Steven Karras

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

  So I got out and I encountered all kind of experiences, which made me feel like I did the right thing. For example, I was on a train in Austria and the conductor said something like, “At least Hitler had one great idea about getting rid of the Jews.” Another night when I was at the opera in Salzburg, I heard the couple behind me, talking about “damn Jews.” So I called the MP. I said, “Arrest those people. We’ll talk about charges later.”

  In 1946 when I was discharged at Fort McCoy, I was asked if I wanted to join the reserves or the Army National Guard, but I said, essentially, “Up yours.” Then the 1948 National Guard was offering second lieutenant commissions to people with a college degree and who passed a written exam. I had come out of the war a corporal. I decided that all things considered, I was twenty-two years old, I was healthy, and I was single. I said to myself: “They’re going to get you again. Next time, I’d rather go as an officer and a gentleman rather than creeping and crawling in the mud.” So I accepted a second lieutenancy in the Army National Guard. Once I get into something, I tend to stay committed to it. The whiter my hair got, the more they promoted me. I retired a brigadier general.

  I HAVE ALWAYS THOUGHT it was ideal to have good defense establishment. I feel strongly that the civilians are in the army reserve of the National Guard because we tend to keep the professional soldiers honest. I can tell you that I was opposed to the war in Vietnam. There were many of us reserve officers who were opposed to the war, and we marched (in uniform) during some peace demonstrations. I’m essentially afraid of the basic military type.

  At twenty-seven I got married and we had four children. My wife died after forty-seven years of marriage, but life goes on and I’ve had a rich, full, colorful life, all these things considered: the Holocaust, wartime, and combat duty, my chance to get some revenge and have some pride about my career. My brothers and I all ended up becoming professors.

  My thoughts about the Jewish experience in the Holocaust and World War II are that we’ve survived. I survived combat, but also Judaism survived. I have strong feelings about the survival of Judaism, but that in no way contradicts my loyalty to the United States, a country that has given freedom. The country is based on that. It’s a wonderful thing.

  I’ve taken the liberty, which many Jews before me have done, and I’ve edited the Passover Haggadah (prayer book for Passover). When I get to the part where it says, “Next year in Jerusalem,” I suggest that the United States is our Jerusalem. Next year, in this blessed country again.

  Dr. Bernard Baum sat on the faculty of the School of Public Health at the University of Illinois, Chicago, for forty years until his death on June 6, 2008. Baum was the chairman of the American Council for Judaism and the author of As If People Mattered: Dignity in Organizations.

  Chapter 14

  HAROLD BAUM

  BERLIN, GERMANY

  97th Infantry Division, 386th Regiment, L Company

  Harold Baum grew up in Berlin. His family left Germany in February 1940 for Lisbon where they boarded a boat for the United States. After working a variety of menial jobs in New York City, his family moved to Cincinnati, Ohio, where he attended high school at night before being inducted. After basic training, he was sent to the 97th Infantry Division, where he became a frontline radio operator. He is pictured above in 1945.

  I felt there should be some justice. As it is written in the book of Deuteronomy, Chapter 16: “An eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth, a life for a life.” This actually came to fruition when I was a GI.

  I was born in 1923. In 1934 I started in the Gymnasium in Berlin of which I was able to attend until the end of 1938. At that point, a regulation was set forth in the Nuremberg Laws that Jewish children could not attend German schools any longer. So, I transferred to a Jewish school. In 1936 we had the Olympic Games in Berlin, and it was a tremendous, spectacular event. Down the street, they put up a little news box for Der Stuermer, the anti-Semitic newspaper put out by Julius Streicher. After my mother saw it, she went to the American consulate in August 1936 and obtained a quota number for our exit.

