I reflected on this phenomenon. Out of the four of us—Urda, Kessler, Lozano and me—I was the only one to live out my life free of long-term psychiatric results and had kept all of my mental faculties. True, I had suffered some trauma, but it was nothing compared to the endless hell my friends went through. I remembered my heartfelt prayers during those maddening three days in the cattle car: “Please, don’t let me lose my sanity!” At the time, I gave thanks for the short-term answer to my plea. Could an earnest prayer have a lifelong effect?
While in Denver back in the summer of 1998, I had also called Greg and Helen Urda, Andy’s son and widow. They were very enthusiastic about the finding of the Barracuda and said that they were planning to attend the 11th Armored Division convention in Kentucky that year. They urged me to come. I was a little reluctant, falling back on my own studied indifference to the war and its memories. I had only been to one such gathering, and that was fifty-one years earlier. But June and I hadn’t seen the Urdas in over twenty years, so we decided to take in the convention on our way back to Israel.
The former ASTP students assigned to Company B, 41st Tank Battalion, developed a close friendship that is still going strong. Pictured here at the 11th Armored Division Reunion in 2005 (left to right) are Ted Hartman, Jules Levine, me, and Wayne Van Dyke.
I was not sorry that I went to the reunion, for I met there another close friend, Wayne Van Dyke. I had not seen him since our first day in battle, fifty-four years before. The first sergeant of our company, Lynwood Ammonds, and his wife, Doris, were also there. What a nostalgic get-together that was, this time with our wives, pictures of our children, and five decades worth of stories to tell.
In the year 2000, two years after my first visit to Bastogne, Roger Marquet called again to invite me to another ceremony, this time commemorating fifty-five years since the end of the war in Europe. In light of the history I had provided to them, a special plaque would be attached to the Barracuda, along with the insignia of the 11th Armored Division. The event would welcome veterans of the 11th and especially family members of the tank’s crew. This time, I felt no hesitation. I told Roger that June and I would be honored and happy to attend.
After the tank ceremony (left to right): Ellen and Greg Urda, Alene Urda, Helen Urda, and June and Ivan Goldstein. My warm friendship with the Urda family has continued long beyond Andy’s passing. In 2006, at the 11th Armored Association reunion, Greg brought his cello and asked me for a few moments of my time. We went into another room. “This is for you,” he said softly, and then played his gift—a beautiful arrangement of the Israeli anthem, “Hatikvah.”
We called Roger the night we got to Bastogne, and he said that he would meet us at the tank in the morning. Did I detect a slight chuckle in his voice? After breakfast, as we walked toward the tank, another figure was crossing the square, and it wasn’t Roger. As the man approached, to my great surprise and elation, I recognized the familiar face of my old friend, Ted Hartman. Another ASTP comrade, Ted was a tank driver in the 11th Armored. Fifty-six years had passed since our tanks were separated during that day in battle, and we had not seen each other since just after the war. After a warm embrace, he told me that he had picked up the dedication story on the Internet and came to Bastogne to surprise me. Over the next few days, we shared the stories of our lives and families. The Barracuda had reunited us. The Urdas and my ASTP foursome in Company B of the 41st Battalion, including Ted, Jules Levine, and Wayne Van Dyke, pledged to get together every year, for as long as we are able.
The plaque dedication ceremony at the tank pulled together a number of veterans and family members of the 11th Armored Division. Letters were read from family members of Alexander, Peterman, and Hebert. The square was filled with city and government officials and citizens from the area. Again, there were special ceremonies for three days, with huge crowds attending. Most important and personally moving to me was that Helen Urda and two of Andy’s children, Greg and Alene, were there with us. How proud Andy would have been. He would have savored this day and appreciated the recognition bestowed upon us.
The pigsty where we were locked up after being captured.
