21 January 1945

438^th AAA AW BN

APO 230 % Postmaster, N.Y.

21 January, 1945       1000

Dearest darling Wilma –

Another Sunday morning away from you – and we sure have missed a good many of them. But we’ll give more value to those we have together and thereby make up the lost. It’s not a very good Sunday anyway, dear, so we’re not missing too much. The weather here just persists in being rotten and it has snowed some part of every one of the last five or six days. About the only striking news is that from the Russian front although by no means does that mean that the boys over here have stopped dying. We follow the Russian reports about as closely as you do I guess – and it makes no difference who gets to Berlin first as long as someone gets there and ends this goddamned war sometime.

None the least of our present annoyances, darling, is the complete collapse of the mail system. I do hope it’s working better in your direction. We just aren’t getting any at all. We never did get all of November’s mail, we got perhaps a third to one-half of December’s mail and of course – no January mail – which puts everything way behind. The only thing we’re getting at all is old journals and newspapers. Yesterday I received two editions of the Boston Herald – 13 and 14 September – which, of course, made excellent reading. Bitch, bitch, bitch – that’s about all I seem to be doing in my letters of late, dear, but I know you’ll excuse me. It could be worse, I know, and besides I’m healthy and well – and that’s no small consideration these days. But damn it – I sure would like to hear from you, dear!

CLICK TO ENLARGE

Boston Herald Front Page, 4 September 1944

I have your letters of the few days before Christmas and I can imagine how all of you felt. By now you must have received some of my mail of late December and I hope you’re all less worried.

By the way, dear, you mention the clock striking in a few of your letters. Do you mean our clock? If so, it has a louder sound than I can remember it having for it seems to me you can hear it in the living room, library, your room or your mother’s room! Does it keep good time?

Yes, as you write darling, things do get dim after 14 months. I have the same trouble in visualizing certain things. I try so hard, too, especially at night while trying to fall asleep. Yet it will all seem very natural, dear. For instance – when I saw Frank Morse some time ago, it was 13 months since I had seen him last and yet when I did see him – it didn’t seem so long at all. It will be the same with us, sweetheart, and yet so infinitely different. Gosh – I get so excited at just the thought, it makes me woozy. To see you and have you for myself, to be completely free again seems like an almost unattainable goal right now – but we’ll make it – just the same.

And why haven’t you got your license yet!! I have plenty of reasons for not having a photograph of myself – but you had all of last fall to get your driving license and no results as yet. I warn you dear – you’d better be able to drive or you’ll have to wrestle me to get into the driver’s seat of our new car. Too bad I sold that old Ford I had – or I could have let you experiment with that.

Well, darling – conditions are getting punk for me to continue with this so I’ll start closing. The only thing we look forward to these days is mail from home – and I hope we hit the jackpot today. For now, darling, so long, love to the folks, and

All my sincerest love

Greg

* TIDBIT *

about George Juskalian's March

From a total of 257,000 western Allied prisoners of war held in German military prison camps, over 80,000 POWs were forced to march westward across Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Germany in extreme winter conditions, over about four months between January and April 1945. As the Soviet Army was advancing, German authorities decided to evacuate POW camps, to delay liberation of the prisoners. At the same time, hundreds of thousands of German civilian refugees, most of them women and children, as well as civilians of other nationalities, were also making their way westward on foot, in hazardous weather conditions. January and February 1945 were among the coldest winter months of the 20th century in Europe, with blizzards and temperatures as low as –25 °C (–13 °F), and even until the middle of March, temperatures were well below 0 °C (32 °F). Most of the POWs were ill-prepared for the evacuation, having suffered years of poor rations and wearing clothing ill-suited to the appalling winter conditions.

Here are excerpts from the story of one who made it, as told to Bonnie Hobbs of the Connection Newspaper's CenterView Southern Edition, published on 9 and 16 June 2004. It was titled "Recollections of a War Veteran." Retired Army Col. George Juskalian, 90, of Centreville's Virginia Run community, served in three wars and, in his 30-year career, made enough memories to last a lifetime. This story starts with his fighting in Africa...

