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Oral history interview with Ernest Kessler

Oral History | Digitized | Accession Number: 2017.155.1 | RG Number: RG-50.030.0915

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    Oral history interview with Ernest Kessler
    Transcript
    This is a United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
    interview with Mr. Ernest "Ernie" Kessler on February 23,
    2017 in Coral Springs, Florida.
    Thank you very much, Mr. Kessler,
    for agreeing to speak with us today
    and to share your experiences.
    It's a pleasure.
    I hope it'll be useful to some people.
    I think it will be very useful.
    I'm going to start with the most basic questions,
    and from there, we'll build our story.
    OK.
    So the very first question I've got
    is can you tell me the date of your birth when you were born?
    Yeah, July 14, 1920.
    July 14, 1920.
    And where were you born?
    Vienna, Austria.
    And what was your name at birth?
    The only change was Ernst.
    It was like Ernest in German so Ernst.
    Yeah, Ernst.
    And then I added one letter when I became American.
    What's that letter?
    E.
    Ernest E. Kessler?
    No.
    From Ernst to Ernest.
    Absolutely.
    One letter.
    Ernest Kessler.
    Yeah.
    Yeah.
    What was your father's name?
    Leopold.
    Leopold.
    And your mother's?
    Irma Epler.
    Was Epler her maiden name?
    Yes.
    OK, was it-- how do you spell it?
    E-P-L-E-R. Epler.
    OK.
    And were both of them born in Vienna?
    No, my mother was born in Vienna.
    My father was born in was then Czechoslovakia.
    That was an area that was between Hungary and Austria,
    Hungary, and the big Austrian empire.
    So as a matter of fact, his birth certificate
    is in three languages.
    Which languages would those be?
    German, Hungarian, and Czech I think it was.
    So does this mean he was born in the Slovak
    part of Czechoslovakia because that's the one that
    borders Hungary, doesn't it?
    Yeah.
    OK.
    But at the time, there was one empire, the Austrian.
    So a lot of people who say they come from Austria
    don't come from Austria itself.
    Meaning the Austria we know today.
    Yeah, the larger--
    I didn't know-- most of the Jewish people in the United
    States have some knowledge of Yiddish,
    which is sort of a mixture.
    Well, I didn't realize there was such a thing
    until I came to the United States
    because the only people who spoke Yiddish were immigrants
    who never, as far as I was concerned,
    never learned how to speak proper German,
    so they spoke some language that I understand.
    Well, that shows the real demarcation
    between German Jews and East European Jews
    because East European Jews mostly
    would speak Yiddish at home, whereas most German Jews did
    not.
    Did not.
    Yeah, so I assume that at home in your family you spoke German.
    Yes.
    Any other languages?
    No.
    We just spoke German.
    OK.
    What was the town or city your father was born in?
    Do you know?
    I used to.
    Ah.
    Maybe it will come.
    As a matter of fact, the reason I wrote the little booklet
    we were talking about before is that I
    have very little knowledge about my parents,
    about their youth, their background.
    That's one of the questions I have.
    Yeah, so that was one of the reason I sat down and wrote it
    because maybe someday a great grandchild or someone--
    Will want to know.
    --will want to know and have some idea what
    was going on in my youth.
    I think that--
    I mean, because I conduct these interviews,
    but not only because of that, I think that's so important.
    Children want to know.
    Grandchildren want to know.
    Some do.
    Some.
    Or sometimes they don't, and then later they do.
    And by the time they want to know--
    It's too late.
    Exactly.
    My case, yeah.
    Yeah, well, it's good that you--
    we were referring earlier off camera
    to a sort of biography that you wrote, an autobiography.
    So you don't-- your parents didn't tell you much about
    their own childhoods.
    No, nothing.
    Very little.
    Another reason was also I was the baby in the family.
    I have a brother and sister who were pre-World War
    I. I was after World War II.
    Or after World War I.
    After World War I, yes.
    And we were an eight-year difference.
    And when you're, let's say, 12 and he's 20, it's a big gap.
    And most my cousins were my brother's age,
    so I had a problem with that too.
    So in some ways, it's almost like being an only child.
    Yeah, I had only really one cousin my only age.
    We used to get together more frequent.
    OK, your brother and sister, what were their names?
    Excuse me.
    It's going to get warm.
    Yeah.
    All right, we broke to be able to turn off the air conditioner.
    So I was asking about your brother and your sister.
    What were their names?
    My brother was Walter, and my sister, Frida.
    And they were born before World War I.
    Yes.
    Do you remember the dates?
    Not the dates, but the years.
    No.
    OK.
    But I know it's--
    A gap.
    I would have to take out my calculator.
    I can figure it out.
    That's OK.
    You explained it in the most important way
    is that there was a real age difference, and so in some ways
    almost, not quite, a generation difference.
    Yeah, and in some cases, my brother became my father.
    He took some of the load off his mind.
    Did your brother and sister live at home
    still when you were growing up?
    Yeah.
    OK, tell me how did-- do you know how your parents met?
    No.
    OK.
    Tell me how did your father and mother support the family?
    How did they put food--
    My father had a factory, a mattress factory.
    It was not the type of mattress that you
    have in the United States.
    Excuse me.
    I'm sorry to interrupt.
    Let's cut until that noise finishes.
    We're rolling now.
    OK.
    If you need quiet, this is not really the best apartment.
    That's OK.
    We'll deal with it.
    So your father made mattresses.
    He had a mattress factory.
    But he imported some kind of material from Africa.
    It was compressed, and he would fluff it up and just stuff that.
    That was core of the mattress.
    So did it have coils like we're familiar with here?
    No.
    OK.
    It was just--
    I'm sorry.
    OK.
    Rolling now.
    OK.
    I guess I'm used to it.
    So the mattress material would come from Africa.
    Get the material, and he would--
    it compressed, and he would fluff it up and then stuff it.
    Was it a large factory?
    We had about maybe four or five employees.
    And one of the things is that we lived in a very old building.
    Everybody, all the friends said, how
    can you live in an old building like this?
    But my mother went to work.
    She does bookkeeping for my father and the office work,
    so she spent most of the time next door.
    So was the factory next door to your home?
    Next door to the factory.
    Right.
    So it was convenient.
    It was very convenient, yeah.
    We had a maid who did the cooking, the cleaning,
    the babysitting, and whatever has to be done.
    As I grew up a little older, we had--
    I got a nanna and later on a university
    student who would after school come and be partly tutor,
    partly companion, partly keep me out of trouble.
    Would you say your parents were well-to-do?
    I would say, yes.
    I mean, we went on vacations.
    Did your father have an automobile?
    He always wished he had one, but because he was more or less
    working for my father, and at that generation,
    parents still had more control than they have now
    about their children in the United States.
    And when my father said no, it was no.
    Oh, so this is your older brother, Walter, yes,
    who wanted an automobile?
    Yes.
    OK, and what about--
    Excuse me.
    OK.
    The only thing is my father finally bought
    a truck to deliver goods but not a car to drive.
    And did this truck--
    he bought it when he was still in Austria when he was still
    manufacturing the mattresses because that was going
    to be one of my questions is how did he sell them,
    and who did he sell them to?
    He sold them, let's say, department stores.
    That type of thing.
    He didn't sell directly to the public.
    He sold it to stores who would resell it.
    And did your-- your mother helped him in the business.
    Right.
    What about your older brother and sister?
    Did they help him in the business too?
    My brother, yes.
    My sister, no, she didn't.
    One of the stories about my sister
    because we have some relatives who had diabetes,
    she was always afraid of getting diabetes, but she loved to bake.
    Well, there's a problem.
    And one of the things she used to love,
    bake something new, fancy.
    I remember one especially.
    It looked like a log with flowers on it.
    She would stand next to me.
    How is it?
    Did you enjoy it?
    Was it good?
    So she would bake it, but she wouldn't
    be able-- she didn't let herself eat it.
    Right.
    Oh.
    She would watch other people enjoy it.
    That's very bittersweet.
    Yeah.
    What was her name?
    I forgot.
    Did you tell me?
    Frida.
    Frida.
    That's right.
    Frida.
    Walter and Frida.
    One thing I think that has to do with politics--
    you know, Austria was a Christian Democratic country.
    It was a democracy but leaning towards Christian religion.
    Like in the classrooms, we had a crucifix.
    I can't pronounce it now.
    A crucifix in every classroom in the corner,
    and religious training was compulsory.
    It was more like mathematics.
    One was religion.
    The Catholic went in the one room and the Jews
    in another room.
    For that class.
    For the class, yeah.
    And I have a class picture.
    Beside the teacher and the principal
    is a priest in the picture.
    Well, who came to teach the Jewish kids religion?
    Rabbi.
    A rabbi.
    Yeah.
    A rabbi.
    Were there many Jewish kids in your school?
    No, not too many.
    OK, was it predominantly then Gentile?
    Catholic.
    Catholic.
    Oh, yeah.
    I would say 90%.
    And was it a neighborhood school?
    Yeah.
    Do you still remember the name of it?
    No.
    OK, what about the name of your father's factory
    or his business?
    It was Kessler.
    Kessler Matratze?
    Yeah.
    OK.
    And there was a neighborhood boy,
    and we used to play behind those bales within army.
    It was our favorite sport.
    Yeah.
    Yeah.
    Like all kids.
    Describe for me the house that you lived in.
    Oh, you want to say something else.
    Add one more thing to it--
    OK.
    --as far as politics.
    Both the communist and the Nazi, before Hitler became
    as prominent as he later became, tried
    to take over a government by force, but both of them
    were defeated by the government.
    The government was able to control, and the Army, I guess,
    stayed with the government so--
    And this would have been around what time, in the '20s or '30s?
    In the '30s because I saw the police riding around with
    the rifles and barbed wire in some areas.
    Oh, really?
    Yeah.
    Were there parts of town, there parts
    of Vienna, that were known as being more communist leaning
    and other parts that were more fascist leaning?
    Not more fascist.
    But the communists, there was worker's housing developments.
    OK.
    And so you, as a young boy, saw some of that control.
    Yeah.
    Were your parents political in any way or your--
    No.
    --brother or sister?
    No.
    At least not officially that I know of.
    What kind of conversations did you
    have around the dinner table?
    What were the topics usually?
    Good question.
    In some ways, a crazy question, you know, because it's in 2017
    I ask it.
    What did you talk about in the 1930s?
    Newspaper articles to some degree.
    Yeah, you know, in Vienna-- have you been to Vienna?
