Teaching History Matters

Another honored speaker for our Sept. 2009 and 2011 reunion…

Holocaust survivor Leslie Meisels addresses his liberators for the first time.

“Please allow me to express my utmost gratitude for the gentlemen who liberated us, those brave American soldiers, who were saying that they didn’t do anything heroic, that they just did their jobs. But in doing their job, they gave us back our lives. And for that, I thank you, from the bottom of my heart…”

In part II, Leslie gives a harrowing description of how he narrowly escaped death a few days before liberation.

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It is April 13th, the 66th anniversary of the liberation. And in no small coincidence, I have been granted approval to travel to Israel with liberator Frank Towers to meet over 50 survivors of the train near Magdeburg liberated on this day in 1945.
Read below the moving narrative of Dr. George C. Gross, his remembrance of the liberation day, written 10 years ago, before he was aware of any of the survivors. He got to know quite a few before he passed on Feb. 1, 2009. Greetings to all the survivors on the day of your rebirth, and to the soldiers who, in “just doing our jobs”, saved the world.

A Train Near Magdeburg

Foreword:

Excerpt from Wayne Robinson, Move out Verify: the Combat Story of the 743rd Tank Battalion (Germany, no publisher, 1945), 162-63:

There was another sidelight to the death of fascism in Europe.  Only a few of the battalion saw it.  Those who did will never forget it.

A few miles northwest of Magdeburg there was a railroad siding in wooded ravine not far from the Elbe River. Major Clarence Benjamin in a jeep was leading a small task force of two light tanks from Dog Company on a routine job of patrolling. The unit came upon some 200 shabby looking civilians by the side of the road.  There was something immediately apparent about each one of these people, men and women, which arrested the attention. Each one of them was skeleton thin with starvation, a sickness in their faces and the way in which they stood-and there was something else.  At the sight of Americans they began laughing in joy-if it could be called laughing.  It was an outpouring of pure, near-hysterical relief.

The tankers soon found out why.  The reason was found at the railroad siding.

There they came upon a long string of grimy, ancient boxcars standing silent on the tracks.  In the banks by the tracks, as if to get some pitiful comfort from the thin April sun, a multitude of people of all shades of misery spread themselves in a sorry, despairing tableaux  [sic]. As the American uniforms were sighted, a great stir went through this strange camp. Many rushed toward the Major’s jeep and the two light tanks.

Bit by bit, as the Major found some who spoke English, the story came out.

This had been-and was-a horror train.  In these freight cars had been shipped 2500 people, jam-packed in like sardines, and they were people that had two things in common, one with the other:  They were prisoners of the German State and they were Jews.

These 2500 wretched people, starved, beaten, ill, some dying, were political prisoners who had until a few days before been held at concentration camp near Hanover.  When the Allied armies smashed through beyond the Rhine and began slicing into central Germany, the tragic2500 had been loaded into old railroad cars-as many as 68 in one filthy boxcar-and brought in a torturous journey to this railroad siding by the Elbe.  They were to be taken still deeper into Germany beyond the Elbe when German trainmen got into an argument about the route and the cars had been shunted onto the siding.  Here the tide of the Ninth Army’s rush had found them.

They found it hard to believe they were in friendly hands once more: they were fearful that the Germans would return.  They had been guarded by a large force of SS troopers, most of whom had disappeared in the night. Major Benjamin, knowing there were many German Army stragglers still in the area, left one of the light tanks there with its accompanying doughboys as a protective guard.  The Major then returned to Division headquarters to report the plight of these people.

For 24 hours, the crew of the tank remained on watch as their charges streamed about the vehicle, crying and laughing their thanks of rescue, and those who could told stories of slavery, oppression, torture, imprisonment, and death.  To hear their stories, to see before them the results of inhuman treatment lifted still another corner of the cover which, on being removed, exposed the full cruel spirit of Nazism which permitted such things to be. And this was but one of the many such stories being brought to light as Allied soldiers ripped into the secrets of Adolph Hitler’s Third Reich.

