at a time.
- And we'd be riding down the Autobahn,
- and some of the planes couldn't even take off.
- The Germans had planes on the side of the highways,
- by the way, instead of the airfields.
- And they'd have them very well camouflaged.
- And they used the Audubon as a runway.
- And the planes were still hidden, many of them.
- They didn't have enough gas to take off.
- And so we were--
- at that time, knew that we just had to end the war.
- Up until February, it was real hard fighting.
- And then the last month, two months,
- was relatively easy, except for this aspect,
- which added a whole new dimension, to what we
- were experiencing.
- Did you have forewarning that when
- you were coming to this area, you would meet SS resistance?
- No.
- No.
- No.
- There was no indication that we'd see the camps.
- And the SS-- the SS resistance, by the way, wasn't so great.
- I mean, there weren't that many of them.
- And rifle power was not--
- that's meaningless after we'd faced the German artillery
- and the tanks.
- So it was resistance, but it wasn't--
- it wasn't real big fighting.
- It was more close up than we were used to.
- We had some village fighting, going into the villages.
- Were there villages around the camp that you first came to?
- Yes.
- Or was it in the-- was it in the open?
- It was in an open field.
- I can't remember--
- I can't even remember the town.
- The names aren't so important, really.
- Reconstructing the setting is--
- I don't think I could go back and find it.
- But I know-- but I know the general area.
- And so we went into the big camp, like later on,
- I saw Mauthausen.
- And, of course, I'd been reading about Auschwitz.
- So it wasn't any--
- it was not in that league at all.
- But it was a series of huts out in an open field.
- Right.
- It was a barracks-like huts.
- Do you remember the day at all, and coming upon--
- and coming-- going to this area?
- And was there any talk amongst your fellow
- comrades of what they thought was going on or what was there?
- I'll tell you one incident there, which is also--
- because, obviously, I've relived these things very often,
- and I haven't been reluctant to talk about it.
- And so that's another aspect.
- You haven't, or you--
- No, I have not been.
- Because it was probably--
- I learned something in those days
- that I have never forgotten.
- Yes, obviously, we talked about it.
- Obviously, we said what kind of beasts are these that do this?
- All the anger that we would normally
- have against the enemy because they're shooting at us,
- after all, was intensified.
- There wasn't any brand new anger,
- but it just gave us more impetus.
- But I do remember that one of the people
- that we took prisoner, one of our Sergeants
- was beating him up with a--
- pistol whipping him.
- Pistol whipping who?
- One of the prisoners, one of the German prisoners.
- Who was an SS?
- I don't know whether he was or was not.
- I think he wanted some information as to where
- the rest of the company had gone or where the artillery is
- so we could avoid it.
- I can't even remember.
- But this is a big, burly, Texan Sergeant,
- one of the original monsters--
- the gorillas, as we called them.
- And he was pistol whipping him.
- And I was a fellow Sergeant.
- I said, come on now, you don't have to do that.
- This is right after I had seen this.
- And he said, you are--
- you're going to defend these guys?
- We should shoot him.
- And he says, after what you saw?
- I said, we're no better than they are if we do this.
- And he continued.
- And I just went away.
- And the lesson of--
- we had, in America-- or an American--
- the same propensity for evil.
- And I found in myself that I couldn't tolerate--
- as much as I felt about it, that I couldn't tolerate
- fighting for my principals.
- But I was very ambivalent because I really
- wanted him killed.
- And if he had been standing up, I might have shot him--
- shot him myself.
- But once he's a prisoner, you have a different attitude.
- It was very revealing to me.
- And I've been thinking about it all the time.
- What does this say about our own capacities
- for evil or for avoidance?
- Which is really what came out.
- By the way, if you have a chance to see Breaker Morant,
- see it, because it raises this issue in the same way.
- For me, it raised it from World War II.
- They raise it in the Boer War or in the Vietnam War.
- I have heard about it.
- It's a very interesting moral issue,
- especially for someone who felt as deeply as I did.
- That was my people on the line.
- Was there more of that going on at the time?
- Were there other beatings of Germans?
- I wouldn't say widespread because there was no need to.
- The other attitude is that within a couple of weeks,
- many of the soldiers were--
- found the German women very friendly and much cleaner
- than the French.
- And would-- were carrying on with the German women
- as if they had every right to.
- And they were friends.
- And it wasn't rape, like the Russians may have been.
- But it was a lot of fraternization.
- And all sorts of orders, you don't
- fraternize with the enemy.
- In meantime, they were--
- we'd sleep in the houses lots of time.
- And there were women there.
- And they may have not had any men around for a long time too.
- So it was mutually beneficial.
- And I couldn't.
- I still can't go into Germany today.
- I think I've spent one hour, going from--
- looking over my old foxholes and going to Switzerland.
- And I didn't want to even eat in Germany at the time.
- This is when you did return to Germany?
- Yeah, three years ago-- just three or four years ago.
- And we still have, obviously, feelings about it.
- Sure.
- Since one of the purposes why we're doing the project
- is to try to have firsthand evidence of what
- was the situation in the camps, in all the various camps,
- as much description as you can give of what
- was happening when you came upon this camp
- would be good to have.