After the tank program, a group of the participants and media personnel traveled up to the Lhoas farm and the field where the Barracuda was stopped, for a retelling of our story. My unanswered question from our trip two years earlier still nagged me: “Where was the small stable that we were taken to after being captured?” I broke away from the group and wandered away from the farmhouse. All of a sudden, I spied a small brick shed across the driveway. I had not noticed it the last time. I tried the door, but it was locked. Could this be the little barn in which we were locked up that first night? I asked Roger to get the key to the door. The minute the door swung open, the memory of that night came rushing back to me. This was it! Mrs. Lhoas told me later that the small building had been a pigsty before the war, but it was now a tool shed. The mystery was solved. All my recollections were now confirmed in hard brick.
The Pierlot family, grandchildren of Mr. Denis, who owned the meadow, invited us to their home and spent the evening with us and the Urda family. All the children and grandchildren, as well as other family members, had been gathered to meet us. With their son-in-law as interpreter, we discussed those harrowing war years and its impact on all of us. The family expressed, over and over, their eternal gratitude to the Americans for their liberation from the Nazis. Once again, they treated me like the American ambassador.
Epilogue
Looking Back, Looking Forward
I BEGAN MY STORY WITH what started as a beautiful day in Denver, December 7, 1941, a date that is indelibly engraved in the memory of every American who lived during that time. Our lives and our memories are filled with landmarks in time: personal, family, national, and religious dates. I now conclude my book with three special dates that occur in a one-week period.
Today, as I write my final chapter, it is a gorgeous day in Jerusalem. The date is May 2, 2008. Outside, it is quiet. The time is approaching 10:00 a.m. The silence is broken by the wail of a siren, sending out a piercing cry throughout the entire country of Israel. Every child and adult stops what he or she is doing and stands erect in silence. I am looking out from my balcony window toward the Knesset, the main street below, and the park across the street. Vehicles have stopped moving; drivers and occupants stand beside them. Pedestrians on the street and people in the park are standing motionless as the siren continues. The day is Yom Hashoa, Holocaust Remembrance Day, the day designated to remember and pay homage to the six million Jewish victims who perished through Nazi barbarism during one of the blackest periods in mankind’s history. For twenty-four hours, all forms of entertainment stop. Television programs shut down, except for news and programs related to the Holocaust. This type of memorial is unique in the whole world and recalls the history of persecution and slaughter that our nation has endured since its very beginnings.
The second of the three days is May 7, Yom Hazikaron, Remembrance Day. We remember and honor the soldiers and citizens who have lost their lives in the constant wars waged in the sixty years since Israel became a state. On the night of May 7 and through the next day, we will change our somber mood to one of great joy, celebration, and gratitude. Israel will celebrate the Jewish people’s return to its homeland after two thousand years, and the establishment of a sovereign Jewish state—Yom Haatzmaut, Independence Day.
It is very significant to me that in 2008 the Hebrew date of Israel’s Independence Day falls on the Gregorian calendar date of May 8. This is V-E Day, the anniversary of the end of World War II in Europe, the date that Nazi Germany was defeated sixty-three years ago.
The establishment of the State of Israel is inextricably tied to the ashes and the souls of six million victims and the many survivors of the Holocaust. During the sixty years since Israel’s establishment, its enemies have initiated fierce wars aimed at Israel’s destruction. Despite this ongoing attack by its Arab neighbors, this
little democracy has developed into a veritable paradise. Israel has been in the forefront of the world’s technological research in electronics, medicine, agriculture, and other fields, as well as excelling in the arts. This amazing country with its tiny piece of land has one of the world’s greatest armies.
In two months, with God’s help, June and I, together with our children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, will celebrate our sixtieth wedding anniversary, along with Israel’s sixtieth anniversary. As I look back on my life, I am forever thankful to my mother’s Partner for a life of deliverance, good health, success, children, grandchildren, greatgrandchildren, and the most wonderful wife imaginable. These are my greatest blessings. As I look toward the future, I hope and pray that God’s countenance will shine upon us and guide us to a time when man will learn to live in peace.
Appendix
Family Lore
MY GREAT-GRANDPARENTS on my mother’s maternal side, Moshe Yitzchak and Fega Goodstein, came from London to America with six young children around the year 1870. They traveled across America in a covered wagon, settling in Denver, Colorado. This was before Colorado became a state.
