Someday You Will Understand

by Nina Wolff Feld

  Finally, by the end of September, he had been accepted into the language division of the Army Specialized Training Unit (ASTU) and was taking some classes at Virginia Tech:

  September 22nd, 1943

  “I’m writing you a letter from one of my most interesting classes—this one being English. I just had a really interesting class, on the French military. I’m one of the youngest in the class; there are Sgt. 1st, Sgts., etc.—all intelligent men, who have a pretty good knowledge of French; the instructor knows the language in depth, but there are students who know more. Before that, I had an American history class. It’s good to be in a classroom again! To live with and listen to intelligent men!”

  My father was relieved to be placed with the more advanced group of students ranked in the top 5 percent. The other 95 percent, he said, wouldn’t find an enviable destination on completion of their more grueling training. He would rather have sweated over books than a stretcher! For the moment, though, the atmosphere was relaxed, and he boasted that during classes students were permitted to read newspapers, write, sleep, smoke, or chew. The civilian professors didn’t care in the least. He lived almost as a civilian. School ended at four p.m. and at noon on Saturdays.

  The cooling temperatures of autumn brought rain. The monochromatic blue-gray stone buildings lining the paved paths and avenues on campus took on a more dramatic tone. With the change of season came a sea of political change, as Italy capitulated to the Allies and Mussolini was forced to surrender. Hitler’s impenetrable wall was crumbling. The shield of propaganda had created a sense of safety so formidable that the German people and the Allies believed the Reich to have the strength of a fortress, and that had aura had also weakened. “The Mediterranean was now an Allied lake,” wrote a columnist in Time magazine, September 20, 1943. “Militarily, the Allies were not now pacing fretfully around Festung Europa—they were on the drawbridge of Hitler’s fortress. And since the fortress has no roof, the whole of the German heartland lay exposed to constant attack.” Meanwhile, my father attacked my grandmother’s letters analyzing the current geopolitical shift in power:

  VPI Blacksburg, Va. The 23rd of September 1943

  My Dears,

  Thanks for your letter today, that is for the one dated Sept. 20th. M. Le Curé has his head in the clouds if he thinks the war will be over by Christmas. He seems like a good chap but not too knowledgeable about politics—despite the contacts he appears to have. . . . It’s very nice of M. Le Curé to believe they’re preparing me for a post in DC, or to “teach French soldiers.” For your information, the course Military French is for all the language students in the STAR Units as well as many civilian students at many universities. . . . He should use his imagination less. Keep him close—but don’t court him too much. He could become very useful when I’ve finished my studies. To that end, be good friends—but don’t let it become an obsession.

  I have the impression that a good number of influential people (not in the Army or the Marines, etc.!) entertain the most idiotic notions about the length of this war. Mrs. Rosenthal says that La Guardia and Morris have similar illusions. There will really be some disappointed people at Christmas! It’s true that we can see an end now—it’s not the way that it was a year ago—but please consider the facts: the Boches forces are still quite formidable, and their leaders are fighting on with nothing to lose. As we know all the characteristics of the square heads2 there is little reason to wait for a popular uprising.

  The victory over Italy—who wouldn’t fight for the Boches, as is demonstrated by the fact that they’re fighting them now—isn’t a good barometer. Remember the fierce battle that the enemy waged in a very small corner of Tunisia. I have at least the impression that something completely unexpected is brewing, and that the European war will go on until the summer of 1944. As far as Japan is concerned, there’s no point in discussing your point, chère Mamo. Come on! A little more reason, and a little less wish fulfillment! I’m writing you in this way because your financial actions shouldn’t be influenced by this kind of nonsense. . . .

  As it is almost 23h, “Bonsoir, Mesdames et Messieurs, bonsoir mes Demoiselles.” I have to go wash my pen. It’s stopped up and has started to leak all of a sudden.

  Kisses,

  Walter

  * * * *

  Days sped by and rumors flew. My father and his friends hoped that, wherever they were sent, it would be as luxurious as the VPI campus. Finally, as September came to a close, he got his wish.

  VPI, VIRGINIA September 28th, 1943

  My Dears,

  Thank you for the two packages that we’re in the midst of enjoying, and for the letter.

  I learned from the Times that Rosh Hashanah began this evening. I had the impression that the holiday started later. And so, my apologies and Happy New Year!

  Chère Mamo, you say I like to eat while studying. You seem to have the impression that I’m studying. I do practically nothing—I go to classes (this morning I forgot a few), I read, sleep, or write letters—sometimes I listen. No homework, no exams. This morning the Military French prof left, and a Franco-American and I took charge of the class; it was fun for a change. It was about terms having to do with the maneuvers of an armored tank division.

  My friend told me that he has seen my name on a list for Yale (1 ½ h. from NY). We don’t yet know when it will be published, but we will leave on Monday. That would be ideal. It seems that I won’t get a furlough; I’m really mad about it, because there was ample time for one and I haven’t had my furlough. To show our contempt, a group of us are growing mustaches.

  I just saw another of my friends, and he said he had definitely seen my name on the list. I have moxie!

  I’ve already bought my PFC chevron: we call them Praying For Corporal.

