One of our early confrontations was just before Passover. It was a time of the year that I sorely missed being home. Every year, before Pesach, Mother would mobilize our whole family to clean the entire house. Cabinets, floors, walls, mattresses—everything was scrubbed down until our home was scented with a special pre-Pesach freshness. We’d all pitch in, straining and sweating, until Mom was satisfied. Then the work of bringing up the special dishes from the basement would begin. Within a day or two, the house would again smell different: this time with the heavenly cooking aromas of special Passover foods.
So I was thrilled when Mother sent me a box of matzoh; it was a practical measure, for Mother knew I wouldn’t eat bread, which is forbidden on Passover. But more than that, it was a touch of home, and it brought back the warmth of her magical kitchen. I put the box in my footlocker, which was against the rules, for we were not allowed to keep food there. It was unopened, and I intended to take it to the mess hall to store for me during the eight days of Passover.
That day, when I came back from maneuvers, I found that the whole box of matzoh had been opened, broken up, and dumped all over my bed. I was told to report to the captain’s office.
“Captain, I found the box of matzoh that my mother sent me destroyed, and the contents were dumped on my bed. I was told to report to you.”
“That’s right. You knew that it was against regulations to store food in your footlocker.”
“But that was my food for Passover! My mother sent it because I can’t eat bread next week.”
“That’s your problem. You broke the rules.”
“Couldn’t you have just confiscated it? Couldn’t you have put it somewhere else, instead of breaking it all?”
“That’s it, private! You’ve got KP duty next week. Dismissed!” KP meant kitchen police, referring to soldiers assigned to help in the kitchen. As peeling potatoes and hauling tons of garbage is not exactly an elite job, KP duty was commonly used as a punishment.
In our barracks, Friday night was the time to scrub the place clean. When I asked for permission to go to my chapel services, the captain refused my request, implying that I was pulling the religion card to get out of the cleaning. I offered to make up the work, but he still refused to let me go.
According to regulations, Christians were off on Sunday so they could attend church, and Jews were permitted to go to Friday night services. Going to these services was the only Jewish experience open to me in the army, and since boyhood, I had loved going to shul. I knew that it was my right to go to the services of my faith, so I went to the major, the battalion commander. Again, I offered to give up passes, to take on extra work. The major was startled and puzzled by my desperate entreaties. “You have the right to worship,” he said gently, “without having to offer anything in return. Your commanding officer must know that. Here,” he said, signing a paper, “take this order to your captain.”
The captain was furious! From then on, he gave me extra guard duty and found fault with everything I did. He was trying to break me, trying to get me to give up Friday night services—but that was my little bit of Shabbos, and I wasn’t going to let anyone take it from me.
Yes, we Jews had our rights at Camp Cooke, but that didn’t eradicate the sentiments around us. On one particular occasion, the entire camp was gathered for an update on current events when a soldier stood up and asked, “Why are we going into battle, risking our lives, while the Jews make money off this war?” He was allowed to continue, piling on more anti-Semitic statements, totally unchallenged. The blithe answer was, “That’s not for us to say; we have a job to do.”
There was no negation of the “facts” implied in the question, no denial, nor censure of the soldier’s attitude. I was burning.
Outside, after the session, I took a long look at the questioner. He was a surly guy and looked tough, but I decided to confront him anyway. I gave him a piece of my mind, and fists flew. The captain came out and saw the scuffle, broke it up, and noted the bloody nose I had given the other guy. The “victim” got a sympathetic pat on the back and went free. For me: more KP.
After everyone had left, a soldier came up to me and whispered, “For what it’s worth, I feel for you because I’m Jewish too,” adding hastily, “but nobody knows it.” I realized he had been able to hide his identity because his last name sounded Italian.
“Why do you hide it?” I challenged him.
“It’s better for me this way,” he answered furtively. “It’s just better.”
