Someday You Will Understand

by Nina Wolff Feld

  After a few more stops at cafés we went . . . Yes, to eat again! At one of the cafés, I came across an Italian Jew on his way back from Switzerland, where he had flee to be an intern [sic]. He told me that everything can be had in Switzerland. Currency hasn’t been affected by inflation; the franc is still good. Yes, the prices are a bit higher than normal, but not from inflation. One centime is still one centime, and it retains its value. This is important, because one Italian centesimo has disappeared—it doesn’t exist anymore. A radio that should have cost 440.00 or more in America when we could buy them goes for 12500 lira, $125.00. One thing there is hardly any of is cigarettes.

  The town [Milan] didn’t suffer much from the war. Here and there one finds houses destroyed; a road half-destroyed. The Communists are extremely active, as everywhere, but Milan is redder than ever. The big Antonio is a leader of the Communist party. After dinner we went dancing at a private apartment on the roof of a very modern house. It lasted until three o’clock in the morning, after which we went to sleep. We got up at 9, and after breakfast we went into town once again to run some errands. After another meal in the style previously described, we left for Cano. There is a little lake there before the mountains begin, near Como. It is 1800 hours now. I swam and took a sunbath. After another feast we’ll return to Milan, where we have some more business, then we go back to Ghedi. My Italian has come back, and I speak better than ever, though not yet as one should. The Boches are detested everywhere. They acted like pigs here, which is exactly what they are. The Fascists are finished as well.

  I also bought a tie for you, dear Papa, a genuine silk tie for $4.00. Yesterday, I was in Verona. Here is a list of things I brought back in my car—all a supplement to my three meals a day that we receive in the mess for special troops: One case of rations (to pay our “rent” on the farm and for the dogs—we don’t eat that!). One case of pineapple, in one-pound boxes (I’m in the middle of having one right now), a case of V-8 Cocktail, one kilo of coffee, one kilo of butter (because we can’t find any on a farm with thirty cows!), a kilo and a half of soap, Portuguese sardines supplied by the SS as well as the highest quality salamis. And above all, please don’t send me a watch if you haven’t already done so. I’ll be sending one myself to cousin Pierre when I can find the time. I think I also mentioned not to send any handkerchiefs etc. . . . I’ve bought dozens more here in addition to the ones I left with.

  Friday morning two friends and I left for yet another little three-and-a-half day excursion. A new one. You see, the Captain never knew anything about our last excursion, and the Lt. suggested they give us a few days off. The Captain was so happy with all our “hard” work that he agreed. So, this time it will be completely official. Ah, what a hard life I lead! This morning someone came by at 9 o’clock and we were still in bed. . . . I don’t really care! (It was a 2nd Lieutenant Rothschild who speaks with a certain “accent”—and I’ve yelled at him many times because he doesn’t do his work.)

  We took a lot of photos yesterday, of our dogs, the farm, ourselves, and also our dinner last night. Every night we have dinner about 7 Km. away from here in a tiny village at a very rustic inn. Last night it consisted of: salami (top quality), butter, bread, chicken bouillon with egg and croutons, white and red wine, roasted chicken, eggplant, spaghetti with cheese sauce, cherries, peaches, coffee (half the “national” brand, the other half the coffee that we gave them for our private consumption). Anything and as much as we want.

  We went to the opera in Brescia, The Merry Widow. We had such a good time. It was a comic opera but the actors and actresses took themselves so seriously and we had the royal box seats. After the first act, we went out and bought flowers. We wanted to have a little fun, and we sent them to the prima donna, the widow, with the compliments of two adoring “American” fans. . . .

  I went to the movies to see I Married a Witch a second time. Very amusing. At the same time they showed the film about Buchenwald. Excellent results: a number of the women cried and the men were horrified. We should force every German, European, and American to see this film. The movie house is modern and air-conditioned—I’ll go back. Afterwards, I felt like drinking something, and it was after last call and the MP wouldn’t let me in. So I invited him to have one on me, which he immediately accepted, and he let me in. Simple, huh?