    Well, you know, the coffee shops that have newspapers on a rack.
    Oh, Vienna's famous for that.
    People come have one cup of coffee
    and maybe sit there two hours reading the paper.
    Yeah, and also come on weekends, very often my father
    would have a card game, and my mother
    would talk with the ladies.
    And the nanna would take the children to the movie.
    That sounds nice.
    Yeah, and see a Tom Mix movie.
    What kind of movie?
    Tom Mix.
    Tom Mix.
    Oh, comics.
    No.
    No, no.
    Tom Mix.
    He was a cowboy.
    I didn't know of him.
    Before your time.
    [LAUGHS]
    Famous cowboy.
    Excuse me.
    Yeah.
    Famous cowboy.
    Tom Mix.
    Yeah.
    Really?
    Tom Mix, yeah.
    A very famous movie.
    And recently came out now that they think
    he might have been a Black man.
    I don't know about any of that going to be proved or not, but--
    Well, that sounds like a really fun way to spend the time.
    Your parents have their enjoyment,
    and you get to go to the movies.
    Right.
    OK.
    Was is far from your house, the cinema?
    No, it was within walking distance.
    OK.
    Did you did you have a radio at home?
    A radio?
    Mm-hmm.
    Yes, we started out with a crystal detector
    and the earphones, and later, we got a big radio
    with big speakers.
    And when my mother wants to listen to it,
    she called me to turn it on.
    It's like now with computers where
    the children know all about it.
    My daughter, the same.
    She has to teach me.
    Yeah.
    So describe for me a little bit of your building.
    You said it was an old building.
    Yeah.
    So describe.
    A very old building, and we had what you
    call it now railroad apartment.
    OK, describe that for me.
    What does that mean?
    Where you have to go from one room to the other, and let's
    say you couldn't go to the dining room from the hall.
    You had to go through another one.
    The only thing that was separate was the room for the maid,
    so she could get from the kitchen from the side.
    How many rooms did you have?
    How many rooms?
    OK.
    Around six rooms.
    That sounds quite substantial.
    Yeah.
    How many bedrooms would that have been?
    Three bedrooms plus the maid's room.
    And why was it considered an old building?
    Do you know about when it might have been built?
    No, just the shape of the building, and I
    guess it was not popular anymore to have this railroad flat.
    Were you on the first floor, the ground floor?
    One flight up.
    So what, in Europe, would be the first floor.
    That's all there was, yeah.
    Just the one flight up.
    Oh, it was only a two-story building, and the--
    Yeah.
    And we also had access to the attic,
    so we stored things up on top.
    Was it a stone building?
    Yeah.
    OK, and did you have electricity?
    Yes.
    Did you have a plumbing?
    We didn't have air conditioning.
    We had a single heater that was--
    not cold.
    It'll come to me what they called it.
    Coke.
    Isn't that a byproduct of coal?
    Yeah, it is.
    Coke.
    And it would last.
    One filling would last 24 hours.
    Yeah, and which didn't warm too well the last room in the thing.
    So it was for the whole house, the whole flat.
    Yeah.
    Not one in each room.
    No.
    Yeah, just one.
    And what room was it in?
    I would call a family room, the room that we spent most time.
    OK.
    Unless we had a formal dinner, we would eat dinner there.
    We would spend the afternoon there.
    Do you remember the address that you were--
    that your flat was on?
    The apartment was in [GERMAN] einundfunfzig.
    [GERMAN] einundfunfzig, so that's [GERMAN] 51.
    Yeah.
    OK.
    And 49 was my--
    the factory.
    [GERMAN] neunundvierzig.
    Yeah.
    49.
    It's right next door.
    OK.
    And what part of town?
    Did the neighborhood have a name?
    Well, it's the--
    Was there a [GERMAN] or something like that?
    You know, Vienna is divided into the [GERMAN].
    That was in the sixth.
    [GERMAN] bezirk.
    Sixth.
    It was called Mariahilf.
    Mariahilf.
    Yeah.
    That's a good Jewish name.
    [LAUGHS]
    Was it a mixed neighborhood?
    Yeah.
    OK, was there also a Jewish neighborhood
    in Vienna, a predominantly one?
    I think was in zweiter bezirk.
    The second district, yeah.
    OK.
    That's all I can think of.
    Were your parents very religious?
    My mother said that before World War I, she had a kosher home,
    and because it was so difficult to be
    kosher by the end of the war, she dropped being kosher.
    She drew her limit.
    She wouldn't bake any ham or any of those things.
    You could eat it if you bring in a slice,
    but she wouldn't put it on the stove.
    That was her compromise.
    Her limit, yeah.
    Did they attend religious services?
    Yes, on holidays.
    OK.
    Yeah, not Friday or Saturday.
    We didn't.
    But in the holiday, we spent the whole--
    they spent the whole day in the--
    most of the day's service in the temple.
    And it was the type that had a balcony for the woman,
    and the men where in the lower.
    And I mean, even the religious service,
    half the time the men would talk--
    Throughout it.
    --instead of paying attention to the rabbi.
    But then we had some religious people
    who spend the whole day or even the whole night
    there but not many.
    And were you sent--
    And usually, the parents gave the maid
    a few shilling, like dollars, so we went and bought
    some flowers where she, the maid,
    paid for it because we didn't have no money on that day.
    So she bought the flowers, and we brought it to my mother
    in the balcony.
    Oh.
    Yeah.
    So was that a common tradition?
    Yeah.
    It's a very nice one.
    And was the synagogue, the temple, close to you?
    Well--
    Walking distance?
    Maybe two city blocks, long city blocks, yeah.
    And do you remember its name?
    No.
    OK.
    Is it supposed to have a name?
    [LAUGHS] Usually, they do.
    Usually.
    Preparing for this, I looked and I can't find any--
    I know I have the tallis from my bar mitzvah,
    but I can't find any other paper.
    I know.
    Never got them.
    Got lost.
    I don't know what happened.
    You know, if they're not lost, then you'll
    find them at some point when it's not as relevant,
    you know, but they will show up.
    Papers have a way of doing that, but oftentimes documents
    are lost.
    Do you still have a passport from Austria?
    Yeah.
    OK.
    I have a passport.
    Another thing I found we were part in--
    from 15, 16 years because I left when I was 18 so
    a year or two before that.
    We joined air raid warden.
    We became air raid warden.
    And the big thing we did, which when
    you think of all the bombing during the war,
    have a bucket of sand in the attic and a shovel.
    When an incendiary bomb comes through the roof,
    we were supposed to shovel it in the sand.
    And when you're thinking about the mass bombing and everything
    through the war, that wouldn't have helped very much.
    Well, there wouldn't have been enough sand.
    In the late '30s, anti-Semitic became more obvious.
    We'll get to that.
    We'll get to that.
    At this point, I want to still get
    a picture in my mind of what your early life was
    like, what your relationships were like to your family.
    You said that your older brother kind of
    acted as a second father.
    Yeah.
    What were his duties in regards to you?
    What would he do?
    Yell at me.
    [LAUGHS]
    That's no fun.
    No.
    Did he have to take care--
    He even went to--
    I remember once or twice he went to school
    because I didn't do too well.
    Were you generally a good student or not so much?
    No.
    Yeah, because I got better when I switched,
    when I got to a technical school.
    For a while, I was in called academic.
    We had Latin and not much, but a little Greek.
    All the old languages.
    Yeah, that was not my thing.
    Then I switched to a technical school
    where we drew plans and things like that.
    I did much better, and I enjoyed it more.
    I was not good at languages.
    So was this already in high school?
    Would've this been gymnasium or something?
    Yeah.
    OK.
    All right.
    Tell me a little bit about your parents' personalities.
    You know, your father, your mother, your older siblings,
    kind of paint a picture to me of what kind of people they were.
    Difficult. Difficult. That's a difficult question.
    I know they were very kind.
    We had everything that we needed.
    There was never any question of he
    can't except for the call from my brother.
    Most of the things we did get.
    And my sister, my brother, we used to go skiing in the winter.
    Usually, we had snow enough that you
    could take the trolley car just for the day to go there skiing.
    And I know my sister used to--
    when I was very young, my sister used to carry my skis.
    My parents-- I was brought up by strangers, really,
    between the maid taking care of me, and the nanny,
    and the student at--
    university student.
    So how would you then describe your family life?
    Was it a close family, or was it more distant people
    between each other?
    I would say we were more distant.
    We were one of the--
    it get me here too.
    I always said we not a kissing family or touching cheeks.
    My brother and sister were the same age practically,
    so my sister's girlfriends would chase after my brother
    to give him a kiss because he was not--
    like I said, we were not a kissing family.
    Family.
    [LAUGHS] So that was a way of teasing him, huh?
    Yeah.
    You wanted to talk about how life started to change
    in the late 1930s, the second half of the 1930s.
    Before then, did you ever have the feeling
    that you're different from the rest?
    No.
    OK, would you say you were integrated-- as a family,
    you were integrated into Austria?
    Yeah.
    Well, I mean, we were just--
    they still had horses and things like that,
    but politically we were all [INAUDIBLE].
    Yeah.
    So what started to change?
    I'm sorry.
    Go ahead.
    Within that one.
    I have a thought. because in the late
    '30s, in '35 or '36, the anti-Semitism started to grow,
    and they had some vandalism in synagogue.
    So the men in their 20s and so, including my brother,
    they joined a organization to be--
    they had some kind of uniform and be near synagogues
    and try to protect the area from vandalism.
    So that's when they started to come more obvious,
    the anti-Semitism.
    So this is well before the Anschluss,
    well before Hitler marching in, two or three years before.
    No.
    No.
    No, that was in '30--
    let's see.
    The Anschluss was in '38.
    It was maybe '36.
    OK, something like that.
    So that would have been local agitators, local Nazi agitators.
    Yeah, and when they were outlawed,
    they started having white socks, and instead
    of the formal uniform, there wore some identifying outfit.
    Did your father's business suffer?
    No.
    No.
    No, because it was pretty limited.
    We had no problem in school, so the only thing
    was some vandalism on--
    which you have now in the United States.
    It's similar.
    As a matter of fact, after Hitler marched in, I went--
    I wanted to finish school.
    I had three months left to finish.
    I figured I'd try.
    And I went back to school and the Nazi in charge--
    all he said, you know, things have changed.
    Nazis have taken over.
    Why don't the Jews sit in the last row?
    And that's the extent of my problem in school.