The train needed some badly needed food that night.  More, the promise of plentiful food the next day was given to them.  The commanding officer of the 823rd Tank Destroyer Battalion was seeing to it that such food would be available.  He had ordered German farmers of the surrounding towns to stay up all night, if necessary, to get food to these people.  Other Americans concerned themselves with locating living quarters to get the concentration camp victims away from the evil-smelling freight cars before more of them died and were covered by a blanket or just left lying in their last sleep beside the railroad tracks.

Sgt. George Gross (relayed to Matthew Rozell, March, 2002):

On Friday, April 13, 1945, I was commanding a light tank in a column of the 743rd Tank Battalion and the 30th Infantry Division, moving south near the Elbe River toward Magdeburg, Germany. After three weeks of non-stop advancing with the 30th from the Rhine to the Elbe as we alternated spearhead and mop-up duties with the 2nd Armored Division, we were worn out and in a somber mood because, although we knew the fighting was at last almost over, a pall had been cast upon our victories by the news of the death of President Franklin D. Roosevelt.  I had no inkling of the further grim news that morning would bring. Suddenly, I was pulled out of the column, along with my buddy Sergeant Carrol Walsh in his light tank, to accompany Major Clarence L. Benjamin of the 743rd in a scouting foray to the east of our route.  Major Benjamin had come upon some emaciated Finnish soldiers who had escaped from a train full of starving prisoners a short distance away. The major led our two tanks, each carrying several infantrymen from the 30th Infantry Division on its deck, down a narrow road until we came to a valley with a small train station at its head and a motley assemblage of passenger compartment cars and boxcars pulled onto a siding.  There was a mass of people sitting or lying listlessly about, unaware as yet of our presence. There must have been guards, but they evidently ran away before or as we arrived, for I remember no firefight.  Our taking of the train, therefore, was no great heroic action but a small police operation.  The heroism that day was all with the prisoners on the train.

Major Benjamin took a powerful picture just as a few of the people became aware that they had been rescued.  It shows people in the background still lying about

Farsleben train, moment of liberation, 4-13-1945

trying to soak up a bit of energy from the sun, while in the foreground a woman has her arms flung wide and a great look of surprise and joy on her face as she rush

es toward us.  In a moment, that woman found a pack left by a fleeing German soldier, rummaged through it, and held up triumphantly a tin of rations.  She was immediately attacked by a swarm of skeletal figures, each intent upon capturing that prize. My yelling did no good, so that I finally had to leap from my tank and wade through weak and emaciated bodies to pull the attackers off the woman, who ran quickly away with her prize.  I felt like a bully, pushing around such weak and starving fellow humans, but it was necessary to save the woman from great harm.  The incident drove home to me the terrible plight of the newly freed inhabitants of the train.

I pulled my tank up beside the small station house at the head of the train and kept it there as a sign that the train was under American protection now.  Carroll Walsh’s tank was soon sent back to the battalion, and I do not remember how long the infantrymen stayed with us, though it was a comfort to have them for a while. My recollection is that my tank was alone for the afternoon and night of the 13th.  A number of things happened fairly quickly.  We were told that the commander of the 823rd Tank Destroyer battalion had ordered all the burgermeisters of nearby towns to prepare food and get it to the train promptly, and were assured that Military Government would take care of the refugees the following day. So we were left to hunker down and protect the starving people, commiserating with if not relieving their dire condition.

I believe that the ranking officer of the Finnish prisoners introduced himself to me and offered to set up a perimeter guard. I think I approved and asked him to organize a guard, set out pickets, and handle the maintenance and relief of the outposts. However it happened, the guard was set up swiftly and efficiently. It was moving and inspiring to see how smartly those emaciated soldiers returned to their military duties, almost joyful at the thought of taking orders and protecting others again.  They were armed only with sticks and a few weapons discarded by the fleeing German guards, but they made a formidable force, and they obviously knew their duties, so that I could relax and talk to the people. A young woman named Gina Rappaport came up and offered to be my interpreter. She spoke English very well and was evidently conversant with several other languages besides her native Polish.  We stood in front of the tank as along line of men, women, and little children formed itself spontaneously, with great dignity and no confusion, to greet us.  It is a time I cannot forget, for it was terribly moving to see the courtesy with which they treated each other, and the importance they seemed to place on reasserting their individuality in some seemingly official way.  Each would stand at a position of rigid attention, held with some difficulty, and introduce himself or herself by what grew to be a sort of formula:  the full name, followed by “a Polish Jew from Hungary”-or a similar phrase which gave both the origin and the home from which the person had been seized.  Then each would shake hands in a solemn and dignified assertion of individual worth. Battle-hardened veterans learn to contain their emotions, but it was difficult then, and I cry now to think about it. What stamina and regenerative spirit those brave people showed!