I surmise that there were many such “Marranos” in the military in those days. Ethnic pride had not yet evolved in the melting pot that was America in the 1940s. Being a Jew bore a stigma in many circles, and most people just wanted to blend in. At best, your Star of David was worn under your shirt, or simply carried in your heart.
There’s another little postscript to this story. When we arrived in France, the “tough guy” shot himself in the leg (he said, “by accident”) and he never did have to go into battle.
Even normal, fair treatment for Private Goldstein was beyond my favorite officer’s ken, and he discriminated in many unanticipated ways. Take the target competition, for instance. Back in 1944—before computers!—to aim a tank’s gun, you had to estimate distance visually and then adjust the sight. Tank training included target practice, and for some reason, we ASTP guys excelled at this. Accuracy testing included everyone, including tank commanders, and the object was to see how many shells it took you to hit the target. To motivate the men, prizes were offered, and test results were posted on the bulletin board for all to see. And what prize did a soldier want most? A three-day pass!
How excited I was when I saw that I had scored the highest, even surpassing the officers. I promptly strode over to the captain’s office to collect my prize. “No pass!” he hissed, and threw me out with a barrage of nasty names.
I didn’t go over his head this time. I figured he was baiting me so I would do something wrong: then he could have me court-martialed. I didn’t play his little game. I sure could have used the pass, though. During all the months of training, he had denied me all requests for furlough.
But when I got my orders to go overseas, I knew I was entitled to a furlough for a visit home. I really wanted that furlough. I knew my mother would be waiting to see me before I left, that she would treasure our time together. I wanted to be able to tell her I loved her, that I’d be ok, that I’d be back. But even now, the captain said no, no furlough. My blood boiled. He had no right to keep me from seeing my family before going into battle! I knew the army regulations, and I went over his head to get my rightful pass. I didn’t care if later I would have to pay for his displeasure. I went back to Denver to say goodbye.
As it happened, I returned the week of Max’s Bar Mitzvah. I requested an extended leave so I could stay for Shabbos and celebrate with my family. Request denied. Resigned to the dictates of war, the whole family accompanied me to the train station to say goodbye. I hugged each one and kissed Mother, assuring her that I would be back soon. She gave me a long, sorrowful look.
Since I could not stay for Max’s Bar Mitzvah, I did the next best thing: I wrote a letter to Max, loaded with sage advice from a big brother. Many years later, when we were both grown and had children and grandchildren of our own, I discovered that Max had cherished that letter his whole life.
CHAPTER 3
Going Overseas
MY DIVISION WAS DECLARED COMBAT READY, and our days in the States were drawing to a close. Most of the men had been training for close to two years. At the time that the division had been formed, in August 1942, General Rommel was threatening the Suez Canal, Cairo, and the Allied supply line in the Middle East. The new division was formed to meet the challenge, and it would signal the increasing role of armor in the Army’s upcoming campaigns. Thousands of young recruits had been sent to Camp Polk, Louisiana, for the rigorous and tireless training. After eight months the 11th Armored Division was sent to Camp Barkley, Te
xas, for yet more training and then to the Mojave Desert of California, where desert battle conditions were simulated. From there, they were transferred to Camp Cooke for organizational training and to polish their battle skills.
Unlike the well-trained core of the division, the ASTP soldiers, myself included, had been rushed through just five months of training. But that didn’t matter. The war needed men, hundreds of thousands of men, to meet a vicious and seemingly unstoppable enemy. Ironically, despite its desert training, the 11th Armored was slated to take part in a huge campaign in Western Europe.
On August 12, 1944, we received orders to go to Camp Kilmer in New Jersey, our point of embarkation. My Division left Camp Cooke in September. To confuse the enemy, the battalion was divided into two groups taking different railroad routes through the country. Our company traveled through the South. The first morning, we got out of the train in Arizona for calisthenics, and I enjoyed an unexpected pleasure: the sun was rising over the Painted Desert, and it was a beautiful sight to behold. We traveled through New Mexico and Texas during an intense heat wave. At each train stop, the townspeople would be waiting with ice-cold lemonade and other treats for us. The wonderful unity and warmth that they felt toward their servicemen was exhibited everywhere across America. I doubt that we will ever again experience such unanimity in our country. The trip took six days and nights, and we finally arrived at Camp Kilmer.