    How did you look at that at the time when you heard that?
    Glad that I'm not affected by it because you hear stories
    about other students in other schools
    that were either beaten or refused entrance.
    And when I walked down the street
    and I would see a group of men on the next block,
    I would turn around and find a different way
    because I wouldn't take a chance who
    and why is there a group of people congregating.
    You know, one reason why I ask you
    because I had two interpretations in my mind.
    And one of them is, OK, so life changes,
    and there is a Nazi appointed as an official,
    and discrimination policies are instituted.
    On the other, the fact that he says
    sit in the last row in that time might
    be that he is giving his due to his higher-ups
    and trying to protect his students so that they at least
    don't experience the worst.
    Right.
    And you think it was more that?
    Sure.
    Yeah.
    OK.
    That's all it was.
    OK.
    And supposedly Hitler was, at one time,
    complaining that too many Nazis have what they call a Hausjuden,
    a Jew that they are protecting.
    He says if everybody protects one Jew,
    we have nobody to persecute.
    It was a problem, isn't it?
    It was.
    So I take it then that you would have finished
    gymnasium in June 1938.
    The Anschluss--
    It was in '38, in the fall of '38.
    In the fall of '38.
    When did the Anschluss happened?
    Happened in the--
    I would have to look it up in my notebook,
    but it was in the beginning of '38.
    I don't know specifically.
    I don't remember, but I had a thought maybe
    it's March, or April, or something around then.
    Yeah.
    But that's why I asked.
    I can look it up when be break.
    OK.
    Did you remember-- I mean, did you
    see much of what was going on in the streets
    right before and right after the Anschluss?
    No, I just heard stories.
    I was lucky.
    I was not directly involved in it,
    except I guess I wouldn't go wherever I saw [INAUDIBLE].
    Did your parents stopped going out to cafes or not?
    Well, limited.
    They limited going out, and my father sold his business
    to somebody under pressure.
    This is after the Anschluss or before?
    Yeah, after.
    After.
    Yeah.
    That was common.
    Same thing.
    We own the house, apartment building.
    The one you lived in or another one?
    No, that was too shabby to own.
    [LAUGHS]
    We owned another, and he sold it under pressure.
    Do you know the address of the one that your father owned?
    No.
    No.
    And after the war, through reparations and paper,
    he got the house back.
    And then he sold it again very quickly because find out it
    was costing more to run it long distance.
    Than to sell it.
    Yeah.
    Hopefully, he got a much better price for it.
    He didn't.
    Didn't make money.
    Yeah.
    Did you have more aunts and uncles in Vienna,
    or were you pretty nuclear family?
    While I lived in Vienna, we had a lot of--
    yeah--
    Relatives.
    --because one family, they had, I think, about five children,
    all much older than I was.
    And the one that I remember talking about,
    they had a coffee shop that didn't do well,
    so my father used to help out the big family.
    Yeah, and my mother had a sister and a brother.
    Her sister had a daughter that was my age,
    but her brother was no good.
    A no good Nick.
    No good Nick.
    Yeah, so they get into trouble.
    Yeah.
    Well to me, it sounds like a very dramatic shift when--
    after the Anschluss for your family.
    Your father is forced to sell his assets.
    First, his means of making a living, and then some property.
    Was that something that changed the dynamic of how you
    looked at your future at home?
    Well, it so happens when Hitler marched in,
    I had a friend of mine in school decided that we
    were going to see the world.
    We were going to go to--
    had plans to go to Australia.
    Wow.
    So that was our big plan.
    And my parents got along to the extent
    that I had actually an Austrian passport.
    [INAUDIBLE] I was little.
    Even though it was so shortly after Hitler marched in,
    they still was furnishing Austrian passports.
    And I had the feeling when it was
    come to the actual immigration-- emigration,
    parents probably would never let me go.
    But they amused me, and I had--
    At least the passport.
    --at least the passport, which was helpful
    when things got worse shortly.
    I got my second cousin send an affidavit,
    and I was one of the early ones to get out
    because I didn't have to go through the German passport
    problem.
    Now in the Austrian passport, was your--
    was the fact that you were Jewish,
    was that noted on that passport?
    No.
    That was done later in German passports.
    They had a J stamped in the book, big one.
    But you didn't have that.
    No.
    Did your parents have passports prior to the Anschluss as well?
    No.
    So they had to get--
    Get German passports, yeah.
    I see.
    So this second cousin, where did this second cousin live?
    New York.
    So you had some family in the United States.
    Right.
    Mother's or father's side?
    Either one.
    [LAUGHS] OK.
    I took-- I wasn't fussy.
    [LAUGHS]
    I took whoever--
    Whoever was there.
    --was willing to take me.
    So they had-- in other words, both sides of your family
    had relatives in the US.
    Yeah.
    OK, and this particular cousin, what was their name?
    OK, sorry.
    Sorry.
    I'm bad at the names and dates.
    It's OK.
    I'll tell you, it's the hardest thing to remember, so forgive me
    that I keep asking.
    No, there's no problem asking.
    The problem is answering.
    [LAUGHS] The reason why I ask is usually just
    to anchor the chronology so that when
    we're talking about a specific incident,
    we can provide context.
    But sometimes, you can do it in other ways too.
    Yeah.
    So you get-- when did your parents decide
    that it's time to go basically.
    What happened to make them decide that?
    I would have to--
    a year later.
    I would have to look it up too, but it was--
    in the meantime, the war with Japan started.
    In other words, Hitler, he was [INAUDIBLE]
    but just to give you an idea, Hitler had marched into France.
    So you were still in Europe when the war started.
    No.
    No, I came in '38.
    So you left first.
    I was first.
    I was the only one of the family.
    OK, let's talk about those circumstances then.
    I left in--
    Hang on a minute.
    A couple of questions--
    you do finish your gymnasium in the fall of 1938.
    Right.
    OK, and then--
    I think it was August.
    It was August that you finished.
    OK, and then how long before you actually left?
    How many weeks or months?
    Weeks.
    Weeks.
    Yeah.
    So you were ready to go.
    You were in your mind, and you were sitting on packed bags.
    Yeah.
    OK, and was the--
    [?
    I was in DDR.
    ?] I just needed that final push to get the visa,
    and as soon as I had it, I was the first one of my family
    to get out.
    Now at that point, did your parents
    think it's more like your youth trip
    to New York rather than Australia,
    or did they see this as, OK, this is
    a good thing that he's leaving?
    Yeah.
    The second?
    Yeah.
    OK.
    And I never thought about it until at least not too long ago.
    The strange part is my sister took me to the train.
    I have a feeling that I wasn't coming back.
    Can we cut for a little bit?
    Yeah.
    It's sort of what you are saying is
    that it occurred to you not so long ago that your sister came
    to see you off because it would have
    been too hard for your mother and your father.
    You know, as children, we don't imagine
    how hard it must be because the drama of the moment
    is what takes over the trip itself.
    Being that I was always the--
    they still considered me the baby,
    and I said that I was the first one of the family.
    My sister went to England for a little by [INAUDIBLE] domestic.
    After you left.
    After I left, yeah.
    And then my brother got somehow through Italy.
    My parents thought they can stay like a lot of older
    people, my wife's parents too.
    The [INAUDIBLE] were the ones.
    So there were soldiers, and all them thought, ah,
    things won't get that bad.
    Yeah.
    They all hoped that things will level off.
    Got a little bad, but then won't be that bad.
    And so your parents stayed until--
    The war.
    Hitler had marched into France.
    So after he had been in Poland, he then marched into France.
    There was a short time when Hitler and Russia
    were on a friendly basis shall we say.
    Yeah, they were on the same side.
    They were allies.
    Right.
    They were allies with we should say,
    but Hitler was using all his forces
    on the west front occupying Holland, and [INAUDIBLE],
    and France.
    So by that time, my parents decided that they want to leave,
    that things are going to get worse.
    They probably bought a visa to one of the islands.
    You mean the Channel Islands?
    Yeah.
    The British ones.
    No.
    No, Central America.
    Ah.
    One of the islands.
    And [INAUDIBLE] yeah, but they couldn't get out
    through the west anymore because the war was there,
    so they had to go east.
    So they took the Russian railroad,
    and they ended up in Japan in Shanghai.
    Oh my goodness.
    By then, the war with the United States
    broke, so they got stuck in Shanghai for the duration.
    So they spent the whole war, World War--
    In Shanghai.
    --in Japan.
    Yeah.
    They had enough time to pick a bride for me.
    [LAUGHS]
    Didn't know that in the meantime I got married.
    You had found-- yeah.
    Did you have any ability-- did you
    know what was happening with them at the time,
    or was there any correspondence or anything?
    Very, very little.
    We just heard that they going there,
    but then once the war broke out, all communication was finished.
    OK, you mean the Pacific War.
    Yeah.
    OK, so you knew that they had reached Shanghai.
    Yeah.
    OK.
    Then it stopped until after the war was over.
    So four or five years.
    Yeah.
    That's huge.
    That's a huge amount of time.
    The interesting part is we understand
    that the story is that Hitler asked Japan to return all
    the Jewish immigrants to Germany for extermination,
    and the Japanese refused.
    I guess it was the Japanese saying
    that it's not my business.
    That's your business, and if they're here,
    they are here and will stay.
    Well, a number of people went that route,
    but it's a huge route.
    It's through--
    It's fairly large, yeah.
    But again, I have no real details about it.
    Did they talk about it after the war?
    No, except they managed.
    And things were not easy, but they managed.
    And they bought a couple of gowns
    they bought to bring for the ladies [INAUDIBLE].
    A few gowns.
    Yeah.
    From Shanghai?
    Japanese.
    Whatever they call it.
    The kimonos?
    Kimonos, yes.
    They brought.
    So the way that they managed to have enough money
    and enough things to think about that they were not
    under that great of pressure as unfortunately so many others
    were.
    Yeah, when they-- we'll go back to your story,
    but I'd like to kind of finish the thread on theirs.
    You say that you first had contact with them again
    after the war finished.
    Yeah.
    Yes, when did they arrive in the United States?
    Can I interrupt for one second?
    Sure.
    I'm sorry.
    It's rolling.
    Give me a second here.
    Sure.
    OK.
    I'll sit up.
    OK.
    There we are.
    Should sit up.
    We're good.
    Yeah, I just readjusted.
    We're good to go.
    Everything is rolling.
    OK.
    Do you want to shut the fan off?
    Yes, I do.
    Yeah, thank you.