- I probably can't give you much because, don't forget,
- they were shooting at us at the time.
- Yeah, that was-- that's an issue.
- That's going to be an issue.
- And I-- it probably was only one afternoon that I spent there.
- Because we had to move on to capture--
- to go after the next group.
- Certainly, on the camp, we--
- You do remember that it was the afternoon.
- Somehow, I guess I do.
- But if I had to go into a court of law, I'm not sure,
- but it seems to be in the afternoon.
- I remember the sun shining.
- And I remember the incongruity of--
- and probably in April--
- but the incongruity of that death.
- And the war is definitely getting over.
- And then they're killing.
- It was waste, you know.
- But I guess the fact that they would be shooting them
- and burning them alive is what I could never tolerate,
- never understand.
- So I guess I visualize in my own mind
- three, four barracks-like huts, surrounded by barbed wire.
- And I remember being on the outside of the barbed wire,
- obviously shooting at the SS.
- And as they retreated, we went after them.
- So we were going after them.
- And we tried not to take any prisoners.
- So that's my memory of it.
- I don't have-- there, we didn't stay.
- We were already gone.
- On the liberation of the train, that was also a--
- like an hour, two hours.
- We opened, then we had to move on when the next level came in.
- Let's stay with what we can do.
- And we'll move to the next.
- Was it already burning when you came to it?
- Yes, it was already burning, and they were pretty much
- all dead by that time.
- We could still hear some shots.
- And that's how we knew that something-- that we
- were coming across something.
- They were shooting them as we were coming.
- And then we-- and it was--
- I don't know if I saw the bodies or was it described to me.
- I can't even remember anymore.
- In my mind, I saw the flames.
- The picture in The Holocaust, where they burn the synagogue,
- was really the picture that I remember now.
- Because that's more vivid now than what
- happened 40 years ago.
- But it was very similar to what I recall.
- Do you remember how far away were you from the fire?
- A couple hundred yards.
- When you're talking-- in an infantry, you're really--
- 500 yards is the most you can shoot.
- And even then, you can't hit anything.
- So a couple hundred yards.
- And so I could see.
- And I remember that it was a beautiful setting around it,
- and lots of trees, lots of woods.
- It was not the Auschwitz type of mud and mud.
- It was a small something in the middle
- of the woods somewhere-- more like middle of a field, not
- the woods.
- And it was-- I gather--
- I don't know how--
- I don't even know how I know that--
- but sort of like--
- I guess it was a gypsy camp.
- And then I find out afterwards that this
- was one of the things, that they decided
- to kill all the gypsies too.
- Do you remember smells or sounds, besides the gun firing?
- Well, I remember the smoke, and I remember the gunfire.
- I don't remember the smell of burning flesh.
- But it was mixed with wood and it's mixed with gunpowder.
- So I guess it's the normal smells of war.
- Plus the fact we weren't so clean ourselves in those days.
- So I don't know what--
- So there was a mixture of smells.
- Yeah, I think it was a mixture.
- I don't remember the normal concentration camp smell
- that you hear described.
- I do remember when I opened up the-- when we opened up
- the trains that there was some--
- obviously, the smell of the dead body, and feces, and just the
- smell of death all around.
- When you get to this last camp, just to finish up,
- did you go actually through the camp at that time?
- Or did you go around--
- I think we went around.
- --and go and chase?
- I think we went around.
- Because we were chasing them, and they
- were retreating from the camp.
- So I'm sure we went around.
- Because we had to go into the woods to get them.
- And we did get, I think--
- or at least we got everybody that was shooting at us.
- And then the others just melted away.
- But we got a fair number of them at that time.
- I'm talking a couple dozen.
- I'm not talking companies, a major resistance.
- They were just people who were shooting at us,
- and we shot back.
- And there were more of us at that time
- so we had a fairly easy time of it.
- Did you-- did any of them try to surrender?
- I can't remember.
- I didn't even think it was-- we didn't get quite that close
- where it was an option.
- If I can-- I mean, there wasn't--
- they didn't come out with their hands up,
- let's put it that way.
- And if we saw them moving, we shot at them.
- So it was very clear cut.
- See, later on, when the German soldiers,
- the Wehrmacht surrendered, and they'd
- come with their white sheets and their hands
- on their head, that was easy.
- We knew they were surrendering.
- And in the last couple of days, we'd say,
- we don't have any more room.
- Could they come back tomorrow and surrender?
- And they did.
- But that was different.
- See, these guys were fighting, and we were--
- and we were fighting right back.
- So it was not a--
- it wasn't an option of suddenly throw down your arm
- and say we want to give up.
- So I guess we didn't--
- they didn't surrender.
- We didn't even look for it.
- It wasn't the general pattern at that time for the Germans
- to surrender.
- They were very well disciplined soldiers.
- Especially what we've heard of the SS.
- Yeah.
- In those that we've interviewed, there's
- been a very ready distinction made
- between fighting the Wehrmacht and fighting the SS.
- Yeah.
- And the SS being--
- just not giving up.
- I remember later on, an SS officer
- that we had caught, with the black leather and black gloves.
