Most of us Jewish guys all threw away our dog tags because they had “H” for Hebrew on them; that really speaks to the caliber of the guys in the 106th who knew what could be done to us if the Nazis saw that we were Jews.
Fortunately for us, these were professional German military men and they told us to line up and bring our blankets and whatever we had. They were going to put us on a train. As we were marching one way and they another, I knew it was over for them; they had run out of petrol and had horse-drawn carriages. They put us on a train to go east, and when the weather cleared, our planes just strafed everything they could, include our cattle car, which held about fifty men and several were killed. I yelled in German, “Let us out, let us out!”
A guard responded, “Why should I let you out when you are killing our population?” Finally someone made the decision to let us out. I then went to the commander, told him that we didn’t want to get back on the train, and requested to let us march.
My brother, who was by that time in military government, had heard I was missing and actually came looking for me. He nearly got captured a few months later.
In some sense, it was a relief for the Germans that somebody knew the language and could help them organize the prisoners. After marching a while, they put us back on the cattle car and sent us to Silesia. Stalag 11A and the American compound was very new; there were English captured in North Africa, as well as Serbs, French, Russians, Australians, New Zelanders, and nearly eighteen nationalities altogether in that Stalag. We didn’t have much to eat there, but the British shared Red Cross parcels with us. I didn’t have much luck with the French when I went from compound to compound to collect food for the American boys. The Stalag itself was not frightening; it was well organized and quite a friendly atmosphere. I was able to write letters to my mother on Red Cross stationary. The British who had been there for years made washing machines out of tin cans and even made a radio. The British, Aussies, New Zealanders, and Americans didn’t communicate too much with the French. The Russians, who the Germans treated very badly, were bedraggled and separated from us.
I did my best to conceal that I was a Jew, but strangely enough I didn’t care. When the Russians attacked, the Germans marched us west. Actually, not all of the guards were German; there were a lot of Latvians and other Slavics. Unfortunately, I never got their names.
They had hardly enough food for us, or even for themselves. One time, a few of us knocked on a German farmhouse, and the farmer gave us “speck”-fat-something we had never had. Later, I developed a fever and was diagnosed with yellow jaundice. I couldn’t go on, and everybody knew that if the Germans who were in retreat found any Americans left behind, they would kill them. So, two Australians put me in a push cart and pushed me for two days until I got better.
Along with the help of my fellow prisoners, I think I was able to survive because I was initially so well trained, even though I had lost all of this weight. We did lose some people along the way. We were marched to Hof, near the Czechoslovakian border.
One frightening experience was when we came across a group of concentration camp inmates on a work force. A couple of us wanted to go over to them, because they looked so awful. I realized they were Jewish inmates; when I started walking to them, a German guard pointed a rifle at me and I thought he was going to shoot me. A couple of guys dragged me back. That was when I decided to lay low, because if they found out I was a Jew, I would share a similar fate.
When we got to Hof, it was about three or four days before the war ended. The guards took off, and we tried to make our way toward our own lines when we heard our artillery. I was told to be the leader of our column, in case they were German troops and I had to tell them that we were prisoners. We almost got shot when we made it to our lines and were shouting that we were American prisoners. It was wonderful; the officers couldn’t do enough for us and they fed us in their tents.
Then I got so sick because I hadn’t anything in my stomach. I weighed 104 pounds and was not well, anyway. I couldn’t retain food, so I was evacuated to a hospital in England. When I was shipped stateside, at Walter Reed Army Medical Center I was diagnosed with colitis, which was a result of my yellow jaundice, but I eventually got better. We were treated well; for the returning POWs from Europe, we were in much better condition than those prisoners coming back from being in Japanese captivity.
Bert Grunwald earned his master’s degree in Russian economics from American University. For nine years, he worked for the Central Intelligence Group (later renamed the CIA) before entering the brokerage business. In 1967, Grunwald founded Man Alive, Maryland’s first methadone treatment program.