    So we were talking, I think, about your parents--
    Yeah.
    --in Shanghai, and I was, I think, asking,
    when did they finally come to the United States?
    I would say the war ended in '45.
    Around '47.
    About two years after.
    So the truth is you didn't see your parents
    for almost 10 years--
    Yeah.
    --when you left in 1938.
    All right, let's talk about your journey.
    After your sister brings you to the train station
    and she sees you off, how did--
    you know, by transport, how did you reach
    the places you needed to go to?
    You took a train from where to where?
    I had an uneventful rail ride to Amsterdam.
    I had no problem at the border or anything.
    The ship was a new ship.
    It was the second trip.
    It was very nice.
    Was it a passenger ship like a cruise ship or something?
    No, it was-- yeah, passenger ship.
    And I have the picture in the ballroom where we--
    so obviously we're at a party.
    We have party hats on, and they had games and movies.
    It was not first class, but it was not--
    I don't know-- tourists.
    Not the lowest.
    It was somewhere in between.
    And I don't remember much about it
    except that I have the picture, for instance, having
    dinner with four ladies.
    You know, people describe to me sometimes their journey
    across the ocean but later than yours,
    and the atmosphere is much different.
    If they tried to get out later, it
    was much more tension, much more nerves.
    No, this was very pleasant trip, both to the railroad
    and then on the ship.
    What was the ship's name?
    New Amsterdam.
    The New Amsterdam.
    Was it a Dutch ship?
    Yeah.
    OK.
    And it was brand new.
    That was the second trip we were on,
    and they had all the facilities, and sports, and things
    like this on it, games.
    And when you left-- clarify for me this--
    was it more because you were young and wanted to travel,
    or was it because you wanted to get out
    of Austria because of the menace that was approaching
    and that was already there in many ways?
    No, the first part.
    You were young.
    You wanted to travel.
    Yeah.
    OK.
    Yeah, it was not political.
    Well, when [INAUDIBLE] finally started getting--
    after Hitler marched in, then it turned into necessity
    rather than the [INAUDIBLE].
    Yeah, so do you remember arriving in--
    Well, that was one of the big disappointments arriving
    in the United States.
    Where was the Statue of Liberty?
    Where was she?
    I don't know.
    Hidden.
    After Brooklyn, then Staten Island.
    You couldn't see it?
    I always envisioned that the very first thing
    when you come to the United States is the Statue of Liberty.
    And so for many people it is.
    Yeah.
    So where was she when you arrived?
    After you go through Staten Island, and Brooklyn, and Long
    Island, I finally get--
    you get to see it.
    OK, so in other words, she wasn't hidden
    by fog or something like that.
    No, but you had to wait a while.
    Yeah.
    OK.
    No, it's [INAUDIBLE] the statue [INAUDIBLE] is on that island
    in the middle of--
    Ellis Island, yeah.
    Yeah.
    Where did you disembark?
    In Brooklyn.
    Not Brooklyn.
    I'm sorry.
    Bokan.
    Bohok.
    Hoboken.
    Hoboken.
    Hoboken, New Jersey.
    In New Jersey, right.
    OK.
    And one of the relatives that send the affidavit,
    he had a car.
    He picked me up, and then I saw Manhattan
    with all the fire escapes.
    I thought that was so ugly to see
    these things on every building.
    I was very disappointed, but the more modern cars too.
    We had more modern looking cars, streamlined cars,
    already in Austria than in the United States.
    They were all the boxy cars with the running boards.
    Yeah.
    Those were your first impressions.
    Yeah, first impression was not what you'd expect of Manhattan.
    From when he had the car, where did he take you?
    Where did he live or--
    Oh, he lived in the Bronx.
    So is that where you went?
    Yeah, I stayed with them for a little while, a short time
    until I got a job and then had a little money.
    A refugee rented a seven-room apartment.
    By yourself?
    No.
    No.
    A distant friend--
    OK.
    --rented a seven-room apartment.
    Then he rented a couple.
    They rented each room to one or two people.
    And you got a room there.
    So I got a room there.
    Was that also in the Bronx?
    Yeah.
    OK, what kind of jobs were the first ones that you got?
    Well, the very first job I helped an electrician,
    which was nice.
    Unfortunately, his cousin came, and that put me out of a job.
    Then I got a job in the garment industry.
    Down in Manhattan?
    Yeah.
    Wow.
    Now did you need to speak English for those jobs?
    No.
    How much English did you know at that point?
    Very little.
    Very, very little.
    And I tried to verify when some of my young co-worker's gave me
    new phrases.
    [INAUDIBLE] Given the wrong things to say.
    So in other words, that no one's playing a joke on you.
    Right.
    OK, did anybody try do you think?
    No.
    The minimum wage at that time was $0.25--
    An hour.
    --an hour.
    But a relationship, you could get a Chinese dinner
    for $0.35 full course.
    So the $0.25 lasted you awhile.
    Also a relative once, a big treat,
    give me $0.50 to go to the Roxy.
    To go to the Roxy.
    Yeah, that's like the Radio City Music Hall, the movie.
    How cool.
    And I didn't want to take.
    I thought $0.50 was too extravagant to spend on a movie.
    Oh, so what did you do?
    You didn't go.
    They finally convinced me I should go.
    Now that $0.50, the movie was, I think, $0.25.
    The round trip on the subway was $0.10.
    $0.35.
    Still let me $0.15 for lunch, a hamburger, or Frankfurter,
    or something.
    So it went.
    Did it make an impression?
    Certainly.
    Well, to see the building itself is impressive,
    and the big stage shows besides the movie, yeah.
    Were you hearing things about what was going on in Europe?
    Not to the full extent.
    Do you remember getting letters from your family
    while you were in the Bronx there?
    Well, it was only a relative.
    Yes, I did, but they didn't mention anything
    of the [? worst ?] thing.
    I mean, there was little things like,
    for instance, that neighbors would leave food packages
    on a park bench for them.
    Oh, dear.
    So that's-- yeah, as it was, not too much.
    You know, I was still a kid, even though 18 is--
    you should be more adult. It's still not--
    how should I say--
    political [INAUDIBLE].
    Well, you know, on the other hand,
    you were the baby of the family, and this was your first time
    out from under the wings of the family.
    And it's not to be expected-- or it is to be expected that it
    takes a while to adjust to that, you know, and--
    To be on my own.
    Yeah, did you get letters from your sister?
    Was she, by now, in England?
    Yes.
    OK, and what happened with your brother?
    Now you said you went through Italy.
    Is that it?
    Yeah, I don't know either.
    But somehow he got crossed the border,
    and eventually they all came to United States, my whole family.
    Well, what about-- let's talk about your sister
    and your brother.
    When did your sister arrive in the United States?
    You got me.
    During the war?
    No, before the war.
    Oh, so she got there fairly early.
    She got before the war because both her husband,
    my brother were all in uniform eventually.
    OK, when we talk about before the war,
    we're talking before the United States entered the War so
    before '41.
    Yeah.
    OK, so she arrived.
    Was she already married when she came?
    Yeah.
    No.
    No.
    No.
    Wrong.
    She met her-- she knew her future husband,
    but they were married in the United States.
    And also I think she would have preferred someone else,
    but at the time, my father--
    at that time, still you needed permission, you know?
    And he didn't say yes for someone else.
    Right.
    So she took second choice.
    It was not the best.
    But [INAUDIBLE] you mentioned about the jobs.
    My second job was in the garment industry,
    and one thing I was very proud of, they would make things,
    let's say, for Sears Roebuck for 100 stores.
    And they give you enough material, enough dresses,
    let's say, that every store would
    get three green, two blue, and one red
    and size six, eight, and 10.
    In all of those colors.
    And you couldn't end up with all size 10 blue,
    so you had to be able to figure out how much to put in each box.
    So that was your job?
    That was my job, and I was proud of doing it,
    that I could handle it, you know?
    You know, you were new in the United States.
    It was-- you know, who wouldn't be coming straight from Vienna?
    Another example of my father, he heard that in the United States
    men wear leather jackets, so he says, I'll get--
    I'll have a leather jacket made for you because they
    didn't do it in Europe.
    He says, but why a jacket?
    Might as well get--
    A coat.
    --make you a coat.
    So I got a beautiful leather coat,
    except nobody in the United States wore a leather coat.
    And I was embarrassed to walk in my leather coat
    because it was pointed out you're not belong here.
    It makes you stand out, yeah.
    Yeah, so I wore it at work until it wore out.
    But still, you obeyed.
    You obeyed.
    What I was used to is short under the pants.
    We call lederhosen.
    Lederhosen, yeah.
    Yeah.
    So did you-- when your sister came over, did you meet her?
    Yeah.
    OK.
    And did she then live with you, or how did that work?
    She managed to get--
    well, he was-- in Europe, he was a dentist.
    In the United States, he didn't have enough formal training,
    so he opened a dental lab.
    So he worked for dentists, and that apparently
    paid well enough that they managed very quickly
    to establish.
    But you then lived separately.
    Yeah, most of the time.
    I lived for a while with my brother too, and--
    When did he come over?
    Before the war?
    After me.
    [LAUGHS] That's accurate.
    That's very accurate.
    Also before the war, and then he was drafted.
    We were all three in uniform eventually,
    only I had a little side trip to Minnesota.
    And that was why?
    The HIAS, which is a Jewish organization,
    decided that there are too many Jewish refugees collecting
    in New York City and that they would
    like to spread them out a little bit across the country.
    And at first, my brother was against it.
    He wanted me to stay in New York,
    but then he accepted my decision.
    So you decided to go?
    Yeah.
    Because one of my questions would be
    could HIAS compel you to go?
    No.
    No, I was volunteering.
    It was an extension of my--
    being on my own and see what happens.
    So it was National Youth Administration and Roosevelt
    Make Work Program.
    And HIAS arranged for me to join the program,
    and I understand that HIAS paid for the cost involved.
    So I went there.
    And I took auto mechanic, but that was too dirty.
    So I went into electronics because I
    had some knowledge of electrical work, and I preferred that.
    So there were some courses involved with this.
    Yes, it was a training--
    a live-in training program.
    OK.
    But we live in barracks.
    In Minnesota?
    In Minnesota.
    I even remember the town.
    Minne-- no.
    I was going to say Minneapolis, Minnesota,
    but that's a big city, Minneapolis.
    Ah, anyway, I visited.
    I was invited by a Jewish family for dinner once or twice.
    Did you see much of Minnesota outside of the family
    in the barracks?
