Sons and Soldiers

by Bruce Henderson

  Although he had controlled his emotions while standing up to the threats and pressure put on him by the investigators from headquarters, the encounter left Martin furious for a long while. Hadn’t he and the other German-speaking interrogators proved their worth and loyalty yet? What did it take? He realized how easily the attack might have been called off for no good reason, and he knew it would only have resulted in his regiment losing the momentum gained by its recent advances. A delay would have given the enemy time to reorganize and strengthen their defenses, which could have meant more American casualties.

  In mid-December, the 35th Infantry moved into position near Haguenau, in the Alsace-Lorraine region of northeast France, fifteen miles from the German border. A bundle of maps were distributed with their new objectives, including the German city of Karlsruhe. But just two hours later, the maps were recalled, and the men were given word that they were being redeployed due to a surprise enemy offensive. They pulled back ninety miles to Metz, where they were resupplied, then dispatched north to help stop the German offensive through the Ardennes.

  It was snowing nonstop, and during a three-day drive on icy mountain roads in whiteout conditions, Martin’s only point of reference was a heavily loaded kitchen truck in front of their jeep. Arriving at their destination on New Year’s Day, the regiment was given the mission of clearing their sector of enemy troops, with little notion of how many troops there might be or where they were located. They immediately sent out the reconnaissance platoon to probe the area.

  Regimental headquarters was set up at a farm and the IPW team found shelter in an empty henhouse. Later that day, the reconnaissance platoon returned with their catch: ten German prisoners of war, one officer and nine enlisted men. Martin decided to start with the officer. In strutted a smartly dressed young captain who demanded to be officially presented in surrender to an officer of equal or superior rank.

  Martin explained that they had neither the time nor inclination to call out the regimental band to greet him, and considering that he was already a prisoner of war, any American soldier was his superior. Upon hearing Martin’s impeccable German, the captain realized to his horror that this wasn’t just an American who spoke German, but surely a native German who had immigrated to America. He castigated Martin as a traitor.

  Martin now dropped the hammer on the Nazi. He said it had been made extremely clear to him during Kristallnacht that as a Jew he was not German. Stiffening his tone, he added ominously that the same message had been beaten into him during his time as an inmate at Dachau. Can you imagine, Martin asked the captain, what would have happened to me at Dachau if I had confronted a concentration camp guard the way you are confronting me?

  The captain was livid with rage. It was a shame, he told Martin, that he had ever been released from Dachau.

  From the documents the captain carried, it was clear he had spent most of his nascent military career on administrative duty and had only recently been assigned to the front lines, where he indicated he had made a commitment to help win the war or die on the battlefield. As his capture had deprived him of those glorious options, he was now attempting to make up for his loss of face by insulting his Jewish interrogator. Martin nearly lost his temper more than once and wanted to slap the German for his insolence. But he held back. Getting angry would do no good. Instead, Martin remained icily calm.

  When the captain realized he had no choice but to deal with Martin, he supplied his name and rank. As a matter of pride he wanted to go on record that he had become separated from the rest of his unit and for three days had tried unsuccessfully to reestablish contact with them or other German troops. He and his men had only been captured because they had run out of food and ammunition.

  Martin knew it was not unusual for German soldiers, when they became separated from their units, to hunker down in one place or even hide from their own troops until they had the opportunity to be captured by the Americans. Then, to save face, they often made up stories of how hard they tried to look for their comrades. But Martin figured this Nazi zealot could be trusted to have scoured the area looking for German troops as he claimed, which meant if he could not find any, they must actually be gone. The captain had volunteered exactly the information Martin was looking for. At some point, he guessed the captain would realize the blunder he had made in his self-righteous rage, but by then it would be too late.

  To confirm what he had inferred from the captain’s testimony, Martin spoke to the captain’s men, who were not fans of their arrogant young leader. Sure enough, they talked freely about the days the captain had them marching aimlessly around the empty countryside looking for their own troops but finding none. Martin now had the confirmation he needed.

  The regimental staff was relieved to learn from Martin’s report that the immediate area was clear of German forces. They ordered units to extend their lines farther with greater speed and confidence. Martin’s outfit was soon on its way back toward the border for the final push into Germany that had been delayed by the Ardennes offensive, and he was excited to be part of it.

  Martin Selling could not wait for that day when he stepped on German soil as a U.S. Army soldier.

  After the 6th Armored Division’s swift advance across the Brittany peninsula, it pivoted eastward and cut across France. For Stephan Lewy and his OB team, it became an even faster-moving war. They were charged with keeping an updated operations map showing the location and strength of all enemy units in their immediate area. The division—part of Patton’s Third Army—moved so rapidly their latest military maps covered areas they had already left behind, and out of necessity they were using Michelin tour guides picked up in towns along the way.

  Additionally, Stephan constructed a large wall map using cardboard backing covered with sheets of acetate. He listened on the wireless to the nightly war news from England, France, and Germany in all three languages, then drew the reported positions of Allied and enemy forces so the command staff had a complete picture of the battle lines in Europe. General Grow often started his day with his nose up to the large map, and whenever Patton showed up he also stopped to ogle it, because he was interested in what lay hundreds of miles ahead.

