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A story of finding inner peace sixty years beyond the events of World War II.

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on November 14, 2013|

A Conversation with Rona Arato, author of THE LAST TRAIN: A HOLOCAUST STORY

By Sharon Salluzzo

In The Last Train, Rona Arato deftly tells her husband Paul’s remembrances of his life between April 1944 and November 1945. Paul was five years old when he, his ten-year-old brother, Oscar, and their mother (his father had already been taken away to a work camp) were taken from their home and forced into a ghetto, put in boxcars and taken to a farm in Austria, and finally to Bergen Belsen Concentration Camp. In April 1945, Paul and his family were again put in boxcars. American soldiers, who were in combat at the time, liberated the train near Farsleben, Germany. The physical and psychological horrors endured by Paul make a very strong impact. Rona lets the events carry the book.

But the story doesn’t end there. In September 2009, Hudson Falls, NY history teacher, Matt Rozell, held a Holocaust Symposium and a reunion for the train survivors and the soldiers who liberated the train. They spoke with students, and with one another. It was a time of great emotion, constantly moving between sorrow and joy. I am so glad that Rona included Paul’s remarks to the students in her book. I was fortunate to be in the audience at the symposium, and I will never forget listening to Paul as he spoke. I grew up having seen a photograph that Paul waited sixty years to see. My father was one of the U.S. soldiers who liberated the train. I sat next to Rona at dinner that last night of the reunion. She said she wanted to write Paul’s story. Four years later it has now been published. I am delighted to share a conversation I recently had with her.

Sharon: What kind of preparation did you have to do in order to write THE LAST TRAIN?

Rona: I often tell people that when I married Paul, I married the Holocaust. While it was at the symposium at Hudson Falls High School that I became determined to write Paul’s story, I have been accumulating information and background since our marriage. To get a better understanding of his background, I interviewed Holocaust survivors for Steven Spielberg’s Survivors of the Shoa Visual History Foundation between 1994 and 1998. Paul had applied for family reparations after the War, and I read the outlines. Occasionally, he would tell me some of his experiences. In the late 1970s or early 80s, he and I visited Karcag, Hungary, Paul’s hometown. It was still under Communist control and very much the way it was when Paul lived there. The roads were mud. Some of the people were still pumping their water from the community well. I was able to get a feeling for his life and what they had been through. Writing this book was an emotional journey but also a fascinating journey. I heard the testimony of other train survivors during the symposium. One of them, Leslie Meisels, had worked with Paul for years before they discovered they were both on that train. Isn’t that an amazing coincidence? Of course I was doing research through books and online websites right up to publication. In fact, I had to call my editor and say “Stop the presses!” as I discovered a key fact. We had thought that these Hungarian Jews were rounded up and sent off by Nazi SS guards. Paul and I learned that it was actually Hungarian Gendarmes under SS troops who were sent by Adolf Eichmann. Paul said to me, “No wonder I could understand them. They were speaking Hungarian.” The end papers of the book are a copy of the transport page from the Bergen Belsen Memorial in Germany. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum checked facts for me. And my editor was wonderful in telling me where I needed to fill in background information.

Sharon: Paul has his sixth birthday during this time. How do you get into the mind of a six-year-old boy who is held in a Nazi Concentration Camp?

Rona: While Paul’s childhood in Hungary and mine in the United States were very different, the timeframe was the same. It was easy for me to go back to what it was like growing up in the 1940s. I have a good imagination and can close my eyes and remember what it felt like to be that age. In addition, my grandchildren are young, and I am able to observe them and their reactions to situations.

Sharon: There are a number of photographs, including Paul’s parents as a young married couple, and Paul’s nursery school picture. How were these preserved?

Rona: Their house in Hungary was bombed, so there were no pictures left there after the war. Some photos were sent to Paul’s uncle in Cleveland. After the war, almost every town made a Yizkor book – Yizkor is the Hebrew word for memorial. These books chronicle the history of the town, the Jews who lived there before the war and list those who did not return. Paul’s nursery school picture comes from the Karcag book. When Paul and I visited Karcag, we photographed the water pump and the Synagogue. Some of the photos in the book were taken by the soldiers on the days the train and the camp were liberated. Did you know that the photograph of the woman and her daughter emerging from the death train is now on a list of the 40 most iconic Jewish pictures?

Sharon: That is amazing, Rona, because until a few years ago, it was known to only the soldiers who liberated the train. My Dad kept it in his top dresser drawer. When he told his story to (history teacher) Matt Rozell, Matt put it on his website. The Internet has been a powerful tool in spreading this story.

moment-of-liberation1.jpg

Rona: That was how we learned about the work Matt Rozell was doing. My son read an article on the Internet about the train and sent it to me. I gave it to Paul who recognized it as the train he had been on. We contacted Matt who said he was organizing a symposium at Hudson Falls High School. It was there that Paul and your Dad (Carrol Walsh) met. I included that wonderful picture of Paul and your Dad embracing right after Paul said, “Give me a hug. You saved my life!”

Sharon: Not only is it a great picture of Paul and Dad, but it captures the feeling of all the survivors who had spent a lifetime searching for the soldiers who saved them.

Sharon: How did you approach the actual writing and selection of words and language?

Rona: I wrote the story in English, not Hungarian, but I wrote in a way they might have spoken. I tried to use the vernacular of the time. We don’t have a record of their exact words but we do know how they would have spoken, and what they were feeling at the time. When I have included Hungarian or Yiddish words, I have included explanations for them. Writers always need to listen to how people speak.

Sharon: THE LAST TRAIN recounts historical events for which you have created dialogue between characters. How would you classify this book?

Rona: I would call it creative nonfiction, or fictionalized nonfiction. The events that happened to Paul are all true. Occasionally, I needed a bridge between incidents or to show the passage of time. When I created a scene, I discussed it with Paul for authenticity. For example, I included a scene in which Paul sights the return of the storks, and has a conversation with his mother. I needed something to create a sense of time and place, and what they were feeling in the absence of Paul’s father. When Paul told me there were storks that returned every spring, I knew I had found the bridge I needed. My intention was to recreate the history. To bring the reader along, the writer needs to show the drama of the events.

Sharon: There are many heart-stopping scenes: when Paul is confronted, nose-to-snout with the ferocious German Shepherd dogs; when he is separated from his mother and brother at the train station; when he sneaks through Bergen Belsen to visit his uncle; and, of course, when the SS guard shoots the boy standing next to Paul.

Rona: I was not going to include that last event. I thought it was too strong for my audience. I was telling my editor about it, and he insisted that I include it. He said it was important to tell exactly what happened.

Sharon: What did Paul think of the way you portray him?

Rona: When he first read it he said, “You are making me look like a bratty little kid.” I responded, “Well, you were!” But what I actually meant by that is he acted like a typical 5 or 6 year-old in that he was terrified. But his own distinctive personality also shows through where he was both feisty and stubborn. These were important traits to have.

Sharon: Why did you include the reunion in the book?

Rona: The reunion was approximately 60 years after their liberation. It was, without a doubt, one of the most amazing shared experiences of my life. The powerful feelings shared by the soldiers and survivors radiated to their families and to the students at the high school. They were reunited because a high school history teacher interviewed a soldier and the information was put on his website. For the survivors and soldiers to share this experience with the students is so important. These students will share what they heard with their children. They are the ones who will pass along what happened. It was a life changing experience for everyone involved.