    No, they had a lake and a rowboat.
    I would go pulling the rowboat, go swimming pulling the rowboat
    with my emergency [INAUDIBLE] in case I need to--
    yeah.
    And I was the only Jew in that group.
    They were mostly local people, people live in are my own age.
    And what was the idea after you finish the course?
    Do you stay in Minnesota?
    Was that the thought?
    Yeah, going to stay there, yeah.
    But what I was saying, there were the other fellows
    in the program, when they found out that I'm Jewish,
    they were shocked.
    When I called, told them that I used a push
    cart in New York delivering cloth,
    we couldn't believe it because the only Jew they know
    is doctors and businessman.
    They didn't know that Jews in some areas do manual labor,
    and I think that's part of the--
    causes anti-Semitism.
    Is not having knowledge.
    Is that what you mean?
    Yeah.
    Yeah.
    Did you feel anti-Semitism from them--
    No.
    --or just most wonder?
    No.
    They accepted me.
    Just trying to convince them.
    You know, there's a joke that a mother
    doesn't think her son is grown until he got a doctorate.
    [LAUGHS] So what they had in mind were stereotypes.
    Yeah.
    How long did it take you to learn English?
    Well, it's so gradual.
    There's no real--
    Did you go to courses at all?
    I had very little.
    Mostly, I learn from my co-workers.
    But then the war broke out.
    Were you in Minnesota when the war broke out?
    Yeah.
    And I registered in the draft board, and I took a bus
    and went back to New York.
    And why did you decide to do that?
    Right away.
    And why?
    Why?
    Was Minnesota just not for you?
    No, the war broke out.
    I wanted to be in it.
    And then instead of waiting for the things
    to get done in Minnesota, I went back to New York.
    So you figured it would be quicker in New York?
    Yeah.
    And say goodbye to everybody and see where things are.
    Yeah.
    Who did you live with when you got to New York?
    My brother.
    Was he also living in that same kind of place of renting a room,
    or did he have his own apartment?
    No, he had his own apartment.
    But he had a one-bedroom apartment, and it kept changing.
    But while I was there one time, he
    had two, four, five, at least five people
    sleeping in a one-room apartment and one bathroom.
    Was he taking people in?
    No.
    No, they were all family.
    My cousin had come in the meantime,
    and his wife's sister came.
    And I came.
    OK, was your brother married?
    Yeah, he was married.
    Was he married still in Australia?
    But he had no--
    yeah, he got married after Hitler.
    In other words, he and his future bride
    were, I think, pushing already but didn't get the formal OK.
    But once Hitler came, I guess my father decided
    might as well get married.
    But one thing I remember for that wedding,
    we didn't go all together, all of us at the same time
    because after Hitler, we each walked individually
    to meet at the temple because we wouldn't
    want to make something obvious that there's something going on.
    Then as soon as I came to New York, I went to the draft board
    to volunteer, and the Sergeant said, you can't volunteer.
    You're not a citizen.
    He said, but you call your draft board,
    and you say you'd like to be drafted immediately.
    They should put you head of the list, and that's what I did.
    Oh my.
    Called the draft board, and instead
    of waiting for your number to be called up,
    they put my number ahead and drafted me immediately.
    And this is what you wanted.
    Yeah.
    So you couldn't join the Army as a volunteer, the regular Army.
    Interesting.
    I didn't know that.
    I didn't know that.
    But you could volunteer for the draft,
    and that'll take you to the Army.
    [LAUGHS] The rules and regulations, you know,
    they're kind of funny.
    Well, one was the regular Army, and the other one
    was the draftee Army that was, like,
    sort of two separate sections.
    So what happened then?
    So you were drafted in--
    when?
    1941?
    '42?
    '41.
    No.
    Pearl Harbor was '41.
    '42 and '43, '45.
    '42, I was drafted.
    OK, tell me about that experience.
    Where did you first go?
    When you were drafted, what was the first step?
    They put me into the Medical Corps, and I could tell you.
    I can't look at blood.
    The first time I see a wound, I'm
    going to lie down next to them.
    He says, well, don't worry.
    The first time, it might happen.
    We'll pick you up.
    The next time, you'll be OK.
    So I had--
    Was this day after basic training?
    --some basic training, marching up and down.
    Where?
    No idea.
    OK.
    And, yeah, they had these things which is important--
    uniform of the day, which means the post at every morning, what
    everybody should wear so that the whole barracks stand
    with the same outfit because you have the brown outfit when warm
    and when not so warm.
    So we were issued several groups of uniforms.
    So you didn't just get one.
    You got several types of uniforms.
    Yes, and they posted which one to wear everyday.
    And we had a little bit of what they call close order drill
    marching up and down, and then going right,
    left, but no guns or nothing.
    And one thing I remember how to pick up somebody lying there.
    You put your feet against his feet feet,
    and you pull it up, and throw over the shoulder.
    That's how you do it?
    Yeah, to carry somebody if you don't have a [INAUDIBLE].
    Did you have to practice on other people to do it?
    Yeah, sure.
    Were you able to pick them up easily?
    Yeah.
    The only problem, some of the, let's say,
    heavier width men had a problem because everybody would
    pass by when we'd pickup one--
    The skinny guys.
    [LAUGHS]
    --one that's not so heavy.
    Then they had to get the sergeant
    next to them and the next man to [INAUDIBLE] you pick him up now.
    [LAUGHS] Because you get heavy guys being wounded as well.
    I didn't know how it is in the field when the actual--
    I think they are--
    but by the time you go in the field,
    you're already better trained.
    Yeah, and you're also not skinny anymore by that time.
    I mean, you're not heavy anymore.
    Fortunately, I was only a few weeks in training,
    and then a Lieutenant came.
    And he assembled all the foreign speaking people
    and said who, wants to volunteer?
    For what?
    Did they explain to you?
    Military intelligence outfit.
    That sounds interesting.
    So everybody raised their hand, and that outfit
    was Camp Ritchie, that camp.
    See, that name I remember.
    Yeah, and so that was--
    were there people who spoke many different languages,
    or was it mostly German?
    Mostly German.
    OK.
    And a lot of refugees like me, but we had all languages--
    Italian, French, Polish, Russian, all kinds of--
    yeah.
    We got there with a bus.
    Oh, before I must [? say-- ?] no.
    No.
    Back.
    Camp Ritchie, right.
    We got to Camp Ritchie.
    The first thing they said, there's
    no uniform of the day at Camp Ritchie.
    You wear what you're comfortable with.
    That doesn't sound like the Army.
    And no saluting of officers.
    No saluting of officers?
    No.
    There were too many there because it was a mix.
    We went to class and lectures with officers on the same level.
    There was no distinction.
    So what kind of training did you get there?
    Well, one of the things I remember,
    which was very unusual, they had maps of the local aerial
    with German names on it.
    And it was all the American street names and routes
    all were changed to German names.
    So like Maryland, a map of Maryland with German names?
    Right.
    And then they took us and dropped us
    off every two, three miles.
    Every two-man team, they gave us one of these maps
    and said that we'll meet you at midnight at this coordinates
    and at this point.
    Find your way, so the idea was that you had to rely on a map
    to find your way.
    You couldn't read the road signs because they were not
    in English on the map.
    No, they're in German.
    But are they the translation of the names from English?
    There's no translation.
    They just picked out names.
    So if you're on a street that's called Main Street in English,
    they may call it [GERMAN].
    Yeah.
    That's right.
    What you have to go by--
    let's say the compass says north is over there,
    and you find a street and a wider
    street that's going in that direction, that's probably it.
    And if you come to a crossroad, if the crossroads is similar,
    then you know you're in another area.
    Did you get lost?
    No.
    So the maps worked.
    The maps worked, yeah.
    Just that the names were not right.
    And then they gave us a map.
    I don't if you are familiar with contour lines.
    No?
    No.
    On a map, when there is a hill, a steep hill,
    the lines are close together because the line is, let's say,
    at 90 feet, 100 feet, 1,000 feet.
    When it's flat, those lines are further apart.
    So you can tell on a map whether this
    should be a flat area, or a steep area,
    or whether there is a gully, the line goes--
    because a river is there.
    So they gave us a map and took out a section of the map,
    cut it out, and said, you go and fill it in.
    So we had to go out and look.
    You know, there's a hill over there and a stream going there.
    One thing they dropped, they told us
    they used to have pigeon flying, carrier pigeon.
    But too many pigeons got hurt, so they dropped that.
    But we did have--
    and that was where they crowded around me because I
    was the most experienced--
    Morse code.
    That is the dots and dashes.
    Yeah.
    Yeah, and when I had the electrical classes in Minnesota,
    we had some training, so I had some experience with Morse code.
    So I was the only one who know.
    Who knew about it already.
    One thing we didn't have--
    very little of the Corps, close order drill.
    Didn't have a firing range, you know,
    to practice shooting the gun.
    Did you have that in basic training?
    That was my basic training.
    No, I thought in Camp Ritchie you didn't have this,
    but in basic training were you shooting guns?
    Camp Ritchie was my basic training.
    I didn't have a basic training--
    Elsewhere.
    --at all.
    OK.
    Like the marching and things like
    this, very, very, very little.
    And in that movie, they mention that this
    is the movie with the most unlikely soldiers in the US
    Army.
    And what was the reasoning why you
    wouldn't get this other kind of usual training?
    Time.
    I guess they tried to get us as quick as possible to Europe.
    And sometimes even after we got to England,
    we were guarding prisoners with rifles but no ammunition.
    And I was wondering sometimes whether they
    didn't trust us as German.
    Were you alone in that kind of suspicion?
    I didn't think of it at the time.
    Now much later, I was thinking, you know, it's stupid.
    How come we were guarding prisoners with no ammunition
    because we were never in the firing range.
    That's the kind of soldier Camp Ritchie produced.
    Well, but they produced something else too.
    So those other kinds of training,
    those sorts of trainings with the maps,
    they actually sound fascinating.
    But what was their purpose supposed
    to be in reality on the ground?
    What was it supposed to train you for?
    We had found [? some stuff, ?] the list of all ranks,
    German Army ranks.
    You can recognize what kind of prisoner you have
    whether it's high ranking or low ranking.
    We also had besides German, Russian insignias,
    and we had insignias that tells you what type of outfit
    the German was with, whether it was
    a tank outfit or an infantry.
    Once we were told that they're expecting a schnell battalion.
    Schnell is fast, a fast unit.
    So we expected a motorized unit.