Also tremendously moving were their smiles.  I have one picture of several girls, specter-thin, hollow-cheeked, with enormous eyes that had seen much evil and terror, and yet with smiles to break one’s heart.  Little children came around with shy smiles, and mothers with proud smiles happily pushed them forward to get their pictures taken.  I walked up and down the train seeing some lying in pain or lack of energy, and some sitting and making hopeful plans for a future that suddenly seemed possible again. Others followed everywhere I went, not intruding but just wanting to be close to a representative of the forces that had freed them.  How sad it was that we had no food to give immediately, and no medical help, for during my short stay with the train sixteen or more bodies were carried up the hillside to await burial, brave hearts having lost the fight against starvation before we could help them.

The boxcars were generally in very bad condition from having been the living quarters of far too many people, and the passenger compartments showed the same signs of overcrowding and unsanitary conditions.  But the people were not dirty.  Their clothes were old and often ragged, but they were generally clean, and the people themselves had obviously taken great pains to look their best as they presented themselves to us.  I was told that many had taken advantage of the cold stream that flowed through the lower part of the valley to wash themselves and their clothing.  Once again I was impressed by the indomitable spirits of these courageous people.

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)

I spent part of the afternoon listening to the story of Gina Rappaport, who had served so well as interpreter.  She was in the Warsaw ghetto for several years as the Nazis gradually emptied the ghetto to fill the death camps, until her turn finally came.  She was taken to Bergen-Belsen, where the horrible conditions she described matched those official accounts I later heard.  She and some 2500 others, Jews from all over Europe, Finnish prisoners of war, and others who had earned the enmity of Nazidom, were forced onto the train and taken on a back-and-forth journey across Germany, as their torturers tried to get them to a camp where they could be eliminated before Russians on one side or Americans on the other caught up with them. Since the prisoners had little food, many died on the purposeless journey, and they had felt no cause for hope when they were shunted into this little unimportant valley siding.  Gina told her story well, but I have never been able to write it.  I received a letter from her months later, when I was home in San Diego.   I answered it but did not hear from her again.  Her brief letter came from Paris, and she had great hopes for the future.  I trust her dreams were realized.

We were relieved the next morning, started up the tank, waved good-bye to our new friends, and followed a guiding jeep down the road to rejoin our battalion.  I looked back and saw a lonely Gina Rappaport standing in front of a line of people waving us good fortune.  On an impulse I cannot explain, I stopped the tank, ran back, hugged Gina, and kissed her on the forehead in a gesture I intended as one asking forgiveness for man’s terrible cruelty and wishing her and all the people a healthy and happy future. I pray they have had it.

George C. Gross

Spring Valley, California

June 3, 2001

click here for the ANNOTATED PHOTOGRAPHS

LISTEN to Carrol Walsh and George Gross share their recollections of the liberation of “A Train Near Magdeburg” (9:32)

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Just back from the reunion of the 30th Infantry Division Veterans of World War II and also the Holocaust survivors whom they liberated on April 13th, 1945.

At the conclusion of my presentation, John, one of the soldiers, said to me, tears in his eyes, “Yes. This is what I fought for. We didn’t really understand why we were over there. This is what we fought for.”