Sharon: What has surprised you most about the publication of THE LAST TRAIN?

Rona: That the audience goes beyond middle school and high school. Their parents and other adults are reading the book and responding.

Sharon: What would you like to see children and adults take away from this book?

Rona: This is a universal story of survival. I want my readers to see how this family and their extended family took care of each other and watched over each other. Paul’s mother was suffering with typhus and her young sons literally propped her up at roll call so the soldiers would not see how ill she was. Oscar became a father figure for Paul. He told Paul to stand up straight and not to cry. In the camps you don’t break down. I want my readers to be able to say, “Thank God I have the right to show my emotions. It’s okay to be a kid.”

Sharon: Thank you for speaking with me today. Paul’s family returned to Hungary, but life changed tremendously. He eventually came to Canada. Is there another book here?

Rona: There very well could be! It was not easy getting out of Communist Hungary.

The Last Train offers so much in terms of discussion points. It makes a huge impact in its 142 pages. It would be a great introduction to a study of the Holocaust for high school students. It is also accessible for 10 year-year-olds. Adults will truly understand the importance of both parts of this story. Of course there are the general topics of World War II and the Holocaust but there are also topics of bullying, physical and psychological fears, strength and courage, mother-child relationship, sibling relationship, family and friendship, defining a hero, the impact of a photograph, and hope. It is a story of captivity and deliverance; a story of new-found friendships, deep respect and a sense of inner peace discovered sixty years beyond the events of World War II.

WATCH PAUL ARATO SPEAK TO STUDENTS FOR THE FIRST TIME

Rona’s presentation on THE LAST TRAIN includes a Power Point display including original photographs. It is suitable for children nine and up as well as adults. For more information about Rona Arato, her books and her presentations, visit www.ronaarato.com.

To book Rona for a visit, go to www.childrenslit.com/bookingservice/arato-rona

If, after reading The Last Train, you would like more information about the train to Magdeburg and the Hudson Falls High School symposium, please go to Matt Rozell’s site: https://teachinghistorymatters.com/. By the way, train survivors are still contacting Matt from all around the world. Frank Towers, the lieutenant who oversaw the liberation, has made it his life’s work to locate any remaining survivors. To date, about 350 have been found.

found at http://www.clcd.com/features/th_Rona_Arato_Final.php

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Numbers dwindling, WWII veterans continue poignant reunions, renewing bonds forged in battle.

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , on November 12, 2013|

Numbers dwindling, WWII veterans continue poignant reunions, renewing bonds forged in battle

Article by: DAN SEWELL , Associated Press
NOTE: I was reading this article in my hometown paper yesterday. Frank Towers is mentioned halfway in. Then I remembered some time ago the AP contacted me looking for info on WW2 reunions, and I gave them Frank’s contact info. So yes this is another cut and paste update, but I did have something to do with the article! That’s 1st Lt. Frank Towers- the guy charged with shuffling dazed Holocaust survivors to food and shelter, April, 1945…. He’s 96, planning another reunion in Savannah in Feb. I’ve been to his last 6 reunions. There is nothing like getting up at 6am for breakfast with a table of these guys.

DAYTON, Ohio — Paul Young rarely talked about his service during World War II — about the B-25 bomber he piloted, about his 57 missions, about the dangers he faced or the fears he overcame.

“Some things you just don’t talk about,” he said.

But Susan Frymier had a hunch that if she could journey from Fort Wayne, Ind., with her 92-year-old dad for a reunion of his comrades in the 57th Bomb wing, he would open up.

She was right: On a private tour at the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force near Dayton, amid fellow veterans of flights over southern Europe and Germany, Young rattled off vivid details of his plane, crewmates, training and some of his most harrowing missions.

“Dad, you can’t remember what you ate yesterday, but you remember everything about World War II,” his daughter said, beaming.

When Young came home from the war, more than 70 years ago, there were 16 million veterans like him — young soldiers, sailors and Marines who returned to work, raise families, build lives. Over the decades, children grew up, married, had children of their own; careers were built and faded into retirement; love affairs followed the path from the altar to the homestead and often, sadly, to the graveyard.

Through it all, the veterans would occasionally get together to remember the greatest formative experience of their lives. But as the years wore on, there were fewer and fewer of them. According to the Department of Veteran Affairs, just a little over 1 million remain. The ones who remain are in their 80s and 90s, and many are infirm or fragile.

So the reunions, when they are held, are more sparsely attended — yearly reminders of the passing of the Greatest Generation.

—When veterans of the Battle of the Bulge gathered in Kansas City this summer, only 40 came, according to organizers, down from 63 last year and 350 in 2004.

—Of the 80 members of Doolittle’s Raiders who set out on their daring attack on Japan in 1942, 73 survived. Seventy-one years later, only four remain; they decided this year’s April reunion in Fort Walton Beach, Fla., would be their last, though they met Saturday for a final toast in honor of those who have gone before them.

—A half-century ago, when retired Army First Lt. Frank Towers went to his first reunion of the 30th Infantry Division — soldiers who landed at the beaches of Normandy and fought across France and Germany — he was surrounded by 1,000 other veterans.

“Now if I get 50, I’m lucky,” said Towers, who is working on plans for a reunion next February in Savannah, Ga. “Age has taken its toll on us. A lot of our members have passed away, and many of them who are left are in health situations where they can’t travel.”

So why persist?

“It’s a matter of camaraderie,” Towers said. “We spent basically a year or more together through hell or high water. We became a band of brothers. We can relate to each other in ways we can’t relate to (anyone else). You weren’t there. These guys were there. They know the horrors we went through.”

___

As many as 11,000 people served in the 57th Bomb Wing that flew missions over German-held Europe from North Africa and the island of Corsica during most of the war. Hundreds survive, according to wing historians and reunion organizers. Only nine veterans made it to this fall’s event.

George Williams, 90, recalled earlier reunions with his comrades, “having a great time yukking it up and talking about things.” No one else from his squadron came to this one.

“All of a sudden, it’s lonesome,” said Williams, a native of Visalia, Calif., who moved after his wife’s death to Springfield, Mo., where his son lives. “All of the people you ran around with are on the wrong side of the grass. You wonder why you’re so lucky.”

But in a Holiday Inn hospitality suite with patriotic bunting, bowls of pretzels and chips with soft drinks at their tables, the stories flowed easily.

Williams remembered the tension of his first mission, his hand ready at the tag that would release him to bail out if necessary. It went without incident, and upon their return to base, a flight surgeon measured out two ounces of whiskey for each crewman. “Sixty-nine to go,” he said then, because 70 missions was considered the tour of duty. Sometimes on later missions, he would pour the two ounces into a beer bottle to save up for a night when he needed numbing.

Robert Crouse, of Clinton, Tenn., is 89 years old, but he remembers as if it happened yesterday the time a shell blew out the cockpit windshield (“you could stick your head through it”), disabling much of the control panel. Another plane escorted the bomber, its pilot calling out altitude and air speed as Crouse’s plane limped back to base, riddled with holes.

Young recalled flying a damaged plane back to base, hearing his tail gunner’s panicked yells as Plexiglass shattered over him. “You could feel the plane vibrate; you fly through the smoke, you smell the smoke and you hear the flak hitting the plane like hail on a tin roof.”

