Early one morning, as he lay wrapped in a blanket on deck, half asleep, Victor heard a commotion. He joined other passengers at the crowded railing to watch as the ship entered the waters of New York Harbor. Visible off in the distance were the skyscrapers of Manhattan, and he could also make out the Statue of Liberty. He knew the statue from the smaller replica, which stood on a little island where the Seine wound its way through Paris. He had learned in school that the statue in New York’s harbor was a gift from France, commemorating the American and French revolutions and symbolizing the friendship between the two nations. The famous, copper-robed mademoiselle holding the torch lighting the way to freedom made Victor feel at home.
Victor Brombert’s father, Jacob, aboard the freighter Navemar, overloaded with more than a thousand refugees, most of them Jews escaping the Nazis, September 1941. (Family photograph)
After the ship docked in Brooklyn on September 12, 1941, Victor and his parents stood in a long line to disembark, waiting while immigration and health officials processed the departing passengers. Victor, Jacob, and Vera were told that the local newspapers had referred to the Navemar as a “floating concentration camp,” bringing Jews out of Nazi-occupied Europe. Its long-awaited arrival was greeted by officials, photographers, reporters, and joyous relatives.*
His parents found a tenth-floor apartment to rent on West 72nd Street, near Riverside Drive. They quickly wearied of complete strangers congratulating them on their good fortune in being allowed to enter the United States. They were also confronted with endless questions about what had happened in France in the summer of 1940. “Why didn’t the French fight the Germans better?” they were asked again and again.
And they faced an even tougher question, too: “How did you get out when others can’t?” It was a question Victor thought about himself, often. He knew a degree of luck had played a role, but only to a point. In all the adventure stories he had read—The Three Musketeers was a favorite—the heroes fit a certain mold: dashing looks, skill with weaponry, superhuman strength. His father had none of those qualities, yet he was the real hero in their story. Time and again, he had invented escape routes. When one didn’t pan out, he found another. His tenacity, courage, and intelligence had saved them. Jacob was a meek man, but he was not weak. His heroic perseverance got his family out of Nazi-occupied Europe under the most difficult and dangerous circumstances.
Although the fall semester had already started, Victor received late acceptance to Harrisburg Academy, an elite boarding school in the heart of Pennsylvania, on the banks of the Susquehanna River. It was his first time living away from home. Much to his surprise, academic success came easily. The French educational system had prepared him well. He was soon made captain of the tennis team, and enjoyed excursions and cookouts with other students in the nearby pinewoods. As a Jewish refugee who had escaped from Nazi Europe, Victor became a minor celebrity among the teachers and students. He stood out; this was a campus that held Christmas assemblies at which students sang “Jingle Bells” and began each regular daily assembly with a prayer. Widely traveled, handsome, erudite, and with a charming French accent, he became popular on campus.
Victor was soon invited to be a special guest at a Republican women’s club luncheon. When he entered the banquet room, he saw that all the ladies looked alike. They wore white gloves and small hats, which partially concealed the bluish tint of their hair. Their faces were wrinkled but smiling broadly at him. The star attraction at his table, Victor answered many questions. It became apparent that, while the ladies remained polite, they did not believe his descriptions of the war in Europe. He told them about the Nazis, their policies of hatred, the concentration camps like Dachau, their planes machine-gunning fleeing civilians on the highways of France, the disgrace of the armistice and of the pro-Nazi Vichy government, the zeal of the French police in rounding up Jews, and the shameful deportations.
The ladies’ smiles began to fade.
When the club president introduced Victor and asked him to come up front and say a few words to the group, he began by saying how grateful he was to be safe with his family in America. He saw only big smiles now: this was exactly what those assembled wanted to hear. Then he added, “I very much hope this country will get in the war and help defeat Hitler.”
The smiles, even the polite ones, vanished.
By the time Victor sat down, he had the uneasy feeling that he had committed a social faux pas. While they had been professing interest in world affairs, these educated ladies clearly did not want to face the realities of the war that had overtaken Europe and threatened millions of its people. They acted as if Victor, given his youth, was misinformed or exaggerating. For the first time, Victor began to understand the power of the American “isolationism” he had read about. Whether it was a matter of having their heads stuck in the sand, these ladies and many other Americans had no desire for the U.S. to intervene in the war in Europe. The lukewarm reception he received did not alter Victor’s thinking or change the opinions that he expressed in and out of school. He had seen too much to stay silent.
Japan’s surprise attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, was the most exciting event to occur during Victor’s year at Harrisburg Academy. As word of the attack spread through the corridors, dormitories, and classrooms, he found himself wondering how the outbreak of war in the Pacific would impact Europe. When Germany declared war on the United States a few days later, Victor found reason for renewed hope. With U.S. military involvement, he was certain that Nazi Germany would eventually be defeated and his beloved France would be liberated, along with the rest of occupied Europe.