The signature phrase of the United States World War II Memorial in Washington, DC, is that “Americans Came to Liberate, not Conquer.” Yet during their travails across France, the Low Countries, and into Germany itself, many soldiers wondered aloud about the circumstances that took them so far away from home. The drudgery and boredom of Army routine and regulation, not to mention the months of being shot at or shelled, were all taking their toll. However, it slowly became clear to many what they had been fighting for all along as they encountered the evidence of years of Nazi tyranny. And when our soldiers themselves witnessed the atrocities of the greatest crime committed in the history of the mankind, the Holocaust, all questioning ceased.  Americans had indeed come to liberate.

This year, besides the dozen or so old soldiers, we were joined by five Holocaust survivors: Stephen, who at age 31/2 had lost both his parents and was liberated on the train, and Bruria, who told us of how her grandfather passed away shortly after liberation, “beaming like an angel”, content that he had died a free man. George explained the history and the horrors in Bergen Belsen, including losing his father and Micha described his mother’s efforts to recount what had happened in Poland, how his father was shot after jumping from the transport from the Warsaw Ghetto to Treblinka, and how he and his mother survived . And Paul explained that how meeting and becoming friends with his actual liberators was helping him to assuage the scars inflicted upon him, so long ago, but really only yesterday.

This is what I fought for.

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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

 

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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.

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{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.}

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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

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Liberator Carrol Walsh…

Walsh recalls his good friend George C. Gross, with whom he came across the Train Near Magdeburg on Friday, April 13th, 1945. Walsh then recounts the day, and the years afterward,  

 “…the fading memories of the survivors of that event tell you the story of the confluence of  time and place that cast them together forever. It was the morning of Friday April 13 1945,  in a  place called Farseblen…”

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A Train Of Life / Eldad Beck, Berlin

This story ran in the major Israeli daily “Yediot Aharonot”on Holocaust Remembrance Day, April 12th, to a quarter million households.  Thanks to the author for his interest and to Varda W. for contacting him.

Translated from Hebrew by Professor Amiela Globerson, Rehovot, Israel

This story ran in the major Israeli daily “Yediot Aharonot”on Holocaust Remembrance Day, April 12th, to a quarter million households.

On Friday, April 13 1945, at the midst of war on the grounds of Germany, the thoughts of the 30^th Division of American soldiers were concerned not only with the situation in the frontier, but rather a the message on the death of their president Franklin Roosevelt who had led the USA in the world war.

The division was on its way to conquer the city Magdeburg, on the western side of the river Elba. A limited artillery troop entered the village of Farsleben, in order to “clean it up” from the last Nazi soldiers. No Nazi soldiers were found there. However, the American soldiers came across prisoners of war from Finland who told them a strange story, namely that they had escaped from a train loaded with people, nearby.

Indeed, in a valley near Farsleben, the Americans were astonished to notice a train guarded by Nazi guards. The locomotive was still active, the train being ready to move. Nearby the railway, on the green loan among the trees, there were several people sitting or lying down – enjoying the sunshine and the fresh air. The view was absolutely surrealistic: in the midst of frontier between the Americans and the Germans, where on one side of the Elba River the Red Army Forces were approaching driving Nazi troops, a train was taking a rest – as if time and war have stopped moving.

 

The hysterical sigh of relief

 

The idyll terminated when the Nazi guards noticed the American tanks. In view of the size of their enemy, these guards realized that they had no chance and that should rather escape. They were captured after a short while. While the Nazis were still escaping, there were a few civilians, mainly women, girls and children, who approached the Americans with joyful screaming. Only then did the Americans realize the horrible appearance of the train passengers. George C. Gross, the commander of the American Force, reported last year – just before his death, on that meeting: “Each one of them looked like a skeleton, reflecting the signs of starvation and morbidity on their face. Moreover, when they saw us they burst into laughter of joy, if one can indeed name it ‘laugh’.

It was a burst of pure sigh of relief, almost hysterical”.

“One of the women”, Gross remembered witnessing, “found a package that a Nazi had left while escaping. She checked the package and waved  in victory movement with the food kit. She was immediately surrounded by a shoal of skeletons, each one of them trying to dominate the ‘prize’. My shouting at them did not help. I had to leave the tank, to pave my way among the weak, erased bodies, in order to save that woman, who quickly escaped with food”.