  Stretched supply lines caused shortages of fuel for U.S. tanks and other vehicles, so the advance halted for days at a time to await truck deliveries from the rear. In spite of the fits and starts, the 6th had worked its way across the Belgian border by mid-December. It was poised south of the Ardennes to strike into the Saar region of southwestern Germany. After the surprise German offensive into the Ardennes, the division was ordered north to help defend the besieged city of Bastogne, where the 101st Airborne was encircled. On December 22, Brigadier General Anthony McAuliffe, acting division commander of the 101st, answered a German request for his surrender with a terse message back: “Nuts!”

  Four days later, the 6th, after making a ninety-degree turn to the north, entered the Battle of the Bulge. It rushed to the zone southeast of Bastogne, now under constant enemy artillery shelling. The Germans were massing a force estimated at six divisions to the east of Bastogne, but with the 6th suddenly at their flank, they were forced to reposition men, tanks, and artillery. On New Year’s Day, the 6th, which Patton called one of his two best armored divisions—along with the 4th, the other “twin engine” of the Third Army—launched an attack along its entire front. On that day, living up to Patton’s credo to always attack first, it was the lone U.S. division attacking the enemy, not just defending.

  Bastogne held, and by the second week of January 1945, it was clear that the Germans’ gamble in the Ardennes had failed. Suddenly fighting a rearguard action, they tried desperately to get as much of their armor, equipment, and troops as possible back across the Our River and behind the Siegfried Line to blunt the expected Allied invasion of Germany.

  Hordes of enemy prisoners were taken in the Ardennes. Stephan was assigned to accompany one, a German one-star general, back behind the lines. They transported him in a tank s
o he couldn’t be identified during transit, to avoid a possible rescue attempt. After delivering him to the Third Army’s sprawling POW cage, Stephan walked past where prisoners were devouring fresh eggs, fresh meat, and freshly baked bread. The men of the 6th had spent nearly two hundred consecutive days on the front lines, eating mostly cold K-rations. Stephan was disgusted that enemy prisoners were eating better than the GIs in the field who were doing the fighting. He was tempted, for a moment, to sit down and enjoy a hot meal. But given who his tablemates would be, he decided it wasn’t worth it.

  Stephan Lewy behind the wheel in northeastern France on the way to Bastogne, Belgium, October 1944. (Family photograph)

  Back with his division and in the crush of round-the-clock interrogations that often meant working forty-eight hours straight, Stephan found himself at a fold-up table in a large tent facing a German SS major who refused to say anything other than his name and rank.

  He had seen during recent interrogations that some Third Reich soldiers, far from considering themselves defeated, were prepared to put up a last-ditch fight to defend the Fatherland. We will throw them back into the ocean, the arrogant, big-mouthed apes from the New World, promised one unfinished letter found on a prisoner. They will not get into Germany. We will protect our wives and children from all enemy domination.

  But Stephan was exhausted. With no pretenses or niceties, he demanded to know the strength and location of the forces they faced. The officer, head held high, remained mute.

  Finally, Stephan stood, reached for his trenching tool for digging foxholes, and told the prisoner to follow him outside. After a short walk, Stephan, as he aimed his .45 pistol at the prisoner, threw the shovel on the ground.

  “Ein Loch graben,” Stephan said.

  The Nazi picked up the shovel and began digging as ordered.

  After a while, Stephan told him to make it deeper and longer.

  The prisoner did, without uttering a word.

  Stephan then told him to lie down in it to make sure it fit him, and the officer did so. He then climbed out and dusted himself off.

  Stephan handed him two wooden slats and told him to write his name and rank on one of them for the cross that would mark his grave.

  That was when the German broke and started talking.

  Later, Stephan thought about what he had done. Yes, he had secured tactical information about the enemy units they were fighting. But had the end justified the means? Probably not, he decided. He knew psychologically mistreating a prisoner was a court-martial offense. It was the only time he had done such a thing, and he never would again. He knew he had let his anger get the best of him, and he wasn’t proud of it.

  Like other Ritchie Boys, Stephan had been trained to detach himself from any personal and emotional aspects of interrogation. But as he faced the SS major that day, he could not shake the sense of haunting danger such men had instilled in him most of his life. Stephan realized that the closer he came to returning to Nazi Germany, the more pent-up resentment, and even rage, he was feeling.

  PART

  THREE

  We had heard rumors about the existence of camps. I didn’t know what to expect. I was afraid I might find my mother or sister among the dead.

  —MANFRED “MANNY” STEINFELD

  11

  THE CAMPS

  Even in early April 1945, few American civilians, or for that matter soldiers fighting the war in Europe, knew the name Buchenwald. It stood in a forest of beech trees for which it was named—Konzentrationslager Buchenwald, which meant Concentration Camp Beech Forest—on the northern slopes of Ettersberg Mountain, five miles from the German city of Weimar, renowned for its culture heritage. Weimar had been the focal point of the German Enlightenment (1650–1800) and home to the country’s most beloved author, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, as well as composer Franz Liszt and artist Paul Klee.