Chapter 20
ERIC BOEHM
HOF, GERMANY
In 1934, Eric Boehm’s parents sent their sixteen-year-old son ahead to the United States. His older brother, Werner, had left Germany a year beforehand, and came to the United States in 1937. His parents did not emigrate from Germany until 1941. From 1936 to 1940 Boehm attended the College of Wooster in Ohio. During and shortly after the war, he was an Army Air Corps officer in intelligence, ending up in Germany and helping to dissolve the Supreme Command of the German Luftwaffe. Later, he was a War Department employee, involved in building up the German press, at the headquarters of U. S. Military Government in Berlin.
I was a lieutenant in the U.S. Army Air Corps. While stationed in Wiesbaden, Germany, I was told to report to Reims, France, to SHAEF and Eisenhower’s HQ. The assignment was to serve as the intelligence/interrogation officer, on the occasion of the dissolution of the Oberkommando der Luftwaffe (OKL), Supreme Command of the Luftwaffe. The headquarters of the Luftwaffe was in Flensburg. SHAEF had the assignment of dissolving the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (OKW)—Supreme Command of the German Wehrmact—and its navy, along with it the OKL. The reason for the mission to Flensburg was that the successor government to Hitler, headed by Admiral Doenitz, was located there (just south of the Danish border) whence they had fled from Berlin.
I was one of four officers sent there on the air force side. Altogether, the total mission had maybe twenty-five to thirty officers and a small number of noncommissioned officers. All of us were flown to Flensburg and actually landed with the help of the Luftwaffe unit that had been controlled by a Royal Air Force (RAF) regiment. The RAF regiment, I was told, went through the battle lines and persuaded the commander of a German SS division that it would go north “to establish order.” I remember that an RAF regiment that arrived at the end of the war did its job well. There must have been about one hundred operational aircraft at the Flensburg airbase. They were inoperative since all of them had their propeller removed, and they were stored in a warehouse under RAF regiment guard.
The senior officer of the four officers, who were attending the air force side of the SHAEF control mission, was an American, General Schramm. The next in rank was Air Commodore H. W. Mermagen; third was RAF Group Captain J. McComb, and lastly was me, 1st Lt. Eric Boehm. I had the assignment based on a briefing by A-2 (Intelligence) of SHAEF; specifically the “order of battle,” that is, the disposition of units and equipment of the Luftwaffe.
The A-2 of SHAEF told me that he had hoped that my commanding officer, Lt. Col. Eric M. Warburg, would represent A-2, but he was then busy interrogating Field Marshall Goering, so he sent me instead. The A-2 told me that my rank was too low for the job, and that I might have to get the support of General Schramm to overcome that handicap.
It was clear to me shortly after arrival that the two German headquarters, OKW and OKL, were pretty much operating on their old wartime mode and were not yet controlled by the SHAEF Control Party.
It is part of the standard operating procedure to take control of all files. The German military units had burned many of the files, and thus denied the occupying forces useful and often important information. I intended to go to the OKL headquarters to take charge of the files, have them sealed and turned over to us, and do this unannounced to avoid selective burning.
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When I discussed the process with General Schramm, he said that I should simply ask them to select what is important and turn that material over to us. This violated common sense, as it stands to reason that we would have no control over their selection. We were the ones who should guide the selection process and have them work for us on a controlled basis. I tried to persuade this general that A-2 of SHAEF would look askance at his suggested mode of operation and that I was accountable to A-2 who sent me on this mission. I should physically be there while they were packing the OKL records, which I had previously ascertained that the OKL had done a certain amount of selection for itself when it fled Berlin, and what was left was quite manageable for us. The general would not budge, no matter how hard I tried. He thought it was too offensive to “pounce on them” to take charge of the files and I had to find another way.
I knew that General Schramm was interested in getting a German pistol, a Luger or a Mauser. So I went to Flensburg to the air raid bunker, where I knew huge amounts of small arms were stored. I was able to get a laundry basket full of Mausers and Lugers and presented this basket to the general. Obviously he was pleased and, with a smile, said, “Now I’ve got to do my duty as I’ve been taught, and you win, Lieutenant.” So, I did my duty there, no records were burned, and A-2 of SHAEF was satisfied. I did get the order of battle of all the Luftwaffe units, and SHAEF was able to take control of the Luftwaffe units in a knowledgeable way.