Not all the memories are bad ones. There was the late-war mission when they hit a spaghetti factory instead of the intended target (“Spaghetti was flying everywhere,” recalled Crouse, chuckling). There was Williams’ first Thanksgiving meal overseas: a Spam turkey, spiced and baked to perfection by an innovative cook.

“I still love Spam,” he said.

Then there was R&R in Rome, hosted by the Red Cross. Young men not long removed from high school toured the Colosseum and other historic sites they had read about. They visited the Vatican; some met Pope Pius XII. Williams got a papal blessing of a rosary for his engineer’s fiancee.

“It was pretty good,” Williams said of his war experience, “except when they were shooting at us.”

___

Some of the veterans fear that their service will be forgotten after they are gone. Crouse and others have written memoirs, and many of the reunion groups now have websites, magazines and other publications in which they recount their stories.

“You just hope that the young people appreciate it,” said Young. “That it was very important, if you wanted to continue the freedom that we have.”

Their children remember. Some are joining them at the reunions; others keep coming after their fathers are gone.

At this year’s reunion, Bob Marino led a memorial service and read the names of 42 members of the 57th Bomb Wing who died in the past year. A bugler played “Taps.”

Marino, 72, a retired IRS attorney and Air Force veteran from Basking Ridge, N.J., helped organize the gathering. His Brooklyn-native father, Capt. Benjamin Marino, died in 1967 and left numerous photos from the war, and Marino set about trying to identify and organize them. To learn more about his father’s experiences, he corresponded with other veterans — including Joseph Heller, who was inspired by his wartime experiences with the 57th to write his classic novel “Catch-22.”

“He never talked about any of this,” Marino said, turning the pages on a massive scrapbook as veterans dropped by to look at the photos. “Once in a while, something came out. I wish I had sat down and talked to him about it.”

This was precisely the gift Susan Frymier received at the reunion in Dayton.

She watched as the father who had long avoided talking about the war proudly pulled from his wallet a well-worn, black-and-white snapshot of the plane he piloted, nicknamed “Heaven Can Wait” with a scantily clad, shapely female painted near the cockpit.

She listened as he described German anti-aircraft artillery fire zeroing in on his plane. “I had to get out of there. All the flak … they were awfully close.” He described “red-lining” a landing, running the engines beyond safe speed. His voice suddenly choked.

“Oh, Dad!” said his daughter, and she hugged him tightly.

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Hell came in like a freight train. Veterans’ Day 2013.

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on November 11, 2013| 1 Comment »

I am reposting this today for Veterans’ Day 2013. Also tune into CBS 6 Albany NY at 6pm this evening for a feature story on him. Frank was in the 30th Infantry Division, which liberated the Train Near Magdeburg; he came to our school.

The morning of December 16, 1944. A lonely outpost on the Belgian frontier.

“Both the enemy and the weather could kill you, and the two of them together was a pretty deadly combination.” Bulge veteran Bart Hagerman. Photo: George Silk/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images Dec 20, 1944

In subzero temperatures, the last German counteroffensive of World War II had begun. Nineteen thousand American lives would be lost in the Battle of the Bulge. “Hell came in like a freight train. I heard an explosion and went back to where my friend was. His legs were blown off-he bled to death in my arms.” The average age of the American “replacement” soldier? 19.

Of the sixteen million American men and women who served in WWII, four and a quarter hundred thousand died on the field of conflict. In 2011, nearly 1000 veterans of World War II quietly slip away every day. The national memory of the war that did more than any other event in the last century to shape the history of the American nation is dying with them. The Germans threw 250,000 well trained troops and tanks against a lightly defended line on the Ardennes frontier in Belgium and Luxembourg, which created a pocket or “bulge” in the Allied offensive line, the objective being to drive to the port of Antwerp to split the American and British advance and force a separate peace with the Western Allies. What ensued was the bloodiest battle in American history. It saddens me that it comes as a shock to many Americans today that the “Battle of the Bulge” didn’t originate as a weight-loss term.

On a personal note, I have had the privilege of interviewing many of the veterans of this battle. In the high school where I teach, I have been inviting veterans to my classroom to share their experiences with our students. As their numbers dwindled, I smartened up, bought a camera, and began to record their stories. And for the past decade, I have been sending kids out into the field to record the stories of World War II before this generation fades altogether. These men and women have helped to spark students’ interest in finding out more about our nation’s past and the role of the individual in shaping it. On our website we have worked to weave the stories of our community’s sacrifices into the fabric of our national history. And that, to me, is what teaching history should be all about. After all, if we allow ourselves to forget about the teenager who bled to death in his buddy’s arms, if we overlook the sacrifices it took to make this nation strong and proud, we may as well forget everything else. I shudder for this country when I see what we have all forgotten, so soon. But if you are taking the time to read this post I suppose I am preaching to the saved.

I will close with the account of a nineteen year old infantryman who in fact survived the battle and the war, and who I was able to introduce to many Hudson Falls students on more than one occasion. Sixty-nine years ago this December, a day began that would forever change his life.  Frank is now the only living Medal of Honor recipient from World War II left in New York State and New England.

In the winter of 1944, nineteen year old Private First Class Currey’s infantry squad was fighting the Germans in the Belgian town of Malmédy to help contain the German counteroffensive in the Battle of the Bulge. Before dawn on December 21, Currey’s unit was defending a strong point when a sudden German armored advance overran American antitank guns and caused a general withdrawal. Currey and five other soldiers—the oldest was twenty-one—were cut off and surrounded by several German tanks and a large number of infantrymen. They began a daylong effort to survive.

Francis Currey MOH and Ned Rozell March 2010-Ned is friends with the last WWII Medal of Honor recipient in NY and NE, Frances Currey. Yes, the special edition GI Joe he signed for Ned is 19 yr. old Frank!

Francis Currey MOH and Ned Rozell March 2010-Ned is friends with the last WWII Medal of Honor recipient in NY and NE, Frances Currey. Yes, the special edition GI Joe he signed for Ned is 19 yr. old Frank!

The six GIs withdrew into an abandoned factory, where they found a bazooka left behind by American troops. Currey knew how to operate one, thanks to his time in Officer Candidate School, but this one had no ammunition. From the window of the factory, he saw that an abandoned half-track across the street contained rockets. Under intense enemy fire, he ran to the half-track, loaded the bazooka, and fired at the nearest tank. By what he would later call a miracle, the rocket hit the exact spot where the turret joined the chassis and disabled the vehicle.

Moving to another position, Currey saw three Germans in the doorway of an enemy-held house and shot all of them with his Browning Automatic Rifle. He then picked up the bazooka again and advanced, alone, to within fifty yards of the house. He fired a shot that collapsed one of its walls, scattering the remaining German soldiers inside. From this forward position, he saw five more GIs who had been cut off during the American withdrawal and were now under fire from three nearby German tanks. With antitank grenades he’d collected from the half-track, he forced the crews to abandon the tanks. Next, finding a machine gun whose crew had been killed, he opened fire on the retreating Germans, allowing the five trapped Americans to escape.

Deprived of tanks and with heavy infantry casualties, the enemy was forced to withdraw. Through his extensive knowledge of weapons and by his heroic and repeated braving of murderous enemy fire, Currey was greatly responsible for inflicting heavy losses in men and material on the enemy, for rescuing 5 comrades, 2 of whom were wounded, and for stemming an attack which threatened to flank his battalion’s position.

