Steven Karras

by The Enemy I Knew: German Jews in the Allied Military

  The consulate employed Germans and never before had I been treated like cattle. This was degradation at its worst. My father, who had had cancer two years before I was born and had surgery to remove it, was told by the vice council that he could not go to America because of his medical history. You cannot imagine the absolute fear, horror, and terror this produced in my family. It was a horrible experience for me, a seventeen-year-old boy to see my proud, sixty-year-old father degraded, insulted, pushed around, and treated like dirt. He actually broke down and cried. And so, my parents insisted that I take the visa and go to the United States with the hope that I could send for them later after they had gone to Palestine. I never saw him again. He died two and one-half years later.

  So I received a visa for the United States stamped into my passport. The passport itself was another form of degradation. Unless a Jewish person in those days had an obvious Jewish first name, he had to add “Israel” as a second name. My father’s name was Ludwig Goldschmidt, so the name in his passport read “Ludwig Israel Goldschmidt.” Then, to make sure, a large red “J” for Jew was stamped on the passport.

  So, it was destined that I was to go to the United States and my parents to Palestine. We went to the railway station, and the train took us to Holland. At the border inspection came a final Nazi guard admonishment not to ever come back. Soon the train was over the border and we were free at last. The clock had turned back maybe 500–1,000 years, and my family was wandering the world and looking for a home.

  When you are young, however, you look at the world maybe with rose-colored glasses. To me, it was an adventure. I was all alone on the damn Queen Mary. I was a top-notch ping-pong player at that time, and I won the ping-pong championship on the ship. That to me was important.

  I stepped off the boat with $3.50, or something like that, in my pocket, and that’s how I started out in America. The first impression I had of the United States was that all the girls wore hats that were shaped like bird nests. And I saw children who didn’t beat each other. I also didn’t have to look around the corner to see if someone was going to beat the daylights out of me. All of this provided a tremendous sense of relief.

  My first job was as a landscaper in Lake Mahopac, New York. After I left there, I ended up in Bedford Hills at a tuberculosis sanitarium as a pot washer and an onion peeler; every day I peeled twenty-five pounds of onions. During all this time, my correspondence was regular with my parents in Palestine. By 1941, the world situation got more serious, and I was ever more concerned about the war. My father died in June of that year.

  The Japanese did a miserable thing at Pearl Harbor, and it was a matter of course that the Germans would follow, collaborating with them, and there was a declaration of war. I listened on the radio to the president, and I knew I had a job to do. That job was to help America win the war.

  On December 8, war was declared and I found myself as being classified an Enemy Alien. I wanted to get in the army to fight for America, but enlistment at that time was the privilege of citizens only. It took me a while to convince someone to let me in the army, so I wrote a letter to the then Governor Herbert Lehman, and I received permission in 1942 to volunteer for the draft.

  It took till September 1942 for me to report to active duty after obtaining a leave of absence from the university. At the induction center in Syracuse, I hoped no one would notice my flat feet. Thank God they didn’t, and I was in. Next stop was Fort Niagara, where I was sure they would assign me to either the field artillery since Cornell University’s ROTC training had prepared me for that, or engineering to take advantage of my camouflage training special courses I had taken to supplement my knowledge of plants. I was also positive that I would be placed in military intelligence to take advantage of my knowledge of German or somewhat poor French and Dutch.

  Instead it was dress parades, VD films, and watching AWOL prisoners smash rocks so we would learn by example, and then off to Camp Wheeler for thirteen weeks of infantry basic training. I attacked basic training with everything I had. I was a good shot and great with a bayonet. Following this glorious time with all its episodes of rifle, machine gun, and bayonet training, I thought I would be chosen for Officer Candidate School because of my “superior intellect” as a college student, but it was not to be. Again, I was still an Enemy Alien by definition and not yet a citizen, so it was back to the barracks and to St. Augustine, Florida, to become a valued member of the 254th Military Police Company for riot control.