- And who was-- what did we know in those days?
- We put them all-- all the prisoners together.
- And he says, I insist on surrendering to an officer.
- And I said, you can insist what you want, you better sit there.
- And I refuse to sit.
- He sat, and I also said, please, make some resistance.
- Give me an excuse.
- I really didn't want to take him prisoner.
- This was already several--
- please-- I was begging him to make a fuss.
- And he sat.
- Then, obviously, went with the other soldiers.
- But I didn't offer him those distinctions
- in the American army.
- Do you remember-- after going through that first camp,
- do you remember calling back to any other COs or other people
- that you had to report what was going on and what you said?
- No.
- Don't forget, I'm a lowly Sergeant.
- That's higher than many, though.
- We never would have done it.
- We would have said--
- what we probably would have reported
- is that there was some resistance,
- and we conquered it, or there are some people here
- who need some help with medicine or food.
- That's what we would have reported.
- But we wouldn't have said, my God,
- we came across the Holocaust.
- It just was not within our thinking in those days.
- But it still seemed like an extraordinary event,
- to come across--
- It was very extraordinary.
- It was extraordinary to see the people
- and to see the skeletons.
- And there's the one--
- in one of those rest periods, where I really saw the people--
- not in the immediate.
- When I came back to this camp for--
- I don't even remember what it was-- where I saw them
- three or four days afterwards.
- And where they were going around with the wheelbarrows.
- Now they had already been liberated.
- And they were getting the food, but were still traumatized
- by the whole thing.
- And wanted to go into the camp--
- go into the town to take more food and wreak revenge.
- And we-- the other soldiers, they said, well,
- we got to keep them in the camp so
- that they don't go into the city or town to pillage.
- So it was probably the right thing to do,
- although I can imagine how that prisoners must
- have felt about that.
- But seeing them in that setting was--
- then I began to realize it was much more
- widespread than we had seen.
- It just wasn't two isolated incidents.
- This was some days later?
- Some days later.
- I can't remember precisely, but maybe a week later.
- We were taken off the front line for a few days of rest.
- And then as we went back, there was a camp nearby.
- Do you remember that night after you came to the first camp,
- whether--
- I assume that you stopped-- the platoon stopped for the night--
- whether there was talk of what went on during the day?
- Oh, I think so.
- I think so.
- I can't remember the specifics, but I
- think we'd already decided if they're SS,
- let's go after them.
- It was very clear, have you seen what these sons of bitches
- have done?
- And, don't forget, as I keep saying,
- it wasn't Jewish or not Jewish at that point.
- It was just what they were doing to people.
- So there wasn't anything, at this time,
- special about being a Jew.
- No.
- And since I was the only Jewish guy in my outfit,
- I guess I would have been even more sensitized if they had.
- Now when I saw the Jewish ones--
- This was at the train.
- At the train, I didn't even then realize
- how much special treatment they were getting.
- I just said, oh, the other were gypsies, these were Jews.
- It was another facet of the same thing.
- And I guess because I had seen the non-Jewish one first--
- it has always been very clear in my mind
- that the Holocaust was not only Jewish.
- And I guess I've argued intellectually with Elie Wiesel
- all along, that it's a mistake to think of it only as Jewish,
- as horrendous as it is.
- But there were others who suffered as well,
- and that it is a genocide of a major proportion.
- And that we shouldn't reserve it unto ourselves.
- It was really that first experience.
- Yeah.
- It had a major part of informing your sense that was the way
- that the Holocaust should be--
- Including even that little experience
- with the Belgian prisoners of war, that they too suffered.
- Not in quite the same way, but they were-- a lot of deaths,
- and a lot of deprivations, and a lot of inhumanity, as it were.
- Not quite the same way as in the concentration camps,
- but that they were against everybody,
- against human beings.
- So I guess I had a little bit more eclectic
- feeling than most people would reading
- about it in a general way.
- Coming back to the second incident, with the train,
- how did you know that they were Jewish?
- Oh, well, when they started speaking Yiddish.
- That's a good clue.
- And when they said [YIDDISH].
- And they couldn't believe it.
- And so--
- What did they say?
- Were they joyous?
- Was it-- or just--
- Oh, it was-- they were moaning.
- They couldn't-- many of them couldn't speak.
- And they just-- they didn't know--
- they heard shooting around them.
- They were locked in a car.
- They don't know from anything.
- We open up, and they see American soldiers.
- And the thing I remember mostly was they moaned,
- throughout the train.
- A moan of joy is what I heard.
- It wasn't shouts.
- I wasn't-- because they were too weak, just a moan.
- And when they realized that they were now free.
- And then, you know what [INAUDIBLE] is, and food.
- And we gave them from our canteen.
- And we gave them our chocolate bars and our K-rations.
- And they didn't know how to open up the cans, the tuna
- fish that we carried.
- I don't know if you know what a K-ration is.
- It's a little box that's--
- Something like a tuna fish can, I imagine.
- Well, it's a whole series--
- biscuits and-- each one would carry like three meals.
- So we carried three, four packages.
- Because we didn't get any-- we didn't have any mess kitchens
- with us at the time.