At nightfall, as Currey and his squad, including the two seriously wounded men, tried to find their way back to the American lines, they came across an abandoned Army jeep fitted out with stretcher mounts. They loaded the wounded onto it, and Currey, perched on the jeep’s spare wheel with a Browning automatic rifle in his hand, rode shotgun back to the American lines.

After the war in Europe had officially ended, Major General Leland Hobbs made the presentation on July 27, 1945, at a division parade in France.

source material “Medal of Honor: Portraits of Valor Beyond the Call of Duty by Peter Collier.

Frank on TV   http://www.cbs6albany.com/news/features/top-story/stories/hometown-heroes-sergeant-francis-currey-12021.shtml

Frank signs autographs at our school.
Frank signs autographs at our school.

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WWII – The Nazis.

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on October 8, 2013| 1 Comment »

Traveling compadres Tim, Scott, and Alan in front of our hotel next to the Presidential Palace, Warsaw, Poland, summer 2013.

Traveling compadres Tim, Scott, and Alan in front of our hotel next to the Presidential Palace, Warsaw, Poland, summer 2013. Out for a nightcap and to discuss our shared day.

I am stealing another post from my friend Scott. We traveled together for three weeks this summer on our roller coaster Holocaust tour, and he continued on. Here is a great post with great pictures. Wish I was there with you buddy, but you make it come alive for me and my readers. Great pics, too. Learned a lot. Safe travels. MR

 

WWII – The Nazis

01 Tuesday Oct 2013

During the 11 day tour of WWI and WWII, we stopped at some important and significant locations to Hitler and the Nazis.  I think it is important to look into the history and development of the Nazis if we want to further understand how this much hate can manifest in a  major government.  If you have been following the news out of Greece and their political party known as Golden Dawn (whose symbol resembles the swastika), I don’t think we are that far away from this still happening.

One stop that marked Hitler’s rise was the site of his Beer Hall Putsch in 1923.  Hitler tried to rally some fellow drinkers from a beer hall in Munich to overthrow the Bavaria State Government.  It failed.  Here is the room he gathered supporters:

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This was a great place to be.  However, if you took a moment to think about what happened here, you had to pause.  I think this is a great example of resilience, though, to see people using this space for good things today.

We also stopped in Nuremberg and visited Zeppelin Field – the site of the large Nazi rallies of the late 1930′s you have seen in documentaries and films.  In the 1970′s, the German government passed a law forbidding the destruction of important Nazi buildings.  However, seeing Zeppelin Field it is clear that they are not doing much to preserve these sites.

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The podium you see down there is the one Hitler stood on.  You can see this area has become a parking lot and it is also the route of a road race so you can see the racetrack walls on the right.  The field in front of you, blocked by trees, is where Nazi’s rallied.  Here is a close up of the sides:Image

Here is the podium straight on:Image

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When I was up there on the podium, I turned around and imagined Hitler walking through the doors behind the podium to the place I was standing – it was a little creepy.  Image

I am impressed and disgusted by the amount of energy and money and resources and humanity spent on this hateful man and his message.  But this field was full of people who supported him.  In the museum nearby, there are videos of older German ladies who recall as young children all the excitement when Hitler came to town.  They told of going home and getting ladders so they could see him when his parade passed by.  And they told the camera this – years later mind you – with smiles on their faces and laughter in their voices.  I did not sense a bit of shame of their role (though they WERE children) in what Germany did during WWII and leading up to.  This was a something that stuck with me.

The Museum I talk about was in the largest building the Nazis were building in Nuremberg.  It was never finished, but the building remains:

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To give you a better idea of its size, here is what it looks like inside – that is a motorcoach full sized bus below:

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Again, you can kind of see the disrepair this building is in.  It does house a pretty good museum on the history of Nazism and its place in Nuremberg history, but most of the building is crumbling.

Another place we went to was what we call The Eagle’s Nest up in the German Alps overlooking Austria.  This house was a gift to Hitler by the Nazi Party on his 50th Birthday.  We took our bus to the bottom of the mountain is sits upon and then had to take another bus, driven by special drivers to near the top.  This is how we saw the house at this point:ImageImage

Notice the tunnel in the picture above – this was the way to the elevator:Image

 

From here, we took an elevator up to the house.  The same elevator Hitler took.  Again – creepy.  It felt though like most people here were doing the touristy thing – like we were – rather than once again comprehending the historical significance of this man and this movement.  I couldn’t wait to get off the elevator.

At the house, it was beautiful.  It was much smaller than I had imagined.

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Here are some pics from inside.  They turned the living room area into a restaurant now:ImageImage

Here is the signature fireplace:

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Hitler must have stood right here on days like this (which was pretty cold up here in the mountains) warming his hands.  I had to get out of here  – so I went outside and enjoyed some spectacular views.  Notice the fresh snow on the surrounding mountaintops:

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But no matter how impressive the view was, the reason for this place never escaped my mind.  When we got back down to the bottom of the mountain, we went through some Nazi bunkers that were built here as well:

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Inside were these tunnels and rooms:

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In one room, they made into a memorial for Holocaust victims and names were being read 24/7.  Here is the room and the walls which were covered in graffiti I think encouraged by the museum people:

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And this leads us to the details of the Nazi atrocities.  If you have been reading my blog, I have been to 8 or 9 concentration camps already.  I went to another one on this tour – the first camp – known as Dachau.  Here is the train platform and the main building the Jews (and political prisoners, POWs, etc.) went through:Image

The now all too familiar “Work will set you free” sign”

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The fence and guard towers:

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The area where victims were gathered each day:

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The main lane with the barracks outlines and bunks inside:

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The gas chamber:

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The old crematorium:

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When that wasn’t enough, the new crematorium:

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You all know what happened here and the horrible thing the Nazis did.  If you want to know more, read my first 12 or so blogs.

There are some symbols of remembrance here, like this sculpture:

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And this synagogue:

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But this is a horrible place.  My group, many of whom had never been to a camp, where visibly shaken and moved.  That is why it was good that we visited the Court House that housed the Nuremberg Trials after WWII and saw the punishment of those responsible for this.

Here are the gates to the court house:

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This is a functioning court house today and the court room that housed the trial is still being used as well.  Here is a pic of what the outside looked like after WWII:Image

The court room today:

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Luckily we were there on a Saturday, so we could sit in here all we wanted.  They had little video monitors that you could use to watch parts of the trials.  It was great to sit there and watch, through logic and reason and rules and respect, these Nazis get convicted.  I could have watched this all day.  I could have watched this for a week.  I think I will have to watch the movies again when I get home, but this made me happy being here.

Finally, we visited a German cemetery:Image

Notice the markers in the ground – they represent two Nazis for two German soldiers were in every hole.  Standing there, I could not bring myself to forgive these people.  I almost felt like they did not deserve this burial and respect.  Just then, out of the fog, came our friends – reminding us of the message from the bridge that perhaps it was time to heal.

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http://scottdurham.wordpress.com/

 

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Keep tossing pebbles.

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on September 24, 2013|

Francis Curry, WWII Medal of Honor, with students.

Francis Curry, WWII Medal of Honor, with students.