Colonel George Juskalian

"We got to the border of Algeria and Tunisia about Jan. 15, 1943 and began fighting the Germans and Italians there." Some 10 days later, the battle continued in the Makthar Valley in central Tunisia and, on Jan. 28, Juskalian was captured by the enemy. George was in regimental headquarters, but knew the Americans had gotten into a heavy fight, the day before. "One of our intelligence officers had gone out to check on the situation, and word came back that he'd been wounded and was out there somewhere," he said. "So another officer and I went out in a Jeep and found him, but he was dead. Then we came under fire, so we couldn't drag him out of there."

Juskalian told the driver to return to the command post, and he set out on foot to see how the other U.S. troops were doing. "I thought they were all right because we hadn't heard anything from them," he said. "But they'd been overrun by the Germans." Earlier, Juskalian had lost his glasses so, when he came upon the Germans, he couldn't distinguish who they were from 50 feet away. Emerging from the bushes, they pointed rifles at Juskalian and took him prisoner. "I was irritated with myself for being so foolhardy," he said. "I shouldn't have been there."

He and other American prisoners were interrogated in Kairouan, trucked to Tunis and flown to Naples, Italy. Said Juskalian: "They flew about 100 feet above the Mediterranean because they were afraid that, if they flew higher, the American fighter planes — not knowing POWs were inside — would see us and shoot us down." The soldiers were later placed in a British POW camp in central Germany, in Rotenburg am Fulda, where they remained until June 1943. The British POWs had been there a long time and told the U.S. soldiers how to handle the German guards. They also asked them to help with a tunnel they were building.

Although Juskalian had claustrophobia, he volunteered. "It didn't bother me until I went home," he said. "I'd go into a cold sweat, [thinking about it]." The camp was a former girls school, and the tunnel went under a road. "It was ingenious," said Juskalian. "Instead of going under the floor, it started at a panel in a wooden wall, went down about three feet, horizontal about 10 feet and then down about eight feet. It went out under the street, beyond the barbed wire. The intention was to go 100 feet more to come out on the bank of the Fulda River. Then the guard couldn't see it because it wouldn't be eye level."

The Girls School Today

The POWs dug with scoops fashioned out of British biscuit cans with handles created from their wooden bed slats. They even made a pipe out of these cans, carrying fresh air to the tunnel's end from a hand-cranked fan at its beginning. But before they finished it, the Americans were moved to a camp in Poland. "Two of our members feigned illness so they could stay there and help with the tunnel," said Juskalian. "But the Germans knew about the tunnel. We found out later that a British POW had told them."

He was a POW for 27 months total, and 19-1/2 of those months were spent in this new camp, called Oflag 64 ("Officers Camp"), in Szubin, Poland. "We got there June 6, 1943 and stayed until Jan. 21, 1945," said Juskalian. But instead of trying to tunnel to freedom — as they'd done to no avail in their old camp — this time, the POWs busied themselves with other activities, organizing an orchestra, band, theater group, library, newspaper, athletics, language school, etc.

"For awhile, I was the editor of the monthly paper," said Juskalian. "A guard with a printing shop in the town printed it for us. We put in stories from home, cartoons, pictures of pin-up girls and girlfriends and articles about camp sports and activities." He said the Germans didn't bother them until the end, when 50 people escaped from a British POW camp and they killed the 30 that they captured. Then, said Juskalian, "A German captain from Austria warned us not to provoke the Germans or they'd exterminate us."

Russia later began assaulting the whole Eastern front and, on 21 January 1945, the Germans began marching their POWs to Germany. "We marched 40 days, 400 miles, in the dead of winter, and it was bitter cold," said Juskalian. "We slept in barns, ate wheat and barley and traded old coffee for bread." Of the roughly 1,500 men that left Oflag 64, only about 400 reached their destination.

They were eventually placed in a camp in Hammelburg with other American officers captured in the Battle of the Bulge. Gen. Patton's son-in-law was among them, so a task force was sent to liberate the POWs there. "They arrived, the end of March, and the German guards fled," said Juskalian. "But there weren't enough trucks to take us all out of there, German infantry soldiers were all around, and my buddy Pete and I were recaptured," he continued. "We were tired and depressed, but thankful to be alive."