  Before leaving Camp Wheeler, however, I was to taste my first Americanized form of anti-Semitism. We were on a field exercise and it was close to the time when selections were to be made to determine our next assignment. I wanted infantry, specifically a heavy weapons platoon. It seemed the quickest way to get into active combat. It may sound childish, but I had this feeling that I was going to be able to do something. You take this for granted that you can make a difference. Being a European boy, especially having gone through the Hitler period the way I had, I was so gung-ho it was absolutely a riot. I had a grudge to settle.

  The officer in charge came by and I asked if it was possible to request this assignment. He answered, “Why not join the Jewish Army?” This was the derisive term for the Medical Corps.

  I became livid and impulsively shot back at the captain: “I don’t have to take that kind of shit from anyone!”

  The captain walked off. This kind of language was a court martial offense in 1942. So, we all marched back to the barracks, and pretty soon a sergeant summoned me to the company HQ. I was ushered into the captain’s office, who closed the door, and I was alone with him. This man, my company commander, a captain of the U.S. Army in the year 1942, turned to the private in his fatigues, who only three years before came from Nazi Germany, and said, “In regard to this afternoon I want to apologize to you for what I said.”

  I thanked him and left the room. I stepped out in the Camp Wheeler sunshine, head held high and deeply grateful that my belief in the justice of the American system had again been confirmed. This episode, so very significant to me at that time, can probably be only understood if the reader places him or herself in those times. Somehow, it seems that throughout my life at crucial moments there always appeared the right person, remark, or action that reinforced my evermore deeply felt belief that America was great because of its people. It’s a bungling country, maybe crude and rude, but always searching to be better. I felt, and feel, lucky that my father’s foresight sent me here.

  So it was not the infantry but a new “elite” MP force, not like in the past of having just simple soldiers on police patrol, but a special unit of well-trained MPs trained in riot control for future problems to be faced in captured enemy lands.

  In the U.S. Army on February 5, 1943, in the district court in Jacksonville, Florida, I became an American citizen almost exactly four years after coming here. It was a wonderful moment on a great day. In our group, I was the only German and by definition the only Enemy Alien.

  In June our training finished, and we shipped out to the Yukon Territory in Canada to protect the new Alcan Highway, which extended from the railhead in Dawson Creek, British Columbia, to Fairbanks, Alaska. This part of my war experience was strange, boring, and in some ways maturing. I was reduced in grade from private first class to private because I shot a hole in the barracks floor with my .45.

  I felt strange; I wanted to get into the real war and not just sit it out in the Yukon directing traffic, patrolling highways and streets, and guarding gasoline dumps, no matter how essential they were. One day, I saw on the company bulletin board that anyone having foreign language skills could apply directly without going through channels to the War Department in Washington, D.C. Needless to say, I saw a way to get out of there and wrote immediately.

  Soon, I was sent to Military Government School at Fort Custer, Michigan. This was a great experience. Many of the nation’s finest historians and international law experts taught us what to expect in occupied territories.
I was then told to report to Camp Ritchie, Maryland, to train as an interrogator of prisoners of war. At Camp Ritchie, the washout rate was very high, but I made it and with luck I met John Slade. He was born Hans Schlessinger in Frankfurt and was thirteen years my senior—highly intelligent, honest, and decent, and as good of a man as one could wish to be with. When he arrived in New York, he started out as a foot messenger for a very small investment banking firm called Bear Stearns, and he made such an impression on the head of the firm, Joseph Bear, that he kept getting promoted.

  After he made enough money, John was able bring his entire family over to the States. When the war started, John, who was already thirty-four at the time, really wanted to serve in the army, but since he was the sole provider for his parents he wasn’t sure whether he should go. Joseph Bear, who absolutely loved John, told him, “You go into the army; I will take care of your parents, and when you come back your job will be waiting for you.” What employer would do that today? Anyway, John Slade was probably the finest interrogator in the European Theater of Operations. I held the rank of staff sergeant and John was a technician third grade, which was just half a grade below mine. We were a successful team.