The American soldiers did not understand what was going on. The explanation was waiting for them within the wagons that were staying there silently. In the language of the First World War these wagons (“boxcars”) were designated “40 or 8”, namely, they could accommodate 40 people or 8 horses. When the Americans opened the doors they found inside hundreds of people loaded, standing, stinking horribly. After having evacuated the train, there were the remaining bodies of those who did not manage to survive following that journey.

The many people who were released from the train told the Americans, in a mix of languages, a story that was impossible to understand. Eventually, a young woman, Gina Rappaport, a fluently English speaking survivor from the Warsaw Ghetto, told them that this was an exportation of Jews, loaded on the train a week earlier at the concentration camp of Bergen Belsen, on the way to an unknown destination. Investigating the guards of the train and the personnel, it appeared that they had received clear-cut orders to lead the train with its 2,500 passengers – to one of the bridges on the Elbe River, and to explode it there.

“At that time we knew very little about the holocaust”, says Frank W. Towers, one of the commanders of the 30^th division, whose soldiers found the train. “We have read in the newspapers descriptions of concentration camps, but we did not realize what it was all about. Our forces entered Germany on October 1944,and here we were on April 1945, and so far had not seen those camps and the prisoners. We thought that it was all just propaganda, to enhance our determination to fight Germany. It was hard to believe that people can carry out such horrible things to other people. We then found the train”.

Towers nowadays 93 year old, continues, “I arrived at the train on the following day after it was found,  I have never seen people in such conditions – skinny, weak, filthy, stinking, fighting for their life. Many of them could not even stand up. They have already been taken out of the train, sitting around it, anticipating food and medical treatment. During the six days on the train all they have received was tasteless soup. We could not understand the situation in which they were. We had plenty of food, so we provided them our war-servings of food and chocolates. They ate immediately, but their bodies were not used to food anymore, and they started vomiting. The medical personnel called in emergence instructed us to stop serving the food, and the recommended treatment was to provide the food in by far smaller amounts”.

A wagon loaded with explosives

 

At the midst of the war against Germany, Towers decided to stop the progression of his fighting forces and to direct all the resources towards rescuing the Jews who were in the train. Firstly, the Americans asked the inhabitants of Farsleben to collect food, clothes and medications for the Jews. The Germans were also requested to accommodate survivor Jews in their homes, particularly elderly and families with children. The Farsleben inhabitants objected to these instructions, and complied only upon the threat that unless they obey – the Mayor of the village will be killed. At the same time, the American soldiers prepared a collective grave near the small town, to burry all the dead victims of the train.

Dr. Mordechai Weisskopf, then – a 15 year old boy born in Budapest, was among the survivors. A few months earlier he was deported from Hungary by the “Arrow Cross” fascist party, and then transferred by Nazis to Bergen Belsen, along with hundreds of Budapest Jews. The Hungarian Jews were placed in “zunderlager”, a special site at the camp, probably as based on the intention to use them in an exchange arrangement with the Allies, similarly to the arrangement that went on with Kastner.

“It was all about at the time when the second transport of ‘Kastner’s Jews’” was moved out”, saysWeisskopf. “We were transferred to their place. The Germans allowed us to keep our clothes and personal back-packs. We had the privilege of special conditions, and exempted from the slavery. We suffered from hunger and the torture of standing up in orders in the snow and rain. A few days after the end of Passover we were transferred to a train, claiming that we would be released upon an exchange arrangement. Obviously, this was misleading”.

Two additional trains loaded with Jew prisoners left Bergen Belsen on the following days. One of them disappeared, leaving no traces. Until now, it is not clear what the Nazis intended to do with those Jews. “Our train started moving”, recalls Weisskopf. “We were moving back and forth, until we stopped near Magdeburg. We knew that we were entering the area of the frontier. The survivors had several different versions on what was happening there. I heard that the commander of the train called the representatives of the Jews and told them ‘Germany is lost and the war is about its end’. He told them that he got an order to move the train onto one of the Elba bridges and there to explode it. As he said, one of the wagons was full of explosives. He said that he had decided not to carry out that order, pending on an agreement that the Jews will guarantee his life as well as his soldiers, in case they are captured by the Americans. He asked the Jews to provide him with their civil clothes for himself and his soldiers, and they all left the train. The Americans arrived there on the following morning day, in two tanks”.

