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5-End of Liberation - End of War

I've read about a controversy revolving around the question, "Who were the true liberators of Dachau?" Can you tell us about this dispute?

In the movie, “The Last Days”, there were three liberators: (Paul Parks), a Japanese, and I. (Paul Parks) and the Japanese never got to Dachau, although they thought they did. They were in a satellite of Dachau, which was a much smaller situation. There were 101 satellite camps, very much smaller than Dachau, with a couple of thousand, maybe, each. (Parks) claimed that he'd gone to the main camp of Dachau, and he never did. In fact, we had an investigation into his apparent role, and because of what he had said to the SHOAH foundation, he was picked as one of the liberators of the movie. But we learned many times over that he was a farce.

Have you ever spoken to him about it?

No. No, I never saw him. We went to the premier of "The Last Days," where I met Spielberg, Steven Spielberg. (Parks) wasn't there. The Japanese guy was. He also liberated - he and his people liberated - a satellite of Dachau, and thought he had gone to the main camp, because there were a couple thousand in this camp. But most of those camps were set up as being work forces to go make armaments for the Germans.

Where did you go after you liberated Dachau?

To Munich. That was our main objective initially, before the change that took us to Dachau. And we learned later that the reason that we went to Dachau was that a couple of prisoners escaped from Dachau, or one of the camps, and found us, the Americans, and told them that "You need to come with all haste to Dachau." I guess that's who they contacted. The 43rd division or the 3rd division, somebody told us that we had to go to Dachau. But we never got the full word of what we were going to do there. But these prisoners did, and told somebody that told somebody else that told somebody else, and never got to us, even the battalion commander, (Walter Felons). So when we got there, we were totally shocked. But it was known by the hierarchy in this country. Roosevelt knew it, and some higher people knew it—knew that there was a Holocaust, that it was involving millions of Jewish people who had been hauled out of their homes and places of business etc, and a lot of them executed. But we didn't know. We were combat troops fighting German soldiers, not killing innocents, like the Nazis were. (Ugh).

On a different note, did you actually see this man that was alive in the boxcar?

No, I didn't. I was in the camp, and one of the sergeants from the 2nd battalion, which was (Colonel Downard's) battalion, heard this moaning. (Carnavelli) was his name, he was a sergeant. He went to (Colonel Downard) and said, "I think there's somebody alive in one of these boxcars," and so he took (Downard) and this tank destroyer captain to the boxcar where he was. He was alive, but barely. He stayed alive and didn't freeze. He had apparently spared some food, and he was able to have morsels of it, and kept him alive during this Dachau Death Train thing that lasted from the first of April until ... gosh when was it ... the twenty-third of April. But he was the only one alive in that whole train. So (Carnavelli) took (Colonel Downard) to this place, and they pulled him out from under some bodies and spoon-fed him. He lived to tell the story of the Death Train. That article that Alison saw describes this horrific situation where they went from camp to camp trying to unload this train, but nobody would take them. So a couple of thousand all died, except this one.

Did you see the latrines in Dachau?

If you saw "The Last Days," it showed the latrines there. That, what's her name, (Louise Nisblat) [not sure whether he means Louise or Irene], that had swallowed the diamonds, and kept passing them and cleaning them out. She even did that in the latrine. She didn't want to go to the latrine because she'd lose the diamonds. So she went elsewhere, and then retrieved the diamonds, and then cleaned them up, even in her soup, that you saw, I guess, in "The Last Days.".

What did they look like to you? Can you describe them?

Well, it really was a row of, it looked like a box-like structure with holes that you sit on, like you'd go into a chemical outhouse, or, what do you call them?

Port O Potties?

Port-o-potties, yeah, something like that—only they're open, just a long row of buil(t)-up boxes with holes. That was the latrine, and a deep hole dug in them, and water, I guess, in the bottom of those. And, of course, Irene [not sure whether he means Louise or Irene] couldn't use one of those, because she'd lose her diamonds. And that's a story I’d like to tell you, if you've got enough time.

Since it's not your story, maybe we should move on.

Well, it is my story.

The diamond story?

Oh yeah.

How is that your story?

