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What did you do when the war was over?
As
I said we were in Austria for a couple months and then I came back
to the United States and then I was supposed to go and be shipped
to the Pacific for the continuing war against Japan. But the first
thing after coming back here was we all got a thirty-day furlough.
I was on my front porch in Kansas City, Missouri when the war
against Japan ended. Thank God I didn't have to go there.
After the war ended, how did you feel about the
victory?
Very
good. We were on top of the Brenner Pass in the Austrian Alps. We
linked up with the American Fifth Army, coming
up from Italy, linked up and that was our last action. We felt
very much elated. Hitler had committed suicide by then. We had
linked up with the Soviet Army - who came from the east and we
came from the west - and, as I said, we linked up with the Fifth
Army coming up from Italy and the Germans were finished. We
felt very much satisfied.
While fighting, did you feel there was a potential
victory ahead?
Oh
yes, oh yes. Because, see, I got into combat fairly late in the war,
in the fall of '44, and it ended May 8 of '45. We had already
landed on the beaches of Normandy - it was in June '44 - and we had
already landed in Southern France. Italy was almost completely in
our hands.
When
we landed in Europe - in Marseilles - that was already about six
weeks after Marseilles was liberated and then we went up north
to Alsace Lorraine and
got into combat there. Yes, well we knew it was only a matter
of time - a relatively short time - until we would finish the job.
I
was in Camp Campbell, Kentucky for awhile. Then there was a request
that came from the Bay Area here for five thousand soldiers from
our division to come to Oakland to work in the Christmas post office
to handle the Christmas mail from the boys in the Pacific. I
was among those five thousand soldiers who came to Oakland. When
we got here we found out that the army, with it's ususal efficiency,
had hired five thousand citizens to do the same job. There was
nothing we could do. Eventually we were shipped all over the West
Coast to different places. I sort of luckily ended up on the Presidio
of San Francisco. Here I was an artillery man, and they put me into
military police on the post. I did this job as an MP for one month
and then I was discharged. I was discharged right here on the Presidio.
From
there I hitchhiked my way home to Kansas City. But I came back
out here again two months later and started going to school at the
University of California in Berkeley. I graduated from there
in ‘47 in business administration. Then I went to law school
at Hastings College of Law here in San Francisco. I graduated from
there in 1950. Became a member of the bar in January ‘51. My
first job as a lawyer was on the staff of the Chief Justice of California
as a research attorney. I worked there for the Chief Justice
for about a year and then went to work for a private firm with whom
I was about seven or eight years. I opened up my own office.
That is what I have been doing ever since. That’s a thumbnail
sketch of my career after the war.
During liberation, did you encounter any famous
people?
No,
not really. I know my division liberated a number of quite famous
or high-placed people, but those were other units of my division.
They liberated two prime ministers of France, they liberated the
Polish general, the nephew of the king of England and others.
I
had a sort of funny experience. When we were in Garmisch-Partenkirchen,
which is a town in the Bavarian Alps—where, by the way, the
winter Olympics used to be, I think it was 1936 during the Nazi period—anyway,
there I heard that an uncle of Heinrich Himmler, the head of the
SS, one of three most powerful German people--he was the head of
the all the concentration camps-- that he had an uncle that lived
there.
I got together with a few other soldiers and we took a jeep and went
to the man's house. I asked him, “Are you related to any
of the Nazi leaders?” “Mmm mmm mmm mmm.” I said, “How
about Heinrich Himmler?” “Oh yes, yes, but I haven’t
seen him in years.” Which might well be true. Who knows? I
decided, let’s take him back to our unit. We made him sit
on the top of our jeep. We drove through town and back to my unit.
There I reported to the lieutenant who was in charge at a particular
time that I caught Himmler's uncle. Of course, he was an old
man. I did not think it was of any importance and we let him go,
let him walk home this time.
As
part of my story, after the war, I met my wife Gloria in Kansas City,
Missouri in 1948. She had just come to this country in 1947, after
going through the Holocaust. But she will tell you that story herself.
We met in the summer of 1948, while I was going to law school here
in San Francisco. After school was out, I hitchhiked my way to Kansas
City to be with my family for the summer.
While
I was there, I met with two friends of mine who also had come home
from college. It was a Saturday night, and we had nothing to do really.
One of the guys suggested that he heard about a birthday party
going on in a private home. “Why don’t we go crash it?” It
sounded like a good idea, so we crashed the party. It was a very
dull party
because all the boys were lined up in one side of the
room and all the girls were lined up on another side of the room.
Music was playing and nothing happened. But this gave me enough time
and leisure to survey the field. I picked out the prettiest girl
and asked her to dance. That was Gloria, my wife.
But
the problem was that I could not dance very well because I sprained
my ankle back on the way to Kansas City so I was just hobbling around.
I had to explain that to her because I was not dancing very well.
I showed her my bandaged ankle and then we continued hobbling
around and I had a good time. My two friends were bored to tears
and they left. I stayed there and took Gloria home eventually.
That’s how our relationship began.
