Peter Terry was a principal of the British manufacturing company, Sericol, specializing in chemicals needed for the manufacture of the then newly invented printed circuits. He and his family moved to the United States to start subsidiaries in New York, Chicago, and Singapore. He retired in 1994 at age seventy and moved to Bridgehampton, New York.
Chapter 8
WILLIAM KATZENSTEIN
SCHENKLENGSFELD, GERMANY
505th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 82nd Airborne Division Normandy and Holland
William Katzenstein left Germany in 1937 and settled in New York. He was sent to the Military Intelligence School at Camp Ritchie, Maryland, and soon volunteered to join the paratroopers. After jump school at Fort Benning, Georgia, he was sent to England and joined the 82nd Airborne Division, 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment (PIR) regimental headquarters company, Intelligence Section, S-2 Section. He is pictured above in 1945.
I was born on May 5, 1924, in Schenklengsfeld (county Bad Hersfeld) in Central Germany. My father was Isfried Katzenstein, whose grandfather came from a town named Katzenstein near Fulda, Germany. My mother, Lina (nee Weinberg), could trace her family roots to Spain.
In 1929 my family moved to Bad Langensalza, about 18 kilometers northeast of Eisenach-Thoringia, Germany. My father was a successful dairy cattle dealer and had built up a great business in Langensalza from 1929 on. He lost his business in 1937.
As a child in Germany, I played soccer and other games with other children in my town. I had a normal childhood in the late 1920s and early 1930s. By the mid-1930s, things started to change in Germany. I remember that things really started to change when most of my friends began joining the Hitler Youth. At that time, they started calling me a “dirty Jew.” The insults soon escalated into violence that included beatings. I remember many trips home from school that included bloody noses and broken glasses. Only ten to twelve Jewish families lived in the Bad Langensalza, and almost everyone in town ostracized us. I began to find different ways to go home, but that did not work.
My father asked me if I wanted to take some boxing or wrestling lessons so I could defend myself; I wanted both. A day or so later, my father found a man named Georg Ehrlich, who was not Jewish. Ehrlich means “honest” in German. He had been a professional boxer and wrestler. He was about thirty-five years old and a socialist [of the left, not a National Socialist], and the Nazis banned him from all professional sports. To make a living, he taught wrestling and boxing. In the basement of his house was the gym where he gave his lessons.
Ehrlich taught me boxing, wrestling, and judo. His lessons included stuff both in the book and not in the book. I trained three afternoons a week for six months. Finally, he told me, “You’re ready.”
One afternoon shortly after my last lesson, the same Hitler Youth gang that regularly assaulted me on the trip home from school confronted me again. That day I felt prepared and confident. Recalling my lessons with Ehrlich, I was able to maneuver the fight to the ground of my choosing. I chose a building that had a large brick wall and had my back to the wall to eliminate the possibility of being jumped from behind. That day, there were five or six boys taunting me.
When they confronted me, I turned around but didn’t cringe or plead with them to let me go, as I had in the past. They were surprised and shocked at my reaction. I then pointed at the largest boy and said, “Who’s the first Fatherland’s fighter to beat up on the dirty little Jew?” I told the largest boy to step forward and fight me one on one. As he moved forward, I kicked him as hard as I could in the groin. He crumpled forward in a great deal of pain. I grabbed him by the hair and swiftly and forcefully raised my knee to his face. As I pushed him back, I gave him a kick in the belly and he landed flat on his back. I then said to the other boys, “Who’s the next Fatherland’s fighter to beat up on the dirty little Jew”? At that, the boys fled and left me alone thereafter.
About a year later, we immigrated to New York. Our family had several relatives in America who sponsored us. My mother visited in 1936 and returned with visas (good for one year), so we came to the United States in 1937. Before that, my mother had arranged for a tutor in English in addition to my three and one-half years in school. I was very anxious to go to the United States and experience freedom for the first time. We went by train to Holland, stayed for a few days with friends in Hoofdoorp, and then came to United States via the SS Staatendam. We landed in Hoboken, New Jersey, in October.