FOUR years ago today the most incredible week concluded with former soldiers and the Holocaust survivors they saved watching this newscast together in cocktail lounge of the Georgian Resort in Lake George along with teachers and students from Hudson Falls High School. Thank you Tara, Mary, Lisa, Rene, and all the staff. And to ABC World News for recognizing the importance of the occasion, and to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and the Bergen Belsen Memorial for their attendance and support.

A teacher’s job is to toss pebbles. Several of the participants are gone now, but the ripples here became huge, and no one will forget what they meant, where they came from, or what they have led to.

Watch a story about how a teacher fellow from the Museum reunited Jewish prisoners with U.S. Army soldiers who liberated them from a train near Magdeburg, Germany, on April 13, 1945.

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Stamps and Miracles.

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on September 22, 2013|

I met Leslie Meisels exactly four years ago today, when he and  Ariela Rojek and Paul Arato drove all the way down from Toronto, Canada to meet their actual liberators.

Leslie is one of the most gracious men I have ever met; I am honored to have him as one of my friends and am proud to be in on what he calls the latest miracle of his life.

I wrote to a reporter/columnist in Toronto, Canada, several months back to comment on a story that she had written, and she then had the opportunity to interview several of my survivor friends in the community who had been liberated on the Train Near Magdeburg. She struck up a friendship with Leslie, and this ebook resulted.

A sample:

When I first reached Leslie Meisels on the phone one afternoon in late April and asked for an interview, he told me to hold on a minute — he needed to get his day planner.

I thought he was joking.

Leslie is 86. What could he possibly be doing to fill up a day planner?

A lot, it turns out.

He has a wife, two daughters, four grandchildren. He is an active member of the North York Philatelic Society and a committee member of Circle of Care, an organization that provides services for Holocaust survivors. And he is a regular speaker with the Holocaust Education Centre’s survivor speakers bureau. This spring there were weeks when he addressed four different groups of students about his experience during World War II.

This was one of those weeks. He squeezed me in. I wanted to talk to him about the Holocaust and, more precisely, about his liberation from the Nazi murderers by a dozen surprised American soldiers who found Leslie and about 2,500 other captives near the end of the war, packed in cattle cars on a German train.

An email from an American teacher had tipped me off to the fact that a number of Toronto Holocaust survivors had recently been reunited with their liberators.

Leslie was one of them.

Of course, you can’t talk about liberation without talking first about enslavement. So, sitting on the couch of the neat, spacious penthouse condominium he shares with his wife, Eva, in Thornhill, Leslie started proudly with his family history in eastern Hungary.

Then came his carefree childhood. Then the introduction of anti-Semitic laws, the ghetto, the trains, the months of slave labour and the horrors of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, where more than 70,000 prisoners — most of them Jews — were killed.

Our interview lasted more than three hours, fueled by many cups of coffee and servings of fresh cheese palacsintas (crêpes) whipped up by Eva.

I noticed Leslie’s hands while we spoke. They are enormous — each finger twice as thick as mine, the palms like dinner plates. They are a working man’s hands, without any of the dirt. Everything about Leslie is immaculate — his neatly clipped and cleaned fingernails, his ironed pants and pressed dress shirt with a silver pen poking from its breast pocket, his freshly shaven face. His stories of being treated like a rabid dog were cast in relief by the careful pride he took in his appearance. There is an Old World elegance about him.

But the thing that struck me most about Leslie was his cheeky humour. His brown eyes narrowed and sparkled repeatedly as he took a “side step” to tell me about the girl he was “necking” with while a slave labourer or a refugee. Despite the horrors he endured, or perhaps because of them, Leslie maintained his champagne spirit.

Near the end of the interview, a question bubbled in my mind: what did you take with you? The Nazis had invaded Hungary in 1944. They ordered all the Jews in Leslie’s and other towns to first leave their homes, and then to leave town altogether on a train we now know was headed towards slavery or murder. What would you take if you could carry only a small bag or pillowcase to hold your belongings?

“Underwear,” Leslie responded, “and my stamp collection.”

I wrote that down and moved on. There were a lot of overpowering details in Leslie’s stories, and I still needed to hear about the reunion. But the stamps snagged my attention. There was a boyish innocence about them.

What happened to those stamps, I asked him over the phone a couple days later.

He responded: “I still have them. My mother sewed them into the lining of my jacket.”

Imagine that! Most Jews had all their clothing and belongings stripped away upon entering the concentration camps. You can see their boot brushes, ceramic pots and dolls piled up behind glass cases in the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum in Poland. That Leslie managed to keep his jacket was surprising enough. But that fragile pieces of paper survived the horrendous conditions — well,that seemed miraculous.

I drove back to their condominium for a third interview, this one in Leslie and Eva’s little office. I asked to see some of those stamps.

So Leslie pulled out his master list — a two-page typewritten list of all the stamp albums he has. There are dozens and dozens. He found one with his early Hungarian stamps and pulled it down from the shelf. Inside he’d arranged thousands of stamps in neat rows.

When I expressed surprise at the number of stamps he had, he smiled and opened a drawer in his desk.

“A crazy stamp collector saves all the stamps he comes across,” he said, pulling out a Tupperware container brimming with stamps. “When there are many, many, many, he bundles them up . . . and stores them away. I have millions of stamps.”

Leslie’s wife calls herself a “stamp widow.” She says he spends hours with his stamps a day. He loves them still, like he did when he started his collection 78 years ago. He loves the precision of arranging them. He loves the challenge of collecting a full set of stamps. He loves their colours and their stories. Every stamp, he says, depicts a story of a place, a historic moment or figure, a cause. “You can learn about the world through stamps,” he said.

As we flipped through his collection and he began to tell me the rest of his story, I could see snatches of it reflected in his stamps.

It is the tale not just of an idyllic childhood followed by the horrors of the Holocaust, but also that of a man who lived under Communism, escaped, lived for two years in a refugee camp, arrived in North America with nothing and then built up his life for a second time. Just as every stamp embodies a public story, a bit of history, Leslie’s stamps also tell the story of his life, its joys and deep sorrows, its disasters and its miracles.

************************************************

He is giving his 25th lecture on the Holocaust since April.

“Put yourself in my shoes,” he says to the Cardinal Carter Catholic High School students. “I think you are between 16 and 18, right? You can feel what I felt when I experienced those horrors.”

“They have to know,” Leslie says. “Otherwise, it will be forgotten and could be repeated.”

He talks for just over an hour, pausing only twice for a sip of water.

The stories pour out of him — of the deaf village elder who was strung up by his wrists to a cattle car, of the SS guards with their dogs who laughed at the sight of him naked with his grandmother and mother, of the hunger. He stirs in life lessons — like how his woodworking knowledge saved his life in Bergen-Belsen. “You are the same age as I was,” he says. “Never think you are studying for your teachers or your parents. Whatever you are putting in your head, you never know how it will serve you in life.”

But Leslie’s descriptions are muted at times. He clutters his sentences with clauses and chooses math over graphic detail to describe some horrors. The train crowding, for instance, affords each person a “square foot.” He mentions the bucket but doesn’t fill in the details of how that meant people were forced to defecate in their pants. He is old-school; talk like that seems degrading. Or perhaps the pungent details are too dangerous for him, scratching away the protective layers on his memories.

A girl in a powder-blue sweatshirt in the second-last row appears to have fallen asleep.