Then
of course I had to come back to San Francisco. But Gloria moved to
Los Angeles to the aunt with whom she was living, so the distance
wasn't so great. After a few months we became engaged. In ‘49
we were married. We had two children, two sons. Our older son is
a doctor, our youngest son is a speech pathologist, and between them
they gave a whole baseball team of grandchildren, nine grandchildren
who ranged in age all the way from age 25 all the way down to almost
2. They are wonderful kids. As Gloria is fond of saying, “Hitler,
eat your heart out."
After the war, when you continued on with your
life, you met Gloria and married her. How did marrying a Holocaust
survivor affect the relationship?
I
think in a positive way. After I met Gloria, we went one day on a
Sunday afternoon, we went out to a park. Swope Park. Biggest park
in Kansas City. We went and had a picnic. I told Gloria "Bring
some marshmallows along. We'll roast marshmallows." She didn't
know what marshmallows were. She found out and we roasted marshmallows.
While
we were there having a picnic, she decided she was going to tell
me something about her experiences. That's where I first
heard it - what she went through. I could understand what she
went through because my father - even just for a short time - went
through something somewhat similar. I knew what a concentration
camp was.
It
made Gloria feel very good and she often says it now that when she
told me her story she could feel that I would be one young man who
would understand her and understand what she went through. She
needed that. She had gone out with lots of other young men. In fact,
I think she had about seven proposals. But she always wasn't sure
whether these boys would really understand how she was feeling and
what she went through. She had that feeling about me that I would
understand. That answers your question - "How did it affect
our relationship?" That's how. I feel I did understand.
How did it make you feel when she told you her
story?
Oh,
it was devastating, of course. It's hard to put that in words. Even
today, when she tells her own story, she says: "When I tell
my story, I feel I'm talking about somebody else, not about myself." That's
the way she can get through it. It's hard to tell the story and
to listen to it.
How do you feel about telling your story?
About
telling my story? I've told my story several times. Not only
to your school, but also I was interviewed by the Holocaust Oral
History Project and that was a two and a half hour interview on video
tape. Of course, it was not nearly as long as Gloria's interview.
Her interview was eight hours.
When
I go with her to schools where she speaks, I quite often participate
in the question and answer periods afterwards because I can tell
the students what went on before the actual Holocaust. In other words,
what led up to it. It gives me a good feeling to be able to share
that for whatever good it may do and for whatever somebody can learn
from it. I hope somebody can learn something from it.
Was sharing your story with your children a different
experience from when you share it with schools?
I
don't think it's particularly different because I tell them the same
thing as what I tell you. It's a story that's not as traumatic
as Gloria's story. It's not talking about my feelings but telling
the story. I don't feel that much affected by telling my story because
I didn't go through the sort of things that Gloria went through.
Gloria,
for example - you know, she was torn away from her mother in Auschwitz
and for many years, she could not say the word "mother" without
breaking down. It was much more traumatic for her to tell her
story than it was for me to tell mine.
In what ways have your experiences involving
the Holocaust affected your life decisions?
I think it has probably affected them. The Holocaust is always with
us. It doesn't go away. Now, that's particularly the case with Gloria.
My case is much milder. There's no comparison between my experiences
and her experiences. But I think - I can't tell you chapter and verse
how it has affected us - but it has affected us, I know.
I'm
sure it has affected our children. Both our sons went into the healing
professions. David is a doctor; Jonathan is a speech pathologist
- works with children who have hearing and speech problems. They
are much more sensitive to people's problems than they would perhaps
otherwise be. I think it has affected us just in our general outlook
and in various ways that I couldn't even detail.
Do you have a final message for the future generations?
I
think the message is the same that Gloria gives to students when
she speaks about her experiences, that the Holocaust must not ever
be forgotten. The Holocaust was a watershed event in human history.
We don't know of any event like it. It was a war within a war. I
mean, at the time when the German armies were being beaten like mad
by the Russians, they still diverted a lot of their manpower and
energy to killing Jews rather than sending men to the Russian front.
That's an example.
It
was a war within a war. The war against the Jews. It was not simply
the idea of that dictator, Hitler. It was the culmination, the climax
of really many centuries of discrimination and hatred against the
Jews, which was originally religion-based.
Then
it took over other areas of life. Then, because hundreds of years
ago, you could avoid the discrimination against the Jews by
being baptized. Once the Nazis came to power, that sort of thing
didn't help anymore. If one of your grandparents was Jewish, you
were Jewish. Even if you were Christian.
Their
methodology was so unusual. That's why I said it was a watershed
event in history. It was an organized, deliberate, mechanized, industrialized
method that they used against the Jews. We've never seen that before
or since. We have had genocides since World War II also. We have
seen it in Cambodia; we have seen it in Africa and in other places.
But nowhere has it been on that type of a scale.
Not
only in the numbers but also in the methods. To herd people together
and push them into gas chambers had been unheard of until World War
II. This is something that we must not forget. It teaches us something
about human life. It teaches us something about the so-called brotherhood
of man. We must - in order to learn how to live together - we have
to learn how not to treat each other. That's the study
of the Holocaust.
Hopefully
future generations will learn that lesson. There's no guarantee,
but I hope so.
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