Victor graduated a few months later with the highest standing in his class and delivered the valedictorian speech. He covered much of what he had said at the ladies’ lunch, speaking of the need to defeat Hitler, crush Nazism, and liberate Europe, but instead of being dismissed as a warmonger, the crowd of students, parents, and instructors hung on his every word. Rousing applause stopped him more than once. He realized later that he had hardly said anything about Japan and its surprise attack on the U.S. fleet. The Pacific wasn’t Victor’s war.
America’s war with Hitler and Nazi Germany was his own, and he very much wanted to be part of it.
PART
TWO
We were fighting an American war, and we were also fighting an intensely personal war. We were in it with every fiber of our being. We worked harder than anyone could have driven us. We were crusaders. This was our war.
—GÜNTHER “GUY” STERN
4
CAMP RITCHIE
Former Dachau inmate Martin Selling, still waiting for a visa to get into America, had been at the refugee camp in Kent, England, for only two months before Europe went to war.
The United Kingdom declared war on Germany in the wake of Hitler’s invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939. Immediately, Martin and the thousand other German Jews at the camp were classified as “enemy aliens.” This was a common practice among nations at war, carried out because the refugees had been born within an enemy country in which they still held citizenship. Most in the camp, like Martin, were single men who had been released from Nazi concentration camps on the proviso that they immediately leave Germany.
What surprised Martin was not Germany’s armed aggression, but the sense of security the British maintained in the insular environment of their island nation. Most Britons seemed shocked by the outbreak of war. Only a year had passed since British prime minister Neville Chamberlain signed an agreement allowing Germany to annex parts of Czechoslovakia—a nation sacrificed in a vain attempt to satisfy Hitler—returned from Munich, and declared “peace in our time.” Martin could have told anyone who thought such appeasements would keep Hitler at bay that he or she was badly mistaken. He had seen the streets of Germany filled with tanks, military hardware, and goose-stepping parades; he had witnessed the fierce determination with which Hitler marched his country toward war; and he knew firsthand the Nazis’ d
etermination to impose their will.
The Kitchener Refugee Camp was situated on a former army base on England’s southeastern tip. After the war started, security tightened. The refugees who were now enemy aliens were required to reside at the camp until they emigrated elsewhere. They could move freely only within five miles of Kitchener, and had to return each night. Traveling greater distances required the permission of local police, which was often withheld.
After Britain entered the war, Martin noticed, refugees stopped arriving at the camp. He understood what this meant: that countless more Jews would now be trapped in Nazi-occupied Europe, unable to get out even if they had visas to other countries. If his own departure from Germany had been delayed by even two more months, he would have been among them. It was a sobering thought.
No heating had been installed in Kitchener’s old barracks, each of which was divided into two rooms with twelve double bunk beds and little else, not even chairs. Every bunk had a mattress, a pillow, and a wool army blanket, surplus from World War I. Refugees were allowed one suitcase; the rest of their belongings were kept in a warehouse. Sanitary facilities were primitive, and there was no hot water in the washrooms. Many men complained about the food, but after Dachau, Martin considered the meals a vast improvement.
Their conversations in German always turned heads, and some locals made it clear that they were not welcome in nearby towns. But soon, the British military decided to put their native language skills to use for the war effort. The Nazis were believed to be using commercial radio stations on the continent to send messages to U-boats offshore and to spies in England. A British army unit came into camp and set up twenty large radio receivers in one of the barracks, connecting them to a bank of Dictaphones, which could be switched on to record suspicious talk. Teams of refugees monitored the receivers, each of which was set to a different German-language radio station.
Though Martin was eager to help out and immediately volunteered, it didn’t take him long to see that the operation had some major shortcomings. First, the volunteers weren’t told what they should be listening for and recording. The British suspected that the enemy was using some type of code, but the refugees weren’t given any help in figuring out what it might be. A verse from a song or a poem, or a string of numbers? More importantly, they weren’t allowed to raise antennas any higher than the tops of the low barracks, which severely limited their range.
A British army lieutenant oversaw the listening detail. Billeted at a hotel in town, the officer, who had learned some German in school, had a receiver installed in his room. Since it had a much higher antenna, set atop the peaked roof of the hotel, he got better reception and received stations the refugees could not pick up in camp. It wasn’t long before he became frustrated by the refugees’ lack of results; when they pointed out the problems caused by the lack of antenna height, their concerns were dismissed. Despite the best efforts of Martin and the other volunteers, the situation turned acrimonious. It was clear that they were not trusted because they were Germans, and the operation was closed down.
Before departing Germany, while he could still pay in Reichmarks, Martin had bought an open-ended Cunard–White Star Line ticket from England to New York. It was a purchase he would have been unable to make after emigrating, given the laws against taking money out of Germany. In the refugee camp, he had very little cash, but it almost didn’t matter: the steamship ticket to America was much more valuable.