- So we gave them our food, and our water,
- and everything that we had.
- And, of course, they took as much
- as they can because they hadn't had anything for days.
- But [YIDDISH]---- because it was just so anomalous to them that
- somebody Jewish would be a soldier.
- This they knew after you had spoken to them in Yiddish.
- Yeah.
- Well, [INAUDIBLE] Yiddish or in some cases a little French.
- My German was not very good.
- And most of us didn't speak German.
- So that little bit of Yiddish, and that's
- how I found out they'd been there
- for six days on the train.
- Had they-- they told you that they
- had been there for six days.
- And were they telling you--
- what else were they telling you?
- Were they telling you where they came from?
- Were they telling you what they had experienced?
- No, they didn't.
- Well, first of all, they're still-- the SS
- are still shooting at us.
- I guess I have to keep reminding you.
- In the midst of the story, it is hard.
- That's part of the difference.
- But I wanted to emphasize by saying that you're
- being on the front lines, most who we've interviewed were not.
- And so when they came-- when they came upon the camps,
- or when they came upon others, it wasn't--
- they didn't have to watch out for themselves.
- It was more as an observer.
- I don't remember-- well, first of all,
- I didn't even know enough to ask them what camp.
- I didn't know there were camps, really.
- Nor would I have understood if they told me
- where they were coming from.
- Because it probably would have been a small camp out there.
- I do remember, obviously, that we haven't eaten.
- And they didn't open the cars.
- And we need water.
- And so and so has died.
- And that one has died.
- And so that made a very strong--
- but the kind of detail that you would normally
- do in a more relaxed setting, we did not do.
- I can't remember how long we spent with them.
- Was this also in the afternoon?
- During the day.
- It was during the day.
- During the day.
- It was also--
- A sunny day.
- --a sunny day, which by itself is remarkable.
- Because there were so few sunny days on the front.
- --a tour.
- And you were still being shot at.
- And I'm still being shot at.
- So we didn't have lots of time.
- But I had already gotten the impression.
- And I guess I saw that the others were
- doing very much the same thing as I was, trying to relate
- and trying to talk to-- certainly giving
- food and water.
- But I just can't remember whether it was a long--
- don't forget, even a half an hour
- would have been long for me at that time.
- To stay in one place.
- To stay in one place.
- I don't want to over-dramatize the conflict,
- but they were shooting at us.
- I'm just imagining in my mind that finding out you
- were Jewish, and you said that--
- that special reverberations that went through when they found
- that out-- whether they had told you where they had originally
- come from, or were asking about relatives in America,
- or whether there was any of that kind of exchange--
- I don't recall that.
- No, I don't think I would have.
- I would now.
- Don't forget, I was young.
- I would not have asked where were
- you born or anything like that.
- Because it's-- they were not even quite alive and it
- wasn't the right moment.
- I think that I do-- somehow, I sensed that they were telling
- us how they--
- we came from a camp, and they beat us, and they put us there,
- and six days we've been here without food and water.
- And that's what I remember.
- And I don't remember that I was born in so and so,
- and do you have--
- positively nobody asked about any relatives anywhere.
- They certainly didn't know where I came from or even cared.
- I mean, really interested in just getting some food.
- It's not like going to Israel and reminiscing.
- There was a strong sense of the desperation.
- Oh, these were-- a third of them were dead.
- They were living with the dead.
- And they are not--
- many of them, I know, just did not
- survive on what we gave them.
- So they were on their last legs.
- Many of them couldn't stand up.
- When they got out, they couldn't stand up even.
- And that's when I saw the wheelbarrows later on,
- where it intensified that they weren't strong enough to walk.
- When you get three or four people
- being wheeled on a wheelbarrow, they were so light and frail.
- And this guy pushing them around.
- They were sitting up, and a very weak wave.
- I don't know whether they ever survived or not.
- So that's not your usual story?
- Some of it is, and some of it isn't.
- We did not feel ourselves liberators.
- I just have to tell you again.
- Please-- that's fine.
- And we can--
- In fact, after the tape, I'd like to--
- or with the tape, but after the tape,
- ask you to comment more about that, both from your--
- we can talk, probably after the tape,
- while I go to some more of these.
- Any more sights and sounds with the train?
- Any more memories of--
- Well, it was probably-- that was even more traumatic for me
- than the other, because I was closer.
- And also because I spoke with them.
- So, therefore, that had a much stronger impact on me.
- And the fact that they were all Jewish had an impact.
- What were your feelings?
- I said, I can't believe it.
- And I said, I really feel--
- and I guess that's the reaction mostly, was it's not true,
- or it just can't be so that they would be this one.
- And somehow, I guess in our mind,
- we made a distinction between the SS and Wehrmacht.
- And maybe it was a completely false distinction.
- But it was just, again, a way of denying.
- So-- I couldn't believe it even when I saw it.
- Obviously, I believed it, but just
- that this can't really be happening.
- No, I had no--
- I must tell you that I had no problem
- with my own Jewish identification,
- particularly since I was the only Jewish guy in my outfit,
- where I'd get all sorts of ribs from my fellow Texans.
- They said, all right, Rosen, how come
- you ended up in the infantry?