They were soon marched south to Nuremburg, where Americans began bombing. "We were cheering, and our guards were getting irritated," said Juskalian. "But the bombs came down on us, too, and I was sure we were gonna get it. About 30 of us were killed. I was thinking of my mother and how ironic it would be to be killed at the end of the war — and by your own aircraft." He and Pete survived, but they were surrounded by Germans, with no place to run. They were then marched toward a prison camp near Munich, but were given the opportunity to return to Nuremburg as wounded soldiers to be treated in the hospital. They took it because that was closer to the American lines than where they'd been heading.

When the Germans tried to see if they were really wounded, the British erected a sign on the gate saying "Plague," and that kept them out. "Three or four days later, the 45th U.S. Infantry Division overran Nuremburg and we were liberated," said Juskalian. "We were overjoyed." They were flown to France, from where thousands of POWs would be sent home. But he and Pete had been prisoners a long time and decided to see Paris before departing. They tried getting money at the Army Finance Office to buy new uniforms, but had no dogtags with their I.D.s.

"But a sergeant there, who managed that office, heard my last name and asked, 'Do you have a relative in Watertown, Mass.?'" said Juskalian. "I said, 'Yes, my brother Dick,' and he said, 'He lives across the street from me.' Then he told the others, 'Give him anything he wants.'"

Juskalian and his wife in 2004

Juskalian went on to serve his country in both Korea and Vietnam. He died on 4 July 2010 in Centreville, Virginia at the age of 96, and was buried with full military honors in Arlington National Cemetery.

20 January 1945

438^th AAA AW BN

APO 230 % Postmaster, N.Y.

20 January, 1945        1115

Wilma, darling –

It has finally stopped snowing and I’m not sorry either. We’ve had a couple of tough days. I haven’t been so bored or fed up for some time now but I’ve gotten so that when I feel that way, I don’t mind as much as I used to. I know it’s temporary; I guess a little sunshine will fix me up fine. From what I read – you’re having a kind of tough winter yourselves and I’ll bet you’re finding that long ride home every night quite an ordeal. It’s easy to understand why you wrote recently that you wished you could share an apartment in Boston with one of the girls. That would really be convenient – but when we’re finally married and living in Salem, darling, neither of us will have to commute and that will suit me fine.

I’ve been pretty busy the past few days with colds etc and at present I’m keeping the Colonel, one of our new majors and half a dozen other officers off duty for one reason or another. This p.m. I’m going back to rear to take care of a few details. I have my MAC officers back there – but I have to check up on some patients. Yesterday our battalion was allotted 5 men and 1 officer to go to Paris on a 72 hr. pass and that doesn’t include traveling time – which means they’ll probably be gone for about 6 days. What a break! We may get more allotments in the future – but I don’t see how I’ll ever get the chance to go – because I have no one to replace me at present.

And by the way – we were given an allotment for 2 men to go home for 30 days. It came out of a clear sky and although it represents an infinitesimal percentage – it is something. Outfits in this Corps with one year overseas duty – were included. It now looks as if our 7 months in England won’t be entirely wasted, because lots of outfits with as much time on the continent as we – had very little time in England. But – there are plenty of divisions here with much more overseas time than we have – so we’ll have to sweat out quite a bit, sweetheart. You wrote me some time ago about applying for rotation when my 18 mos. are up. I think you’ve got something wrong there, dear. It just doesn’t work that way here, and certainly not for medical officers. You may have more dope on it than I have – but that’s the way we know it here. Anyway, we now have 14 solid months to our credit and they can’t take that away from us.

And, sweetheart, I’m going to sign off now despite the brevity of this letter. Believe me, dear, I’d love to write and ramble and tell you how much I love you, long for you and miss you. I don’t want to give you a word picture of the circumstances under which I am writing – but they aren’t good. Most of the fellows have just quit writing until conditions and the situation changes – but I’m going to do my best to get something off to you every day I can.