Is he getting through to them? Like most Holocaust survivors,

Leslie won’t be around to recount these stories for much longer. That inescapable truth adds an urgency to his message. Who then will bear witness?

Holocaust survivor Leslie Meisels, left, signs a program for Hudson Falls senior Taylor Bump during Wednesday's "Remembering the Holocaust, Repairing the World" event. Meisels, who currently lives in Toronto, stressed the importance of relaying his experience to young people "so they remember and fight against discrimination, hatred and injustice." Jason McKibben Glens Falls Post Star

Holocaust survivor Leslie Meisels, left, signs a program for Hudson Falls senior Taylor Bump during Wednesday’s “Remembering the Holocaust, Repairing the World” event. Meisels, who currently lives in Toronto, stressed the importance of relaying his experience to young people “so they remember and fight against discrimination, hatred and injustice.”
Jason McKibben Glens Falls Post Star

He finishes his talk and asks for questions. The girl in the powder- blue sweatshirt from the back asks two. The second one is: “If you could go back, would you change any decisions you made?” She was listening, just with her eyes closed. Holocaust educator Ruth Ekstein says she often sees that — “the most fidgety kids you want to strangle, they are absorbing the most.” The content is so painful, it forces people to scratch and shuffle, or to close their eyes.

“Never allow this to happen to someone in the future, if you see an injustice,” Leslie tells the group. “Never just look at each other as equals. Treat each other as equals.”

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The last miracle

In 2001, Matt Rozell went to the home of one of his students in Hudson Falls, N.Y. Rozell is a high school history teacher there. He regularly assigned his Grade 10 students to interview the veterans in their family about World War II as a way to bring history alive.

That summer, he decided he would do the interviewing himself.

The veteran was retired New York State Supreme Court Justice Carrol Walsh Jr.

After two hours, when the interview was ending, Walsh’s daughter elbowed him and said, “Did you mention the train at all?”

“What?” Walsh said.

“The train.”

So Rozell asked to hear about this train, whatever it was.

Walsh told him about the beautiful, sunny day in April 1945, when after 10 months of fighting their way through France, Belgium,and Holland, and into Germany, his tank and his buddy George Gross’s tank were pulled out of the battalion to check out an abandoned train. An army scout had come across some Finnish prisoners of war in bad condition who reported they had escaped ,the train and that it was packed with prisoners.

Rozell posted the moving interview, as well as Gross’s astonishing photos from that day, on the school’s oral history website, where it sat quietly for four years.

That is, until a grandmother from Australia contacted him to ,say she had been a little girl on that train. The next month he got another email, and another, and another.

In September 2007, Rozell hosted the first reunion of Walsh and three survivors from that train. An Associated Press reporter wrote a story about the day-long event which was published around the world.

Paul Arato’s son Daniel read the story on the Internet. Arato was the 5-year-old boy who witnessed the birthday “present” of a bullet to the head in the Bergen-Belsen roll call. He was also a ,Hungarian Jew who grew up not far from Leslie. He, too, escaped Hungary in 1956 and resettled in Canada. An industrial designer, he was a work associate of Leslie. At the end of a business meeting, the topic of the Holocaust somehow came up. They discovered, to their shock, that they had both been on that train from Bergen-

Belsen. Paul, in turn, told Leslie about the Hudson Falls reunion.

Two years later, they both ventured down to Hudson Falls for a second reunion — a three-day symposium that brought together nine survivors and seven soldiers, including two of their liberators

— Frank Towers and Carrol Walsh.

On the drive down, Leslie was very excited. The initial meeting, over dinner, was spectacular.

“No words can explain the feeling of shaking hands, hugging, laughing and crying with the people who gave me back my life on April 13,” he says. “I never ever imagined that would happen.”

He calls the veterans “angels of my life.” They, in turn, said they were just doing their job.

Leslie and Walsh became close friends. They talked regularly on the phone. They spent some time together in Florida, before Walsh died last winter at the age of 91.

Leslie calls that friendship the last miracle of his life.

Leslie’s 17-year-old granddaughter, Jessica, visited Auschwitz last spring while participating in the two-week educational trip March of the Living. She left behind a small, hand-written sign that said: “I am marching in honour of my grandparents Eva and Leslie Meisels. As well as a soldier, Carrol Walsh.”

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Leslie's StampsLeslie’s Stamps: A Saga of the Holocaust and Escape to Freedom

He had an idyllic childhood in a small Hungarian town where, it seemed, there was no animosity between the Christian majority and Jews like him. But with the rise of Hitler and the Nazis, everything changed for Leslie Meisels, who ended up in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp with his family. Through his wartime ordeals, Leslie carried his stamp collection, started when he was 8, in the lining of his jacket. In Leslie’s Stamps: A Saga of the Holocaust and Escape to Freedom, award-winning Toronto Star columnist Catherine Porter tells the dramatic story of Leslie’s life through his stamps. It is a tale of love, courage and the power of the human spirit.

Leslie’s Stamps: A Saga of the Holocaust and Escape to Freedom is available for $2.99 at http://starstore.ca/collections/star-dispatches-ereads/products/leslies-stamps and itunes.com/stardispatches.

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Now it’s personal-Page 599-The Guns at Last Light.

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on August 27, 2013|

guns at last lightI’m recovering from a foot injury and it has given me time to finish Rick Atkinson’s latest release, The Guns at Last Light: The War in Western Europe, 1944-1945 in his Liberation Trilogy. With school around the corner, I am excited to be teaching a couple dozen seniors once again about World War II, and in the springtime, the Holocaust.

I’m happy with Mr. Atkinson’s coverage of the heroics of the 30th Infantry Division-he even made a research pilgrimage to Hill 314 in Mortain, where elements of the 30th held off against a Hitler-ordered panzer counterattack for 6 days, saving the Allied breakout in Normandy in August 1944. 

If you are a follower of this site, you will know that that division is dear to my heart, not because of any blood relations who fought in it, but because they named me an honorary member of their Veterans of World War II Association for my work in the classroom and in uncovering and reuniting the story of the liberation of the concentration camp train at Farsleben, Germany on Friday, April 13, 1945.

So you can imagine my excitement when I ran across this passage last evening from page 599 of Rick’s book. He writes about some of the chaos that unfolded as POWs, slave laborers, and concentration camps were liberated in Germany:

“Instead, starvation, revenge, indiscipline, and chaos often created what Allied officers called a “liberation complex.” SHAEF [Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Forces ] had presumed that refugees “would be tractable, grateful, and powerless after their domination for from two to five years as the objects of German slave policies.” As an Army assessment concluded, “They were none of these things.… Newly liberated persons looted, robbed, murdered, and in some cases destroyed their own shelter.” Freed laborers plundered houses in the Ruhr, burning furniture for cook fires and discarding slave rags to dress in business suits, pajamas, and evening clothes ransacked from German wardrobes. Ravenous ex-prisoners licked flour off the floor of a Farsleben bakery. In Osnabrück, “rampageous” Russian slaves died after swilling V-2 rocket fuel discovered in a storage yard. Others smashed wine barrels and liquor bottles in a Hanover cellar, drinking so heavily from a sloshing, six-inch-deep pool of alcohol on the floor that several collapsed in a stupor and drowned before U.S. MPs could close the entrance.”