  In the meantime, I quit school in 1938 because my academic accomplishments were, as my mother said, not up to par. I started a training program for a machine shop operator, done under the auspices of the Jewish community in Berlin. I remember the Kristallnacht in November 1938, when we received a telephone call early in the morning from a friend in one of the outlying districts, telling us that all Jews were being arrested. At that point my father and I decided to take to the streets. I started riding my bicycle at six o’clock in the morning throughout Berlin, and I saw the red sky and watched the burning synagogues. My father started riding the subways, and fortunately neither one of us was arrested. After that I vividly remember when we were compelled to turn over all silverware that was in our family’s possession. My mother and I went to the police station, surrendered the silverware, and we received a receipt as if we were going to get it back someday. Our quota number was to be called on August 15, 1939.

  There was, however, a rumor circulating among Jews in Berlin that an anti-Semitic American official was in charge of the immigrants at the consulate, and whoever appeared there was turned down. My father was not going to take a chance, so we waited in line anyway. On the first of September 1939, the war broke out and all immigration came to a sudden standstill. I remember Polish prisoners of war that winter cleaning the streets of Berlin and being treated as sub-humans. I will never forget that as long as I live.

  Jews had a curfew. We couldn’t be out in the street between five o’clock in the morning to eight o’clock at night. We were put on restricted rations of approximately eight hundred calories a day—no meat, potatoes, turnips, etc. We were forced to carry a Jewish identity card called a Kennkarte at all times, to further identify and humiliate us. It was a very meager existence.

  We lived in an apartment house on the third floor, and on the first floor lived a German air force major in the Luftwaffe. On Christmas 1939, there was a knock on the door, and there was Major Mueller with a big package. He asked, “Is your father home?” My father came to the door. “Herr Baum,” said Mueller, “I have a goose for you for Christmas.” This was a very kind gesture. So, there were some decent people amongst them. Then a change occurred at the American embassy because that same official in charge, a man named Breckenridge, fell out of favor and was relieved, and immigration again was allowed to occur, albeit on a limited scale.

  We obtained our American visa on December 4, 1940. My mother was fortunate in obtaining a release from her place of employment and she was allowed to leave. The Jewish community in Berlin organized a transport destined to go to Lisbon, Portugal. We left Berlin on February 26 and were put in a regular railroad car. We had to bring enough food and water along for three days. The doors were locked and we were first taken to Cologne, then Paris, , and finally to freedom across the Spanish border.

  Our first stop was San Sebastian. When we woke up in the morning, we were shocked to see that the whole town was flooded with German military personnel. It was really a nightmare. Apparently, there was a German submarine base there, but we were left alone. From there, we went on to Lisbon, boarded a freighter called the Salpa Pinto, and set off for New York. There were approximately five hundred passengers on the boat; the sleeping quarters were five bunks in the cargo hold, and two days out, all sanitary facilities broke down. We had no fresh water and no toilets, so we found some buckets and took turns to relieve our physical needs in that particular manner. So, it was a miserable experience. However, we were intercepted by the British Navy, hauled into Hamilton, Bermuda, and quarantined for about a week because they suspected that German spies were on the boat. Then the British set us free, I arrived in New York, and that is where the next chapter begins, although my experience with the Nazis remained vivid, and I would never forgive them.

  I arrived in Staten Island, and a friend of my father’s was there and advanced us ten dollars. “Well, get change,” he said. “G
et a nickel, and take the ferry over to Battery Park.” I arrived on West 92nd Street, between Amsterdam and Columbus Avenues. Within five days I had a job as a janitor at a factory in New Jersey. I swept the floor and kept the tool room and machines clean. One day, I told the boss that I knew how to run the machines. He said, “Tool it up and show me what you can do.” So I set it up, did a good job, and got my first promotion in America.

  When my father could not find a job, we traveled on to Cincinnati, Ohio, where a second cousin of my mother lived. Within a short period of time, I was able to find a job in a machine shop where I worked the night shift from six o’clock in the evening to six o’clock in the morning. Then I found out that Cincinnati had a night high school, so I switched to the day shift, 6 a.m. to 7 p.m. and went to night school from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. My first assignment in the English class was an oral summary of a Reader’s Digest article. My way of speaking was considerably different then what it is now, and I was hesitant to open my mouth—ah, the embarrassment. But, I overcame it, gave the report, got a standing ovation, and had a great first experience in public speaking.