Well, let me tell it. We went to the premier of "Last Days," met Steven Spielberg, and met the Hungarian survivors of Auschwitz, one of whom was Tom Lantos, congressman from San Mateo. Irene Nisblat [again, Louise or Irene, or is he referring to two separate people?] and (Ellis Kahana) were the three ladies. Bill (Bache) was the other man, of the five that were in "The Last Days." Anyway, the three ladies - Renee, Louise, and Alice - asked Marge and me to go to dinner with them at their hotel. And so, we went and got in our limousine - we were given a limousine by the SHOAH foundation, and put in a hotel, and squired around all over the place, Beverley Hills, etc - so we got in our limousine and followed the women to their hotel in Beverly Hills. We went in to have dinner, but before we had dinner, we got there about ten o'clock at night. So were going to have dinner, and we talked until three in the morning. One of the ladies, Irene, gave my wife, Marge, a pendant that had the three diamonds. Marge felt it, and she said, "My mother sewed these diamonds into my skirt." I don't know whether that was in "The Last Days." Was it.

Yes.

Yes, sewed the diamonds, and she kept swallowing them, passing them, swallowing them, passing them. She gave my wife, to look at, this pendant. And we finally had dinner about three-thirty or four o'clock in the morning, I think. But we just talked and talked and talked and talked. They all had real trouble going back to their hometowns, because it was so ... like (Renee) going to the door of her house and trying to get in and she couldn't. It was just pretty awful. They described all of this to us, and we talked about their incarceration, and what they went through at Auschwitz, and Renee meeting this "doctor." "Doctor", (psht). So that's the reason I know about the diamonds.

That’s fascinating. It's incredible that you've actually seen them.

Oh yeah. Well, they were in a pendant, and (Louise Nisblat) [ah! Irene or Louise?] has them. She kept them all that time, three years in captivity. She was bound and determined to save them because her mother said "That'll buy you bread." Poor people. What an awful situation they went through.

Post-Liberation

You liberated Dachau, and then you went to Munich. What happened next?

We got to Munich early May, because we (were there in Dachau on) the 29th. I guess it was the end of May. No, we left Dachau the 30th; got to Dachau, I guess, yeah, early May. We captured our segment of Munich without much resistance, because most of their people had fled south, because they knew (we were) a superior force was on its way to Munich. We left Munich and went south to try to catch up with the fleeing Germans. I have, then, another story to tell.

On our way south of Munich, we - and you may have seen this in my writings - captured a German colonel, Colonel (Joachim Pieper), who was a war criminal. His unit was responsible for the (Malmadey Massacre), who killed 108, I think, (GI's), just shot them down. They were prisoners, and he said, in his own defense, that my unit couldn't keep prisoners because we were in the Battle of the Bulge, and we had to move on with all haste toward the ocean to try to cut off the Allied forces. So that was his defense, but it was no defense, really. Just like it was no defense for the 43rd division people to kill the guards summarily.

Anyway, we captured him and his staff. They were penned up in a tennis court, and I had guards around the tennis court. He wanted to talk to me, the colonel. I gave my gun to one of my guards and went in, and he said to me, "Lieutenant, I need to talk to you." I said, "Okay, what about, Colonel?" He said, "I want to join you and go fight the Russians." I said, "Well, I don't think that's going to happen." So I said, "That isn't going to happen; you're going to be a prisoner and I can't let you go. As a matter of fact, I understand from my discussions with my unit that you're a war criminal. So I don't think that's going to happen, colonel. Sorry about that." He said, "Well, I'll tell you what. In ten years, you'll be at war with Russia, or the Soviet Union." And he was almost right. Almost. Anyway, I called back the battalion, and I said, "I need to talk to (Colonel Felons), as I think we have an important prisoner here." And I said to (Colonel Felons), "We've got a German colonel here with his staff, and he says his name is (Joachim Pieper)." And I thought Felons was going to pass out. "(Pieper! Joachim Pieper!) My God! Hold him! Hold him!" "We got him, Colonel, we got him. He's here. We got guards around, he's in the tennis court, and he's well-guarded." So pretty soon, they showed up. The battalion headquarters showed up and took control of (Pieper).

And we went on south. The most we ever did, we found Germans in the Alps, but they weren't about to fight anymore, and said, "Go home. The war's over." It was over on the 8th of May.

Can you tell us what you experienced on VE (victory in Europe) day? Were there celebrations?