- All you guys end up in the finance corps, don't you?
- And then I said, well, they sent me here to keep you guys honest
- and to make sure you're doing--
- just make sure you're doing the job right.
- So I had to get them back.
- At that point, I'm a Sergeant.
- I've already proven myself.
- And everybody was a buddy in the front line.
- There's no enemies.
- So I think it was sort of good-natured kidding.
- There was very few days where I wasn't
- being made aware that, well, everybody knows I'm Jewish.
- Reminding you of what that might mean to them also.
- Not-- I did not feel--
- I guess I-- by that time, I had already decided that just--
- just as we say, well, you're from the South,
- you guys won the Civil War yet.
- We'd kid each other on everything.
- And you Texans don't know how to--
- the fork goes in the right hand.
- I mean, don't you know anything?
- Lots of joshing.
- So I took it good naturedly.
- Whether I was dumb or whether I was realistic,
- I just don't know.
- It was a way of survival.
- It means they hang together at that time.
- Everybody was a buddy.
- Even the Spanish Americans, which
- was a very new phenomenon for the crackers in Georgia.
- Don't forget, I was only also one of the few college educated
- people in my company.
- I had been in OCS.
- I had been in the ROTC.
- Most of them hadn't finished high school.
- So there was a certain amount of class distinction
- almost, and certainly educational.
- By and large, by the way, my impression
- was that there's good people everywhere.
- I mean, there was--
- with all the kidding, it was really the salt
- of the Earth type of attitude.
- There were some not so good times together.
- So I guess I'm a little bit more eclectic because
- of that experience.
- Did you encounter any German citizens?
- And did you talk to them about what you had seen?
- Right after the war, no.
- After those incidents?
- After you had gone to the train, and then
- had gone on, and gone through villages,
- through the Austrian villages?
- One, we weren't allowed to talk.
- Two, we were too busy fighting still.
- And we were not supposed to fraternize with the enemy.
- And I must say I could not, including whatever Germans
- were available, German women.
- I just couldn't mentally face it.
- Not only because of the incident,
- but because they're still in the war.
- So I really had no experience with the Germans.
- But I did talk with the French afterwards and the Belgians.
- And when I spent another year in Europe,
- when I got to know what was happening.
- The German, I really did not have a chance
- to talk to the Germans much.
- It was my fault, but I just couldn't.
- Do you remember conversations that your comrades
- had with Germans?
- They seemed to imply that they didn't know.
- Don't forget, we're also talking small villages, and also
- in an area of Germany where there weren't the big camps.
- It may be that they didn't know.
- This is in the Stuttgart area we're talking about.
- Yeah, or in the Austrian area, outside of those damn signs.
- There were no Jews in those areas anymore.
- There were no-- very few camps in that area.
- So the Jewish aspect, of course, is meaningless in Austria
- at that point.
- So that I just saw a piece of the elephant,
- obviously not in the big cities and not in the--
- later on, on one of our trips to Europe,
- we happened to be sitting--
- we shared a table on a boat with a German couple.
- He was from Cologne and also fought in World War II.
- He was a Lieutenant.
- And we sort of compared war experiences a little bit.
- Very-- in fact, we didn't talk about these things as much.
- The wives were talking about the problems of raising kids,
- so we avoided the issue.
- Did you ask any of the Austrians about the signs?
- You didn't meet them.
- There was no place to meet them.
- Most of the men were out of the--
- were no longer there.
- They were in the army.
- And most of the soldiers were in prisoner of war camps,
- the camps that we had set up.
- And we weren't-- also my fluency in German was so little that I
- wouldn't have been able to talk anyway.
- We've heard from others, though, that the incidents
- of people speaking English was quite high.
- Probably in villages, probably less so.
- Probably in the cities.
- I daresay there would have been-- in the places
- that we were, there was very little.
- And like this SS officer, had to be in English or something.
- And he knew it.
- But I wasn't going to converse with him about the signs.
- And then this last camp that you went back to,
- that was back towards Stuttgart again.
- Yeah, it was right near there.
- It was in that area.
- And it was on one of these, say, about a week recreation--
- a rest while--
- sort of catch your breath.
- That your platoon had been--
- That our--
- Or your--
- Our division.
- Your division.
- And what they do is they send you back,
- and then they bring in a replacement.
- So we were always getting replacements.
- Because it's completely new.
- Because we were like turned over four or fives times because
- of all the wounded, and killed, and people get sick,
- and frostbite, and all that.
- So it was constant, in and out.
- So I had seniority enough to get about four days.
- At 23.
- 20--
- 21-- 21 or 22.
- 22, yeah.
- Of course, when I came in, I was really 20.
- So I was 21, yeah.
- Because it wasn't until the end of '45 that I would become--
- I was 21 when all this happened.
- And I was very mature 21 by then.
- From the-- encountering the fighting?
- Once you're faced with the prospect of death,
- and that it can happen any time, everything else is unimportant.
- And I won't tell you all my war stories,
- but just as an example, we're standing guard in a--
- now we're in Germany.