All for now, dear. My love to the folks, regards to Mary and remember

My love is yours alone, dear

Greg

* TIDBIT *

about the Re-taking of St. Vith
Part 1

The following was extracted from a document called "The Return to St. Vith," prepared by the Research and Evaluation Division of the United States Armored School in Fort Knox, Kentucky, published 25 June 1948. The details are found in the 7th Armored Division's After Action Report for January, 1945.

Among the famous historical examples of indomitable courage and outstanding leadership during WWII, the stand of the 7th Armored Division at St. Vith, Belgium, during the period 17 December to 23 December 1944, has a place high in the annals of military historians. After a gallant stand of six days, the 7th Armored Division on orders relinquished its hard-won ground and then drove into the German line in the vicinity of Manhay, Belgium, whittling at the German Army until relieved on 30 December 1944. At this time, the gallant 7th Armored was fighting with under strength units, for only 70 percent of the combat personnel was effective and medium armor was 56 percent below normal. Von Rundstedt's lightening armored columns were blunted and disorganized as they probed at the 7th Armored's defense, and the methodical German planners found themselves thrown six days behind schedule because of the 7th's stonewall ring of fighting personnel around St. Vith.

Although St. Vith received far less publicity than Bastogne, it was the opinion of many of the German Field Marshals, including Hitler himself, that St. Vith was far more important strategically than Bastogne. The most important fact to consider is that Bastogne could be by-passed and St. Vith could not. Not only to the German High Command was this a paramount issue, but to the Allied Supreme Command as well. For the same reasons that the German Ardennes offensive bogged down when denied this road and rail center, any large Allied counteroffensive to drive the enemy from Belgium soil would bog down unless St. Vith was in friendly hands. The German mission was to deny the Allied Forces the use of the road net, and to "defend to the last round" this all-important town.

January 1945 found the 7th Armored Division as XVIII Airborne Corps reserve in the vicinity of Aywaille, Belgium, preparing for the coming counteroffensive. Replacements in men and material were absorbed by the division at this time, and an intensive training program with emphasis on maintenance and firing was begun. The extreme cold, lack of suitable billets, and icy and hazardous operating conditions caused the division many hardships.

Extensive reconnaissance and analysis of the terrain were made to determine the most effective manner of operation. The poor road net, heavily wooded areas, and rugged terrain dictated the employment of small infantry-tank-engineer teams. Each line infantryman and all key personnel of tank battalions, artillery battalions, the engineer battalion, and the cavalry reconnaissance squadron were equipped with white outer garments to blend with the snow. The tanks of the 7th Armored were the first in the US First Army to be painted white.

On 19 January 1945 the 7th Armored Division had completed all preparations for its attack. The division was poised and ready for the assault. That day the division command post moved to Waimes, and Combat Commands A and B moved into final attack positions in the vicinity of Waimes during that night.

The general plan of attack was to have Combat Command A (CCA) on the left and Combat Command B (CCB) on the right. The division objective at this time was to occupy a frontage of about 10,000 meters extending from the high ground north of St. Vith, and thence to the north and east to the town of Ambleve. On the morning of 20 January 1945 at 0730 the 7th Armored Division began its coordinated attack through the sector held by the 1st and 30th infantry Divisions. The weather had not moderated, being very cold with snow flurries and visibility ranging from fair to poor. Icy conditions and near zero temperatures made movement of tracked vehicles extremely difficult.

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Ambulance near Waimes lets 7th Armored Division pass

Task Force W of CCA jumped off at 0730 January for Diedenberg; meeting only light enemy resistance, it occupied Diedenberg by 1030. Task Force R of CCA succeeded in securing the high ground southeast of Diedenberg by 1530, although it met heavy resistance from strong points established in houses located in its zone of action. During the remainder of the day Combat Command A consolidated its positions and made preparations for the attack on Auf der Hart Woods.

Combat Command B was to attack Born with two task forces: Task Force A astride the road from the west and Task Force C from the northwest. However, because of last-minute changes the attack was postponed; Task Force B patrols encountered difficulty in returning from enemy reconnaissance. At 1130 the attack was launched. Task Force B approached Born without serious difficulty, but Task Force C encountered mines and terrain impassable for armor. At 1630 the assault was launched on Born by Task Force B and the infantry of Task Force C. Both forces encountered heavy small-arms fire from the enemy and by 1800 the attack had bogged down.