  After Pearl Harbor, the Germans declared war on the United States, and we had to register as resident Enemy Aliens and surrendered our cameras and shortwave radio. In 1942 I had wanted to volunteer for the navy, but I was turned down at the recruiting office because I was not a citizen. I was finally drafted in May 1943 and made a citizen in December 1943, just prior to going overseas.

  I started out in the combat engineers in Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, and from there I was transferred to the Army Specialized Training Program at Kansas State University in Manhattan, Kansas. I spent two semesters there, but the need for troops became greater for the coming invasion, so I was transferred to the 97th Infantry Division. I was attached to the headquarters company in an infantry line unit. There were several platoons and a headquarters platoon that directed the action of each unit. I was with the company executive officer, relaying whatever communication I was given to the next echelon, the battalion headquarters. If we had to direct artillery fire, it went through me.

  I came on a convoy and landed in Le Havre, the artificial harbor on the French coast. From there, we went to a staging area called Camp Old Gold. I saw my first real action near Dusseldorf and participated in the Ruhr Pocket Campaign for which we crossed the famous Remagen Bridge—terrible. Our first action was in Nois, where my company was selected to send a patrol with assault boats over to Dusseldorf. There were six GIs to a boat, and we were in a permanent state of diarrhea and fright during the entire attack. I kept my head low, trying to reconnoiter the area while under fire, and I made it back. We were coming from the west bank of the Rhine, and Germans were on the east bank viciously firing at us. The most frightening thing during combat, in which I spent sixty consecutive days, was the uncertainty of where they were shelling us. That of course was followed by a frenzied attempt to identify from where the shells were coming and direct mortar fire in that direction.

  Fortunately, in our company we had a light machine gun section, a heavy machine gun section, and a mortar section. These people did a marvelous job once we identified a target. We once overran a flak position of German 88s; our scout spotted them at dawn and called in mortar rounds on their position. They were slaughtered. The 88s were terrifying German weapons because they were used pointblank on us, instead of on airplanes. Seeing a kid next to you fall, wounded, or killed was terrifying experience. I cannot begin to explain the rage I had when seeing German soldiers come out with white flags after an ambush. Needless to say, there were times when we did not take prisoners.

  We encountered fanatical German resistance in the Ruhr Pocket, primarily from the young boys who were fourteen and fifteen years old and willing to die for fuhrer and Fatherland. At times we saw people dangling from trees, strung up by the SS, with signs around there neck reading, “Ich Bin Ein Fikling” (I am a coward). That only intensified things for me. I had a unique experience in Solingen where a German lady came to our command post and told us that a German general was hiding out. The captain said, “Lieutenant Winsam, Sergeant Miller, Baum, go and get him.” We surrounded the house. There was this middle-aged man, and I started questioning him. In an almost defiant, arrogant manner, without getting up, he said, “Ich bin General Gustav Von Zongen.”

  Without undue delay I told him, “Hande Hoch,” pointed my rifle at the son of a bitch, and he turned ashen white. Then I told him, “Ich bin ein Deutcher Jude” (I’m a German Jew), and this man was in an absolute state of terror. He could not believe that one little yid should get him out of five million GIs. A rifle pointed at an arrogant officer becomes a powerful persuader. It was a good feeling. Gustav Adolph Von Zangen was a lieutenant general, commander of the Fifteenth Army Group. His last command was in the Ruhr Pocket. I escorted him with the lieutenant to division headquarters where he surrendered in a customary procedure, like a soldier, which nauseated me—to me he was a Nazi, not a soldier. General Halsey, commander of the 97th Division, interrogated him while I was the interpreter.

  After we occupied Solingen, there were Russian forced laborers who after being liberated went after the Germans, and the Germans wanted protection from the Russians. As you can imagine, we refused and justice was swift.