    That was in Germany actually in the field.
    Turns out it was a bicycle outfit.
    Yeah, but part of the training we had all the ranking insignias
    and the type of outfit their on.
    I have a book of all the tanks and guns, what
    they look like to identify.
    Now when you were being trained with maps where you can't read
    the street names, what was the purpose
    of that when you were going to be in the field?
    The purpose-- let's say we're in France
    and we don't have a Frenchman with us.
    So we can find our way, or you're a German speaking
    prisoner and you manage to escape.
    And you're an American German.
    Now you're in France.
    You can't read the street signs.
    He has to go by maps, so, yeah.
    Was there training on interrogation techniques?
    Very little.
    Very little.
    Yeah.
    OK.
    And we had nothing like you read in the paper now.
    That waterboarding and the pictures
    you see with nude prisoners and guard dogs,
    we had nothing like that.
    Nothing like that.
    The worst thing that happened to us to a prisoner,
    we had a dark room.
    We'd lock them up in a dark room, and we forgot.
    So the poor guys spent almost a day--
    In the dark room.
    --in the dark room, which is no fun.
    Was this on purpose forgetting or really forgetting?
    We forgot.
    You just forgot.
    We forgot, yeah, because one of the techniques that we developed
    in Germany, we told German prisoners--
    well, the simple was we're having
    an exchange with American prisoners with German prisoners.
    So we're looking for volunteers who
    would like to go back to Germany so we can get the American,
    or the next level, the worst level,
    we have an exchange with the Russians.
    We're going to trade prisoners with Russia,
    and we're looking for people.
    Oh, no, we did always say we--
    OK, so let's say--
    Nobody wanted to.
    Nobody volunteered for Russia.
    No, or we had another very simple thing.
    And we had a large group of prisoners,
    and one was not cooperating.
    Let them stand in front of the [? hut, ?]
    and he would see prisoners going in, going out, going in, going
    out.
    And he's standing there.
    Call him in, and they still, wait outside.
    So after a while, he got tired of standing
    outside waiting when he saw all the others coming and going
    and being [INAUDIBLE].
    So now these were not the type of prisoners
    that we are now talking about, the bomb people,
    and it's a different war now.
    And waterboarding is torture.
    It's not what you're supposed to be doing.
    Well, here's a question to you as somebody who
    was trained to be an expert.
    There are people who say that torture does not
    produce good intelligence.
    It produces questionable intelligence because it--
    people will talk just not to being tortured
    and say anything that they think you might want to hear,
    whether it's true or not.
    They will try to please you to not to be tortured.
    Doesn't necessarily mean-- unless you
    can prove that it's wrong and go back again.
    That's a very, very difficult subject.
    So let me step back a little bit.
    Was this the first time when you went to Camp Ritchie
    that you were with other young guys who were, in many ways,
    just like you?
    Yeah.
    They had come over from Germany, from Austria.
    They were refugees and so on.
    Did you guys talk with one another?
    Did you tell one another your stories, who was back
    home, who was here or not?
    No, not really.
    And I would say maybe half of us were refugees.
    They were [INAUDIBLE].
    There were Americans who were brought up
    on a different language, German or French, because they lived--
    the parents were immigrants a generation before.
    And they spoke it at home, so they spoke fluent.
    Was it usually as good as your language because you--
    Just about, yeah, because that's what they spoke at home when
    they were young.
    What about amongst the refugees?
    Were there German Gentiles?
    In other words, were some of the refugees not Jewish?
    Not that I know.
    OK.
    Yeah.
    The American German speaking people, there were many--
    Non-Jews.
    --non-Jews, yes.
    But German, I don't know.
    And what kind of news were you getting?
    Between '38 and '41, you get some kind of news
    about what's going on in Europe.
    Once you're drafted, what kind of news
    do you get about what's going on with the war?
    The wrong news.
    The what kind?
    The wrong news.
    The wrong news.
    In other words, you would hear about a town being
    attacked that we took a week ago, or we would--
    the newspaper would say we are this far, the front line,
    and we haven't been there yet because the newspaper doesn't
    want to give the enemy information.
    So all the news and--
    So the newspaper guys knew the truth, but they would not--
    They may or may not.
    The [INAUDIBLE] they furnished them
    with information which is not true.
    Correct.
    Yeah.
    OK.
    And I have a lot of picture postcards from England,
    mostly England, that I got while we were there.
    And if we were--
    if I would send a picture postcard from a town
    that I was visiting, I could send them
    the picture postcard with the name on it of the town.
    But I send them a picture postcard from the town
    that we were stationed, we had to cut out the name
    and send it without the name of the town.
    So geography was incredibly important in other words.
    Geographic information--
    Sure.
    --was-- OK.
    Let's go-- OK.
    I have a funny story, but I really hate to put it on tape.
    Well, we can cut for right now.
    That's do that.
    This has nothing to do.
    Once we-- a group of us together leave--
    You were in Europe already.
    Yeah, we were stationed near Washington
    for a while waiting to be shipped.
    OK, this is in Camp Ritchie.
    Yeah, well, it's outside of Camp Ritchie
    near where we were stationed waiting to go
    to the airport for a few weeks.
    OK, hang on just a second.
    You realize we're on tape now.
    OK, yeah.
    That's not-- it's stupid of--
    not stupid.
    Different level.
    Oh, well.
    That's-- the refugees, we decided,
    let's go to Washington to see the Washington Monument.
    But we asked directions to the Washington--
    not monument.
    What's the other one?
    Statue.
    We asked.
    We were three guys asking for the Washington Statue,
    and some people directed us.
    We end up in a little park at the little statue.
    We said, where is the thing with the thing?
    Where's that big, tall thing?
    Oh, you meant the Washington Statue.
    This is the-- or Washington Monument.
    We didn't know the difference.
    Did you eventually get to the monument?
    Somebody directed us in the right place.
    How long did your training in Camp Ritchie last?
    About how long was it?
    A few months.
    I have all of these, I can look it up after.
    I have a lot of those [INAUDIBLE] with dates with it.
    But it was not-- now it was not, like, half a year or something
    like that.
    No.
    No, a few months.
    OK, and then you were--
    and then this is still 1942.
    You're shipped out.
    Yeah, we flew to Scotland because they
    were getting the Afrika Korps that
    defeated the Germans that we defeated in Africa,
    and they were being shipped to the United States.
    So these are prisoners of war from--
    Prisoners of war, right.
    And they went through that camp in Scotland
    before being shipped.
    Do you know the name of the camp?
    Yeah.
    What was it?
    One thing, for instance, besides an interview,
    they get a shower and a change of clothes
    so that they could not smuggle anything in their clothes
    to the United States.
    So the only thing that they kept was a few pictures
    of family and a letter.
    That's all.
    Otherwise, they got a prison uniform.
    They got a shower.
    They had to take off all their clothes, take a shower,
    and then got the prison uniform so that they'll
    look completely isolated.
    Like to the opposite thing, I have
    a button, an American uniform button,
    that has a compass in it.
    You can open it up.
    There's a compass.
    Now if the German did what we did,
    wouldn't do you any good because they took all the clothing off
    and nothing went to the other side of the shower.
    Everything went out.
    So were those-- the clothes that were left--
    that they would leave--
    Garbage.
    Garbage.
    Everything was--
    Burned or thrown away.
    They threw it.
    OK, you got rid of it.
    Do you remember where in Scotland this was?
    No.
    And did you have already a job assigned to you,
    what you were going to be doing?
    Yes, after Camp Ritchie, they formed teams.
    And a team was two officers and three enlisted men.
    Three enlisted men?
    I think so.
    Five, yeah.
    Anyway, and most of--
    two officer and two of us--
    four of us spent practically the whole rest of the war together.
    Oh, really?
    The four of you.
    Yeah, when we came to England, we
    got two Jeeps and a little trailer,
    and that stayed with us because we were not
    assigned to different outfits.
    We were attached to them, so we kept our equipment
    because we were semi-independent.
    And what was your job supposed to be?
    Interrogation and interpretation.
    Sometimes we were at cemeteries.
    [DOORBELL]
    OK, let's cut.
    OK.
    Camera's rolling.
    So before the break, we were talking
    about you being with two officers and two soldiers,
    a group of you, where, from Scotland
    on till the end of the war, you were part of the same group.
    You never changed, and sometimes you'd
    get attached to different units.
    And it's at that point that we cut to have our break.
    Now during the break, you told me
    that your wife was also from Germany, was it, or Austria?
    Austria.
    Austria.
    Vienna.
    And that of her whole family, she's the only one who survived,
    and that one of her younger brothers
    was a Ritchie boy like you.
    I would like to find out.
    What was his name?
    Walter Mandelbaum.
    Walter Mandelbaum.
    Yes.
    And did you ever meet him in Camp Ritchie?
    No, he was always behind me.
    He got to Camp Ritchie after I left.
    He got to England after I left.
    OK.
    You never met.
    Never met him.
    What was his job when he was in--
    He ended up in the same tactical unit
    I was with two officers, two Jeeps, and a trailer.
    And what happened to him?
    First of all, all [? rolls ?] got notification
    that he's missing and never get any details.
    My captain knew somebody, and I was able to get the story.
    What happened was that the team was moved from one location
    to another, and the road that the captain was in charge made
    up, the men objected to it.
    Said that it's not safe and didn't like the thing.
    But he insisted of going.
    Said that a convoy went before.
    And he checked it out, and they're OK.
    So he went to the road, and, which is, again, surprising,
    they saw some potholes.
    And the captain says, let's avoid those potholes.
    They're [? land ?] mines, and there was a mine.
    Blew the Jeep, and Walter was caught under it.
    And then they said they couldn't help him
    because they got under machine gunfire,
    so the Jeep turned around and left.
    And he was left there.
    Yeah.
    Oh my.
    So we never really found out was he mortally wounded?
    Was he a prisoner?
    After the war, we got--
    she got notified that he's buried in France,
    and we arranged for a buried in the National Cemetery
    in Queens or Brooklyn.
    It's somewhere on the border there.
    Yeah.
    And so you were able to take his remains to Queens and Brooklyn
    after the war?
    After the war, we brought him to--
    yeah.
    At that time, we still lived in Long Island
    so we used to be able to take a ride to visit the grave.
    What a bitter story.
    It means then that, nevertheless,
    even though you were not having combat functions,
    you were nevertheless in danger.
    We were always possibly with mines and--
    I can't get the word out--
    artillery range.