First of all, everything was bigger; we lived in Manhattan in the Washington Heights neighborhood, so populated with German refugees it was jokingly called, “the Fourth Reich.” There we knew many people and were constantly visiting back and forth. I delivered groceries and laundry packages, shined shoes, delivered newspapers, and so forth. My father, a businessman who didn’t speak English, had a terrible time, but we eventually moved to Middletown, New York, in October of 1939, where he bought a farm with big barn and an eleven-bedroom house. He started in the cattle business again, my mother opened a summer resort, and things were looking up. After I graduated from Middletown High School, I went to Baltimore, Maryland, where I worked in a dental lab and took pre-dental at Johns Hopkins University at night.
We still had family members trapped in Germany. My second cousin Rosel, my great aunt Minnie, and other distant relatives remained behind. My father “bought” my aunt Minnie out of a concentration camp, but could not get Rosel out. Prior to the big roundup in 1940 and 1941, he got visas for forty-eight people. He accomplished that by having $20,000 in a bank; to sponsor each person, you had to guarantee you had $5,000 by getting an affidavit from the bank and then you got four visas. He would then move the money to another bank, get an affidavit from that bank, and bring over more people, etc.
My father anticipated the war. When the United States started sending convoys to Britain, he said, “Sooner or later, we will have to get in.” I wanted my revenge, so I volunteered at the draft board.
In March 1943, I was inducted into the U.S. Army. I went to Camp Pickett, Virginia, for my basic training. Solicitation boards arrived on base and I signed up for the Military Intelligence School at Camp Ritchie, Maryland. At that school, I learned numerous ways to think on my feet. For example, I learned everything from how to drive a train to flying a Piper Cub plane. I even learned how to make a crude map with just a pencil, a piece of string, a clipboard, and a piece of paper.
Following Military Intelligence School, I volunteered for airborne training because of what I had been through, and what the Nazis were doing to my people. I figured that Uncle Sam was doing me a great favor by training me and providing me with transportation and weapons to help me get my revenge. It was strictly voluntary and more dangerous. To my thinking, it was well worth putting my life on the line. Most of the guys I trained with were okay, but there were always a few anti-Semites. Since I had good hand-to-hand training, I usually challenged the biggest one and quickly put him on his behind; as a rule, the rest wanted to be friends with me after that. Every once in a while, I had dealings with a few refugees and we helped each other.
In May 1944, a few months after I graduated from the Parachute Training School at Fort Benning, Georgia, I was shipped to England and assigned to the 82nd Airborne Division, and subsequently to the 505th PIR regimental headquarters company, Intelligence Section, S-2 Section, as a translator/interpreter/interrogator. My unit went from Boston to Southampton, England, via the Queen Mary. It only took three and one-half days, since the Queen could outrun the U-boats.
My first action was on D-Day, the night before the beach landings on June 5. Before my jump, my heart was beating like crazy and my guts were churning, but I got used to it. I was a “pathfinder” and part of the first unit to hit the ground and liberate the French town, St. Mere-Eglise. My primary job was to be in charge of observation posts from which we went on night patrols to take prisoners alive (if possible) for interrogation. We were aware of impending attacks and laid ambushes. On one occasion, we annihilated about thirty Krauts
and took prisoners. With prisoners, I usually asked questions about family, their hometowns, etc., and then led into pertinent questions. Out of 150 interrogations, I had only 2 who refused to answer.
We then invaded Holland—Groesbeek and Nijmegen. In Normandy, there was constant movement, but Holland was different. We had taken it and the Germans were constantly attacking. A few days after our initial jump into Holland, at about ten in the morning, I was “requested” to go to a U-shaped hill outside the small town of Reithorst. I was to interrogate and bring back a captured German captain and two enlisted men. I traveled to the hill with a lieutenant in a small staff car we had liberated. As we approached the hill, there was no activity, not even small arms fire. There was a windmill on top of the hill, as well as a small building that resembled a log cabin. The prisoners were inside the building guarded by one of our men, who left after I arrived.