  But since the 1937 construction of Buchenwald, one of the largest Nazi concentration camps, the area had served a much darker purpose. The camp was surrounded by an electrified barbed-wire fence, watchtowers manned by SS guards, and posts with automatic machine guns. Buchenwald also had its own crematorium. In seven years, a quarter of a million people from all over Europe had been sent to Buchenwald to perform slave labor in armament industries and limestone quarries, until they were worked to death under the Nazi policy Vernichtung durch Arbeit (extermination through labor) or they were weeded out as unfit to work and executed. Deaths by hanging, shooting, and lethal injection, as well as starvation, illness, disease, and medical experiments, exceeded an estimated fifty-five thousand, not including the thousands more who died after being shipped from Buchenwald to other concentration camps.

  In April 1945, with Patton’s Third Army rapidly approaching from the west, the Nazis began to evacuate Buchenwald, fearing its liberation. The small contingent of women prisoners, about five hundred, was taken by train and on foot to the Theresienstadt concentration camp in German-occupied Czechoslovakia. On the first day of the evacuations, five thousand male prisoners were force-marched to Weimar, and hundreds of the sickest died en route or were killed by guards. At the train station, they were packed into sixty rail cars with little food or water, their destination the Dachau concentration camp, 250 miles to the north.*

  On the afternoon of April 11, a forward element of the 6th Armored was approaching the village of Hottelstedt, about two miles from Buchenwald, where they ran into some SS stragglers and engaged in a brief firefight before the Germans surrendered. As the GIs were lining up fifteen prisoners to be taken to the rear, dozens of unarmed men in gray-and-blue-striped prison uniforms suddenly rushed out of the woods and began striking the Germans with their bare fists. The stunned and confused Americans pulled the attackers off their prisoners. The inmates told the Americans that they had been held at a nearby concentration camp where these SS men had been guards. They frantically pointed down a road in the direction of the camp.

  No one with the 6th Armored knew anything about a concentration camp in the area. The inmates had pointed south, but the advance unit and the 6th Armored’s tank columns a few miles behind it were heading east. Disregarding his orders not to stop or slow down, the commander halted his unit’s advance and dispatched a four-man reconnaissance team led by Captain Frederic Keffer, a battalion intelligence officer, in a six-wheeled armored vehicle. Two of the inmates from the camp climbed aboard to show the way, and they soon came to a twelve-foot-high barbed-wire fence. The soldiers could see that behind it were hordes of scrawny men in the same prison stripes.

  Leaving two men with the vehicle, Captain Keffer and Sergeant Herbert Gottschalk, a Berlin-born Ritchie Boy, crawled through a hole the inmates had made in the wire fence after the camp was abandoned hours earlier by the SS commandant and his men. The GIs were swarmed by filthy, cheering inmates. They picked up the American captain and threw him into the air, caught him, and tossed him up again, as though he were the winning quarterback of a football game.

  When Keffer returned a short time later and reported what he’d found, his commander sent an urgent radio message to 6th Armored headquarters seeking food, water, and medical help for thousands of survivors of a Nazi concentration camp named Buchenwald.

  The next day, Stephan Lewy, assigned with the 6th Armored’s other Ritchie Boys to serve as translators, arrived at Buchenwald. Stephan had long known that concentration camps existed in Germany, but this was the first one he had seen. He was shocked by the size of the camp, the thousands of prisoners it held, and the pitiful conditions under which the emaciated inmates were living. His father had been caught in an early Nazi roundup in 1933 and was sent to the newly opened Oranienburg concentration camp outside Berlin. He had been released two years later after suffering a heart attack. Stephan still remembered when his father returned from the camp and how gaunt he looked, with most of his teeth missing.

  Still, when Stephan arrived at the Buchenwald camp, he was unprepared for the living skeletons he found there. In f
ront of the first barracks, he came to a group of men who were just skin and bones sitting and lying, as if in a trance, next to a pile of decomposing bodies. Stephan was horrified to see an arm suddenly reach out from the midst of the corpses. The living, the dying, and the dead were all mixed together.

  One of the first survivors Stephan spoke to was a German Jew. He explained that the prisoners were segregated by nationality and by the color of a triangular patch—called a Winkel—sewed on their striped jackets. Yellow was for Jews, red for communists, black for Gypsies, pink for homosexuals. The inmates told him that the various nationalities were assigned to their own barracks and blocks in the camp.*

  The windowless, unheated barracks had been designed to house four hundred prisoners each, but many were crowded with up to two thousand. Inmates slept atop wooden planks stacked five levels high, usually four or five to a bed with only a single blanket to cover them even in winter. Coarse mattress covers filled with lice-infested straw were the only bedding allowed. Each morning they discovered that more of their fellow inmates had died during the night. They stripped them for any warm clothes, then dragged the bodies outside and deposited them atop growing mounds of corpses.

  The liberated prisoners who could stand struggled to their feet to hug passing GIs. We are free! they shouted in a multitude of languages, and despite their weakened conditions and the horrors they had endured, gaiety echoed throughout the camp those first days of freedom. Through his interactions with the survivors and seeing their relief and gratitude knowing their suffering was over and they had a chance to begin life anew, Stephan, amid the horror, felt his greatest satisfaction of the war.