Brigadier General Bruce C. Clarke, commanding Combat Command B, directed the task forces to reorganize and be prepared to continue the attack on order that night. From 2300 to 2345 an intense artillery preparation was laid on the town, utilizing 13 battalions of division and corps artillery. The attack was again launched, this time encountering severe enemy resistance which included tanks, self-propelled guns, and infantry. Both task forces succeeded in reaching the outskirts of Born at 0132 on 21 January. The remainder of the night was spent consolidating the hard-earned positions. During this day's operation the task forces captured 115 prisoners who were components of the 18th Volks Grenadier and 3rd Parachute Division.

19 January 1945

V-MAIL

438^th AAA AW BN

APO 230 % Postmaster, N.Y.

19 January, 1945        1130

Dearest sweetheart –

Talk about your New England blizzards! We’re having one helluva storm right now, dear, and it’s the first one I’ve seen in several winters. I had to go out this morning and just got back. I’m going to try to stay around this p.m. but it will depend on a couple of factors.

I got two letters yesterday – the best combination, too: one from you and one from my folks. Yours was dated 19 November and theirs 24th November – so you see, sweetheart, what mail service we’ve been getting. But they were plenty welcome and I’ll take as many as come along. I haven’t had a recent one from either you or the folks in some time. I hope everything is going along well, darling, and that you’re less discouraged and worried than you were when you wrote me during the week of the breakthrough.

News these days is scant and slow but the over-all picture is encouraging, dear – and we’re all expecting to hit Berlin one of these days – after all. Nothing more for now, Sweetheart. Will try to write more tomorrow. Love to the folks and to you –

All my everlasting love

Greg

* TIDBIT *

about the Death Marches


Death March from Dachau

The following was taken directly from The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum's Holocaust Encyclopedia's web page called "Death Marches":

A massive Soviet 1944 summer offensive in eastern Belarus annihilated German Army Group Center and permitted Soviet forces to overrun the first of the major Nazi concentration camps, Lublin/Majdanek. Shortly after that offensive, SS chief Heinrich Himmler ordered that prisoners in all concentration camps and subcamps be evacuated toward the interior of the Reich. Due to the rapid Soviet advance, the SS had not had time to complete the evacuation of Majdanek. Soviet and western media widely publicized SS atrocities at the camp, using both footage of the camp at liberation and interviews with some of the surviving prisoners. The evacuations of the concentration camps had three purposes:

(1) SS authorities did not want prisoners to fall into enemy hands alive to tell their stories to Allied and Soviet liberators,

(2) the SS thought they needed prisoners to maintain production of armaments wherever possible, and

(3) some SS leaders, including Himmler, believed irrationally that they could use Jewish concentration camp prisoners as hostages to bargain for a separate peace in the west that would guarantee the survival of the Nazi regime.

In the summer and early autumn months of 1944, most of the evacuations were carried out by train or, in the case of German positions cut off in the Baltic States, by ship. As winter approached, however, and the Allies reached the German borders and assumed full control of German skies, SS authorities increasingly evacuated concentration camp prisoners from both east and west on foot.

By January 1945, the Third Reich stood on the verge of military defeat. Most of German East Prussia was already under Soviet occupation. Soviet forces besieged Warsaw, Poland, and Budapest, Hungary, as they prepared to push German forces back toward the interior of the Reich. After the failure of the surprise German Ardennes offensive in December 1944, Anglo-American forces in the west were ready to invade Germany.

The SS guards had strict orders to kill prisoners who could no longer walk or travel. As evacuations depended increasingly on forced marches and travel by open rail car or small craft in the Baltic Sea in the brutal winter of 1944-1945, the number who died of exhaustion and exposure along the routes increased dramatically. This encouraged an understandable perception among the prisoners that the Germans intended them all to die on the march. The term death march was probably coined by concentration camp prisoners.