At the time when Field Marshall Wilhelm Keitel was sent from Flensburg, I was the interpreting officer for that particular assignment. It must have been that he was taken in Luxemburg, though I was not entirely certain. He was, in fact, arrested and became a prisoner of war, and was detained in anticipation of the Nuremberg Trial.
On a ship called the Patria, I interrogated Luftwaffe General Eckhard Christian from Hitler’s HQ, and he was crying when he talked about the last days of “Der Fuhrer.” The reason for that became transparent later when I found out that one of Hitler’s secretaries was General Christian’s wife. It was embarrassing to see this man in tears. We weren’t sure whether we could interpret this to mean that he was an ardent Nazi deploring what happened to Hitler, or otherwise. During the interrogation of Otto Koller, who was then the chief of staff of the Luftwaffe, he was incredibly uncooperative because he was not being interrogated by a more senior officer.
As victorious armies, we were of course in a state of exhilaration—the war was over and we had won. Moreover, I enjoyed the personal satisfaction as a Jew from Germany of our having defeated the Nazi juggernaut and wiped the Nazi evil from the face of the earth. I was, however, very careful to make sure that I would never appear to be vindictive in any way. Nevertheless, it was very gratifying to be saluted by Admiral Doenitz, then the head of the German government. As a token of recognition of their defeated status, all Germans, regardless of rank, saluted the Allied soldiers of the SHAEF party first. We acknowledged, though I did it with reluctance.
Since there was a shortage of German-speaking officers, I was loaned to the army side as the interpreting officer for the arrest of Field Marshall Keitel. General Rooks, Eisenhower’s representative, called Field Marshall Keitel to the ship in which we were operating to tell him to pack and be ready to be flown away from Flensburg several hours later.
About 2 p.m. that afternoon, a Lieutenant Colonel Boehm-Tettelbach and the aide de camp, or adjutant, on Field Marshall Keitel’s staff came to the gangplank of the ship and picked me up, so that we could drive to OKW headquarters. We talked very briefly about the coincidence in name; I found out subsequently from my father that the family is from Upper Franconia, the area of Bavaria where I was born. I was rather disinclined to make small talk in any case, because I had some strong feelings, particularly about Field Marshall Keitel. He was known as the lackey of Hitler, but I did not know at the time that he was being arrested in anticipation of being held for the Nuremberg Trials, where he would be sentenced to be hanged—deserving this fate—because he was one of the most evil types serving Hitler.
At the OKW, the military guard was still behaving as in wartime—“by the numbers.” Its soldier’s behavior was as if they had come straight out of a military school. The guard looked formidable, comprising men who had evidently been selected for their extraordinary height. Some of the military police had a big metal shield on their chest. No other American or British officer came with me to get Keitel.
Keitel was allowed a fairly large number of accompanying generals to see him off at the airport, and our General Rooks had provided four staff cars. I was surprised at the amount of baggage that Keitel took with him, a weapons carrier full of at least half a dozen suitcases, some of them quite large in size. I remember one box that approached the size of a steamer trunk.
We all took off for the airport, which was about a thirty-minute drive from there. General Detleffsen rode with me in one of the staff cars. As we were making small talk, I asked him if he was a career officer. He replied in the affirmative. I then asked him what he would be doing in the future. He said there would always be a need for persons to polish shoes. His behavior was quite in contrast to Keitel, as there was no evidence of arrogance. I heard some five years later that this General Detleffsen had gotten a position in the Ruhr industry as a general manager of a large company—so much for polishing shoes.
