Steven Karras

by The Enemy I Knew: German Jews in the Allied Military

  Ultimately 3 Troop would not be known for its collective action as a unit; many were deployed alone or in small groups to units in and behind the frontline in the islands of Crete and Sicily and mainland Italy, and they also participated in the Dieppe Raid in occupied France. The troop was disbanded and its members were attached to other units just prior to D-Day.

  Great Britain’s Friendly Enemy Aliens steadily trickled out of the Royal Pioneer Corps and did eventually see action in North Africa and later the European Theater of Operations (ETO), as did those who entered the British Army in Palestine and other countries in the British Empire. By 1940, approximately 280,000 Jews had left Germany and 117,000 left Austria. Nearly 13,000 German and Austrian refugees—men and women—served in the British Armed Forces. Of the 95,000 German and Austrian Jews who had immigrated to the United States, it is estimated that 9,500 fought in the U.S. armed forces—the second highest concentration of German/Austrian refugees serving with the Allies.

  The extraordinary, if not unprecedented, circumstances that led to this impressive number of Allied refugee soldiers during that period was best summed up by historian Arnold Pauker, a former German refugee and soldier in the British Army: “It is terrible to have to say this but in one respect we German Jews were quite lucky that Hitler came for us first. This meant that the majority was able to flee or immigrate in time, and among this number the younger generation was heavily represented. When the war broke out, there were many of military age, who had been waiting for an opportunity to fight against Nazi Germany.”

  Chapter 1

  SIEGMUND SPIEGEL

  GERA, GERMANY

  1st Infantry Division North Africa, Sicily, and European Theater of Operations

  Siegmund Spiegel was one of three children born to Jacob and Sara Spiegel in Gera, Germany, a town just south of Leipzig. His older brother, Norbert, left for Palestine in 1935; his sister, Betty, went to the United States in 1936 and Sig followed two years later in 1938. His parents were deported to Poland in 1938 and were last heard from in 1940. He was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1941 and assigned to the 1st Infantry Division. He is pictured above in North Africa, 1942.

  When Hitler took over, Nazi Stormtroopers paraded up and down the streets of Gera, my hometown, singing: “Wenn’s Judenblut vom Messer spritzt, dann geht’s nochmal so gut” (When Jewish blood squirts under knives, then all goes doubly well). It seemed as though we were always sitting at the edge of our seats and there was constant crisis. We could no longer associate with our school friends because they were Aryans and we were not. So naturally, strong bonds were made between the Jewish boys. Finally, in April 1933 my father was called to the Gymnasium and told, “Mr. Spiegel, take your son out of our school, we want the school to be Judenrein.” That was the end of my formal education at the age of fourteen. We knew that while we were born in Germany, this was no longer home and it would never be. So, I looked around for a job because it seemed the only way one could exist was to learn a trade and work with one’s hands. So I learned to be a bricklayer.

  My brother, Norbert, and I were ardent Zionists. He became very active in the Hechalutz, a Zionist organization in Germany, and from the age of eighteen he assumed high leadership positions in Berlin. In 1935 my brother was to emigrate from Germany to Palestine. On the evening he was to leave, we were gathered at home having our last supper as a family and prepared to take him to the railroad station (to Trieste, Italy, where he would board a ship for Palestine) when suddenly my mother collapsed from a stroke. Obviously, it was because her first child was going to leave and she knew all too well that she may never see him again. Yet the decision had to be made—he had to leave and save himself. Upon our return from the station, we ultimately had to commit our mother to a hospital from which she was thrown out a few days later. They did not want to take a Jewish patient, and so we found a Jewish hospital in Leipzig, where I, too, had to say goodbye to her a few years later.

  My sister left for the United States in April 1936 just after taking her last exam for her doctorate. At the age of sixteen I became the sole bread earner in my family, working as a bricklayer apprentice until I left in August 1938.

  I reached the United States as a refugee in the fall of 1938; the ship landed in Hoboken, New Jersey, just outside of New York City, and my sister picked me up. On the subway into the city, whenever my sister asked me a question I would look around and quietly answer her until she said, “You don’t have to be afraid anymore, you can talk openly. You don’t have to look around to see if someone is watching you.” That made a real impression on me, aside from the dirt of New York City.

  That October, my parents were rounded up and deported to Poland because they had not been born in Germany. They had come from Galicia, which had become part of Poland after World War I, so that was where they were sent. My mother could not walk at the time and was permitted to stay in the hospital in Leipzig, but my father still had to leave. She opted to be with my father and they were both shipped off.

  The war in Europe started in 1939 when the Germans invaded Poland, and my parents were fortunate enough to get to the Soviet-occupied area of Poland; so, we were still able to communicate with them. However, when the Germans overran that part of Poland and invaded Russia in 1941, communication quickly broke down and we no longer heard from them.

  I became obsessed with joining the American army once war broke out in Europe in September because it was important to me to fight against Nazi Germany, the country of my birth. At first my application was declined on the basis of not being a citizen of the United States. I was an “Enemy Alien.” But, being told that I could volunteer for the draft, it gave me an opportunity to pursue this goal, and I found myself inducted on November 12, 1941, before America entered the war.