So I did a double take: Ravenous ex-prisoners licked flour off the floor of a Farsleben bakery. I checked his notes-page 801, sure enough, 30th Division G-2 report. I know I have read this before in my research of primary source documentation, originally sent to me by Frank Towers, one of the liberators.  Here it is.

30th Division Medical Detachment Diary & Log

Of course, the backstory surrounding the document above is the story that I have to tell- the soldiers of the 30th Infantry Division and the attached 743rd Tank Battalion, the Holocaust survivors whom they stumbled upon, liberated, and were reunited with 62 years later at our high school and subsequent events.  I’ll probably share the Benjamin photo with Mr. Atkinson on his FB page. 

Anyway, I recommend the book to any of my followers interested in the history of World War II in the European theater, and am really pumped to teach some very excited and motivated students this year, including the grandson of the tank commander who was sent to investigate the train.

This is how you “do” history, and how the teaching of history can sometimes take on a life of its own. So cool to be a part of it, and to read something in a best seller and be able to grasp the incredible backstory that awaits to be told.

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We often wonder, was it all worthwhile.

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on July 29, 2013| 2 Comments »

BusterOne of the hard parts about this project is that people whom you come to know and love get older and pass away on you. But you are thankful that you came to know them, and how you saw them enrich your life and the lives of others.

I first met Buster over five years ago, when I attended my first 30th Infantry Division reunion and he served as the chaplain and the master of ceremonies and chief auctioneer at our final banquet. He had a funny way of putting folks at ease, and the auctions were like a comedy act. He was very devout and serious about his chaplain duties, though.

I have a couple short video clips to share. The first I post on D-Day every year. A producer from ABC News in New York called me looking for the Benjamin photo for a piece on veterans returning to Normandy. Though the 30th did not land until after D-Day, the fact is that Allied forces were only ten miles in, with some very heavy and decisive battles still ahead for the 30th. They would also be bombed not once but twice by Allied heavy bombers on two consecutive days before the launch of Operation Cobra.Buster was a combat medic. “You did not stop to think about how you would cope. You just did the best you could.”

Buster was so taken with the appearance of the Holocaust survivors in the Old Hickorymen’s lives after 62 years, he told the story everywhere he went. After his wife died unexpectedly, he was at a loss, but I know that getting out into the community to tell the story of the Holocaust and the 30th’s connection to this amazing photograph kept him going for a while. He’d call me up at school, looking for pictures to share with students down South in the classrooms. He became a Holocaust educator! And he was sure proud to be an American.

He and his son Sandy, who also recently passed, expended a great deal of energy traveling to our high school in upstate NY for the last reunion with soldiers and survivors at our high school. At the tail end of this short clip he describes one of the wonders of this trip for him. I guess if I was dancing with a lovely young thing, or two, or three, I would say the same!

To close, I wish to paraphrase the reporter for the ABC story, Erin Hayes:

Maybe, just maybe, a group of students like those at College of the Ozarks will discover [veterans] and they’ll get them to tell their stories, to hear what I heard … that a generation that will soon be gone left us a legacy of bravery and wisdom and resilience.

We really, really should treasure that — before it’s too late.

Rest on, Buster. Peace to their families.

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Buster Marion Simmons, 91, a resident of Farmington, Ark., passed away July 20, 2013 in Fayetteville. He was born July 7, 1922 in Orange County, N.C, the son of Tom and Olivia Jackson Simmons.

Buster served in the United States Army during World War II. He was a Combat Medic in the 30th Infantry Division throughout the European theater. He served as the Chaplain for the 30th Infantry Division reunions. Buster attended many reunions in Europe and all over the USA. His favorite trip to Europe was in 1994 when his granddaughter traveled with him. He worked until he was more than 80 years old.

He was preceded in death by his parents; wife of 67 years Bessie Mae Simmons; two sons, Eric G. Simmons and William J. “Sandy” Simmons; three brothers, William Clinton, Glimer and Wayne; one sister Lucille Oakley.

Survivors include one daughter-in-law Kathy Simmons; one granddaughter, Nancy Woodward and husband Rusty; one great-grandson Garrett Woodward and his grand dachshund Buster, all of Farmington.

A Memorial Service will be held at 4 p.m. Tuesday, July 23, 2013, at the Luginbuel Chapel in Prairie Grove with Preston Beeks officiating. He will be interred in Burlington, N.C. at a later date.

Memorials may be made to the Willard Walker Hospice Home, 325 E. Longview St. Fayetteville, AR. 72704; Farmington Senior Center – Meals on Wheels, 340 W. Main, Farmington, AR. 72730 or a charity of your choice .

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“Give me a hug; you saved my life.”

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on July 11, 2013|

World War II infantry veteran Carrol Walsh, top, hugs Holocaust survivor Paul Arato at a reunion in Queensbury, N.Y., on Tuesday, Sept. 22, 2009. Walsh’s unit liberated a Nazi train carrying 2,500 Jewish prisoners, including Arato, from the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany during the war’s waning days. (AP Photo/Tim Roske)

I am reposting this today to honor both of the men below. Paul Arato passed away this week in Toronto, Canada and his memorial service is today. Carrol Walsh, his liberator, died in Dec. at his home in Florida and his memorial service was last Friday in New York.

Paul and Rona would also check in annually for dinner with the Walsh family when they passed through our town. The last time I saw both of them together was in 2011 at one of these dinners in a local restaurant. They sat together and laughed and joked like old pals. Paul told the story of how he arrived in Detroit after the war as an eager late teen anxious to find work designing fast cars in the automobile industry and was driven to the bridge in Canada by law enforcement and pointed to the bridge to Canada, as he did not have the proper documentation. Picturing the scene in his mind, Carrol would laughed outloud and slapped his knee. Both men were so happy to have found each other.

Rest on, friends.

Holocaust Survivors Reunite With US Veterans

NY high school reunites Holocaust survivors liberated from Nazi death train by US soldiers

By CHRIS CAROLA

The Associated Press

HUDSON FALLS, N.Y.

The Holocaust survivor was 6 on that spring day in 1945 when he last saw the U.S. Army soldiers outside Magdeburg, Germany.

Paul Arato was among 2,500 starving and sickly Jewish prisoners from the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, their train abandoned by its crew and Nazi guards as Allied forces advanced. Two U.S. Army tanks on a scouting patrol — one of them commanded by Carrol Walsh, then 24 — came upon the stopped boxcars.

Arato, now 71, and Walsh, 88, met again this week.

“Please give me a hug. You saved my life,” Arato told Walsh in an emotional reunion of concentration camp survivors and some of the veterans of the 30th Infantry Division who liberated them.

Arato, an industrial designer from Toronto, and Walsh, a retired state Supreme Court judge from Hudson Falls, came together for a Hudson Falls High School history symposium inspired by history teacher Matthew Rozell’s original World War II project in 2007.

“You were all kids on that train,” Walsh told the survivors, most of them in their early 70s, as they and their families greeted the veteran. “I was an old man. I was 24 years old!”

Those arriving early for Wednesday’s opening session gathered Tuesday night for an impromptu reunion before having dinner surrounded by the faux Adirondack decor of the nearly deserted indoor water park. Four of the five Nazi train survivors at the dinner had never met Walsh.

