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06 - Linz, Displaced Persons Camps and Prisoners of War
So you were working with a series of camps then. You were an administrator for...?
Yes, we had repatriation officers from these different countries that worked directly with my our office in sorting these people out and getting them back to their home countries.
And you had mentioned before that the area was laid out so that there was one area that was under U.S. jurisdiction?
Yes. Austria was divided into four areas: American, British, Russian and French. All of Austria was divided into four areas with the headquarters in Vienna. Linz was the headquarters for the American zone, active administration for the American zone. And there was similar kinds of situations in the other areas. The British. We worked close to the British. They were pretty good at this kind of thing.
Could you describe the area of the American zone?
Austria is a beautiful country. Really is. I got to see some of it afterwards—Munich and some of the other areas. I even learned how to ski in the Austrian Alps. I got a weekend and was able to go skiing. That's where I learnt. That was kind of interesting.
What were the borders for the American zone?
I can't really lay out where the borders were. Very difficult, there were you know, they were sizeable territories. It took a day or two to see, to drive across each one. Each of us, Russians, British, French, we operated in very similar ways in that particular area.
You told us a little bit about the German prisoners of war and the letters you received from their wives and families?
Not letters but they came in person to our office. These were prisoners that we had rounded up in some of these camps where they were stationed. In the other areas where we had captured Germans we would get them into big groups and then we set up prisoners of war camps all over. And then we would send them off to these camps. At Linz there were enough prisoners where they had come from various areas of Austria. Their families—particularly wives, mothers, sisters, that kind of thing—they were the ones who would come to our office, my office, and try to get their brother or whatever released. "He was not a Nazi, we didn't know it was hap penning. He didn't kill anyone." But by that time we knew who the bad ones were. And I would not take it on myself to release any of these people if I could help it. They had to go higher up. I was pretty low down on the totem pole.
Did you ever find just cause to release any of the people?
I never found one myself, never one. And most of the people I talked to, other GIs in the other areas were the same way. The prisoners, they did not—very, very seldom that they ever found one that really should have been released. Most of them were, particularly the SS troopers, they were die hard and you could tell the SS troopers, they had tattoos on their arms. They would try to hide it but we knew who they were. They were an arrogant bunch.
So we have a better sense of what all was involved in your administrative position. First of all if you could tell us what your title was and what your responsibilities were?
I was an administrative NCO, means Non-commissioned officer. If I had a title it was probably Office Administrator for that particular group. We had a number of GIs doing different things. As I mentioned, we had a warehouse full of people, people who were running the housing areas that we set up. Medical, we arranged for the medical people to go there. The SS troopers, as I said. were really the worst. I wouldn't do a thing for those guys. We just tried to make the survivors, we tried to make them comfortable until we were able to repatriate them. The Russians together, the French and the British, all of that sort of thing. We tried to make them comfortable, give them some clothes, food, that sort of thing.
So you had the POW camps on one hand and the DP camps on the other?
Yes. The prisoners of war, they were prisoners you know, we did not treat them with kid gloves obviously. The PW [he meant DP camps] camps you know, our hearts went out to those people and we did the best we could for them. The more we saw them, I think the more we hated the SS troopers.
Did you develop any personal relationships with any of the DP, the displaced people?
No, because they weren't there long enough, they would come in very shortly and we would try to get them out in a matter of days or weeks to go on to other countries. I talked to some but never really developed a real relationship.
Do you remember any conversations you had with any that stand out to you?
Those few, a couple that spoke English or the interpreters—the GIs we had—they would tell us what went on. They were treated like animals, they were not treated like human beings. The Nazis—the Austrians were among the worst Nazis of all. That's where Hitler came from. And I still cannot forget the Austrian—what's his name?—who became the Director of the UN in New York. What was that, I wish I could remember his name.
Kurt Waldheim.
It turned out he had been a Nazi and he hid it all. We found out it and he was then kicked out of that job and sent back to Austria and became a big shot in Austria. He was amongst the worst of the Nazis. Personally I think they should have lined the son of a bitch up in front of a firing squad.
While you were in Linz did you have interactions with local towns people?
A little bit. Some of them were we got working for us by that time. We tried to make sure they were not among them active Nazis. It was hard to do though at that time. But as I said, the Austrians were, I think, amongst the most die hard Nazis of them all, not all of them of course, but a great many of them.
Were most of the people in these camps, at least that you were working with, were most of them Jewish?
No, not all, maybe half if that.
Were many of them children?
Depending on where they were, there were a few that had some children. They were the first ones we took care of of course. We tried to do the best for all of them.
Were you aware of any orphaned children, were there children without parents or relatives?
Some of them had a parent, a lot of them had maybe a relative, some of them had absolutely no relatives at all. We tried to take care of them. Some of them we tried to place in orphanages, some of them we were able to send to the States into orphanages. They were raised differently and many of them did very very well.
Were people leaving the DP camp—you mentioned that some didn't want to return to their home country—were people able to go other places?
We tried to get them, back number one to their home countries and then from there it was up to those people to get them to their individual towns or wherever they were. We tried to get them there but our major job was separating them by nationality to get them so their own people could take over.
If they wanted to go some place else, then they would deal with their own country?
No. If they were from the French area we sent them to France and if they wanted to go some place else, then it was up to the French officials and not us.
