There are seven rolls of film to illustrate this edition.
Kisses, Yours,
Walter
The next week, after his return to Salzburg, my father penned a letter to Aunt Meti* that included the rough draft of the letter he later sent to the governing body in Landau concerning the disposition of the house:
Salzburg, 27 July ’45
Dear Aunt Meti,
Enclosed you will find the rough draft of the letter I sent to the French military government of Landau, after I had visited them in person. I made some changes, but essentially that’s the text.
I imagine you read my lengthy “report” on the matter at 79th Street, and I do hope you were satisfied with my action. I just resent the idea of these swine living in the house you own—especially Kopf Co. I wish you had been there when I had the whole gang out of bed till midnight, listening to my little speech about morality and the decadent Jew’s return—in uniform. I was very sorry to have had only a little time. I would have liked to evict the bastards personally. But I believe the French commander will keep on his promise.
I hope you don’t work too hard—I’m not. I’m enjoying a “Cook’s tour.” Well, so long and thanks for the birthday card.
Love,
Walter
P.S. You can tell my mother to continue sending me avalanches of packages—it will save her the trouble of having to read my letters. I’m opening a food and tobacco store shortly.
By this time my father was furious with my grandmother, for he had arrived in Salzburg to find an entire mailbag filled to overflowing with packages and letters. No amount of reassurance could ever pacify her worry, and he was embarrassed by the constant windfall. The other soldiers were making fun of him. He stopped sending her letters for two weeks and threatened that if he received any more packages during that time, he wouldn’t write for three weeks.
During his two weeks of silence, my father sent the finished version of the following letter to the French commander in Landau, written on Third Reich stationery:
Rough Draft
Salzburg 27 July ’45
Military Government
French Military Government
City of Landau (Palatinate, Germany)
Mon Commandant,
At the time of our meeting on the morning of the 18th of July, 1945, I discussed with you the subject of the house at Industriestrasse 13a, belonging to my aunt, Mrs. Meta Bach etc. Bklyn, New York. I declared to you then that Mrs. Bach has given me full power regarding the disposition of all the property belonging to her in Europe. I could, if necessary, send a copy of said document.
Here, however, in brief is the history of the house. It was built by Bernard Kuhn. After his unexpected death in Manheim in ’41, the house became the property of my aunt, Meta Bach. Before her departure for the USA, the Nazis tried by force to obtain my aunt’s signature, ceding all the rights in the house to the Nazi state. My aunt refused to give her signature. Naturally, this was not a great obstacle to the Nazis, who, without losing any time, “sold” the house, for 65,000 RM. to Ida Kopf of Landau.
However, in the “sales contract” that is in the hands of Frau Kopf, we can clearly see that the “legality” of this sale is based solely upon a supposed law confiscating property from people of the Jewish religion and putting it into the account of the Third Reich. Obviously, the greatest civilized nations like France and the United States do not recognize such exercises in extortion and expropriation. The civil and moral laws of our civilization do not sanction the sale of stolen goods. Yet Frau Kopf admits that she knew very well that it was not Mrs. Bach who sold her the house!
Consequently, being responsible for the house, by virtue of my full powers, one more time, I beg of you to empty this property of the Boches, except for the elderly Mrs. Hertel and her sick son, whose wife was murdered by the enemy.
If the house could serve for the comfort of the French troops, you are naturally welcome to make good use of it. Please confirm the receipt of this letter.
Thank you for your kindness and attention to this matter, my Commander.
Best Regards,
W.C.W
M/Sgt., M.I. S., A.U.S
Adr.
* * * *
No one in my family would lay eyes on the home again until I pulled it up on Google Earth all these years later to find that it was now, among other things, home to a Mailbox Etc. franchise. As they turned away from the house and back onto Industriestrasse, they headed east to Neustadt, where they stopped at Wiedemeyer, yet another wine and Cognac merchant. The owner, a man of Russian origin, was from a German colony in the Caucasus. They bought some Cognac on the condition that they take 200.00 marks to a certain Carmen in Stuttgart—but for the love of God, not a word of it to anyone!
While they were in Neustadt, my father met an American woman who was very obviously an expat. He soon ferreted out that she’d been a supporter of Nazi propaganda and was no longer allowed back in the United States, but unfortunately he didn’t expand on this brief encounter. They piled back into their truck and before long were about to pass another “maison de vin,” when suddenly my father motioned to his captain to stop once again. Lafon must have figured out that when my father had that certain look on his face, with that pipe of his hanging in just such a way, there was little point but to see where he was headed and just let him go. My father got out of the jeep, determined, silent. He looked at no one. While his back was turned, he heard the sound of wheels rolling behind him. He turned around to see a German car pull up. It took but a moment, but sitting next to the beautiful girl behind the windshield was a young man approximately his age wearing a gray flannel suit. Flabbergasted, he closed his eyes and reopened them quickly to confirm what he saw. War can take people on very different trajectories, and when the swirling tornado calms, bring people together in haphazard ways. He approached them and said: “Ich habe den Eindruck, dass wir einander kennen. Ich bin Stabsfeldwebel Walter Wolff.” (I have the impression that we know each other. I am Staff Sergeant Major Walter Wolff.)