Suddenly, all hell broke loose. It was the beginning of another German attack on the hill. The building had a sliding door with a latch on it, which I closed. I had my Tommy gun with me and went down the hill to join the fighting. As I made my way toward the men, the Germans were coming out of the woods attempting to overrun our position. This was my first eye-to-eye contact with the enemy. It was different from Normandy, where I had fired a few shots, but because of the tremendous hedgerows, I could not tell if I hit anybody, although sometimes I heard someone cry out.
A German soldier charged out of the woods in my direction, less than thirty yards away, and my finger froze on my trigger. I let the whole thirty rounds of ammo go into this man, ripping his waist open. I was pretty scared and also out of ammo. Another German lunged at me with a bayonet. I called to the guy next to me to throw me another magazine of ammunition, but he wasn’t able to get the ammo to me quickly enough. So I reached for my knife, which I held in my right hand, while deflecting his bayonet with my left. Although he ran his bayonet over the knuckle of my index finger (the scar is still faintly visible), I managed to shove all seven inches of my knife into his belly, just above his beltline.
I often reflect on this encounter and realize that if it were not for my training, I would not be here to tell this story. Moreover, most of us young Panthers thought we were invincible and I was an agnostic; however, at that moment I became a believer. While the military hand-to-hand combat training was excellent, I felt that there must have been someone “up there” looking out for me. My old trainer, Georg Ehrlich, must be looking down on me smiling from ear to ear.
At any rate, the German attack was repulsed within about ten minutes after my encounter; however, during that short period of time, one of our lieutenants was in the top of the windmill directing mortar fire while the Germans were firing mortars on our position. I called up to the lieutenant, “Sir, you better get out of there quickly.” A moment later, a shell sheared off the top of the windmill, not more than two seconds after he left the premises.
The lieutenant then directed me to get the prisoners out of the area. I found a jeep and driver and piled the Germans in the jeep. There was no more room, so I jogged along the right side of the jeep with another trooper on the left. About one to two hundred yards from where we started, we were fired upon. I yelled out, “You sons of bitches, stop firing!” thinking it was likely that it was our own men were firing on us after seeing Germans in the jeep. A few seconds later the firing stopped, but not before our right rear tire was blown out. The driver asked me whether we should change the tire. I responded, “To hell with the tire, let’s get out of here.” We then proceeded to regimental headquarters on the double.
My next action was the Battle of the Bulge where we were trucked in. I was only in the Bulge one day and was wounded. I caught shrapnel above the left knee and, the next morning, was evacuated and sent to recover. Although I left to rejoin my unit in March on French 40 and 8s (trains from World War I), we were constantly sidetracked to other places, so I didn’t get back until May 13, after the war had ended. I was more than overjoyed, if not totally ecstatic, that I had been a conquering soldier. I felt that I got my revenge for my second cousin, Rosel Faist, many cousins more removed, and murdered friends. I did not have the opportunity to return to my hometown until 1995.
I was awarded the Purple Heart, Bronze Star with four clusters, Combat Infantry Badge, ETO Ribbon, French and Belgian Croix, and Fleur De Guerre. I even got a good conduct ribbon and more. For the last sixty some odd years, I have often reflected on my war experience; I told my friends and grandchildren war stories. The latter fought over my medals.
As a civilian, William Katzenstein continued to work in U.S. Army Intelligence for many years in Washington, D.C. He lives in Virginia and remains active in the 82nd Airborne Association.
Chapter 9
KARL GOLDSMITH
ESCHWEIGE, GERMANY
142 Interrogation of Prisoner of War (IPW), U.S. Army European Theater of Operations
Karl Goldsmith was born Karl Goldschmidt in 1921 in the Hesse region of Germany in a town called Eschwege. After Kristallnacht, he immigrated to the United States in 1938 where he finished high school in Upstate New York. Upon graduation, he was accepted to Cornell University, where he studied agriculture until being drafted into the U.S. Army in 1942. Goldsmith trained at Camp Ritchie, Maryland, as an interrogator of prisoners of war and landed in France with his small unit, 142 IPW, in September 1944. After VE Day, he was appointed military governor of his hometown of Eschwege. The photograph above (Goldsmith at left) is during his service in the American Military Government, Germany, 1946.