Well, a lot of the guys were shooting rifles into the air, and we had booze, and we consumed some of that ... a lot of that! And we just had a jolly time. We were in a beautiful country, Austria.

Did you attend the Nuremberg Trials, and, if so, can you describe that experience?

Yes. I was stationed in (Salzburg). I was the Division I and E - Information and Education - officer at the time. That cushy job I had. Oh, I remember the name of the hotel that I stayed in was the (Bristol Hotel) in (Salzburg). What a posh hotel. So.... ask the question again.

Did you attend the Nuremberg Trials, and if so, can you describe that experience?

Oh yeah. We were invited to go, so four or five of us, I think, went up to Nuremberg, and went to the trials. We were there three of four days, while Goering and Von Ribbentrop and some of the... Goebbels, I guess, was also still alive. Goering committed suicide not too long after we left to go back to (Salzburg). He had a cyanide capsule in his tooth, and swallowed it, and killed himself. Because he thought he was winning, at first, against the prosecutor. He had the prosecutor kind of going for a while, and the prosecutor decided, "Enough of this. I'm being too kind to this Hermann Goering." So he started telling him that he is responsible for the death of 6 million Jews, he is responsible for this and that. Goering started loosing the battle, and decided "the jig's up, and I don't want to be hanged, so I'm gonna bite the capsule and take my own life." I guess Goebbels did too.

So you were actually there during all of this testimony?

Oh yeah. We were there about four days, before Goering and Goebbels killed themselves. I don't know how Goebbels died. Maybe it was the same way Goering did. But yeah, it was really riveting. I guess that's the word. When we were there, Goering was really kind of winning the battle with the prosecutor, but the prosecutor decided "Enough of this crap. I'm gonna let him have it." That's why, I guess, he decided that "I don't have a chance," and killed himself.

Coming Home and Recovery

After fulfilling your duties as an Information and Education officer in Austria, you returned to the states on a victory ship. What is a victory ship, and can you describe the experience of being aboard it?

A victory ship was - I guess most of them were built in Portland, Oregon, on the (Columbia River). They were built to carry troops, mostly, and munitions, from here to Europe and to Asia, to the Pacific Theater. They were built in a big hurry. They weren't huge ships, but they would carry munitions and tanks and so on to the European Theater and the South Pacific.

After, I was told to go home - and I almost didn't want to go because of the girlfriend I had, and the job I had; that was a cushy job, living in a posh hotel, and having the run of the whole area - but I wanted to get back to school, and I was committed to marry Sally. So I did, indeed, go home. But the trip home was fraught with some difficulty, because we were sent to these camps that - (Lahare), in France; I was sent to Camp Phillip Morris - and we waited, and we waited, and we waited, and we waited, for I think six weeks (before). They were bringing people over from the states to the army of occupation, and sending them right back home, and leaving us, who'd been in combat for it seemed like years. And so we finally marched on the camp headquarters and said, "What's going on here? We’ve been here six weeks. You're bringing people in and sending them home without their even hardly touching soil. And we've been here all this time, and we were in combat for months. Shouldn't we be going home? What the hell is going on here?" We were really angry, totally angry, because we were just sitting there on our duffs. Finally, they assigned a victory ship for us to go home on.

It took us twelve days to get over there on the ship that went overseas, because we were dodging U-boats. Took us six days to get back on the victory ship. Landed at Fort - in New Jersey, I can't think of the name of the fort - but that was a great homecoming, because all the fruit and milk and ice cream and steaks and other stuff we could eat, because well, I'd had a lot of that, too, in (Salzburg), but this was just oodles of stuff.

What was the moment like right when you walked off the ship? Can you describe the scene?

The first thing, when I went overseas, I didn't want to look at the Statue of Liberty. But when I came back, I really wanted to see the Statue of Liberty. We pulled into port, and we were trucked to the fort. We'd been there on our way out, and, of course, went up to New York, and boarded the big ship. I guess it was a feeling of... finally, I'm back home. Sort of. Being on the east coast, that wasn't my home. Finally, we stayed at this fort for three of four days, and then got on a train, and came back to California. (We were) separated at (Camp Biel) in California, north of San Francisco.

Then my mother and sister drove up to Tacoma, where I was going to marry Sally. We were married in Tacoma, and went on our honeymoon. That was really the beginning of the end of our relationship, even though it lasted for thirty years, because we had children, and I felt obligated.