I was just wondering, if you had people who were trying to leave for Palestine?
Yes, we worked closely with some of the Jewish organizations in that area. My wife had relatives, mostly she had never seen before. She had a cousin who had survived one of the concentration camps, I remember. He was able to round up about fifty or sixty Jewish children who had survived and had nobody else. He was—I think they were in Austria—and the only way he could get them some place, they had to walk and they walked through weeks, if not months, over mountains and through for miles and miles to get to a place from where they could get to Israel. We tried to help them where we could.
What Jewish groups were you working with that you said helped facilitate this?
There were some of them. The Jewish Welfare Commission and there were other groups from that area. We just tried to the best for everybody. We tried to do the best for the French, wherever else they came from, the Dutch, we tried to get them back. Some of the Jews had come from other countries, from France, Belgium, from Amsterdam, and our main job was to get them back to their home towns if we were able to, at least to their countries. From there the other organizations would try and get them out if they wanted to get to Israel. Occasionally some of them came to the States if they had relatives, we were able to get them to the States. But this one cousin my wife never knew she had we found out afterwards, he led this group of fifty or sixty children on foot and took them out of these areas and got them to a port in France and then on ship to get them to Israel.
What was his name, do you remember?
I don't know. Miriam remembered but I didn't. The British were running—were in charge of Palestine that time. They were happy to get rid of the responsibility but while they had it—I remember there were shiploads—I wasn't involved directly in that but there was at least one shipload of refugees, hundreds of them in this particular ship that the British would not let get off the ship and get into Palestine and they were sent to a camp in Crete I think it was. And on another island, Cyprus also they had these camps set up. But they [British] would not let them off into this particular area, I remember that. There was a whole other story to get them to Palestine.
It sounds like most people were going through these camps pretty quickly?
Yes, we tried to get them into their home countries and eventually many of them got to the States. We tried to do that in a quick humane manner but it was difficult because so many of them were bad, they died before you could do anything for them.
Are there particular individuals you remember or particular stories from that time of your life?
There were so many, they all ran together. As I said, when I came back out of the service to the States I couldn't talk about it to anybody about everything I had seen. It took me some years before I could talk about it. This was not uncommon. I think a lot of those GIs who came back from Vietnam I think went through the same kind of situation actually.
Who did you first start talking about it with?
To members of my family and to organizations and school—some of the people I met at Western Reserve University, some of the faculty members I came in contact with. It just took a long time.
How long were you there at the camp in that role?
In Linz? Several months.
Returning Home
And when did you finally return home?
I was finally was able to accumulate enough seniority and points to come home. And I was sent back to Le Have which was a redeployment port for American soldiers. Le Have had a lot of American camps, they were called the cigarette camps, they were named Camp Philip Morris camp—I am not a smoker, I was never a smoker so I never smoked in my life—Camp Camel, but Camp Philip Morris, that's the one I went through. We finally were able to get home. Almost everybody in the army was a smoker, I was one of the few. I used to trade my cigarette rations for candy bars. I never smoked. My father was a chain smoker all his life and we hated it and that's what killed him, emphysema finally, he died of emphysema from the smoking. My brothers, my sister never smoked as a result of that. And to this day I never let anybody smoke in my house. If you are a smoker and you wanted to smoke, go out in the patio.
What kind of candy bars did you guys have?
Hershey bars, Good Humor, what the hell were some of those I liked, the one with the nuts in it?
Snickers?
Snickers, that kind of thing. It was a mixture. The candy bars were a lot better than the cigarettes, that's my way of thinking. I still remember that almost everybody in the army smoked.
Came out of the service was happy to get back to my wife and family and and get back to school, get my degree and some graduate work on the GI Bill.
Impact of the War
How did these wartime experiences impact you and your family life as a parent?
I appreciated a lot of the things a lot more, I think. I appreciated family and freedom, what you could do. I appreciated other people. I never had a problem with any of that. I was always very open—I made friends with everybody. I was always popular when I was in school, a leader actually. Everybody was the same. But obviously we felt differently about the Jewish survivors that came through. Even to this day I have friends who were survivors—not many of them left anymore, obviously, because of age. I don't know that many GIs—ex-GIs—probably aren't a hell of a lot of them left either. When I think about it, probably should have done more.
If there is one thing that you would like us to take away from your wartime experiences, what would that be?
The major thing we learn through all this is that you treat everybody as an individual and you don't categorize them, whether they are blacks or Jews or Mormons or whatever, they are still individual people and that's the thing that counts. Even after the war there is still a lot of anti-Semitism. I myself never was personally affected by it. I never had that aimed at me personally, which was unusual. I know a lot of people that did. I think the while thing with this going to war—after we got married and had children, a major thought I had that was, "I don't mind going as much if my sons do not have to go in—go to war." That was my first thought. In more recent years I thought, "I hope my grandsons never have to go."
I think we all have the same hope.
Everybody feels the same way I am sure.
Thank you very much for your time. We really appreciate this.
I don't know if I was able to give you any insights or not. I wandered a lot obviously.
It was fantastic. Thank you.
As I talk about it, I was thinking about this past week, more and more of these things came to my mind that I probably wanted to talk about.
Thank you for sharing your story.