The young man couldn’t have looked more surprised. In fact, he looked as though he had the wind knocked out of him. Once he regained his composure, reinflating himself, so to speak, the color returned to his tanned face. He hadn’t changed much since they were boys and wore the stress of the previous years well.
“How many years did you spend in the Boche army?” asked my father.
“Actually, I spent one year in a concentration camp in France, escaped, and spent the next six months in hiding. Mother was at Theresienstadt, near Prague. She just returned one week ago. She . . . has—that look.”
Hans paused as he said this, his breath catching in his throat. As he did, my father told him that his aunt Meti had spent a short time in a camp when she refused to cede their house in Landau to the Nazis and was arrested. As their conversation fell into a moment of thoughtful silence, Hans’s father walked out to the courtyard from the building to find his son conversing in German with an American soldier. Looking again at my father, Mr. Vogler took a subtle but more careful look at the young American.
“Papa, look who it is. Do you remember Walter Wolff from Belmunt? Say, how is your sister, Ellen? Has she married?”
My father shook his head no and was about to answer when the older Vogler interjected, “Walter, what a fine young man you’ve become. Look at you . . . and your uniform? Come in, come in—won’t you, please?”
“That’s very kind of you,” my father responded, “but first, won’t you pose for a picture with me? My parents and Ellen will scarcely believe this.”
The older Vogler had been in prison for some time as well for resisting his wife’s arrest. She was Jewish. Mixed marriages were forbidden under the Third Reich.
My father and Lafon entered a fantastically well-furnished house and joined their hosts. They ate, drank two bottles of wine, and, after inspecting the enormous cellars, bought two cases for their little side business. They exchange
d news, joked around, and spoke of better times at Belmunt. After several hours, they said their goodbyes and left for Stuttgart, passing through Heidelberg for the second time in so many days. On the road, they picked up a young French girl who had to get to Augsburg, where she worked for the AMG (Allied Military Government) in Stuttgart. With no hotels for civilians, the young French girl had no choice but to sleep in the truck, so they emptied it of its fragile contents for the night, allaying any fears of midnight looters. My father gave the girl his bedroll and huge down pillow, neither of which he’d bought or expropriated, and turned the back of their truck into a protective cocoon of sorts. The following morning they reloaded the truck and left for Augsburg, dropped the girl at her destination, and continued on to Munich, then Salzburg, where they arrived at about 10:30 that night. Did I mention that when they stopped in Munich they bought another two cases of wine and liqueur? What a racket!
My father and his old school chum from St. Moritz, Hans Vogler. The elder Mr. Vogler is to his left.
You may be wondering what they did with all of this stock? Liqueur and “eau de vie” cost them $2.50 a liter. They sold it for $5.00. The wine costs $0.25, $0.30, $0.45. They sold it for $1.00. The aperitif wines (sherry, vermouth) sold for $1.45 at a 200 percent profit. According to my father, everything was strictly legal, and since their prices were reasonable by comparison to Italy and France, they were making a small fortune. Of course, at least for my father, it wasn’t for the money they were doing this. Quite to the contrary, as we know, he had too much. It was for fun. Besides, the other soldiers were more than happy to obtain merchandise from them rather than elsewhere, because the prices on the gray and black markets were much higher.
However, he and Lafon encountered a bit of tragic chaos on their return:
Salzburg, July 21st, 1945
. . . Upon my arrival here, I found my room looted, but I have already replaced the stolen objects—which was easy with my “stock.” But I was mad, because it was American soldiers who did this. Nothing has been recovered as yet, but tomorrow I’ll light a fire under the feet of certain officers who are responsible for this. The bastards broke the door.
As a result, I moved. There was total confusion in the houses occupied by the army because the officers and NCOs [noncommissioned officers] do nothing but have fun twenty-four hours a day and could care less about the soldiers, so I decided not to care about them either. I rented a room in a private house, for the ridiculous price of $1.25 a month—RM 12.50. The room is good, the lady brings me breakfast (with the food that I supply her). Meanwhile, I maintain an official residence. What I’m doing isn’t legal—but the officer responsible for my logic has three apartments himself, is never at the office, and has at the minimum five women. However, as an NCO I have the right to a particular kind of room. Merde! The people here are very glad to have an “Amerikaner” in their house. Oh, you should hear my magnificent American accent! I can no longer speak any differently. It shields me from my indiscretions and renders my propaganda more effective.
I have, however, come across a Jewish family from Poland who survived a concentration camp. They gave me a yellow star: it’s for when I have business like what happened in Landau. It terrifies the Boches when they see that on a uniform. The Jewish brigade, which occupied a part of Austria before the “Limeys” pulled them out, made the countryside tremble with their little pogroms and their regime of terror. We should put them in Germany. This is a subject one can’t publicize.
My mail is a complete mess. At least a kilo of your letters was sent back to Italy by some bastard who could care less about my mail or me. I think I’ll visit his officer tomorrow—just because I won’t tolerate these little manifestations of anti-Semitism! I too can be a bastard!