During these death marches, the SS guards brutally mistreated the prisoners. Following their explicit orders, they shot hundreds of prisoners who collapsed or could not keep pace on the march, or who could no longer disembark from the trains or ships. Thousands of prisoners died of exposure, starvation, and exhaustion. Forced marches were especially common in late 1944 and 1945, as the SS evacuated prisoners to camps deeper within Germany. Major evacuation operations moved prisoners out of Auschwitz, Stutthof, and Gross-Rosen westward to Buchenwald, Flossenbürg, Dachau, and Sachsenhausen in winter 1944-1945; from Buchenwald and Flossenbürg to Dachau and Mauthausen in spring 1945; and from Sachsenhausen and Neuengamme northwards to the Baltic Sea in the last weeks of the war.

CLICK TO ENLARGE PICTURES

Major Death Marches

Auschwitz was the largest camp established by the Germans. A complex of camps, Auschwitz included a concentration, extermination, and forced-labor camp. It was located 37 miles west of Krakow, near the prewar German-Polish border. In mid-January 1945, as Soviet forces approached the Auschwitz camp complex, the SS began evacuating Auschwitz and its satellite camps. On 19 January 1945 the last large transport, with 2,500 prisoners, left the Auschwitz main camp at 1:00 am under the supervision of SS First Lieutenant Wilhelm Reischenbeck. Near Rajsko the last column joined up with 1,000 prisoners from Birkenau. Behind the village of Brzeszcze the procession joined with a column of 1,948 prisoners from the Jawischowitz sub-camp.

Nearly 60,000 prisoners were forced to march west from the Auschwitz camp system. Thousands had been killed in the camps in the days before these death marches began. Tens of thousands of prisoners, mostly Jews, were forced to march to the city of Wodzislaw in the western part of Upper Silesia. SS guards shot anyone who fell behind or could not continue. Prisoners also suffered from the cold weather, starvation, and exposure on these marches. More than 15,000 died during the death marches from Auschwitz.

Death Marches from Auschwitz

The following transcripts were recorded by four death march survivors, as shown on the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum web site. The last transcript below was recorded by a collector of evidence following the marches.

Fritzie Weiss Fritzshall
Born: 1929, Klucarky, Czechoslovakia

We knew that it was the last days of the war, we knew because of the bombings and we knew because of the way the Germans soldiers were pushing us and pulling us already and emptying the camps and whatever. They took us all and put us together, all of the people from camps, and they had us march through towns and through fields. They didn't know where to put us anymore and they didn't know what to do with us and there was no food because the Germans were losing the war. Oftentimes as they marched us through a town, a window would open and a shutter would open and either a potato or a loaf of bread would come flying out and the shutter would close after. And we would all pounce on this potato or this whatever this piece of food was that came at us. And of course they would shoot at us, but we didn't care at that point because we were hungry. The streets were literally covered with bodies as we marched. We would pass bodies, body after body after body, people that were dropping dead from hunger, from disease, from dysentery, because they did not have the strength or because they gave up.

Lilly Appelbaum Malnik
Born: 1928, Antwerp, Belgium

Word came to us that we were going to evacuate Auschwitz. Why were we evacuating Auschwitz? It is because the Russians were coming close by. And so we...we all walked out Auschwitz and we started walking. And we started walking, we walked for days. I'll never forget it. I don't know how many days we walked. We walked and then we took cattle cars and then we walked again. And as we walked we heard gun shots and they told us to keep on marching. We heard gun shots and they were shooting people in the back who couldn't keep up with the walking. It ended up being called the death march because the ravines and the gutters, they were all red from blood. From people, some people who spoke Polish, we were walking through Poland, and some people who thought they could escape would try and escape. Some people who couldn't keep up with the walking anymore, they got weak, they threw all their bundles away and they walked until they couldn't keep up anymore, they fell behind and the Germans just shot them. We saw people being shot in the front in their chests, in their back. They were laying all over, on top of hills, behind trees. It was really like a war zone. And this is how we finally arrived in a camp called Bergen-Belsen.