  Because the army felt it necessary to keep me, an immigrant from Germany, “under surveillance” for fear that I might be a Nazi spy, I was not given the privilege of joining the combat engineers, which I had chosen as my branch of service, but was assigned to receive my basic training in the infantry. At the same time, the 1st Infantry Division, “the Big Red One,” needed personnel, so I was sent to Camp Blanding, Florida, as a member of a heavy weapons platoon.

  Hardly a week had passed when I received the order to appear at the G-2 Section (Intelligence) of division headquarters (HQ). It was obvious that my personal record indicated my German background and my facility with the language made me a candidate to serve in the division’s intelligence section. No sooner had I been assigned than I was sent on detached service to a training school of II Corps, to act as an instructor to members of the 1st Infantry Division, the 36th Infantry Division and the 1st Cavalry Regiment to teach some of their intelligence personnel German commands and drill them in German, as well as teach them identification of German uniforms, ranks, and insignia. I was promoted to technician fourth grade (sergeant’s stripes with a “T”). Back at division, I immediately went into study of the German “order of battle” in which I became highly proficient.

  After I became a fixture in the Big Red One’s G-2 Section, I was asked to attend a dinner of the division HQ’s noncommissioned officer (NCO) club. It was a rather prestigious club made up mostly of longtime members of the division staff, many regular army men, and a few draftees. There were very few Jews among them, and certainly no one who spoke with an accent. I specifically recall a master sergeant of one of the division sections (G-3) who distrusted me, not only because I was Jewish, but also because I was German and spoke with an accent.

  After many drinks and dinner, and general cajoling, I got up and asked to be heard. I expressed my thanks for having been asked to attend and said that I was proud of being in the U.S. Army with this group, but especially proud to be with a group that was helping me, as I was helping them, to fight and hopefully to defeat the German enemy from whom I was fortunate to have been able to escape. There was roaring applause—a standing ovation. After much handshaking and as we were ready to leave, I pas
sed a group of other higher noncoms, and heard that particular master sergeant say to the others, “You know, this guy is all right.” I must say that the inclusion meant a great deal, but it didn’t make me elated, which I didn’t feel until I had the chance to confront the Germans.

  WHEN THE DIVISION WAS READY TO LEAVE for Europe, it suddenly became apparent that I was not yet a citizen. The army at that time would not take noncitizens overseas, so while at the staging center at Fort Indiantown Gap, Pennsylvania, I was restricted to my office. After several hours an MP escorted me to the G-2 Section. Lieutenant Colonel Porter, my commanding officer, told me that at Gen. Terry de la Mesa Allen’s request, the FBI had conducted an investigation of me as to my trustworthiness, since it was the general’s wish that I leave for Europe with the division. He pointed to a man in civilian clothing who was sitting at a desk and who then interviewed me for some time, having interrogated all my colleagues previously. Upon conclusion of the interrogation, he announced to Colonel Porter that I would not be a “traitor to America.” The following day, I was taken in a command car to a federal court in Philadelphia, where at a special session, I was sworn in as a citizen on July 29, 1942. The following day the division left for New York to embark on the Queen Mary for England.

  No sooner did we arrive in England and were quartered at Tidworth Barracks, an old English military base, than intensive planning commenced for the invasion of North Africa. After extensive maneuvers off the coast of Scotland, we rendezvoused with an even larger armada out of New York in the mid-Atlantic, slipping at night through the Straits of Gibraltar into the Mediterranean, and past Oran, in a ploy to keep the Germans off-guard. Then we turned back to hit the beaches near Oran. My own baptism of fire occurred at the break of dawn on D-day, as I approached North Africa in an LCA (an assault landing craft for about forty men) with members of the advanced echelon of the 1st Division’s general staff. The LCA, having hit a sandbar, stopped abruptly and lowered its front ramp, thus instantly signaling us to jump off. I hit a low spot and found myself in water up to my armpits. At that time, even the money belt I was wearing—carrying $20 Canadian gold pieces to be used if necessary to “buy” tactical information from the locals—helped weigh me down, in addition to my rifle, ammo, and field pack.

  I never would have thought that the first “enemy” confronting us in Africa would be the French Foreign Legion, which after three days of intensive combat finally severed itself from its Vichy government ties, and later became our valiant ally. Our 18th Infantry Regiment lost hundreds of men during this three-day encounter. The cemetery in St. Cloud near Oran attests to the severity of the combat.

  As soon as the initial engagement with the French Foreign Legion was completed and we were consolidating our forces in Oran, the campaign to oust German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel from Africa made us push east, through Algeria into Tunisia. To describe the Tunisian Campaign, its rugged terrain, its fierce battles—from the battle near El Guettar in the south, where we had no air night fighters to protect us from the constant night attacks by German JU 88 planes, to the loss of much of our armor at Kasserine Pass—until conclusion of the campaign would fill volumes. Our foxholes, protecting us from the deadly shrapnel of antipersonnel bombs, were literally the size of a grave. The toughness of the soldiers of Hermann Goering’s Fallschirmjaeger Regiment and their arrogance after capture was proof of the Nazi’s superbly working war machine.

