German marching compass in a case taken from an SS officer by a US soldier

Hy Silverman was born in the United States. Soon after the December 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor, the US entered World War II. During the war, Hy served in C Battery, 322nd Field Artillery Battalion, 83rd Infantry Division. He was the only Jewish soldier in C Battery. In April 1944, his unit was deployed to the European Theater of Operation. In June, Hy participated in the D Day invasion of Omaha Beach in Normandy. While advancing toward Luxembourg, Hy was wounded and sent to France to recover. In December, Hy rejoined his unit, which relieved the 101st Airborne Division near Bastogne, Belgium. In spring 1945, Hy’s unit advanced eastward across Germany. During the advance, Hy and eight other soldiers were riding in a truck pulling the unit’s 105 mm Howitzer gun when the vehicles halted suddenly at a concentration camp. The Division is recorded as having liberated Halberstadt-Langenstein-Zwieberge, a subcamp of Buchenwald. Hy later believed that it might have been Mauthausen, which is in Austria. Hy was not prepared for the horrors he saw in the camp. From his seat on top of the truck, Hy could see “a few hundred emaciated men speaking Yiddish,” wearing flimsy, blue and white striped concentration camp uniforms and eating raw potatoes which a German woman had given them. He was the only Jewish soldier in C Battery and spoke German and Yiddish, so he was able to communicate with the prisoners. While talking, Hy noticed a large, husky man wearing a dark blue or black suit that looked like a uniform with the insignia torn off. The man had a compass and whistle around his neck. Hy felt that the man did not belong with the others because he looked too well-fed. Hy jumped down from the truck, pointed his gun at the man, and ordered him, in German, to remove the equipment from around his neck. The trucks began to move away and the prisoners moved closer to Hy and the other man. Hy asked the nearest prisoners who the man was and they said that he was the commandant. As Hy jumped back onto the truck, he told them, in Yiddish, “kill him.” The other soldiers did not understand what was happening until they saw the prisoners pull the large man to the ground and stone him to death. Hy’s unit put up photos of the camp in the town nearby, where the townspeople protested that they “didn’t know” about what was happening there. The 83rd Division continued to advance through the region until May 6, 1945, when they met Soviet Forces at the Elbe River. The following day, Germany surrendered. In March 1946, Hy’s Division returned to the US and was inactivated the following month. Hy settled in Jenkintown, Pennsylvania.