  To eliminate any possible misunderstanding: Michigan is no longer in the running. The telegram was sent before this letter. I have to go to bed now.

  Good night, and again, my best wishes for the new year.

  Yours,

  Walter

  * * * *

  Seemingly overnight, the Yale campus filled to capacity with soldiers pouring through its wrought-iron gates. The monochromatic tone of the uniformed men struck an unfamiliar chord with the undergrads, who now made up the minority. They had no choice but to stand by and watch as a parade of soldiers carrying cardboard suitcases at their sides marched past and into the dormitories, which caused some friction. In their minds, perhaps, a degree from Yale would be devalued by the less-educated swarm, hovering around three thousand soldiers, that had invaded campus. Universities such as Yale had a strong history of anti-Semitism and had “Jewish quotas.” They were much less likely to admit students or give tenure to faculty with Jewish backgrounds. This changed during the years after the war, but through the ASTP program the school had no choice but to welcome the soldiers, Jew and Gentile alike. By year’s end, there were between six and seven thousand soldiers in training on campus, the largest student population in the university’s history. My father’s letters give us only part of the picture of Yale in 1943.

  A few men stood by scratching their chins as 250 men lined up for the second time that day and waited for role call before “Old Shit And Guts” let his men go with an “Aaaat Eeeease!” The 1st military platoon, made up of all those over six feet tall, and the 4th academic platoon fell out of line and relaxed their posture.

  “Well, banzai! This is loony,” my father said to no one in particular.

  He and the other soldiers marched in formation across campus toward their classes. The sandbags stacked against every building on the Yale campus was an ever-present reminder of what could happen. The sandbags offered the ivy-clad buildings some protection from bombs dropped during an air raid, unless of course there was a direct hit. From the top of campus’ tallest buildings, soldiers manned lookout stations equipped with telephones and would report any damage or fires.

  As he was marching, my father spotted a familiar face. A
s he drew closer, he recognized Alfred Whitney Griswold, the future president of Yale. My father was now mapping the path that would take him back to Europe. He aimed forward with one eye to the past and the other steadily focused toward the future. The autumnal New England weather, the crisp, cool air after a long hot summer, reminded him of a fall day in St. Moritz. When it rained, the overcast skies darkening the heavy buildings was a reminder of Brussels. He politely stopped the approaching man, who recognized him as well. Professor Griswold was the head of the ASTP program at Yale. They shook hands and exchanged niceties.

  “There isn’t anything that I can do about it, Private Wolff. I presented your case to the colonel, but in view of the fact that you are a language specialist, the Army is of the opinion that you should have no difficulty with a hard language such as Japanese.”

  “Well, thank you ever so much for your efforts and good day,” said my father as they continued on their respective ways. How the head of the special training programs in languages and civil affairs at Yale and this private first class were first introduced isn’t clear, but my grandparents were friendly with Professor Griswold as well. Fortunately or unfortunately, my father had passed his written and oral exams in French, German, Italian, and Spanish. The brief encounter assured him of his standing in the specialized training program, but he had other ideas.

  Later that weekend, after a rushed and grumpy departure from Grand Central Station in New York, my father hastily bid his parents and Ellen goodbye and ran into his Swiss friend, Brandeis, on the train back to New Haven. They talked all the way back to Yale. Brandeis told my father, “I’m convinced they’ll deploy only the crème de la crème for a tour in Japan.”

  “Well, I think that by staying average, neither too high nor too low, there’s very little possibility of getting assigned there based on my studies.” Translation: Do as little as possible, stay slightly above the fray but not too far in the lead, and he won’t be their first choice for the Pacific Theater.

  When the conductor called over the loudspeaker, “Next stop, Nuuew Haaven!” the two refugee soldiers gathered their things and stood by the doors as the train pulled to a slow stop, lining up with the platform. Before walking back to campus, my father stopped at the newsstand and bought a newspaper and Time magazine. He would have to ask his parents to pick up a copy of France-Amérique and send it along with his rubber-soled tennis shoes and shorts for calisthenics. The paper had been founded months earlier by French exiles. It was the voice of the Resistance and a forum for Charles de Gaulle, the exiled leader of Free France, with articles by impassioned journalists and first-hand accounts of Occupied France and war news. Unlike its American counterparts, France-Amérique published articles that came from the country’s heart and soul that fueled my father’s outrage.

  One, entitled the “Extermination of French Jews,” made my hair stand on end, so I can only imagine what it did to him. When I read it in the offices of France-Amérique, I could almost hear my father saying, “Now you see, Ninotchka, you understand what we were up against. I couldn’t tell you before. You had to find out on your own.”

  Between the July 16 and August 18, 1942, 28,000 “Isrealites” were arrested in the occupied zone and interned in concentration camps of the Vélodrome d’Hiver and Parc du Princes. Over the course of the first weeks of October 1942, 35,000 Jewish families were brutally separated and exterminated. In September of 1942, the number of Jews deported from the “unoccupied” zone grew to 1,300.

  There currently exists in France almost fifty concentration camps for the Jews. Women and children are usually sent to Beaune-la-Rolande.Then the women and children ages thirteen and older are transported to Poland and the Ukraine, where we completely lose track of them.