We received M4 Sherman training in California’s Mojave Desert but would end up serving in wintery Western Europe. Official U.S. Army Photo
Orders were issued that every division member should have the opportunity to visit New York City. My father’s family lived in Brooklyn, and I realized that I would have time to pay them a visit before shipping out.
I had been to New York as a very young child, when Father had gone east with Jerry and me to see his family. It had taken two days to get there by train, and we stayed a month. I was overwhelmed by the swirl of grandparents, uncles, aunts, and cousins who seemed to know all about me, though I had never met them before. Zaidy Goldstein had been the biggest surprise of all. A small man with round glasses, he had come from Russia after a stay in Ireland. And he looked like an Irishman too, with blond hair and blues eyes, which my father inherited. Though my father’s given name was Max, he was nicknamed Murph growing up on the Lower East Side of New York. The nickname stuck for the rest of his life.
Though I had barely met Father’s family, they proved to be particularly loving and kind to us after Father’s death. Highlighting my childhood were the many packages that would come for us from the Goldsteins of New York, and what wonders they contained: sports equipment, new clothes, food and candy of all kinds—gifts that told us time and again that Father’s family was thinking of us, that they would never abandon Murph’s boys.
So much time had passed since I had last seen them. In the interim, my grandparents had died, but I was anxious to reunite with the rest of this big, boisterous, welcoming family once again. I decided to surprise them. Finding my way to New York City, I took the Brighton Beach Express subway from Times Square to Brooklyn and found my grandparents’ house on East Seventeenth Street. Now living in my grandparents’ home were my father’s married sister Dora, her husband Al, and their two children, along with unmarried Uncle Phil and unmarried Aunt Libby.
Surrounded by loving uncles, aunts, and cousins (I am at the center, in uniform), it was hard to believe that I would soon be fighting for my life on a battlefield somewhere in Europe.
I rang the bell and waited. When Uncle Phil answered the door, there was a second or two of shocked silence as he took in the uniformed lad grinning down at him. Then came the joyful shout, “Ivan’s here!” Everyone came running, crowding around me in a huge, tearful embrace.
Ivan’s here! Word went out, and within a half hour, the whole family had bustled into the house. It was a wonderful and nostalgic reunion that lasted late into the night and continued the next day. That day was to be the last carefree day in my life for quite awhile.
Yom Kippur, September 27, 1944: Jews everywhere in the world are pouring out their hearts to the Almighty Judge, the only power great enough to stop the merciless Nazi butchers. Men and women in concentration camps, broken by labor and starvation, pray silently, straining to remember the holy words, even as their tormentors force them to work yet harder on that day. Soldiers on the front, mothers and fathers back home, religious and nonreligious, rabbis and renegades, all weep and try to muster strength. And yes, Ivan Goldstein is praying.
Just before Yom Kippur eve, we were told that our division could ship out at a moment’s notice. We were therefore confined to barracks, so that the entire division could be mobilized quickly. The only exception was permission for us to go to the mess hall at mealtimes. I realized that the mess hall was next to the chapel and that the Kol Nidrei service would be starting there soon, marking the beginning of the twenty-four-hour fast. I reasoned that since I wouldn’t be going to eat in the mess hall, I should be able to attend the Yom Kippur services instead. My buddy, Jules Levine, didn’t see it that way. “We’re confined to barracks, Ivan,” he countered. “If they give the order to move out and you’re anywhere but in the barracks or mess hall, you could probably be court-martialed!” But going to the chapel on Yom Kippur was really important to me: so important that I cajoledJules into cooperating. “If the order is given, you just run over and tell me. I’ll be back before anyone misses me.” He reluctantly agreed, and I went to services that night, and again the next day, poised to bolt to the barracks if I so much as saw Jules enter the chapel.