  After completion of the Ruhr campaign, we were sent to southern Germany and started moving in the direction of Czechoslovakia. On the western border of Czechoslovakia and Germany, we encountered a concentration camp called Flossenberg and liberated one of the smaller camps of that facility. We saw scores of dying, starving prisoners. It was terrible, and the stench and odor of death, I will never forget.

  There were also well-fed prisoners who had on the same inmate uniforms. I unsuccessfully tried to communicate with them in German; one kid in my company spoke Russian and Polish to them and they did not understand that either. We could not figure it out. My captain decided to strip them down and discovered that they had their blood type tattooed under their arm, which was customary practice among SS troops. They went into the mass graves and helped to dispose of all the corpses, but they did not last to face a war criminal trial. The justification for their demise was that they switched uniforms, which under the Geneva Convention is a punishable offense. They remained in the pits with the corpses.

  From there, we advanced fifty kilometers short of Prague, but were pulled back into Germany. When the war in Europe ended in May, I was sent home. There I had a four-week furlough and was then shipped out to the Pacific on an attack transport to participate in the invasion of Japan. Fortunately, the United States dropped the atomic bomb and saved my life. I was on occupation duty in Japan for six months.

  While I had a yearning to seek retribution, I felt such gratification for being accepted as a worthy citizen of the greatest country. It was my duty and obligation to serve. My goal was to be treated as an American, and when I had an opportunity to demonstrate my loyalty I did. I hoped that I would have the opportunity to get a certain amount of revenge, and I was privileged that I had that experience.

  I was, and still am, eternally grateful to America. After the war, I was able to receive help under the GI Bill of Rights. I went to college, medical school, and made the grade. I delivered babies for over forty years. I have a beautiful wife and four children.

  Dr. Harold Baum is a retired obstetrician living in Marco Island, Florida.

  Chapter 15

  EDMUND SCHLOSS

  JESBERG, GERMANY

  3rd Armored Division

  Edmund Schloss arrived in Chicago with his family in 1938 and resumed his schooling. After graduating from Hyde Park High School, he was soon inducted into the U.S. Army in 1943. After basic training in Texas, Schloss received specialized training, learned some basic interrogation techniques, and was then shipped to England as a replacement. He joined the 3rd Armored Division in St. Lo, France. He is pictured above in 1945.

  We lived in Jesberg, Germany, a town of about three thousand with about tw
enty-five Jewish families. In the beginning of the Hitler period, it wasn’t bad. When we were little kids, we would go to the parades and give the “Heil Hitler” sign, but things changed considerably once they started clamping down on us. I remember one time when Hitler himself came to our town; they decorated it with flags, put trees up in front of homes, and everything was fine until an hour before he came. They came and removed all of the decorations from the Jewish homes—there were about fifteen to eighteen of them on the main streets—and painted Mogen Dovid on each house. That was a major blow.

  In the early 1930s, there were about twenty people who owned cars in Jesberg; five were owned by Jews. The first car my father, Rudolf Schloss, owned was made in France, and in 1931 he bought a Ford Model A made in Cologne, Germany. Our auto mechanic was a very good friend of my father’s. He joined the SS for business reasons; however, he remained a good friend until we moved to Frankfurt. My father, my brother, and I were never taken to a concentration camp because of this man. He always advised us before Jewish men and boys were being picked up.

  One time he could not get word to my dad early enough, so at the last minute he told my dad to take us into the field outside of town, where we stayed overnight until he signaled us to come home the next day. Three times they came to our house that night and tried to break the door down. My mother was frightened. The Nazis used the Jewish-owned cars for transportation to the camps. I remember at least three occasions when the friend disabled our car so the Nazis couldn’t use it.

  We had Hebrew school every Sunday. As a matter of fact, the teacher was retired from the Jewish school in Borken, where my mother was from. We were brought up conservative. My father owned a department store that sold clothing, shoes, furniture, and anything needed in a home except food. It was a very good business until early 1934 when the Nazis started boycotting Jewish businesses. For a short period of time, customers would enter through the warehouse area, but the Nazis stopped that. Big items were sold on credit, and many of our customers continued to make payments even though they could not continue to come to the store.