  Children two to thirteen years of age remain, without any supervision, at the Pithiviers camp where a severe epidemic of Diphtheria is raging and where they are dying by the hundreds.

  Much later I would learn that one of those fifty concentration camps was located in the furniture warehouse belonging to my mother’s cousin, in the center of Paris.

  Another article described in vivid detail what happened when one prisoner at a concentration camp fainted one morning and fell to the ground just as he lifted the handles of his wheelbarrow. He was taken away by the Germans. The next morning before reporting to work, the prisoners were forced to stand at attention, heads held high as the unfortunate man from the day before knelt on the ground in front of them, looking utterly gray, his temples bloodied. He had been beaten so violently about the head that one eye hung out of its orbit, suspended only by the attached nerve.

  Yale marched to a different beat during World War II. Glenn Miller and his Army Air Force Band rehearsed and jammed for music-hungry servicemen in the dining halls before taking their uniquely American style to the troops abroad. Music was the greatest morale booster in the European Theater, carrying listeners through the war with the sounds of Swing, until Miller’s plane went down and he was lost in the icy waters of the English Channel in December 1944 on his way to Paris to join the band as they toured France.

  Before sitting down to his studies, my father “peeled off” another letter to his parents and slipped in a book of matches from Camp Pickett and an article from Time magazine. He was always fond of taking little mementos. He wouldn’t be going home this weekend. With two upcoming exams and 165 pages of history to read after having received his books a short two days earlier, there was no time. Japanese was becoming easier as the weeks progressed; he was up to about 250 phrases. My father was determined to stay in the program, so visits home would have to be sacrificed to study. If my grandmother couldn’t see him, she would inundate him with more packages from home. Pralines arrived along with a pullover sweater and pair of striped pajamas so big they were better suited to fit the oversized frame of his Uncle Fred, my grandfather’s brother, who was in Marseille during the period before their escape. In the package, my father also found that week’s issue of France-Amérique and a stock certificate from my grandfather. He was becoming a capitalist!

  He finished his letter with the sentence, “Kyòo oua koré de yamamashiòo” (Let’s stop for today). After mailing the letter, he returned to his studies. After more reflection, he decided he would do better to excel in history and his other classes but just glide by in Japanese. We have very different ideas about gliding by. My father took hundreds of pages of notes in Japanese class alone. The margins have been written in, words are underlined, and accents are drawn, all to aid in memorization and pronunciation. He had made much more than the slight effort that he led everyone to believe. He was only pretending to do poorly. If he had to prove himself, then he would do so at a moment’s notice.

  Along came more letters and packages. This time they contained shirts, gym shorts, heavy wool long johns, orange juice, and fruit. He gently threatened my grandmother that she would soon be receiving a large package of returned items from the store that she apparently thought she was helping him open. With a certain adolescent charm, he ended the letter by saying he would be coming for Sunday lunch at his favorite restaurant on 79th Street: Chez Mamo. He rather enjoyed the little trip to New York; it was fun. He’d call on his best friend, Monroe, still too young to be drafted. Since failing out of ASTP was not to his advantage, he settled in and decorated his room at Yale. He hung up maps and his sister Ellen’s whimsical watercolors of Central Park, giving the little space charm and warmth, and lit the room with six different lamps he had collected.

  An obvious awareness of design was flourishing. At this point, my father had no idea that one day he would become New York’s king of lamps, accessories, and what I used to refer to as “Ready-to-Wear Furniture.” Items purchased at his stores could be picked up or delivered, assembled or not, depending on the customer’s choice. Advertisements for Bon Marché were a fixture on the pages of the New York Times for close to forty years. He was a trendsetter, a master at transforming Bauhaus designs into affordable pieces of
furniture for a bargain-savvy consumer who insisted on great design. In the 1990s, the Bon Marché building was bought by the New School and renamed Henry Arnhold Hall—another bizarre coincidence, since they were childhood friends at Belmunt in Switzerland as well as fellow Ritchie Boys.

  By November, phone calls and trips home became less frequent, while, paradoxically, paranoia about his well-being and temper seemed to be running high as he stayed in Connecticut on a more regular basis. He was not all that unhappy with the workload or the routine as it was. Quite to the contrary, he was dating a girl whom he took to see Noel Coward’s madcap comedy Blithe Spirit at New Haven’s Schubert Theater one evening after he finished sentinel duty. There were fewer letters home, and on the occasions when he did write he explained at length how much less time he had and that his parents and Ellen should lower their expectations. One night when he returned to his room to find numerous telephone messages from Ellen, who was worried that he had fallen ill, he had a fit. To keep up with the family’s demand, he spent the long hours of class time writing letters instead of listening to lectures on military history, etc. He figured he was being more productive than the third of the company who took their siesta, while a third studied Japanese and the last third bore holes into the classroom walls by staring at the same spot for hours. Soon, an outbreak of flu brought Yale to its knees and almost sent my father to a sanitarium. What follows is the funniest moment of my father’s experience at Yale, before final exams and his transfer to Camp Grant in Rockford, Illinois: