I am re-posting this today on the anniversary of Dr. Gross’ death.
Yesterday my son turned 11. And at about 11 pm yesterday on the West Coast, Dr. Gross died at home with his family around him.

I just found out. More than anyone else, he is the one responsible for this website and the hundreds of lives changed because of it.

You see, he took the photo that you may not really notice in the heading above, along with 9 other photographs that forever imprint the evidence not only of man’s inhumanity to man, but of the affirmation, hope and promise of mankind. It was he who wrote the prose that led me to the survivors, and vice versa. And it was he who cultivated a deep friendship with me via his wonderful writings and telephone conversation. How amazed and happy he seemed to be to hear from all the survivors.

In the summer of 2001, I did an interview with his comrade in arms, army buddy Carrol Walsh. Judge Walsh put me in touch with Dr. Gross. If you go back through the archives you know the rest of the story. It has changed my life and the lives of my students in that we are now trying to rescue the evidence, the testimony of the Holocaust and the World War Two veterans, for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. And today I received in the mail a bulletin from this Museum, reaffirming the mission that Dr. Gross had everything to do with setting me on.

He came into my life during a dark time for me- we had just lost our father (who thankfully, like Dr. Gross, passed on from his own bed at home), and our mother was battling the final stages of Alzheimer’s disease, or dementia, or whatever that nightmare was called…. we began a conversation that has yielded so much fruit.

Lately, I knew he wasn’t well. I actually had looked into flights across the country before Christmas for my son and I to pay a visit, but we just couldn’t seem to swing it financially, with Christmas bills coming in and holiday fares going up. My back up plan, in my head, was to go out in February, when fares were half the cost… Well, February arrived yesterday and now it is too late, I never got to shake the hand of a man who helped reshape my own life, and the lives of so many others.

His 8×10 liberation photos are mounted in the front of my classroom, with his captions for all to see. So I see George and just one of the noteworthy products of his life, everyday. The captions that he wrote for each are mounted below each print, a testament to his humanity and to his graciousness.

I know it is selfish to feel so bad about the fact that I was not able to literally reach out and touch him. I’m just so damned disappointed.  Right now it’s another dark day for Matt, but I am comforted that he was surely welcomed by his beloved wife, parents, and maybe even my folks as well.

From his statement read at the occasion of the first reunion, September 14th, 2007. Please feel free to add your own comments or tributes. Matt

Sincere greetings to all of you gathered at this celebration of the indomitable spirit of mankind!

 

Greetings first to all the admirable survivors of the train near Magdeburg, and our thanks to you for proving Hitler wrong. You did not vanish from the face of the earth as he and his evil followers planned, but rather your survived, and grew, and became successful and contributing members of free countries, and you are adding your share of free offspring to those free societies.

You have vowed that the world will never forget the horrors of the Holocaust, and you spread the message by giving interviews, visiting schools, writing memoirs, and publishing powerful books on the evil that infected Nazi Germany and threatens still to infect the world. I am enriched by the friendship of such courageous people who somehow have maintained a healthy sense of humor and a desire to serve through all the evils inflicted upon you.

 

Greetings also to the dedicated teacher whose efforts have brought us all together through the classes he has taught on World War 2 and the web site he maintains at the cost of hours of time not easily found in his duty as a high school teacher. I know that several of you found your quest for knowledge of your past rewarded by the interviews and pictures Matt Rozell and his classes have gathered and maintained. Selfishly, I am grateful to Mr. Rozell for leading several of you to me, bringing added joy to my retiring years.

 

Greetings also to all the faculty, staff, students, parents, and friends of the school at which this important gathering takes place. Thank you for your interest in the survivors of the Holocaust and their message.

 

And special greetings also to my old Army buddy, Judge Carrol Walsh, and his great family. Carrol fought many battles beside me, saved my life and sanity, and resuscitated my sense of humor often. We had just finished a grueling three weeks of fighting across Germany, moving twenty or more hours per day, rushing on to reach the Elbe River. Carrol and I were again side by side as we came up to the train with Major Benjamin, chased the remaining German guards away, and declared the train and its captives free members of society under the protection of the United States Army as represented by two light tanks.

Unfortunately, Carrol was soon ordered back to the column on its way to Magdeburg while, luckily for me, I was assigned to stay overnight with the train, to let any stray German soldiers know that it was part of the free world and not to be bothered again.

 

Carrol missed much heartbreaking and heartwarming experience as I met the people of the train. I was shocked to see the half-starved bodies of young children and their mothers and old men—all sent by the Nazis on their way to extermination.

I was honored to shake the hands of the large numbers who spontaneously lined up in orderly single file to introduce themselves and greet me in a ritual that seemed to satisfy their need to declare their return to honored membership in the free society of humanity.

I was heartbroken that I could do nothing to satisfy their need for food that night, but I was assured that other units were taking care of that and the problem of housing so many free people.

Sixty years later, I was pleased to hear that the Army did well in caring for their new colleagues in the battle for freedom. I saw many mothers protecting their little ones as best they could, and pushing them out, as proud mothers will, to be photographed. I was surprised and please by the smiles I saw on so many young faces.

Some of you have found yourselves among those pictured children, and you have proved that you still have those smiles. I was terribly upset at the proof of man’s inhumanity to man, but I was profoundly uplifted by the dignity and courage shown by you indomitable survivors. I have since been further rewarded to learn what successful, giving lives you have lived since April 13, 1945.

 

I wish I could be with you in person at this celebration, as I am with you in spirit. I hope you enjoy meeting each other and getting to know Matt Rozell and Carrol Walsh. I look forward to seeing again my friends whom I have met and to meeting the rest of you either in person or by E-mail. My experience at the train was rich and moving, and it has remained so, locked quietly in my heart until sixty years later, when the appearance of you survivors began to brighten up a sedate retirement.

You have blessed me, friends, and I thank you deeply. May your lives, in turn, bring you the great blessings you so richly deserve.

 

Fondly yours,

George C. Gross

September, 2007

 

Just returned from a three day conference.

As Holocaust educators, we talk about the choices that individuals face and the patterns that one may follow in making one’s choice. The trend seems to be to focus on the role of the “perpetrator” and “bystander”  in the greatest crime in the history of the world, to examine the nuances of their behavior, to perhaps gain insight into why the Holocaust occurred. Yes. Very, very,  important.

But how about including in our discussion the actions and behaviors of the soldiers who ended the Holocaust? They faced a choice, too. They had seen their friends vaporized in front of their eyes, they were weary, and tired of being shot at, and utterly exhausted. They were twenty fours hours away from another major showdown at a “last stand” city. Many of the soldiers would not survive, though the end of the war was in sight.

But they stopped, even as the enemy was digging in behind the battlelines.

Horrified and in shock, they sprang into action. One 4 year old survivor remembers that it was the “first time in my life that I can recall an adult with a smile”. If someone were to argue that the world owes these soldiers a debt, I don’t think too many people would find that problematic.

If you have not viewed the news clips (about 3 minutes each), I welcome you to do so.  In doing so, however,  you are forewarned that there is  someone who vehemently disagrees with that argument. He even shakes his finger.

And what does that say about the soldiers in this story? We need to dissect the behavior of the collaborators and those who are complicit in the crime. But what is it about the decisions made  and actions taken by these soldiers that is important to study? Of course this is worthy of our consideration, and as I struggle with my own role  in  the future of Holocaust education, I don’t think it should be overlooked or worse, “sidebarred” in the larger narrative of choices, patterns of behavior, and decision making.

Remember, the permanent exhibition at the USHMM even opens with visitors listening to the narrative of one of these soldiers on the elevator ride up to the 4th floor.  Why? It is more than that soldier just becoming  the “set-up guy” for the shock that greets one when the elevator doors open. We need to really explore that further.

Frank Towers, a World War II veteran who helped liberate 2,500 Jews on a train bound for a Nazi concentration camp, meets Bruria Falik of Woodstock, who was on the train, at Arbor Ridge at Brookmeade in Rhinebeck. (Photos by Karl Rabe/Poughkeepsie Journal)

Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to have you consider this, with the video  interviews, as well. And to the folks who might have thought otherwise, it’s not about me, finding and bringing folks  together- those soldiers are primary actors in this drama, and are survivors in their own right as well. {And note that throughout this discussion I have refrained from using the term “liberator”. My guys are not even officially recognized as “liberators”.}

What made them tick? Would one of us have picked up and carried a sick, lice-ridden, foul smelling “semblance” of a human being, exhausted and at the breaking point ourselves ?  Look below in the next post to get a Holocaust survivor’s take on it.

{As part of the conclusion to my USHMM Teacher Fellowship project, I  am posting the unfolding nature of the discovery of the camps as Allied troops closed in from the East and the West, sixty-five years to the day that the discovery/event occurred. This post also gets an inordinate amount of hits; please be sure to visit the “About” link for context.}This was originally posted on 4-15-10.}

April 15, 1945: British troops reach the Bergen-Belsen, Germany, concentration camp and find 60,000 survivors and 27,000 unburied corpses. Following liberation, starvation and typhus will claim about 13,000 more…

(Weber, Louis. The Holocaust Chronicle. Publications International Ltd., 2007. http://www.holocaustchronicle.org)

See  Bob Spitz’ testimony of his liberation, and typhus.  In this video, filmed by my son Ned in March 2008, he is addressing his liberators for the first time since 1945.

When I was in ninth grade, my education was disrupted brutally by having been transferred into a railroad yard, packed into cattle cars of the German government and ended up in Bergen Belsen with my father. We were in Bergen Belsen from late March to February, in which my father and I were separated. We were hiding the fact that we were father and son. He was taken away from me and he was shipped to a camp in Austria, the camp was called Mauthausenwhere he was killed. So I was in Bergen Belsen, all by myself, age 14-½ -15, and my physical situation was very, very bad. You heard from other former inmates that they had doctors and birth certificates. We had no no doctors or birth certificates. More often than not we had water problems. We didn’t have running water because the water system was probably in a very bad condition. We didn’t have water available 24 hours a day. I don’t think I have to discuss food with you, you’ve heard enough stories about the lack of food … So on that particular fateful April day, we’d received our orders to go to the railroad yard to be packed in because we we are now going to Theresienstadt. Theresienstadt is so many kilometers from Prague, Czechoslovakia; it was a military camp during the existence of the Austrian-Hungary Empire. Which disintegrated in 1918. Now it became a camp for Jewish inmates under the National Socialist system, you know our train made a drastic mistake in getting to Theresienstadt. It didn’t get into Theresienstadt; it didn’t make it because of you gentlemen of the 30^th Division. It was certainly a big day, as I was sitting inside of that car, cattle car, where I would estimate that there were few inmates in the cattle car that had fewer then 1,000,000 lice each. Naturally starved to death, skin and bones, very, very  bad condition. Until we heard, I heard, that somebody was fiddling with the lock of my sliding door, from the outside. Obviously that sliding door, the lock was open and first thing I know is that the sliding door is sliding toward an open position. A young man who wore, for you veterans, an ‘OD’ uniform, which means olive drab in English, and he had a white  armband with a red cross in it. Behind him there were 2 or 3 younger men without the Red Cross armbands, they were talking a language that I understood. I assume that I was the only one in my car that understood/spoke English. I had English in school with other languages. I was the only one with these guys that was able to strike up a conversation. They were, I think, more delighted than I was. I didn’t realize just how many advantages I just gained because I have successfully established a line of communication with these guys from another part of the world. They were delighted that they could start finding out information that was never available to them. At this time I think I want to stop for a minute to try to convey to you the impressions that I gained at that time from these three guys.

It’s hard for me to describe it accurately because, a) I was sick, terribly sick, b) my perception did not function at all, I had a high fever so I’m trying to remember to the best of my ability: The degree of shock, their shock, surprise, questioning on their faces-Where did these people come from? How did this happen? But within a few minutes this combination of emotions got transferred into the demonstration of concern, care, interest, a demonstration of wish, and good intentions, that was conspicuously demonstrated to each and every one of us. Before I realized just what was happening, the strong arms of that young man with the white armband grabbed me- I don’t know why, he probably didn’t know how many lice I had on my skull-

He pulled me out of that car and then the other soldiers started pulling guys out of it.

I forgot to tell you. When the first soldier opened that sliding door, some bodies-our bodies-fell on him from the railroad car. They were dead. Naturally that came as a surprise. To us, you know, it was a matter of an every day event. He pulled me out and I don’t know how, I didn’t know what was going on. I was out of it, first thing I knew, I am riding on a truck. Again I went out of it, the next thing I knew I was standing in front of a gun which was run by a gasoline-fed engine. They were spraying me with white powder, lots of it. Later on I found out that was procedure of DDT, de-lousing. Believe me they had to waste an awful lot of powder on me.

After this, they pulled me and took me into a room. Now I knew it by then that the city, the village of Hilersleben  all of a sudden gained 2500, 2600, 2700 new comers. From that train and many of them needed hospitalization. I assumed the majority needed hospitalization. I was put in a semi-private room, two people to the room. Well later I found out that the 2^nd and 3^rd floor consisted of wards with 70 bunks,  70 beds. Here I have a semi-private room because they could talk to me and I could talk to them. After God knows how many medical examinations and everything else the drastic change of tension in my diet was really very, very easy. Going from no diet to a diet is a drastic turnabout, but it’s an easy process. Again my food had to be supervised very carefully because many people, liberated people, got extremely sick and many died because of their food intake not being planned or controlled. A good Army major went from living quarters with a cocked 45 pistol in his hand, expressing his desire that the German peasant, the German farmer, the German citizen starts cooking for these guys. Many of these guys weren’t ready for that food. It played havoc.

So as time went on, I got better and better and I got rid of my typhus and my fever dropped. They called this “normalcy”. I have a problem with this word, normalcy, what is normal? What’s normal to you doesn’t have to be normal to me. I think it’s only a setting on a washing machine. My recovery was very nice and satisfactory except I assumed a new duty which I wasn’t aware of. Often, as the day went on, one medic after another said, ”Hey, Bob. Will you please come with me to the 3^rd floor? We have a problem  with Tommy/ Billy/ etc. There’s a problem, he can’t talk to us, and we can’t talk to him.” I found myself acting as a translator. Little did I know that was going to be the beginning  of something big.

{transcribed by Ashleigh Fitzgerald, HFHS ’10.}

Holocaust survivor meets Army rescuer after 65 years

Michael Woyton • Poughkeepsie Journal • August 12, 2010

Mrs. Falik heard of Frank in the Yediot Ahronot article, a major daily in Israel, that appeared in April 2010 on my project.Thanks to Varda W. in Israel for her major efforts at uncovering more survivors and getting the word out.

Frank Towers, a World War II veteran who helped liberate 2,500 Jews on a train bound for a Nazi concentration camp, meets Bruria Falik of Woodstock, who was on the train, at Arbor Ridge at Brookmeade in Rhinebeck. (Photos by Karl Rabe/Poughkeepsie Journal)

RHINEBECK — Frank Towers doesn’t remember the 12-year-old Bruria Falik he may or may not have seen 65 years ago in a crowd of children.

But they met Wednesday for the first time with hugs and tears.

Towers, 93, of was one of a contingent of soldiers who liberated a train filled with 2,500 Jews headed for Bergen-Belsen, the Nazi concentration camp.

He was speaking about his war experiences to a group of people at Arbor Ridge at Brookmeade, a senior living community in the Town of Rhinebeck. Falik, a Woodstock resident, was there to finally meet one of the men who saved her life.

Towers, who now lives in Brooker, Fla., was part of the 30th Infantry Division, an Army National Guard unit from South Carolina, North Carolina, Georgia and Tennessee, making its way through Germany toward the Elbe River.

“We were bombarded by propaganda about the torture and capture of the Jews (by the Germans),” he said, speaking with vigor. “We didn’t believe it. We thought they were trying to make us fight against the Germans all the harder.”

In early April 1945, the division liberated Brunswick and was headed to Magdeburg, Towers said.

“We had heard there were German troops in Fallersleben waiting to ambush us,” he said, and reconnaissance was sent April 13, 1945, to scout the area. No enemy troops were discovered.

“They found something else they weren’t prepared for,” Towers said: an idling train crammed full with about 2,500 Jews.

“The crew’s last order was to take the train onto a (bombed out) bridge and run it into the river,” he said.

“But they had a little bit of brains,” Towers said. “They figured they’d get killed too.”

The cars were so crowded, he said, each meant to hold about 40 people but jammed with as many as 100, it was impossible for everyone to get to the sole bucket in the corner, which was the bathroom.

“There was a horrendous stench,” Towers said. “It was so bad our own American boys had to turn around and vomit.”

Having rations and being willing to share, the soldiers gave what food they had to the starving people.

During their trip, once a day, they were given a thin, cold potato soup that was mostly water.

The food the soldiers shared was too rich for the starved people, Towers said, and they stopped giving them anything and waited for medical protocol. The people were taken to nearby Hillersleben, where they were turned over to the American military for further processing.

They were infested with lice and were dusted with DDT, their clothing confiscated and burned.

After getting showers, the people were given clothing donated by the people of Farsleben.

Towers said it wasn’t until they found the train that he realized what he originally thought was propaganda was, in fact, the truth.

“My own version, my own experience, of one small facet of the Holocaust was repeated 6 million times,” he said.

Before their meeting Wednesday, going through Falik’s mind was, how do you say thank you to someone who saved your life?

Falik said she does not remember Towers.

“But I felt I knew him all my life,” she said.

Calling that April day “glorious,” Falik said her memory tends to focus on the positive things.

“This is a country that dedicates itself to saving people all over the world,” she said.

“And I have a wonderful son as a result of being saved,” Falik said.

Towers said that sometimes the events from 65 years ago invade his dreams.

“And a lot in a bad way,” he said. “What I saw and what people like her (Falik) conveyed the way they had to live, in my dreams, I’m laying on a lice- and tick-infested bunk on a train, and I can feel them crawling on me.”

Towers demonstrated waking with a start.

But then he remembers what he and the other soldiers did that day.

“I had a small part to play in saving her life,” Towers said.

“She has come up in society,” he said, “and I’m partly responsible. It’s quite emotional that we have come full circle.”

Patricia and Donald Weber of the Village of Rhinebeck came to the lecture because the subject is poignant.

“It’s something we should not forget,” Patricia Weber said. “Man’s inhumanity to man is awful. We need to learn what we can do to prevent it.”

http://www.poughkeepsiejournal.com/article/20100812/NEWS01/8120340/Holoc