Last night, our little dog FINITO had a tragic accident. He fell two stories through a hole in the stairs. God, did he scream, the poor little guy. He was alive when we picked him up, and the captain brought him back to the hotel. I doubt he’ll survive. He’s so cute and beautiful. He’s a little hunting dog, already 30 cm. long and completely brown, except for a white belly.
Kisses, Yours, Walter
* * * *
Captain Lafon—quiet observer watching the drama of my father’s past unfold as it became the present. The young superior officer was the only person to bear witness as my father recovered some of the shattered pieces of his former life. Lafon was also the only person to actually meet some of those who had played a part in that past when they coincidentally ran into my father’s old friend, Hans Vogler, a day after my father had repossessed the house that had originally belonged to his maternal grandfather in Landau. It was there that my grandmother and her sisters had been born and raised before the house was expropriated and bought for a song from the Nazis. He alone was there to capture the expression on my father’s face as he dealt justice to the occupiers while providing that the elderly Madame Hertel be permitted to remain in the house as he ordered the others out. The initiative my father took during this small but significant act of revenge at Industriestrasse13a likely offered him some much-needed closure. Certainly, this was an important part of the process that allowed him later to make the most of a promising future in New York City and to put six years of turmoil behind him as he compartmentalized the trauma and the complex emotions of his violent exile.
These defining moments informed my father’s character, because to turn the tables on one’s enemy is to restore one’s place in the world—in his case, not only as a survivor but as a survivor with the ability to use his rank and new citizenship to regain a foothold as a Jew and as part of what came to be known as the Surviving Remnant.6 In turn, my father could not help but be struck deeply by the desperation and the desperate condition of the thousands of other, far less fortunate survivors with whom he came into contact. He was so troubled by what he saw that he enlisted his family and friends to help as many of the Displaced People as he could.
The following letter was originally written on the stationery of the “DEUTSCHE PARTEI Amt des Volksgruppenführers” (Community Leaders’ Office, German Party). Across that heading on the first sheet my father wrote: “See our latest success ‘Behind Barbed Wire’ contracts made for many years in advance” and on the second page “Under Completely New Management (kosher), (kosher), NOW STRICTLY KOSHER.” Interspersed in the letter are several SS stamps. His humor was meant especially to ward off the censors.
August 28, 1945
. . . And now, to another very urgent order of business. Near here [in Linz] there are several Jewish DP camps. They live under really terrible conditions. The food is insufficient. They are lacking in everything. HIAS [Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society], HICEM,7 JOINT [American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee], UNRRA [United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration], etc., etc., etc., are doing NOTHING. They [the DPs] receive no medication. It is a crime. All of these organizations collect millions and do nothing. Because of this, I ask you to please send packages to my address marked like this [sketch] with [three vertical lines] M/Sgt. [address] P.M. NY, NY, so that I can recognize the packages. Do not put anything deluxe into the packages—simply canned foods or anything else that will resist the rigors of transport. I suggest: meat, coffee, sugar, chocolate, [condensed or powdered] milk, chocolate, ordinary soap, etc.—Ask all of your friends to do the same thing—it is imperative. Cher Papo, those on Wall Street can do the same thing. I will send confirmation to anyone who sends me a package. All of these packages will be distributed by the Jewish chaplain from the 26th Infantry Division, HQ Linz. A group of friends I was with . . . gave me this urgent message. At the same time, and in the same vein I will write to Mrs. Rosenthal. She will know a lot of people. Anyway, my dear Ellen, show her this letter. If she seems interested, twenty something people at a time will do the same thing. May I suggest that this is done before the Xmas rush . . . ?
Yours,
Walter
P.S. The mail is in complete disorder—nothing
has been sent since peace was declared.
Then he decided to write to Eleanor Roosevelt. Perhaps he felt compelled because he had read these words of hers: “in order to be useful we must stand for the things we feel are right, and we must work for those things wherever we find ourselves. It does very little good to believe in something unless you tell your friends and associates of your beliefs.” During World War II, Eleanor Roosevelt was known to have brought the cares and concerns of our GIs before Congress and the public, and she continued to do so well after the death of President Roosevelt. Perhaps for that reason, too, my father took it upon himself to draft a letter to the First Lady on behalf of the Displaced People whom he encountered as his intelligence work took him to some of the seven hundred DP camps throughout Austria and Germany during the first few months after the end of the war.
The conditions in which survivors were living were acceptable at best, but deplorably similar to the concentration camps from which they had just been released. Sickness, malnutrition, and the death rate during the first months was uncontrollable. Food and other basic necessities were in short supply. The soldiers were untrained in how to handle or organize the masses of traumatized homeless, stateless people who until just eight weeks before had been awaiting their annihilation in Nazi concentration camps. In fact, some of the camps that presently housed DPs had been built as slave labor camps by the Reich; some survivors who still lacked any alternative were left with no choice but to wear the infamous striped uniforms until other clothing could be found or requisitioned for them. The difference between their lives before and after the fall of the Reich was that they were no longer contained by barbed wire fences or guarded by the SS and threatened with imminent starvation and murder for being Jews.
Someday You Will Understand Page 18