  We have all the comforts of home now. Barber, TSF repair, film developing, mimeograph service, ice cream parlor, garage, tailor, laundry, etc. . . . Other than that, we have a Boche dog expert, which is of the utmost necessity, with all of our dogs and one little cat. Our PX rations are distributed twice a month. As far as I’m concerned, I’ve refused my entire ration with the exception of beer, fruit juice, and cigarettes. It’s true that I have four cartons in reserve (on this note, please no more cigarettes). I bought a beautiful camera, with a telephoto lens. They tell me it’s a “Mezie.” I also have two revolvers now. On my night table there is a really nice office lamp, which is also mine. . . . I’ve also sent off a package for you with souvenirs. . . .

  In a few days I’ll be in a new country. I still have lira; I think I’ll start a soldier’s account, because, in spite of it all, I can’t spend everything. I have my strategic reserve, which I won’t touch. If it interests you 1) in Germany, one Swiss franc sells for 500 marks. 2) Near the Austrian border 1 mark sells for 3 lira despite the official rate of 10 lira for 1 mark—the beautiful little spiral, it will be a perfect end for the episode that was the Third Reich. The French franc is rising. . . .

  We can ask for a furlough. I’ll request France and Belgium in order to take care of my finances. In my request I’ll include the powers of attorney that you’ve given me. After all, I have to put the bank account . . . in order and see to our homes in Brussels [they had several apartments at their former building at 155 Rue de la Loi]. If I receive the furlough—and this is doubtful—I’ll try to sneak off to Nice, Marseille, Lyon, [and] Paris, where I’ll stay for several days. From there I’d like to proceed by car or plane to Brussels. Perhaps I’ll go to Paris directly and will pass through the other cities on the way back. All of this, however, is hypothetical.

  Also, I’ve learned that we’ll be going to Austria . . . and that we’ll probably get a hotel on the Wolfgangsee [a lake in the Salzburg region]. We’ll be attached to the Control Commission—which is what I wanted.

  * Yiddish for “miserable Jews.”

  CHAPTER 9

  It Is Your Moral Duty: DPs Among the Ruins in Austria and Germany

  Finito, my father’s puppy.

  While my father was en route to Austria, Harry Truman, the former justice of the peace who was now a leader of the Western world, was preparing for his first journey overseas as president. This was also his first Atlantic crossing since soldiering during World War I. He was going to meet Stalin and Churchill in Berlin at the Potsdam Conference to discuss the terms that would end World War II and lay the groundwork for Germany’s postwar government.

  The leaders were supposed to design a new future for Germany to grow a stable postwar economy. However, the division of the country into four separate and distinct zones of Allied occupation by the United States, Great Britain, the Soviet Union, and France, as well as the revision of the German-Polish-Soviet border, became major points of contention, with the three superpowers unintentionally ushering in the Cold War that lasted until the fall of the Berlin Wall and the first steps toward German reunification in 1989. Had some of the broad strokes of the plans at Potsdam been laid out differently, tensions and divisiveness might not have risen to such high levels and the Cold War might have been averted.

  While traveling abroad, my father wasn’t the only one writing home to his mother and sister, of course. So was President Truman. In 1955, Life magazine published excerpts from the president’s then- forthcoming memoir. In what is now one of his most famous “Dear Mamma” letters, he addressed his mother and sister Mary from the Potsdam Conference in July 1945. He must have penned it after a long and f
rustrating day with Stalin and Churchill. He wrote, “Dear Mamma and Mary, . . . You never saw such a pig-headed people as the Russians. I hope I never have to hold another conference with them—but, of course I will.” Whether a young soldier addresses his mother as “Chère Mamo,” as my father did, or a president writes “Dear Mamma,” I guess the common thread that exists among us all is that, no matter what one’s rank or stature, mother is always mamma.

  On the fourth of July, my father and his captain left San Michele near Verona after he was transferred to the 15th Army Group. They loaded their little truck with all their belongings and piled into the front seat with one extra passenger, the smallest of war orphans, a little brown dog of undetermined variety they had named Finito. Judging by the photographs of people posing with both my father and said mutt, this tiny fellow wreaked havoc with all of the women they met along the way.