    Yeah, we had a few close calls from that.
    So let's go back now to your story.
    From Scotland, you go to England.
    And where in England were you based?
    All over, but mostly on the south west corner.
    It's sort of sticking out, and we call it Land's End.
    Yeah, most of the time, we were in that area,
    but we moved around because we sometimes moved from a regiment
    to another regiment.
    But then we-- first, we were working with prisoners,
    then we were assigned to the 29th Division.
    It's an infantry division.
    We were with them, attached to.
    And, yeah, we did stupid things.
    Such as?
    Such as, thinking back, when you tell a story,
    it's hard to believe, but I tell you, it's a true story.
    OK.
    The division general decided they should have some more
    experience with report observation and the reporting,
    so he wanted somebody in an area.
    We called it the moors, which is completely desolated.
    In Britain.
    In England.
    In Britain because the soil is so soft,
    they can't grow anything.
    And he wanted somebody, an enemy, for his troops.
    And who better maybe than our team?
    No.
    And there we put on German uniforms
    and played the enemy for him for a couple of days.
    We set off smoke bombs, and firecrackers, and things.
    And were the troops hunting you with real ammunition?
    I don't know.
    [LAUGHS] I hope not.
    [LAUGHS]
    They were just supposed to observe and report.
    Yeah, and then I told you the soil there is very soft,
    and we got into our Jeep.
    The rear wheel dug into the soil.
    We didn't get anywhere, even though it's a four--
    drive--
    Four wheel drive.
    Yeah.
    So the only thing that he [INAUDIBLE] back and pushed
    didn't help, so finally, we were the three of us with one Jeep.
    The three of us got out.
    We were able to lift up the Jeep enough to get traction and start
    rolling, but it was in gear.
    I don't know what you know.
    Means the wheels were spinning, so we
    had to run after the moving vehicle
    to jump in, catch up with it and jump in in German uniforms--
    Oh, good god.
    --in wartime England.
    Yeah, when you think about it, there's a bit of irony in that.
    Yeah.
    How long were you based in Britain when you were there?
    How long did that take?
    A number of months?
    I don't know.
    Dates, I have to look.
    I have to go through my book and give you all the dates.
    That's OK.
    Yeah, because then we were--
    finally, we moved to an isolation camp
    prior to the Normandy Invasion.
    You were in an isolation camp.
    What's that?
    Tell me what is an isolation camp.
    The isolation camp-- well, we were not
    affected to it because we had our little trailer.
    We could put stuff in there, and--
    But who was in the isolation camp?
    Who was it for?
    Well, the infantry, for instance, what they would do
    is--
    soldiers accumulate things here and there
    that they shouldn't have.
    Let's say if you should have one pair of socks,
    eventually you end up with five for some reason.
    Well, in an isolation camp, we were watching infantry.
    They would bring out a group of infantry
    and say dump your pack that you carry.
    Well, you were told to put everything in their duffel bag,
    dump it out.
    Said now take out, let's say, one pair of socks, hold it up.
    You hold it up.
    Now put it in the bag.
    Now take one of this.
    Put it in.
    That's it.
    Right face, march.
    Everything left behind.
    All the excess stuff was left behind.
    And so that was sort of like a location, a facility,
    for that to happen.
    Also in that camp, we stopped all communication
    with the outside.
    Couldn't write letters or anything,
    and couldn't leave the camp for any reason.
    And that was in preparation.
    Was that also in the southwest of England, or was that--
    Yeah.
    OK.
    It was also.
    Before we go to going to Europe itself across,
    I want to ask a little bit about the interrogations.
    You took part and you conducted such interrogations
    of prisoners.
    Yeah.
    Do you remember the first one that you conducted?
    No.
    Do you remember any memorable ones?
    One.
    OK.
    He was the only one who admitted that he's
    a Nazi, that he believes in Hitler
    and I probably scared him a little bit because I had--
    I was already in France right after the invasion.
    I had a Thompson machine gun, and it has
    a pretty large bullets in it.
    And I said to him, well, I'm also a Jew,
    and I raised my weapon.
    So I guess I scared him.
    How did he react?
    I don't know.
    I guess he was ready to faint.
    Most of the people--
    most of the German were saying, first of all, none of them
    is a Nazi.
    They're all against Hitler, and most of them
    claimed that they didn't do much fighting.
    They said we never fight.
    They shot at the Americans.
    We surrender.
    Said who killed them?
    We didn't.
    So once, we're talking to an infantryman [INAUDIBLE],
    and we told him that.
    He said, well, it's partly true because where there
    was heavy resistance and a lot of people hurt,
    we didn't take prisoners.
    Most of the prisoners come from area
    where we had little resistance, so [INAUDIBLE].
    It gives you an idea, but then that's war.
    You can't keep shooting and then raise your hand
    and say, I surrender because they won't take a surrender.
    But most of them were routine.
    What were the questions that you would be asking?
    What were the standard questions?
    The standard-- what outfit are you in?
    What outfit is behind?
    What is the big [? group? ?] Is there an armored division nearby
    or you know about one?
    Things like that mostly.
    And were you able to get useful intelligence?
    Yes.
    OK.
    Well, now I'm telling--
    You never know [INAUDIBLE].
    The typical example is the Battle of the Bulge.
    How come that came as a surprise to everybody?
    To the Allies, yes.
    Yeah, somebody didn't do the job.
    The German were able to hide all those people in the attack
    to breakthrough.
    You would think that somebody fell down on the job.
    On the Allied side.
    Yeah.
    OK.
    Because a little more and they would have reached the channel.
    It was basically one town that was in the way.
    One major crossroad, a town that all the roads came together
    and the Americans held on to it.
    That's where the famous "Nuts!" came in.
    You heard one, no?
    No.
    No, tell me.
    A German asked the town to surrender,
    and the commanding officer sent him back, "Nuts!".
    And he was able to hold on long enough for [INAUDIBLE].
    It was a question of weather.
    When the Germans broke through, the weather was bad.
    They couldn't get any airplane support or observation,
    so they didn't know exactly what was going on.
    And then the weather cleared, and [INAUDIBLE] came and turned
    around the whole thing.
    And one of our regiments was diverted
    to the edge of the bulge because they were close enough.
    And there they-- we got orders that--
    from the Battle of the Bulge that we should not
    leave the camp without American guard as a companions or--
    Escort.
    --escort, right, because in certain case,
    some American soldier of another outfit, and he is--
    our English might shoot and they ask question--
    Ah.
    --because, at that time, what they did instead of asking
    for a password, they asked question about baseball,
    about something the American would know but a German spy who
    we speak English well but doesn't know these little--
    Detail type things.
    --details of American life.
    And neither would refugee Ritchie boys.
    Right.
    Most likely.
    We haven't had enough experience.
    But is it--
    OK.
    That company.
    Let's go back to England and the isolation camp.
    Did you take part in D-day, or did you
    come in right after D-day?
    You said you were in preparation.
    Oh, Normandy?
    Yeah.
    I landed D plus one the next morning.
    Oh my goodness.
    Yeah.
    Describe for me what you saw.
    The most interesting part is the Normandy invasion fleet.
    There were troop ship three abreast as far as you could see,
    and every ship had a barrage balloon
    to keep German from low flying planes.
    So every ship had a balloon hanging on a cable.
    And [INAUDIBLE] three troops ships, and on the outside
    were some Navy patrol boats and the different ships
    protecting the flank.
    Did you land on a beach?
    Yeah.
    Which beach?
    Omaha.
    You landed on Omaha.
    Well, actually, the landing was just like you
    see in the movie and things.
    From the troop ship, you have to climb down the cargo net
    and then jump into the assault boat.
    And then to the beach, and then dropped the front, and run out.
    And then during the assault in the first day,
    they would load up these assault crafts.
    And they would right around form, like, a circle.
    And if there are five, or six, or seven boats completed
    the circle, they would spread out into the line
    and then come in all at the same time
    as one line of assault crafts.
    When you got to Omaha Beach, I take it
    that the beach had been won.
    Yeah, it was all clear.
    It was all clear.
    Yeah, but in England, we had a little introduction to it.
    They had the dummy, the offensive,
    and they showed us how they come.
    They call it torpedo--
    Duncan.
    Anyway, it's a long pipe with an explosive.
    You pushed on the barbed wire to blow up the barbed wire
    to get a little path towards the pillbox.
    And then when you're close enough, you had flamethrower
    and you could burn out the defensive.
    Yeah, but to get to that pillbox.
    That--
    That was the thing.
    Yeah, were there--
    Well, the only thing when we landed [INAUDIBLE]
    beach, there were no more Germans
    except a couple of corpses.
    But we were walking up the beach and somebody yells gas.
    So we have to do as a good soldier.
    We have gas masks, put it on.
    One thing, the gas mask has a plug in to keep the water out,
    but it keeps out the air too.
    So we had to put the mask on and take a breath.
    There's no air, but you quickly remember to pull the plug out.
    But, yeah, we we're walking up the beach, everybody
    with their gas masks on.
    The strange part was they were working.
    People were working on the beach,
    but they didn't wear gas masks.
    So it turned out, there was no gas.
    It was just-- there's an odor between the explosive
    and the dead animal, and wounded, and all of that.
    There's an odor, which green troops--
    Don't recognize.
    --don't recognize.
    So after a while, we took the gas masks off.
    But by the time you got to the beach,
    it had been cleared of bodies and it had been cleared of--
    90%.
    99%, yeah.
    OK, because that first day was horrible.
    Yeah, we were supposed to land--
    our schedule was to land in the afternoon,
    and then they would throw the order
    and told us to spend the night on the ship.
    And [INAUDIBLE] said they need more infantry and Ritchie boy.
    So as a Ritchie boy, what was your first job
    after you landed in Normandy?
    What was the first thing you had to do?
    Well, the first couple days was just getting settled,
    finding a place to sleep, and then prisoners
    started coming in.
    The first day, we didn't have any prisoners.
    I guess they didn't take any.
    They all-- another way of saying that Germans didn't surrender.
    At that time, you had to kill them to go [? over. ?]
    Were the prisoners that eventually were taken, were they
    usually military age?
    That is were the young guys?
    Were they seasoned?
    Were they children because a lot of soldiers
    eventually when they get to Germany see really small kids?
    Oh, not an unusual thing.
    Once we ran into a group.
    It was a battalion.
    [GERMAN] Eye and stomach battalion.
    [SNEEZES] Excuse me.
    That was me sneezing.