“When we saw the Americans we all hugged and cried in joy, happy to have survived and be acquitted that day”, continues the Israeli doctor. “There was the great excitement. One of the Americans was a Jew, and said in Jewish: ‘I am also a Jew”. Later on I entered a house in a nearby village that had been evacuated of its inhabitants. We went straight into the pantry, looking for food. My body weight at that time was 30 Kg. I, as well as the others, started eating with no control, and then suffered from severe diarrheas. Afterwards there was a burst of typhus epidemics. I was hospitalized. One day, a Red Cross representative came in, telling me that an American Rabbi was organizing a group of Jewish children to migrate to Palestine. My brother in-law, being with me in Bergen Belsen and in the train, convinced me to join that group. We were transferred to Buchenwald, from there to Marseille, and then to boats on the way to Haifa”.

The officer Frank W. Towers remained there to organize the transfer of the survivors,

after they were first sprayed with DDT and received medical treatment, and were then transferred to an abandoned German Airport, where they stayed until they were moved to refugee camps. Subsequently, he returned with his people to resume their role in the war. Two days after having rescued the survivors from the train, the British soldiers released also the Bergen Belsen camp.

Towers fought until the victory, returned to the USA and has never engage in the story of the train ever since, for the whole period of 62 years. Then, one day he received a letter from a friend, another veteran soldier, who suggested viewing an internet site of a high school in New York. The name was: ”The second world war, a living history project, a train near Magdeburg”. “It sounds familiar”, Towers responded laughing.

Listening to the rescuers

 

Matt Rozell, a history teacher at the Hudson Falls High school, asked his students nine years ago, to interview war soldier veterans. One of the students interviewed his grandfather, Carrol Walsh-a judge in Florida, who happened to be one of the two commanders of the American tank. Rozell was move on with that story. The witness referred the teacher to George C. Gross in California, a university lecturer at that time, who delivered to the teacher photographs that he had made on the day when the train was released. “The photographs were amazing”, Rozell says. “I organized the witnessing data along with the photographs and placed them all on the internet site. Four years later, I had the first call from one of the train survivors, in Australia, who was a child on the train. Slowly, the circle of connections with survivors and rescuers has expanded. A meeting of these people was organized on September 2007.  At that time I knew about only four of them”.

VardaWeisskopf, the daughter of Mordechai Weisskopf, learned about the renewing contact with the rescuers of her father while she was searching material about him in the archives of Bergen Belsen. Recently, in January, following correspondence with Rozell and talks with Towers, she took it to locate additional survivors. “Talking with Towers was a mighty shock to me”, says Varda. “How many people are privileged to talk with people who have released their parents, people who thanks to them we live? As a second generation daughter to holocaust survivor, I have the feeling of a personal mission to record the information on the holocaust, and to see to it that it will be passed on to the coming generations. From my point of view, there were also miracles in the holocaust, and the event of the train was one of these. Actually, the Americans could have left behind the train with its passengers, and continue their role of fighting in the war. Moreover, the train could have been target to direct shelling”.

Within two months Varda managed to locate about 70 survivors, most of them in Israel. So far, a total of 140 survivors have been located. The meetings of survivors and rescuers at the High School continue, and the number of participants is increasing. “The students are very enthusiastic about these meetings”, says Rozell “From their point of view there is a tremendous difference between reading a history book and listening directly to people who were involved in the events. The students realize that they are the last generation having the chance of interviewing directly  these people, so they take it as an obligation to see to it that the information will be brought to the coming generations.”.

“Only for the last two years we have started knowing the people whom we have saved”, emphasizes Towers. “I feel proud and happy knowing that I have had a small part in saving them. They have come up from the ashes, like a Phoenix. It is amazing to see what they did with themselves. We have afforded them a second chance to live, and it warms my heart  to see the results”.

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