  We left Camp Ritchie and were in Camp Kilmer, New Jersey, awaiting our ship. We soon boarded our transport in New York and started our convoy trip to Europe. The quarters were cramped, the food was so-so, but what the heck, we were in good spirits. By the third day out, I had lost all my money playing poker—I have stayed away from gambling ever since that sobering occasion. Basically, the trip went smoothly; there were some U-boat alerts but no attacks, and we landed in a “camp,” which was actually a group of row houses evacuated for our use, near Manchester. There I was exposed to true hunger. We Americans had plenty of food, which was dispensed to us out of large containers directly in our mess kit. When we finished, we put the scraps in a refuse barrel. There were always children, English kids, with buckets asking for our scraps. No scraps ever went in the scrap barrel. This was a sad sight.

  John, nicknamed “Pop” because his being older than all of us, and I decided to go out on the town and eat in a good restaurant. What followed was almost like a scene from the Marx Brothers. The waiters brought a beautiful silver-topped cart, ceremoniously lifted the cover, and, lo and behold, there appeared the tiniest morsel of meat, looking totally lost on this silver serving tray. It was comical.

  London was being bombed at that time by V-2 bombs. V-1 could be seen because they looked like miniature airplanes; their motors sounded like a motorcycle, so as long as you heard the motor you were safe. When the motor cut out—look out below, down comes the bomb. Much more sinister was the V-2, because no one could hear it. It just came. It happened all around, but I didn’t get a scratch.

  Soon our orders came to go. I couldn’t begin to tell you how excited I was. I was a very proud American by that time, and I was doing something that it was high time we were all doing it together. I was surrounded by people with whom I already had a lot of experiences, and this camaraderie that we had, I guess it’s what only happens in wartime. I felt that I was going to show those German sons of bitches what we could do—we, that motley crew from America, that nobody believed could do a damn thing except build automobiles. I wanted to stand on top of my jeep and shout, “Hooray!”

  Somehow I was the driver of our jeep. Our team consisted of two complete units made up of six people: 1st Lt. Rudy Freier, 2nd Lt. Michaels, Sgt. Karl Smith (AKA Karl Goldschmidt), Tech. Sgt. John Slade, Sgt. Wilder, and Cpl. Jancowitz. Freier, Slade, and I were always teamed together. The jeep had a trailer that held all our work material including desk, typewriter, etc. Our weapons consisted of one Thompson submachine gun for each jeep, and each of us carried a Smith and Wesson .45-caliber automatic pistol. With these, we drove onto an LST to go to France.

  On the first day out in the channel, it was Rosh Hashanah and I made up my mind that we were going to have Jewish services. We had our army- issued prayer books and the word spread. It was unbelievable. It seemed as if the whole LST became Jewish. I suppose when in danger, we all pray to the same God, but I am sure half or three-quarters of my “congregation” were Christians.

  When we got to the beach, we were unloaded and we drove into the water. When we came into shallow water, we had been told, “Whatever you do, gun the damn thing and go like hell and don’t stop.” A special tailpipe was fitted, which was about four feet above us, so we could drive through the surf. About five guys with baseball bats stood there waiting and the moment your tailpipe was out of the water at a certain level, they’d hit the damn thing, out flew that extension and we were on our way.

  There were MPs all along the way who directed us. There was a red line and a blue line, one going east and one going west. It was unimaginable to see the vast stream of vehicles and equipment. The Germans had never seen anything like this, nor had the world. Americans production lines back in Detroit trained Americans well. Within moments, if a truck got a flat, or something, there were wreckers, always at the side of the road, that hooked up and pulled the truck off so that the line would never stop. Funny I’ve never seen that in a movie.

  Then we had to establish immediately a POW camp.

  Naturally, we moved with the advance and were attached to different units. At first we were with the Ninth Army, and for a short period, because they were short on interrogators, we were attached to the British 5th Armored Division. When we were at the German–Dutch border in a town called Eschweiler, we were with Terry Allen’s Timberwolf 104th Infantry Division. Depending on where we were, we interrogated mainly German prisoners who were generally captured only hours or even minutes beforehand. Usually, we would know 50 percent or more of what the picture in front of us presented, since the prisoner did not know what we knew. It was not difficult to ascertain when they were not telling the truth. The fact was that practically all of them talked most willingly. The movies often depict the interrogators as villains, using threats, even force. All I can say is that we got more information with friendly talk and a cup of good hot coffee than shown in all the movie versions.