Early in the new year, after long, agonizing years of waiting, Martin’s immigration quota number finally came up, and he went to the U.S. consulate in London to get his visa. On January 30, 1940, the British shipping company honored his ticket, and he boarded the MV Georgic at Liverpool. This was one of the ship’s last Atlantic crossings carrying civilians; it was soon requisitioned by the military for troopship duties.
Martin arrived in New York ten days later. His twin brother, Leopold, and his uncle, Julius Laub, with whom he had been arrested during Kristallnacht, met him dockside. Both had made it to America a few months earlier and were living in a rooming house in Newark, New Jersey. Julius had been unable to find a job, but Leopold, who had been born with a clubfoot, worked in a bakery for a dollar a day and all the stale doughnuts he could carry home, which was often the men’s main meal. Martin found a job in a dry cleaning store, then got a better-paying job in a machine shop for forty cents an hour.
Martin was pleased to have the job and relieved that he did not have to work as a tailor, a trade he had hated in Germany. Nevertheless, at times he felt forlorn and disoriented, especially when he became lost in the bewildering maze of the New York subway system. With limited English, he struggled with signage and directions. His knowledge of the United States, its people, its culture, and its geography was rudimentary, and he was perplexed by the differences between the Old and New Worlds. Going into a bank to cash his paycheck or to the post office to mail a letter required that he ask for instructions, which were often unintelligible to him. Self-serve stores were a brand-new experience, and he was certain if he picked up an item off a shelf, he would be arrested for shoplifting. He was stymied whenever he tried to use a phone booth. The nickel kept plopping back into the coin receptacle without his call going through, and as he tried to figure things out there was usually someone banging loudly on the door for him to finish up.
One day, Martin overheard another worker talking about night school. He expressed interest, and the man told him about Newark Technical School, a college that would later become part of Rutgers University. Martin went to find out about enrolling. He had ten years of schooling, which in Germany was the equivalent of a U.S. high school education. The registrar was patient with Martin’s halting explanations in his poor English and allowed him to enroll. For the next two years, Martin attended classes four evenings a week while working full-time. He had to put in many hours of studying to improve his English, but he sailed through his science and math courses with ease.
After the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, and Germany declared war on the United States four days later, bringing America, which had been neutral, into the European conflict, Martin became an enemy alien for the second time. Still, he did not view the widening war or his own situation with any sense of dread. He had hoped for several years that America would involve itself militarily in Europe, believing it the only way to stop Hitler and the Nazis. And filled with a vengeance since those dark days of his captivity at Dachau, Martin was more than ready to join the fight.
He was now twenty-two and eligible for the draft as a noncitizen resident, but he did not wait to get a letter from Selective Service. Instead, Martin went to the Army Air Corps recruiting office in Newark. Unlike most of the eager young men crowded into the room, when he reached the front of the line he told the recruiters that he did not want to be a pilot.
“I want to be a bombardier,” Martin explained, “so I can drop bombs on German targets.” Suspicious of his German accent, the recruiters treated it as a big joke when they found out he was an enemy alien.
Four months later, Martin received a notice to appear before his draft board. He was the first at work to be called up, and his coworkers were so convinced he would be leaving right away that they gave him a farewell party and some small gifts. But the next day, he was back at work, embarrassed and disappointed, having been rejected again: this time, his immigration papers were not in order.
Three months later, Martin was notified that all his papers had been located, and he was ordered to come in for a physical examination. Asked by the doctor whether he had suffered any recent illnesses or injuries, Martin described his months of maltreatment at Dachau. After completing the physical, the doctor patted him on the shoulder.
“Considering what you went through,” he said, “you are in fine shape.”
The draftees who passed their physical exams were told they could take a week to get their personal affairs in order before reporting for duty. Martin stepped forward an
d asked if he could waive the waiting period. After the embarrassment of his previous call-up, he didn’t want to return to the machine shop and face his coworkers. That day, he shipped out to Fort Dix, New Jersey.
Martin’s main accomplishments on his first day at Fort Dix were finding where the meals were served—called the “chow hall”—and claiming an empty bunk for the night. In the morning, the new arrivals were issued ill-fitting fatigues and given a battery of tests. The next day, they were assigned to different branches for their training—infantry, armored, etc. Martin scored well on the tests and asked for the air corps, still hoping to drop bombs on Germany. This was impossible, he was told; his enemy-alien status rendered him unfit for any type of weapons training. Assigned to the medical corps, he was sent to Camp Pickett, Virginia, for twelve weeks of basic training.
Martin was furious and disgusted, even humiliated, at the idea of being excluded from fighting in the war. He hadn’t joined the U.S. Army during a time of global warfare against Hitler and the Nazis only to serve as a noncombatant.
On his first day at Camp Pickett, he and the other recruits were screened for any experiences or special qualifications related to the medical field. Martin, still seething, told the army doctor who interviewed him that he was in the medical corps only because he had been born in Germany and the army didn’t trust him with a gun. He was a Jew who had been interned at Dachau, he added with a sharp edge. He wanted to face the Nazis on the battlefield.
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