  The winter in Tunisia was wet and bitterly cold; it even snowed from time to time. At one point I came down with a severe cold and ran a temperature and was sent to the nearest field hospital, which was in the adjacent British sector in a large tent in which battle casualties, sick and shell-shocked soldiers, shared the space. It was a zoo. I still see the British nurse in front of me shaking me at about midnight to wake me up to take the sleeping pill that she had neglected to give me hours earlier. Needless to say, the screaming of the shell-shocked cases then kept me awake all night.

  As the 1st Division moved east, our G-2 Section had attached a captain from the French Foreign Legion, he being a “specialist” in the treatment of the natives, together with two French sergeants. His name was Captain Mellish. He was an officer in the Imperial Russian Army in World War I, who had escaped to France during the Russian Revolution and then joined the Foreign Legion. Unlike other officers, he did not care much for “spit and polish,” but instead wore American olive drabs (ODs) and a helmet liner, and had a Luger pistol tucked in his belt.

  In most instances, he was the one who had contact with the local Arabs, in connection with obtaining information about German positions. On one such occasion, right near the front lines, I saw him talk to an Arab who had come across the German lines and pay him for the information he seemed to have just received, and the Arab turned and was obviously heading back to cross into enemy territory. Right after he had turned, I saw Captain Mellish pull out his Luger, shooting the Arab. When I confronted him with what he just did and why—after all he had just obtained information—his answer simply was: “The Arab is no good. He sells me information and he sells the enemy information.” That was a real lesson to learn.

  As we entered the outskirts of the city of Tunis, I saw many old natives squatting near the road begging, some of them holding out recognizable charity canisters. I stopped short after I recognized some of them to be Tzeduka (Charity) boxes used by Jews collecting for charitable causes. I couldn’t help but being totally overwhelmed and I emptied my pockets.

  The campaign finished and I had received orders to fly to Algiers for detached service at Allied Forces HQ (AFHQ), General Alexander’s HQ, where I was to meet British Major Marsden. He was conducting examinations of captured German documents to extract tactical and strategically important information, wherein my experience with interrogation of prisoners and examination of documents captured in the field was to aid in this project. Then, Sicily became our next objective.

  The 1st Division was designated to invade Sicily in August 1943, with the landing to take place near Gela at the South Coast. Again, approaching the beach on an LCA in the early morning hours on D-day, the reception was a hot one: German artillery had zeroed its 88 guns, located in the mountains beyond the beach, on our sector. I vividly recall the blasts as I jumped off the LCA and ran ashore. The enemy fire was so heavy that all of us sought cover by making ourselves as little a target as possible. Flat on the ground, I found myself, as most others, using my helmet to dig deeper into the sand in order to survive. Quite some time passed until the enemy fire weakened, and we advanced stealthily among the bodies and war material abandoned or destroyed until we were able to reach cover at higher ground.

  It was Sicily that ultimately produced some of the heaviest fighting we encountered. Crack troops of Rommel’s Afrika Korps, which had managed to escape Africa, had consolidated their positions in Sicily to still offer resistance. Having retreated from Africa to Sicily, the German supply lines were shortened. The Italian mainland being adjacent to the island, supplies flowed more easily. In Troina, I came across letters in a bunker we had just overrun in which German soldiers were writing home of the heaviest fighting they had been exposed to and expressing their doubts if ever they would see their home again. One of these letters was so remarkable that I translated it immediately. It was sent back to Washington, and some time later I received a copy of a War Department publication wherein this translation was published.

  Our prisoner of war compound was in an open field, separated by barbed wire and guarded by MPs. The Italian prisoners were kept separate from the Germans. Among the German prisoners, the enlisted men were separated from the noncommissioned officers, who in turn were separated from their officers. On one occasion just days into the campaign, I went to talk to a master sergeant of a chemical warfare battalion. He was middle-aged, a family man, totally devoid of the arrogance of his commanding officer. As I approached him, I heard his major call to him in German across the barbed wire concertinas, urging him not to give me
any information. I called back to him in rather rough German to mind his own business and keep quiet. When he continued harassing his master sergeant I responded in much harsher language. When he still was not convinced that it would be best for him to remain quiet, I alluded to him, in no uncertain terms, using a language unbecoming an officer, to mind his own business. At that point he became so enraged that he demanded to talk to the commander of the “pound.”

  When my captain slowly meandered down toward the enclosure where the officers were kept, I heard him ask what the problems were. Then the German major excitedly stated that he is an officer and he demands respect, and that this sergeant, pointing toward me, had insulted him and that he demanded that I be punished. At this point, our captain, the pound commander, pointing toward me asked him, “Do you mean him?” The German responded: “Jawohl” (Yes). The captain then sarcastically answered, “Impossible, he doesn’t even speak German.” On another occasion a fanatical Schutzstaffel (SS) prisoner blew smoke in my face and I gave him the back of my hand. I was a tough little guy.

  Another time I got furious at some GIs who were handing their cigarettes to the prisoners. I said, “What do you think this is, a tennis match? A few minutes ago these men were trying to kill you. Let them smoke their own garbage.” Needless to say, it was gratifying to see Germans humbled.