  They passed through Riveretto, where they stopped to eat, then Trento, Bolzano, and Brenner, crossing the border well past nightfall. Temperatures fell as they climbed through the mountains toward the Brenner Pass. My father layered his uniform with his Eisenhower jacket and winter field coat against the crisp alpine air. Once they arrived in Innsbruck, they stopped at one of the city’s largest hotels and stayed for a day and a half before moving on. In his opinion, the city wasn’t heavily damaged, but a reader looking at the photograph he took while walking down Wilhelm-Greil-Strasse might have another opinion, for it clearly shows the damage as people and pets go about their lives.

  While there, he ran into a lot of friends and former traveling companions, a harbinger of things to come. The locals tried to be friendly, none more than the young fräuleins, whose advances were met with disinterest at best.

  Wilhelm-Greil-Strasse, Innsbruck, Austria, July 5, 1945.

  “Pull over for a moment,” said my father to the captain, who was taking his turn at the wheel. They were leaving Innsbruck, making their way to Salzburg. He adjusted his gun holster and got out of the truck. Ever since he had crossed into enemy territory, he wore his revolver at all times. He trusted no one. One never knew, he thought, the occasion might arise when he’d have to use it—at least that was the hope. He now had three guns in his collection, two Beretta 7/65 and his weighty army-issue .45. A short time later, my father emerged from the shop, smiling from behind his army-issue Ray-Bans, holding a case of wine and a bottle of thirty-year-old Cognac, which he would open during a quiet moment on his birthday. Ray Ban Aviator glasses were the rage since General MacArthur was photographed wearing them after landing in the Philippines, and my father loved the look.

  “There’s still too much of everything on the shelves here. Sausages at the butchers, bread in the bakeries . . . I wish we were still in Italy. I bought us a case of wine. The bastard didn’t want to sell it to me, but in the end,” said my father, with his pipe dangling from the side of his mouth, “he sold me as much as I wanted, and for only forty-five cents a bottle. Kraut bastard, I hate these Austro-Boches. Do you see how they look at us with such curiosity? They have a mortal fear of the USSR and France.”

  “Bad conscience,” said Captain Lafon, as he started the engine.

  Minutes before midnight, my father settled in with his thirty-year-old Cognac. After having spent the evening at the movies and a show with friends, he ushered in his twenty-first birthday during a quiet, more solitary moment. I always wondered why we celebrated birthdays the night before in my family, and I guess this occasion was no exception.

  He had a room in a private house in Salzburg, located on a street confiscated by the Allied Occupying Forces. The civilians had been thrown out the door. He tuned his TSF until he came to a program in progress from New York and then turned his attention to a letter he’d started earlier in the day, which began remarkably, “I’m writing you from the office at the Gestapo building.”

  The former Gestapo headquarters in Salzburg has a unique history. During the Anschluss, the annexation of Austria by Germany in March 1938, the Gestapo moved into a five-hundred-year-old monastery of Franciscan brothers near Mozartplatz. They threw out the monks and used the building as both their headquarters and a prison, complete with interrogation and torture rooms. Right after liberation, the US Army requisitioned thousands of properties to house their troops and supply activities in their occupation zones. Wehrmacht installations and Nazi Party buildings were high on their list of properties to requisition. Salzburg was in the American Zone, and the former Gestapo headquarters was temporarily requisitioned by the army. Later, the first free Austrian radio station started broadcasting from this building. Austria became an independent country again in 1956, but it wasn’t until the late seventies that the Franciscan monks moved back into the complex. It has been a monastery ever since. In less than a generation, this building went from heaven to hell and back.

