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Oral history interview with Marvin Palanker

Oral History | Digitized | Accession Number: 1990.338.48 | RG Number: RG-50.037.0048

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    Oral history interview with Marvin Palanker

    Overview

    Interview Summary
    Marvin Palanker describes joining the US Army in 1943 when he was 18 years old; doing basic training and then being sent to England; participating in the Normandy invasion as member of the 438th Battalion under General Hodges; operating a 40-mm gun and a half track machine gun (he shows a picture of himself with the gun and a friend); advancing into Germany at Aachen; having a Jewish service, during which there was some shelling; hearing rumors about the concentration camps but could not believe them; advancing so rapidly until December that they ran out of supplies and had to retract; retreating after the Battle of the Bulge and regrouping; advancing again through Germany to Cologne; reaching the camp Nordhausen without resistance in the middle of April; finding bombed out barracks and about 2400 bodies of people who had been shot just before they arrived and how only one person was still alive; the town’s people denying any knowledge about the camp; how seeing the camp was the most horrible experience of the entire war (he shows pictures from the camp); proceeding on and encountering the Russians several days later; his unit staying in Grimma, Germany, where he found groups of Czech and Polish women who had been forced to walk between the American and Russian fronts (he shows a picture of a group of Polish girls); being the only Jew in his unit and speaking a little Yiddish tried to communicate with the Czech and Polish women; two of the women asking him to write to their cousin in Buffalo, NY, whom he happened to know from school; the two women eventually moving to the US; expecting to be shipped to the Pacific but the war ending and returning home; and catching polio later and being confined to a wheelchair.
    Interviewee
    Marvin Palanker
    Interviewer
    Mrs. Toby Back

    Physical Details

    Language
    English
    Extent
    1 videocassette (VHS) : sound, color ; 1/2 in..

    Rights & Restrictions

    Conditions on Access
    There are no known restrictions on access to this material.
    Conditions on Use
    No restrictions on use

    Keywords & Subjects

    Personal Name
    Palanker, Marvin.
    Corporate Name
    Dora (Concentration camp)

    Administrative Notes

    Provenance
    Toby Ticktin Back of the Holocaust Resource Center of Buffalo conducted the interview with Marvin Palanker with the cooperation and support of WIVB-TV in Buffalo, NY. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Oral History branch received copies of interviews from the Holocaust Resource Center of Buffalo from 1990 - 1993. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archives received the collection by transfer from the Oral History branch in February 1995.
    Record last modified:
    2023-11-16 08:08:27
    This page:
    https:​/​/collections.ushmm.org​/search​/catalog​/irn511811

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