My grandmother Taube Esther was the third of the Goodstein’s six young children. My grandfather, my mother’s father, Abraham Greinetz, was born in Brest-Litovsk, a town on the Russian-Polish border. The name Greinetz means border. He set off from Brest-Litovsk to America by himself as a young teenager (probably to avoid serving in the Russian army). The date was in the late 1870s or early 1880s. He arrived in Denver, contacting relatives that left Brest-Litovsk before him. They changed their name from Greinetz to Grimes. The Goodstein and Greinetz families were among the earliest Jewish settlers in Colorado.
Abraham Greinetz and Taube Esther Goodstein were married in the late 1880s. This union produced eight children. Three of the children died at early ages. My mother, Ida Greinetz, was born in the year 1894, the third child of eight. My father, Max Goldstein, was the oldest of six children, born on the Lower East Side of New York to Zelig and Leah Goldstein, who came from the Polish-Russian area of Europe, via Ireland, to New York.
Max was born February 22, 1890. He was a blonde, blue-eyed, pug-nosed kid who took on the moniker “Murph,” a name that stuck with him the rest of his life. He loved the entertainment professions and theater life of New York. He made many friends and acquaintances among the actors and entertainers around the stage-door areas of the city.
One of his idols was Pat Rooney, the great soft-shoe tap dancer, whose routines he learned and imitated to perfection. Although he never took lessons, he learned to play the piano and harmonica by ear. One of his friends, who became a confidante, was the great actress Marie Dressler. Murph learned the diamond-setting trade, a career that he excelled in. On a trip to Denver from New York to visit an aunt, he met Ida Greinetz on a blind date. It was love at first sight for Murph. They were married in 1920 after a whirlwind romance and courtship.
According to my mother, it was one of the great love affairs, even though it was tragically cut short by Murph’s sudden and untimely death in 1930. Before the wedding, Ida took a trip to Brooklyn to meet the Goldstein family. A strong bond and love quickly developed from the time of this initial meeting between Ida and the entire Goldstein family. The same bond and love existed between Ida’s family and Murph.
Murph had taken a job with H. H. Clark Jewelers as a diamond setter but had the dream to open his own high-class jewelry store. He realized this dream a couple of years later, in 1922, with Murph and Ida working side by side at Murph’s Jewelry and Gift Shop.
Bibliography
Degive, Jacques, Robert Fergloute, and Roger Marquet. The “Sherman” at McAuliffe Square in Bastogne: The True Story. Bastogne, Belgium: Cercle d’Histoire de Bastogne, 1999.
Hartman, J. Ted. Tank Driver: With the 11th Armored from the Battle of the Bulge to VE Day. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2003.
First published in 2010 by Zenith Press, an imprint of MBI Publishing Company, 400 First Avenue North, Suite 300, Minneapolis, MN 55401 USA
Copyright © 2008, 2010 by Ivan Goldstein
Hardcover edition published in 2010. Digital edition 2010.
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Digital edition: 978-1-61060-076-7
Hardcover edition: 978-0-7603-3816-2
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Goldstein, Ivan, 1924-
Surviving the Reich : the World War II saga of a
Jewish-American GI / Ivan Goldstein.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-0-7603-3816-2 (hbk. w/jkt)
1. Goldstein, Ivan, 1924- 2. World War, 1939-1945–Personal narratives, Jewish. 3. World War, 1939-1945–Personal narratives, American. 4. World War, 1939-1945–Participation, Jewish. 5. Stalag XII A. 6. World War, 1939-1945–Prisoners and prisons, German. 7. Jewish soldiers–United States–Biography. 8. Jewish veterans–United States–Biography. 9. Goldstein, Ivan, 1924–Family. I. Title.
D811.G617 2010
940.54’7243092--dc22
[B]
2009036827
Designer: Diana Boger
Design Manager: Brenda C. Canales
Cover Design: Rob Johnson
CREDITS
On the cover: The gate of Stalag XII A guarded by Allied troops after the liberation. Allan Jackson/Keystone/Getty Images
On the back cover: M4 Sherman tanks in the snow during the Battle of the Bulge. Department of Defense
Printed in the United States of America
Surviving the Reich Page 14