  * * * *

  Below them, Salzburg looked like a miniature replica of itself in a toy store display. With each curve, they reached an ever-higher altitude, gaining on their destination. At this distance, the familiar shapes of buildings and houses were obscured into anonymity, the crimes committed within their walls all but lost to consciousness. My father surrendered to the scenery. Its irresistible beauty tugged at his senses. As the car pulled against every hairpin curve, they warned of their approach with loud honks of the horn. The narrow roads were finally dry. The gray of the previous days of rain now gave way to an azure-blue sky, made more spectacular by the backdrop of sparkling snow-capped peaks and emerald-green forests. No day was more appreciated by my father than one spent driving along a scenic route, high in the mountains in crisp, sunny weather. The winding roads above Salzburg are some of the most beautiful in all of Europe, playground to the wealthy, with panoramas so exquisite that any writer would dream of calling such a serene place home to goad their muse into creativity. Hitler did. He rented a small cottage called Haus Wachenfeld after his release from prison in 1924 to finish Mein Kampf. In 1933, he used the proceeds from the 4.5 million copies sold to buy the cottage, and then, acting as his own architect, he renovated it, expanded it, and renamed it Berghof. It was such a marvel of design and décor that his little home-improvement project was featured in the November 1938 issue of Homes and Garden magazine. Later, the entire area became the vacation destination for the Nazi elite and political guests of the regime. On the occasion of the Führer’s fiftieth birthday, Martin Gorman had the Eagle’s Nest, the teahouse perched on the mountain’s summit, constructed as a gift to him on behalf of the Nazi Party. On July 8, my father’s twenty-first birthday, he walked gaily among its ruins.

  My father at Hitler’s retreat, the Eagle’s Nest, on his twenty-first birthday, July 8, 1945.

  NATIONAL SOCIALISTICHE DEUTCHE ARBEITERPARTEI

  Guleitung, Salzburg

  den Mozartplatz 8-10

  My new address:

  HQ 15th A.G. (USOFA)

  6695 MIS Co (Austria) Salzburg, July 9th, 1945APO 777

  Heil New Order!

  Yesterday I visited Berchtesgaden and Obersalzburg. Our Air Force did a good job! Beautifully decorated, a sublime view—ruins. I took three rolls of film. After we visited the Eagle’s Nest, another few hundred meters above was another palace. That one was not destroyed except for a door I was forced to destroy. You see, I had decided that Schickelgruber’s5 house was a perfect place to urinate. So, while I was in the middle of doing my business, a young woman from the Diplomatic Corps came in through the open door, open because someone had taken the two doorknobs as souvenirs—and, terribly embarrassed, closed the door.

  I should have used my revolver to destroy the lock, but as everyone was army, a gunshot might have been misinterpreted. With two good kicks, the door was open. I left a souvenir of my visit. As to the young woman, I can only say that someone not with the DC would have understood that it was indeed a WC. Nobody could believe my version of the story, and today everyone is telling me that if you chase a woman and she enters a certain place, one has to abandon t
he chase. It should have been my initials [WC] that did that. Today I found a swastika-emblazoned brassard in the house. That gives me carte blanche; this evening I liberated several crystal liqueur glasses and a pretty linen tablecloth of the highest quality, just what I’ll need for my apartment in Vienna.

  I see in the papers that the “Missouri justice of the peace” likes to travel. He’s en route to Europe this evening. How thrilling. He’ll most likely give his views on agriculture to Misters Churchill and Stalin. I suppose we’ll still have a few ministerial remnants—there are still a few people left in government with an above high-school education. What a scandal.

  Well, good night. I have to go see Salzburg’s cretin of a mayor tomorrow. Wednesday, I’ll probably go to Munich. They say it’s not very interesting—more putsch, more beer, more Munich. My heart bleeds.

  Heil to me! (Or: Mit Yiddischem Gruss!)

  Yours,

  Walter

  * * * *

  My father’s letters say little about his mission with Captain Lafon, to whom he was “lend-leased” for a period of about four weeks, but it is highly likely that he and Lafon, along with the men with whom my father worked, spent the rest of their service in the war going to some of the hundreds of camps throughout Austria and Germany that were being used as temporary shelters and processing centers for Displaced Persons, or DPs. DPs were the vast numbers of people who had been released from Hitler’s concentration, forced labor, and prisoner-of-war camps by Germany’s defeat. Many were Eastern Europeans, and many were Jews. Many of them couldn’t simply be repatriated because they feared religious and political persecution if they were to return home. Repatriation was further complicated by the fact that many countries were slow to commit to accepting refugees from other countries. It seems likely that, among other assignments, my father continued his work to root out likely war criminals during visits to the DP camps, perhaps by eliciting information about their imprisonment or abuse as slave laborers or perhaps by seeking out former military personnel or collaborators who might be hiding among them.