  Once when we were all the way at the Mosel River facing a very tough SS outfit, my IPW was attached to Patton’s Third Army. We were at division HQ when Patton had a meeting of his noncoms. He stood on top of a tank, and among other things, he said to pep the guys up over there: “And as far as those damn interrogators are concerned, don’t take prisoners! Shoot the bastards!” I’ll never forget that. It was typical Patton.

  For the most part, prisoners were in shock. One moment they were surrounded by their buddies, the next moment, they would be hit in the head, or stabbed, or a bullet would strike them in the leg and they’d fall down. Now what?

  One story that never leaves me is when I knelt down to a POW who had a piece of shrapnel in his partially shattered leg. It must have been horrendously painful for him, and he muttered a few words to me: “Comerade, gib mir Deine Hand” (Give me your hand, comrade). I gave him my hand, he did his best to muster a grin and I could just feel that by holding his hand I had helped. And that was wonderful in itself. He did his duty. He tried to fight for Adolf Hitler, and it didn’t quite work out.

  For the most part, I was very gratified to see captured Germans. I’ve always said there is no one who rules as harshly and no one who crawls so low as the Germans in victory and defeat. But I didn’t have rage. I just felt that they had stolen my country away from me, they forced my father to go to some crazy place called Palestine, and I knew we couldn’t let these people run the world, that’s for damn sure.

  One day Freier and I were going in the jeep through an area that had been infiltrated at night by Germans and bang—a bazooka shell whizzed by us and hit an embankment we were passing. It was luck. Freier couldn’t hear out of his right ear after that, and to this day he collects disability from Uncle Sam for this souvenir. Only one of us became a causality. One day, Jancowitz drove his jeep over a mine and it killed him. He had just gotten ma
rried before we went overseas.

  As the war came to a close, we were in Tann, Germany, near the Alpine region where Hitler’s troops were supposedly making their last desperate stand. When we were advancing, the front lines were rather fluid and I was bored and wanted some excitement. Freier and I went south and saw a German soldier with a pistol. I stopped the jeep, disarmed him, and asked him where the American tanks were. He said we were the first Ammies he had seen. The next town was Landshut, so I asked him if Landshut was in a defensive position. He said there were no troops there. So I said, “The hell with it, let’s capture a town.” After all, we had a submachine gun and two .45s. Freier thought I was nuts, and was probably thinking of his wife. But I prevailed—maybe he had a little spirit in him after all—and we took off.

  At the beginning of town, we stopped some rather frightened Germans, who told us that there were no German troops in town. So we sped to the town square for reassurance; I held the submachine gun—not much help against a good sniper. Out of the bakery came a bunch of French slave laborers. We were their first liberators. Our fun seemed short-lived, though. From the other side of the square appeared four German soldiers with rain ponchos over their shoulders. I could not see their hands, so I took out my automatic. Our liberated Frenchmen scattered, but our luck held. Up went the four Krauts’ hands. I relieved their sergeant of his Lugar. (I gave it to my son later on.) As we left town, we had one Kraut on each fender and one in the rear, to discourage snipers. The streets and windows were festooned with white flags made of bed sheets.

  Landshut had surrendered to the U.S. Army. When we got back to intelligence HQ, I looked at the map and told them they could move the pins twelve miles farther south to Landshut.

  This episode is not glorious, but like many things war is no fun, and when I hear about “atrocities,” we committed our share. Those who condemn others, just remember that no matter for what reason, man’s inhumanity to man is never justified. Half of our team—Freier, Slade, and I—was running a POW camp of thirteen thousand for which we had the responsibility to weed out SS and other criminal types, and then send the regular POWs to their home as expeditiously as possible. Usually this was by army truck to about thirty or fifty miles from their home, at which point they had to walk or hitchhike the rest of the way, since there were no trains yet and there was no gas for civilian vehicles like buses or cars.