- And we stood guard--
- we're in a village, and we stand guard inside the hallway,
- just to make sure that nothing was coming,
- and that the guys inside could be able to sleep.
- I'm standing guard in the one place we could stand.
- And I remember very vividly--
- it's now 7:00 in the evening, my turn to be relieved.
- The next guy comes on and stands exactly
- in the same spot, the only place to stand.
- A shell drops there.
- He is killed-- by one minute.
- And so who's watching over me that this
- didn't happen a minute ago?
- There's a random shell that happened to drop right there,
- no warning.
- It was a mortar shell, and it would have gotten me.
- And so we go on.
- But you say no rhyme or reason about this.
- So once you face that it could happen any minute,
- without anything on your part that you're doing,
- everything else becomes [INAUDIBLE]..
- So it does have an effect, I guess, on the rest
- of your attitudes on life.
- At the third camp, you had mentioned the wheelbarrow
- as something that stood out.
- Were there other either incidents or other
- conversations with any of the prisoners.
- There, there were conversations.
- And there, there were--
- I think by that time, the medical personnel
- was there and the second echelon,
- and they were telling about that there were lots of these people
- and how weak.
- And that there is a problem.
- They didn't know quite how to discipline them,
- how to keep them under discipline.
- They wanted to go out and take revenge.
- And you can't blame them.
- At the same time, we are under orders to keep them here.
- Isn't it a shame, they're still wearing a prisoner of war camp
- next--
- with the stars.
- And these were--
- I seem to recall that they were mostly Jewish.
- But here I wasn't stationed.
- I just saw them.
- And I wasn't really with them.
- I just-- it wasn't a long stay.
- It was-- I was sort of a bystander on that one.
- But I do remember seeing it, and the fact that, my God,
- they're still prisoners in one way or another.
- That was my memory of that particular one.
- But that it was large numbers and large--
- Then, later on, I became a reporter
- in one of the army newspapers, after the war was over,
- I'd say in June, July, August of '45.
- And then I saw--
- I had access to the pictures of The Stars and Stripes,
- in the files.
- And then I saw all the pictures of--
- that they had liberated.
- So by June and July, I was fully familiar.
- One thing, however, which is one of my [? best noirs,
- ?] in all the pictures-- and I still have them
- in my possession, and which I now gather is becoming very
- important none of them identified them as Jews.
- They were identified as Hungarians, Poles, Lithuanians,
- et cetera.
- It was an American policy--
- that I now found out it's the policy everywhere,
- you identify by nationality, not by Judaism.
- So I wrote an article about that in that publication, which
- you may or may not have seen.
- It's in the article, that I know that was a particular problem
- in repatriation.
- Because Jews, for a time, were being sent back
- to the country where they had originally come from.
- And there was still virulent anti-Semitism--
- And the Americans didn't understand it.
- They didn't understand what was happening.
- And this was two, three months later.
- So I knew about it earlier than most people because
- of my newspaper experience, not because
- of my combat experience.
- So that was another dimension of my education.
- And, obviously, I have not been afraid to talk about it.
- But this last camp that you saw--
- you saw people who were still prisoners,
- and they were dressed--
- Yeah, they were dressed in the striped suits.
- And they were American prisoners,
- but I mean, they had freedom of the camp,
- but they were still kept to the camp.
- Not obviously treated the way the Germans did.
- We gave them food, and they were beginning
- to get into the process of being freed.
- And how did they look to you?
- What was their state?
- Walking skeletons.
- They really were.
- It was unbelievable.
- All the pictures that you see, they were-- and as I say,
- I remember this guy with the wheelbarrow.
- He may have weighed 90 pounds, and the others
- were 50, 60, too weak to walk.
- So very vivid memories.
- Although, I had already seen it in these guys,
- these people in the freight cars.
- These were freight cars, by the way, not--
- I mean boxcars, not passenger cars.
- Right.
- Did you write home about this at the time?
- Do you remember writing letters about--
- See, that's a good question.
- Would anyone have any of your letters
- where you would be able to check?
- Your parents or siblings?
- Well, I never--
- I have some letters that I--
- I haven't looked.
- It would be-- that'd be interesting.
- But, I guess, as I've told you so much,
- I really didn't feel that I needed to look.
- That's an interesting question.
- Especially since you were a writer.
- Yeah.
- That's a very good point.
- I hadn't thought of that.
- It would be interesting to see, yeah.
- In fact, maybe we could--
- maybe you could check, and then we could--
- I don't know--
- --let me know.
- --if my brother kept them.
- I used to write an awful lot to my older brother.
- But we weren't encouraged to write very much in the army
- days.
- You weren't particularly encouraged,
- because don't tell them where you are.
- That's a good point.
- I don't know.
- I would think--
- I may look at some of my old--
- I have some letters from World War II that my mother saved.
- But I haven't looked at them in so long that I can't remember.
- I may check.
- It would be quite interesting.
- Yeah, I'd be interested to see whether the reality is
- what I remember, if I did--
- I can't remember writing.
- I remember writing afterwards, but not--
- You mean the newspaper articles?
- The newspaper articles and I started
- writing a great war novel, but I haven't reached that stage yet.
- And Norman Mailer beat me to it.