It was worth the risk, for I knew that my time of trial had come, that I was to face an enemy that was daring, desperate and hated me as both an American soldier and as a Jew. They would do all they could to vanquish this Jew along with the rest. Keenly aware of the danger before me, I was moved by the mournful, sobering liturgy, “On this day it is decreed, who shall live, and who shall die. . . .” But with the optimism of youth, I didn’t allow myself to contemplate the horrors of war. I would go over there and do my best. The rest was up to God.
Right after Yom Kippur was over, the chaplain handed out boxed meals. Jewish women in the area, filled with compassion for the Jewish soldiers, had sent meals on which we could break our fast. The chicken dinner I received was fabulous, and I wrote to the woman who had prepared it to tell her how much it meant to me.
No sooner had I eaten than the order came for us to ship out. I was ready. We were rushed off the base and taken to New York. I stood on the deck of the ship, watching the harbor slip away. Our division was on two ships, the British HMS Samaria and the American USS Hermitage, each holding approximately five thousand men. When we left during the night, we had no idea that we were part of a massive military convoy. When dawn broke and we looked out over the sea, we realized that our ship was just one of a huge convoy of forty-eight American and British ships.
Ever since the successful invasion of Normandy on D-Day, June 6, 1944, Allied troops had been pushing the German occupation of Western Europe farther and farther back. But reinforcements were needed, and fresh artillery and airborne divisions had to be moved into place to finish off the stubborn enemy. The massive armada pulling out of New York was bound for Normandy, a trip that should have been a three- to four-day Atlantic crossing. But the Germans were well aware of us, and their U-boats dogged our ships, persistently trying to delay the inevitable landing. It took fourteen days to reach the European shore.
Six days out, however, the ship’s captain informed us that because of heavy damage, the port at Normandy could not be used to unload the massive tanks of our division. My ship, the HMS Samaria, was diverted to Liverpool, and the Hermitage landed in Southampton. All the other ships of the convoy carried on to Normandy.
We stayed in England from mid-October until December 20, building up our physiques through hours of training, long hikes, and endless exercise. The sweat was worth it, though, for I left England stronge
r than I had ever been. I have no doubt that the strength and stamina I developed helped preserve my life during the trials that were to come.
A small incident comes to mind, insignificant maybe, but one that I enjoy remembering. As I had become known to my buddies as an artist, they often asked me to draw cartoons on their letters to give the folks back home a little laugh. In the military, all mail was censored before it went back to the States, and since my captain was our censor, he couldn’t help noticing the cartoons.
One day, he called me into his office and remarked affably, “I had no idea you had such talent! I’d like you to draw a cartoon on my letter home.” “I only do that for my friends,” I answered.
Then I turned and left him with his letter dangling from his hand. Revenge? Maybe, but it sure felt good. I never claimed to be a tzaddik (a righteous person).
During occasional light moments like that, it was easy to forget that there was a war going on. But the war was real, very real to the citizens of Great Britain. Until I visited London, I had no idea how great the toll of war could be on a civilian population. When we had time off, my friends and I would go to see shows in this grand metropolis. London seemed to be the height of civilization; propriety ruled, and the orderliness of British society was grounded with a sense of security—until the Germans attacked.
Despite the mandatory blackouts, when the entire city went almost miraculously dark, the German V2 rockets found their targets. The V2 was the newest long-range German rocket. It carried two thousand pounds of explosives and took only minutes to reach its target from mobile launchers in Holland. The V2 was especially feared because it could not be shot down once it was in flight. No matter where you were, when the air raid sirens wailed, you ran for the bomb shelter as fast as you could, because the rocket could be over your head any second. Crowded into the shelters, we could hear the rockets come shrieking through the night, followed by loud explosions, and we could only imagine what devastation we would find when we emerged. It was too much for a Denver boy, but I was emboldened by the palpable determination of the Brits.
Surviving the Reich Page 3