Walsh’s tank patrol discovered the desperate Bergen-Belsen survivors on April 13 — hundreds of emaciated Jewish prisoners who had been herded aboard one of three trains leaving the camp a week earlier to keep them from being liberated by advancing Allied forces.

Walsh’s patrol stayed for a time, handing out candy to some of the children, then moved on after reporting their discovery. Frank Towers, a 27-year-old first lieutenant in the 30th Division, led a convoy that took the newly liberated prisoners to a German town where they were given food and shelter.

For weeks, the men of the 30th had heard of Nazi atrocities against Jews and dismissed the stories as propaganda, Towers said. That all changed when they encountered the train.

“Then we believed,” said Towers, 93, of Brooker, Fla.

This week’s reunion is the fourth since 2007, when Walsh was joined by three of the train survivors at Hudson Falls High. History teacher Rozell’s World War II project included an Internet posting of Walsh’s account of the train liberation.

An Associated Press report of that first reunion prompted more survivors to come forward, some from as far away as Israel, Rozell said. In all, he has confirmed that more than 60 survivors are still living and has been in contact with about two dozen of them.

Nine survivors of the Nazi death train are participating in this symposium, along with Walsh, Towers and four other veterans of the 30th who fought in Germany. Rozell said this week’s gathering is likely to be the last such event of its scope, given the advanced ages of the veterans and survivors.

For Arato, Tuesday night’s reunion with Walsh brought back a flood of memories. He recalled getting candy from one of the soldiers and a handgun to play with.

“I remember it was a Tootsie Roll,” he said. “The gun wasn’t loaded.”

Arato fretted over one detail. He recalled seeing a Jeep along with the American tanks, but fellow survivor Fred Spiegel of Howell, N.J., didn’t remember seeing a third vehicle. Later, Walsh said his patrol consisted of two tanks — and a Jeep.

“There WAS a Jeep,” Arato said, a smile breaking out on his face. “I remembered it right.”

———

On the Net:

Hudson Falls High School World War II Living History Project: http://www.hfcsd.org/ww2

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/wires/2009/09/23/holocaust-survivors-reuni_0_ws_296673.html

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3781062,00.html

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‘Bad to the Very End’

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , on June 7, 2013|

This is from last evening’s PBS NewsHour. Book is on my summer reading list. April 1945 a focus of my studies.

‘Bad to the Very End’: Author Reflects on the Long, Deadly Road to WWII Victory

In honor of the 69th anniversary of D-Day, Ray Suarez talks to historian Rick Atkinson about his new book, “The Guns at Last Light,” which chronicles the brutal fight for victory at the end of World War II.

JEFFREY BROWN: Finally tonight, we mark June 6, D-Day.

Ray is back with book conversation he recorded recently about World War II.

RAY SUAREZ: The war that had a hand in cementing U.S. status as a superpower and created the map of the modern world ended almost 70 years ago.

You could fill a library with books about the Second World War, yet historians still find new things to say and new ways to say it.

Award-winning author and historian Rick Atkinson has just completed the third book in his “Liberation Trilogy,” “The Guns at Last Light: The War in Western Europe, 1944-1945.” And he joins me now.

And, Rick, if nothing else, this book is a reminder that, with D-Day, there was still some of the worst fighting of the war left to go.

RICK ATKINSON, author, “The Guns at Last Light”: That’s certainly true, Ray.

I think the horror of it is difficult to imagine 70 years later. And it continues really after D-Day, almost to the last gunshot. There were almost 11,000 Americans killed in Germany in April 1945, the last full month of the war in Europe. And that’s nearly as many as died in June 1944, the month of invasion.

So the bloodletting continued right to the end. The notion that many Americans have that it was bad on the beaches, and then something bad happened during the Battle of the Bulge in December 1944, and then it was kind of sweeping into Germany and the war was essentially over is actually quite incorrect. It was bad to the very end, almost to May 8, 1945, when the war in Europe ended.

RAY SUAREZ: Terrible, ferocious, deadly fighting through Northern France, through Holland and Belgium, and finally into the German homeland.

Then you bring us to one British officer who says, “Why don’t the silly bastards give up?”

What was the German calculation in those last months, when it was clear they could no longer militarily prevail?

RICK ATKINSON: Well, there are several things at play.

Part of it is terror. Hitler had a police state of the first order. And those who showed any sign of being weak-kneed faced prison or often summary execution. That prevented a lot of people who knew that the war was not going to turn out well for Germany from giving up.

In other cases, you have to say that 80 million Germans tended in large measure to be true believers, that they believed in the fuhrer almost to the bitter end. You would see parades, for example, on Hitler’s birthday, April 20, 1945, in Berlin — this is 10 days before he kills himself — of young girls, young boys who are too young to go into the military carrying flags and singing patriotic songs, people cheering along the streets of a badly battered Berlin at that point.

So, the German psyche was such that they’d been heavily influenced by propaganda. And they were just generally disinclined to give up.

RAY SUAREZ: Rick, you also remind us that the war got deadlier as it went on, because both sides were innovating, inventing new ways of killing the other side practically until the last day of the war.

RICK ATKINSON: That’s true, Ray. The lethality increases as the war goes along, and it — it’s extraordinary how brutal it is.

We Americans, for example, invented something called the POZIT Fuse. That was the code name. There was a little radar sensor in the nose of an artillery shell, and it could, by emanating radar signals, determine when a passing plane or when an approaching target was just within the kill radius of the burst, and detonate that shell.

It was used for the first time in the Battle of the Bulge in December 1944. The Germans called it pure manslaughter. It was part and parcel of a generation of weapons that came along, napalm used for the first time around this time. The Germans had invented the V-1 and V-2 flying bombs and then a ballistic missile, the V-2, with terrifying results, most of them launched against London or Antwerp with devastating results to civilians.

RAY SUAREZ: We have in the final weeks and months of the war some moments where it’s hard to tell where moral authority existed, if such a thing any longer existed.

How could you tell concentration camp inmates not to rise up and kill their captors who were trying to surrender and act like normal soldiers? How could you put trial Americans who, sickened by the slaughter, would just turn and around pop these guys with their sidearms as they tried to surrender? It got nasty, brutal, and frightening in those final weeks.

RICK ATKINSON: This is true.

And it’s not just the final weeks, actually. There’s killing of prisoners that begins early in the liberation of Europe by American, British, Canadian soldiers, and, of course, by the Germans. It intensifies during that last 11 months from Normandy on.

But when you get to the camp liberation phase, particularly in April 1945, for example, at Dachau, American soldiers coming into this camp, tens of thousands of emaciated, horribly treated prisoners, and thousands of bodies lying around, and there were soldiers that went on a rampage. There were at least a couple dozen S.S. guards who had surrendered, had been taken into custody who were murdered, probably more than that.

This is at the same time that there are liberated inmates rampaging, tearing literally some camp guards limb from limb. There was an investigation. The investigators found that, yes, there had been prisoners murdered by American soldiers. Nothing was ever done of it. No one really had the stomach to prosecute American soldiers under these circumstances.

This is just one example of many, though, of the barbarity that war unleashes with — inside otherwise good soldiers.

RAY SUAREZ: I want to continue this conversation with you online.

The book is “The Guns at Last Light.”

Rick Atkinson, thanks a lot.

RICK ATKINSON: Thank you, Ray.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/military/jan-june13/atkinson_06-06.html

 

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