To understand what went on in Germany in the 1930s, history books are of very little use somehow. They cannot grasp the reality of a single life or that of a family. William L. Shirer’s book, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, is about as accurate of a chronicle as I have read. However, to tell a personal story is different. Not as earth-shaking perhaps, but probably a bit sadder. In retrospect everyone’s vision is 20:20, but it seemed utter nonsense to my father to leave Germany in 1933–1938—after all we were all Germans. He and my male relatives had served with distinction in the German Army in World War I.
We were Germans first and Jews second. Was this the reason why, in our myopic stupor, we could not see the handwriting on the wall?
Hitler must have seemed unreal to my father. He thought that this must pass. After all, anti-Semitism had been in Germany before. We lived with it. Epithets had been shouted at us occasionally and I had been hit, but somehow it was not so terrible. I felt secure at home with my family.
As soon as Hitler came to power, things got worse. My friend from across the street, Wolfran “Dieko” Schaefer, called to me out of his basement window. I went down and he was polishing his shoes. We were both twelve years old, and his birthday was July 24, a month and four days after mine. He said, “Karl, I can’t play with you anymore. If I play with you, none of the others will play with me.” After that, he would only occasionally acknowledge me with a nod when no one would see us.
In 1934, it was constant harassment. I was in the third class of the Gymnasium [high school] and it became brutal. During recess, we Jewish boys stood together so as not to be so vulnerable to physical attack, but no luck. My friend, Kurt Frankel, was beaten unconscious over the head with gym sneakers, was hospitalized with a brain concussion, and was never the same again. He survived, but was a very sad man throughout his life.
My teacher, Mr. Almerodt, one day simply ordered me in front of the class and caned me with the words to the class: “So verfrugelt han einen Jude” (This is the way you beat up a Jew). For this episode, which I never forgot, I ordered him to pull weeds in the Jewish cemetery in 1946, when I was back in Eschwege in charge of Denazification for the U.S. Army.
Practically daily on my way to and from school, I was stopped and had to fight. But when you’re one guy against ten, you’re not going anywhere.
It was a hellhole for us in 1935 and 1936, but we lived a fairly normal life. We had a beautiful home with a l
ovely garden. It became obvious that us Jewish youngsters would not be working in their father’s businesses (most of which had been seized by the Nazis), but rather would have to learn a practical trade that could be put to use wherever we would find ourselves—hopefully abroad. I wanted to be a gardener, which in Germany meant fruits and vegetables, as well as flowers.
The Jewish community in Hanover had set up the Israelische Gartenbauschule-Ahlem for homeless Jewish boys, or those who had been in trouble and were sent there to learn a trade or enter a business career, rather than go to jail. The school had developed over the years into an outstanding model of a training center for a gardening career. The director was Mr. Rosenblatt, a wonderful man crippled from French bullets when fighting for the German Fatherland in World War I. The master gardener was not Jewish and, to top it off, was a Nazi Stormtrooper. It was interesting to see him in his brown uniform going off to his meetings. He was the only Nazi I have ever met who was not anti-Semitic. It was to his credit that during the infamous Kristallnacht (Crystal Night), in November 1938 when the synagogues were sacked and hoodlums invaded all Jewish homes, Ahlem was not touched. We could still see the glow of the burning synagogue in Hanover, and during that night, two of our teachers killed themselves.
The Nazis came looking for my father, and my mother said, “Lutz [Ludwig], run. Don’t come home for two days and then you can still help me clean up afterwards.” So, he ran up to the attic and lay on the crossbeams. As the Nazis stormed in the house, he opened an attic window, let himself to the ground by the drain pipe, jumped in the car, and left.
Closets crashed around my mother as they ransacked the house. Telephones were ripped out. Paintings were slashed. Crystal and china were broken, and then they left.
Thank heavens my uncle Walter in New York had given us affidavits. We were called to the American consulate in Stuttgart to be interviewed and examined. Here was to be more horror.
Steven Karras Page 13