- Did you continue?
- No.
- I didn't have it.
- I read it.
- That I saved, and it's not great.
- It was too-- it was a personal saga, which wasn't the--
- it wasn't a good novel.
- It was a good personal saga, but not a story.
- Testimony can be important.
- It wasn't--
- Yeah.
- --as you know, and there's different interests
- in the kind of tales that come from the war that may not
- make great novels, but in their own right.
- Don't forget, the experience for me was primarily the combat.
- I mean, this was an important experience, but just survival,
- my own survival was a major achievement.
- That became very-- that's what I wanted--
- but what I really wanted to say in the story
- was the camaraderie of people in combat, which is something that
- doesn't come through in the war movies, nor the novels,
- but they always put in conflict.
- And I realized afterwards that without the conflict,
- it's not a good story.
- But the reality is that there was very little conflict.
- That you depended on each other so much,
- you couldn't have a conflict, at least
- as I saw it in World War II.
- We were all in it together.
- We made a nice team, but that doesn't make a good story.
- Fiction can at times be more pleasing than reality.
- Yeah, so everyone puts in conflict, and it's not true.
- Were you ever asked by anyone to comment on the camps?
- Since you were a first line fighter, were they--
- did any reporters come to you and ask you what you had seen?
- Or officers question you about what you had seen?
- Oh, no, first of all, everybody was there together, all
- 100 or 150 of us.
- Oh, at the camp.
- That was later on, with the division in the camp.
- Yeah, but on the first line, we were all there together.
- And nobody gave a damn about what we saw.
- We were out to win the war.
- This was another incident.
- If it had been a platoon of SS guys, so get rid of them,
- and go on to the next objective.
- This was just another incident along the way.
- And we did not realize what we had stumbled on.
- And even months later, we didn't really realize.
- So I guess that's--
- we really just saw a small piece of the elephant.
- So that's why, I guess, I keep coming back,
- I do not feel myself as a liberator.
- And the fact that you have this kind of a project
- is very commendable.
- I just hope you keep it in context.
- We weren't the great white hope coming in
- to save the Jews from the concentration camp.
- It happened that we did.
- And if we had known what we did, I
- think we would have fought a different war.
- But we didn't even know it existed really.
- It's important to hear--
- important to hear.
- Did you have contact with any of your comrades
- following the war?
- And where you would have discussed any of this later on?
- No.
- I'm sure that there were reunions with the Texas
- Division, but somehow, I don't want to see any of them.
- They're nice people, but we didn't have anything in common,
- other than sharing death.
- I didn't-- I think there was one guy that I wrote to afterwards,
- in--
- back in Minnesota.
- And of all the incidents, we didn't discuss this one
- in the few letters that we wrote.
- There was one incident amongst-- do you remember when so-and-so
- got killed, not if you remember when we liberated the camp.
- That's an interesting thing, but it certainly
- is-- we found that with some of the others too.
- Some, interestingly, a few--
- it was not you have other--
- depending on, many times, how long they were there,
- or the contact they--
- It was not the overriding aspect of the war to us.
- But, don't forget, we were targets.
- That had to be put into context.
- By now, I shouldn't forget that.
- But it is-- I do have to keep reminding myself as we talk
- about it here, that I'm not talking to you as an observer
- at that time, but as a participant in--
- I wasn't the reporter.
- And you weren't--
- We weren't coming in to get the information, where
- you're doing a very proper interview of probing
- and probing.
- When you're in that setting, you don't.
- If I went back now with all the information, I would--
- I'd be a different person.
- If I came as a war correspondent,
- I'd be different.
- Sure.
- But as a participant, I had a totally different kind of--
- Did you talk to your family about what
- had gone on when you came back?
- Yes.
- [INAUDIBLE]
- Would they listen?
- Oh, yes.
- My father's a Hazzan.
- My mother was very into the Jewish thing.
- Lots of our family had been killed.
- I talked to my kids, and my wife,
- and anybody else who would listen.
- And I must say, nobody said don't talk about it, as long
- as I kept it within bounds.
- Most of them have not heard from my story.
- Because most people had talked to somebody
- who'd been on the front line.
- That's what I mean, I'm certainly no hero on that.
- I just happened to be there and happened to survive.
- But I've always been open about this
- because I think it's a matter that has to be shared,
- and something I've probably read every bit of literature
- on the subject.
- I'm completely familiar with the topic,
- and feel that it's something that has to be told.
- As I said, one of the reasons why
- I think I'm in this business is because the impact that it had.
- What do you-- say more about that if you can.
- What?
- How you see that?
- The double whammy of both this memory and the state of Israel,
- and I must say, part of the time I
- spent after, I met that whole group of Haganah people
- in Switzerland--
- I was in school for a while--
- and they said, you're a combat soldier,
- you know your way around.
- And you saw the concentration camps.
- And one of them--
- a couple of them, they'd gone from Poland and escaped,
- so they had stories.
- I was in medical school in Switzerland at the time--
- join the Haganah.
- And I almost did.
- And then I said, my God, what am I getting into?
- There's going to be fighting.
- How much luck do I want to press?
- I came out of this one alive, who knows what
- the next one's going to be.