When we arrived at the airport, it turned out that the plane, which was to take Keitel to his destination, had landed and then took off to do some sightseeing of Copenhagen from the air. It was uncertain when it would be back. Since it was an unusually warm day, I arranged that the whole group be taken to one of the barracks. Keitel was visibly taken aback by the fact that he had to wait. Since he lacked good understanding as to his new position, he was stupid enough to say to me something to the effect that he had to rush to pack and now he had to wait. I ignored him and certainly did not apologize, but wished in retrospect that I had said something to him to the effect that we had been waiting six years for him, so he could certainly wait a few hours for us.
Eventually, the American C-47 crew had come back and they were ready to transfer Keitel. He was wisely removed to take away the top authority from the OKW. He became a prisoner of war and was placed in one of the holding fortresses, which we honored by such names as “the Dustbin.” I again saw Keitel at the Nuremberg Trails when I was in the audience. Keitel, whom I would estimate to have been 6 foot 4 inches, and weighing 250 pounds, looked visibly diminished both in size and importance in the court of war criminals.
This is the end of my encounter with history in 1945.
After the war, Eric Boehm completed his doctoral studies in international relations at Yale. In 1960, he and his wife, Inge. founded ABC-CLIO, an internationally known publisher of reference books now headquartered in Santa Barbara, California. He is the author of We Survived: Fourteen Histories of the Hidden and Hunted of Nazi Germany.
Chapter 21
FRED FIELDS
UEHLFELD, GERMANY
XX Corps, Third Army
Fred Fields was born Siegfried Dingfelder and fled Germany with his family just after Kristallnacht. They arrived in the United States in 1940 and lived in Brooklyn, where Fields worked as a baker until getting drafted into the army. A graduate of Camp Ritchie, Maryland, he shipped out to the ETO as an interrogator and joined his unit 69th IPW in Metz.
In the whole village where I grew up, there were eight hundred people and eighty of us were Jews, roughly 10 percent. There were three breweries in the town. On Saturday nights, everybody got together in town, Jew and non-Jews, and played cards. Then Hitler came in and everybody started to alienate themselves from the Jews.
I remember one man got up and made a speech in a beer garden where everybody met. He said, “I don’t understand what they want from the Jews here, they’ve never done us any harm. They’re just like we are.” The next day he disappeared and ended up in a concentration camp. He came back six weeks later and never spoke another word abo
ut it. He was cured. The guy who was the political leader and ran the dairy, Mueller, organized the pogrom, in which all of the Brownshirts roused the Jews out and destroyed houses. They dragged the men out and burned the synagogue (just three blocks from our house) that had a beautiful Byzantine dome.
I was nine years old when the Brownshirts staged a demonstration outside our house; they banged on the walls, shattered our windows, and were throwing rocks. My family and I jumped over our back fence, and I led them through the barn, where we boarded horses once a year, and into our vegetable garden. We were sheltered overnight by a farmer who my father did business with and who lived about three miles away. I stayed with a second cousin in Fürth and went to school—an orphan school—for a while until I joined my family later.
In 1933, I was nine and couldn’t fathom what was going on. There was no reason for it. I was scared. The week Hitler came to power my uncle, along with three buddies, came into our village from Nuremberg and marched down the street with a red flag, and that sealed his fate right there. When he fled, the Germans caught up with him in southern France and nobody ever heard from them again.
We resettled in Bamberg in 1935; my father and I took English lessons because he thought there was no future left for me in Germany. On the other hand, he felt that while he couldn’t do business, he had saved a little money and thought he’d be able to survive. He was completely wrong. Ultimately, I was the motivator in getting our family to leave. My father said, “No, we’ll stay,” and I said, “Let’s go.”
Then on Kristallnacht, he and my uncle were arrested and sent to Dachau, like everyone else. If prisoners could prove to the authorities that they had a way out of the country they would let them out. When they let him out the end of August, he didn’t look too good. He would not mention a word about what happened for fear it would get back to the Gestapo and they would take him back. He wouldn’t even tell us about it at home. Anyway, we had a short time to get out of the country and we had to turn over our house, acres of land and meadows that we leased to other farmers. We sold everything for 1,000 marks, the price of two cars at that time.
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