    It was what kind of battalion?
    Eyes and stomach.
    Eyes and stomach.
    They collected a group of people who had medical problems.
    Oh, god.
    You called it the eyes and stomach.
    It was [GERMAN] battalion.
    [GERMAN] battalion.
    Yeah.
    Do you speak German?
    Uh-huh.
    Uh-huh.
    A little bit.
    [GERMAN] so that means all the invalids.
    Yeah.
    So they would try to get groups together
    with the certain problems, you know, to be useful,
    not necessarily front line.
    So they dug ditches and helped [INAUDIBLE].
    And when you say they, that is once the prisoners are captured,
    they were split into different groups
    according to certain criteria?
    You see, you're talking to an absolute newbie who knows
    nothing about what went on.
    Well, things are flexible depending on how many come in.
    So how much you spent with them depends.
    If there's one prisoner, you can spend more time
    than if you have suddenly 100 lined up.
    Of course.
    Of course.
    And did your job then change much,
    or was it almost always this interrogation?
    That's the only-- that and interpretation of letters
    and things that came from home.
    We would read to see whether there's information
    about the homefront--
    how do people feel, how the bombing was,
    so we would go to cemeteries or from prisoners
    to find out what the homefront says.
    Did you remember reading anything particularly memorable?
    No.
    It was routine.
    Some of them more interesting than others.
    Did you have an idea at this point
    that there were concentration camps, that there were
    Jews in concentration camps?
    I personally-- no.
    No.
    I was not fully aware of how bad it was.
    We knew that there was something going on,
    but I did not envision.
    And we were--
    I mean, I call it lucky.
    We didn't hit any concentration camps
    physically to see what the--
    like some units did, so I never did.
    Tell me then after Normandy after landing there,
    what was the route that you took?
    Where did you go from there?
    From where?
    From Normandy.
    To a French port of I don't know--
    Marseille I think.
    [INAUDIBLE] German had taken over,
    but originally, it was a French port, Marseille.
    And we stayed there for a few weeks
    until the Germans surrendered.
    And by then, we had so many prisoners already
    and would asked them, but at the end,
    we knew where everything was.
    Some of the Germans thought by then
    that we were actually in the [? breast ?]
    to see where they are.
    That you were what?
    I didn't understand.
    No, we know so much about the port
    like the people who lived there because we
    had so many prisoners from different section and each one
    telling his story.
    Put it all together.
    And then did you move on from Marseille to someplace else?
    No.
    You stayed there.
    That's not bad.
    You said that at some point, though,
    you are attached to a unit that was
    at the edges of the Battle of the Bulge.
    Yeah.
    The American-- well, most armies, there
    are structures in three, like a three company make a battalion,
    three battalion make this.
    So three division-- three regiments make one division,
    so we had three regiments in Battle of the Bulge.
    That left two on our front and one
    that diverted to the front that was defending
    the edge of the Bulge.
    So it felt strange because, all of a sudden,
    there were less people around ours
    because our regiment now had to cover along the front.
    And where basically was this front?
    Was this in France, or was this in Belgium, or where?
    It was down at a new German border already,
    the Belgian-German border.
    Uh-huh.
    So up north there, like Liege and places near there.
    Right.
    OK.
    And you said earlier that the surprise
    that the Allies experienced by the Battle of the Bulge
    meant that someone fell down.
    Describe to me-- someone fell down
    in their military intelligence.
    Describe to me how this unfolded in your regiment
    where you were that you realized something was
    going on that is not expected.
    Well, when we got the reports the Germans are in an area
    that we didn't think they should be.
    And that's when they--
    we were told about not to leave the camp,
    and a plane was shot down in the area, and things like that.
    You realize the full extent.
    The big worry at the time was that because things
    were diverted to the Bulge, that this
    shouldn't be affect the Bulge.
    And if they come through our line,
    there's nothing there to defend.
    That was our concern at the time.
    And it turned out that--
    This was the main thrust, and that was all they had.
    They didn't have more than that.
    Can you tell me about geographically
    where the Battle of the Bulge took place?
    We were not involved in it.
    I know.
    I know, but where was it basically?
    It was a two hour ride, and from my [? ride ?] in a wooded area.
    It was very bad weather at the time,
    a lot of snow, cold weather.
    Some of the troops were not fully equipped
    for the cold weather.
    Until the Patton finally made it, they were in big trouble.
    Just that they defended--
    they were able to defend the city and hold it long enough.
    What city was this?
    [INAUDIBLE] No.
    I would have to look at the map.
    OK.
    All of these names.
    That's OK.
    Well, and crossroads are important,
    where people can travel, move equipment,
    and the cities are usually built on the crossroads
    because the civilian population--
    Lives there.
    --likes to be in that area.
    Did you take any prisoners in your--
    where you were interrogating people,
    or there were no prisoners to be taken at that time?
    No, they were all brought in by other infantry.
    When did you finally move from the location that you were at?
    What happened after that?
    You mean in the Battle of the Bulge?
    Mm-hmm.
    We moved into Germany from there.
    Yeah, that's all.
    We just moved on slowly until we got to the Elbe.
    I think it was the Elbe River.
    It was a river that Roosevelt and Stalin declared as the--
    that carved out Germany.
    Right.
    And we had orders not to cross it,
    so we could have gone across.
    Besides, at that time, the Germans
    realized that things are bad.
    They only get worse and more willing to surrender
    to Americans and to the Russians.
    Oh, we had people we used to--
    who came across the river on boats and things
    just to surrender.
    To you.
    Yeah.
    There was one couple that came across at night,
    and the first camp that they found was an artillery camp.
    And everybody was sleeping, and they didn't want to wake anybody
    because the shock of seeing a German, somebody
    might take a gun.
    So they went on the road looking for more until they finally
    found a--
    there were no guards.
    They were supposed to be watching.
    --until they find a military police to surrender.
    Did they end up being people that you question?
    Prisoners, yeah.
    Now were these soldiers or were these--
    Soldiers.
    Soldiers.
    Yeah, in uniform.
    And that time, they were willing to put their own rifle down.
    Please, please arrest me.
    Please capture me.
    That is a better fate than being sent eastwards.
    Yeah.
    And where were-- when prisoners were taken at this stage,
    were they sent to prisoner of war camps in the United States?
    Eventually, yeah.
    They went through several stages until then,
    but a large percentage went.
    But with my personal--
    one of my major stories--
    Please, do tell me.
    --we got the call a Polish civilian
    sneaked through the German line and surrendered
    to an American group.
    And he wants to go back and fight with the Americans.
    Well, we can have somebody interrogate him,
    and we had a Polish speaking.
    So my captain in the Jeep and the Polish guy and another one,
    we went to the forward headquarter for that.
    And they had little signs nailed to trees, direction.
    We followed the sign until we came to a road
    intersection, and no sign.
    We didn't know.
    Should we go right or left?
    We see a rifle sticking out of the building, so we figured
    must be American.
    Walked over.
    No, was a Frenchman, French underground,
    and we had a French speaking man with us.
    So they were talking.
    I said, well, Americans haven't come here.
    We're waiting.
    He says, the Americans are back there about half a mile.
    And then about a few hundred feet going this way
    are German troops.
    That was the only time I was in no man's land.
    Oh my goodness.
    Oh my goodness.
    We turned around very quickly to find that headquarter,
    and the guy, our Polish speaking guy, talked to them.
    And he was convinced that he's a German.
    This is a German?
    No.
    That this is genuine?
    Polish.
    Yeah.
    So they had accepted him to give him an American uniform
    and was fighting with the Americans for a couple months.
    Wow.
    What a story.
    What a story.
    That was one of our lucky breaks.
    Another time, one of the lucky thing we
    were in a basement, half a dozen guys.
    An artillery shell hit the building,
    and a beam went through the ceiling into the--
    it went right through and didn't hit anybody.
    They're sleeping all over the basement,
    and the guard upstairs was sitting in a corner
    where there was a stove.
    And the beam went next to it.
    Also he wasn't hurt.
    Things that you get, you know.
    Question of luck.
    Wow.
    Yeah.
    And I don't know how much time you have--
    We're coming close to the end.
    --because my main story is after the war when I
    was amended from being killed.
    I would like to hear that.
    I wanted to ask about where you were at the end of the war.
    I mean, where were you physically,
    and then about Vienna, and then let's
    talk about that main story.
    A couple weeks before peace was declared,
    we were taken out of the division, 29th Division,
    and attached to Bremen Counter Intelligence Corps.
    It was like sort of like an FBI, Bremen.
    And we were independent from--
    the United States established civilian government in Germany,
    so the Bremen had our mail.
    And even though they may not elected,
    they go by American ideas.
    These were civilian Germans.
    German, yeah.
    And [INAUDIBLE] you needed a lawyer, and you needed--
    I forgot-- the papers in order to arrest somebody.
    And you had to have reason for arrest people.
    Well, we were independent, and we're not
    covered by any of the things.
    We established a small prison camp
    in Bremen and a school right in the middle
    of the town almost for all.
    In a way, I guess it was sort of showing
    the German who's the boss.
    There was a prison camp, a small prison camp, with watch towers,
    and lights, and things like this.
    And if they wanted to know, we would
    arrest businessmen or something, who used to travel a lot,
    to see what deals they made.
    Were you arresting people--
    first of all, then there's non-military people
    at this point.
    Both.
    Both.
    OK.
    And was it--
    But mostly they were more interested in non-military.
    And was this for denazification, or was
    this for black market issues?
    Both.
    OK.
    And which was more important?
    Hard to say.
    When I worked at CIC, we were only acting as interpreters.
    We were not actually making policies there.
    OK.
    Yeah, it's the CIC who had--
    the funny part was the man--
    the government, the American-German government
    would come to our office complaining.
    How come you arrested these people?
    Why?
    Do you have reason or it by American standards?
    Right.
    And all the CIC agents said, well,
    we don't have to give you any information.
    We found it necessary, and that's it.
    So there was a double standard between two groups of American,
    yeah, and to the station and then that in a courthouse.
    How long was your--
    how long did you stay there?
    How long were you involved in it?
    Well, I stayed there until I was discharged.
    A few months.
    And is this where you met the end of the war
    when you were in Bremen?
    Yeah.
    In Bremen was when--
    And where did--
    --the official war ended.
    And you said there was a time when someone--
    you were in danger of losing your life.
    Yeah, in Bremen.
    OK, tell me about that.
    Bremen, the courthouse was not destroyed by bombs.