- This is in '46 now.
- And I was 22.
- It sounded very romantic.
- The girls were all beautiful.
- And they were telling me Hebrew jokes, dirty jokes in Hebrew.
- And I felt that that was good.
- And they sang beautifully, all the Haganah songs.
- I was very caught up with it.
- And almost moved, and then I came home,
- and I said, I can't face another combat.
- And without knowing what was going to happen,
- I knew that there was going to be fighting.
- But clearly, because I had even thought about it,
- the whole business of Israel's independence
- had a special meaning, therefore, for me.
- And, therefore, working for a Jewish outfit, where
- you could raise money for the continuation of Jewish survival
- was something that was very much within my psyche.
- So I didn't go out of my way to find a Jewish job right away.
- But when it came along, I felt, my God,
- this is something that is very fulfilling.
- And it has proven to be so. ' And I guess what I'm finding
- particularly interesting is when the younger generations are now
- coming to things that I thought everyone wanted to forget.
- It is very heartening to see their interest.
- You may be off base on a particular perception, the fact
- that you're in a group of people that are interested is great.
- And it gives one hope that there will be somebody
- around to listen in the next generation as well.
- So I, obviously, feel that what you're doing
- is fine, just be honest intellectually.
- Oh, I hope so.
- I hope so.
- That's a minimal concern and a great concern of the interview.
- Yeah, I think you are.
- And I think your sensitivity is very good.
- Just sorting out-- I mean, as a reporter, I'm talking,
- sorting out each person's perception is real
- and it's all different because you only
- see that section of it.
- So piecing together becomes the art of the author, as it were,
- but the [INAUDIBLE]
- Are there other ways that those incidents
- that you saw at the camp, the burning, and the train,
- move you in now, either in different opinions
- about different ethical issues in the world?
- Or in daily life?
- Well, the issue that I think I raised earlier,
- man's propensity for evil, as well as man's propensity
- for good, is very fragile.
- That good people can be bad.
- I'm not quite as quick to condemn the Germans as--
- I am, and I am not, because I understand that the French
- could be as bad in Algeria.
- And Americans could be as bad in many ways and were.
- And that every people have the propensity for evil.
- So I keep saying, what tips this one way or the other?
- And I think from an ethical point of view, the thing
- that Judaism provides is the burden of individual ethics.
- And the mere fact that you raise the question of what is ethical
- is half the battle.
- And what I've resolved in my own mind
- is that only when you consider each human being
- a figment of God that you can have good ethics.
- So then there's something divine in a living person.
- If you lose that divinity or that sense of that every person
- is sacred, then anything goes.
- Then he becomes like a bug.
- That's what the Germans did, the dehumanization,
- the numbers on the arm.
- They were so dehumanizing.
- That's what I keep saying, is that we've got
- to make these living issues.
- And we've got to make each person--
- because if not, the evils can overcome, and they will.
- So I'm both very optimistic and very pessimistic.
- And I guess the motivation to work for the good is that you
- cannot forget the fact that the bad can be around.
- The Israelis can be bad, and have been.
- And this last raid in Beirut is an example,
- that we can dehumanize the Lebanese.
- And if we forget the old precepts, that you cannot--
- I don't know about the plagues, but if you--
- you cannot rejoice over the Egyptians who were slain
- because they are my creatures too.
- That is probably fundamental.
- And all this reminds me of that.
- And obviously, every time I have a Seder,
- I make the same parallel.
- So that's what it comes out.
- So from my ethical point of view,
- it was a very sober object lesson, that people who do
- have the capacity for evil, also have the capacity for good,
- that it just doesn't happen automatically.
- And religious training, per se, doesn't mean a damn thing.
- Some of the most observant Catholics
- were among the guards.
- And a lot of people who have religion in the formal sense.
- So it's the ethical religion that I'm concerned about.
- So I guess that's my credo.
- I look for why it has some meaning.
- It's kind of heavy but [INAUDIBLE]..
- It's important to hear.
- That's why I'm here and what I want to hear.
- All right?
- I think so.
- Is there anything else that you feel like you'd like to add?
- No, I think you've exhausted me pretty well.
- I would have to say, in a certain way, I'm glad.
- Thank you.
- All right.
Overview
- Interviewee
- Ellsworth Rosen
Physical Details
- Language
- English
- Extent
-
1 sound cassette (60 min.).
Rights & Restrictions
- Conditions on Access
- There are no known restrictions on access to this material.
- Conditions on Use
- No restrictions on use
Keywords & Subjects
- Topical Term
- Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)--Personal narratives. Holocaust survivors--United States.
- Personal Name
- Rosen, Ellsworth.
Administrative Notes
- Holder of Originals
-
One Generation After
- Legal Status
- Permanent Collection
- Provenance
- The interview with Ellsworth Rosen was conducted by One Generation After, a Boston based group of children of Holocaust survivors, for the One Generation After oral history project. The tapes of the interview were received by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum on January 7, 1990.
- Special Collection
-
The Jeff and Toby Herr Oral History Archive
- Record last modified:
- 2023-11-16 08:10:04
- This page:
- http://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn510161
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