Lily Mazur Margules
Born: 1924, Vilna

And we knew the only way we can survive if we will stay in the front. Because if you were standing in the back and you couldn't walk with the column, you were just shot. And then I saw young girls walk and walk and all of a sudden they became like frozen, straightened their legs instead and they were just frozen mummies falling right with their face on the snow. The German didn't have to shoot them. This is how they fell. One of my friends started to feel bad, and we took her and I was from one side, and another of my friend, and we were dragging her, practically dragging her, she couldn't, her legs were frozen. So the guard noticed it. He, he, he told the column to stop, he took her to a turnip field, and we heard a shot. He shot her right there.

Sam Itzkowitz
Born: 1925, Makow, Poland

They decided to march us towards the Bavarian mountains, to the Alps. 'Til today I don't know what the reason was. Either they wanted to destroy us in, in those mountains or they were going to trade us off through Switzerland. There was the death march. Well, I was already so weak that I could barely walk. That march was, took about ten to two... ten days to two weeks. Snow in the daytime, snow at night, every... it was March, and the weather in, in March in Germany is just worse than here. Every hour we had a different... And we had to sleep outside... er we always... they always camped us out somewhere in an open field. And we just huddled together like animals in the street, in the... in the in the wilderness. And tried to, just tried to stay alive. And on top of it we saw planes coming over us every... And we were praying, hoping, we says, "Come on, drop them, get it over with." Well I don't know. I think the pilots saw that we were prisoners and they dropped bombs all around us, but never on us. See we were wearing those striped uh uniforms. And they didn't fly too high to start with because they were bombing in the daytime. So probably this is the only thing that saved us.

Benjamin (Beryl) Ferencz
Born: 1920, Transylvania, Romania

As the camps were about to be liberated, the Germans tried to move the inmates out, those who were still able to walk or to work. They left those behind to be killed or to die who were too sick. But they marched them out. And they were marching, I think it was from Flossenbürg to march to Dachau, or one of the camps. And, they took them through the woods and they marched at night, and if anybody faltered on the way, they were immediately shot; if anybody paused to try to pick up a potato or to eat a root or something, they were shot. And I was able to follow this trail through the woods, uh, of mass graves --10, 20, 30, 50 killed, you know. And I would get the nearest farmer to say, "Dig them up." They would say, "Oh yes, we heard firing there last night, there was shooting going on." "Where was it?" "Over there in the woods." And, uh, I would say, "Let's go." And we'd go out to the woods and there would be a newly dug-up place, and I'd say, "Get some shovels," and I'd stop some Germans on the street, "Take those shovels, dig 'em up," and we'd dig up the bodies of, uh, people who'd been obviously shot through the head. Usually the top of the skull is blown off, uh, shot probably kneeling from the back, uh, some of them were tied still, uh, you know, just lightly covered over with, uh, you know, six inches of dirt, something like that. So I could follow the trail of crime being committed all along the way.

There are more than 100 personal videos containing testimonies relating just to Death Marches during the Holocaust on The United States Holocaust Memorial web site. To see more, CLICK HERE.

18 January 1945

438^th AAA AW BN

APO 230 % Postmaster, N.Y

18 January, 1945       0850

Dearest darling Wilma -

This is an almost unprecedented hour for writing you from the continent – at least in the Winter. It just so happens, dear, that I’m trying to heat some water for shaving and I’m not having much success. I’ve already had breakfast and it’s getting light enough out to see. Shaving, by the way, sweetheart, is quite an ordeal. I used to think that once you got into a combat zone, you could just forget all about your appearance and tidiness. That’s so for the infantry and for our own enlisted men in many cases. Some of our officers have slipped a bit, too; I just can’t get away with it and I feel uncomfortable if I try. I feel much better when I have to take care of a soldier and I’m somewhat tidy and clean-shaven. I haven’t missed a day in weeks and that takes in a plenty rough stretch of time. It’s really going to be something to turn on the faucet and get hot water; in this damned section of the country – if you’re lucky enough to get into a house – there’s no faucet anyway or any other kind of water. I just can’t understand how these people lived. In that respect, and in several others, too – the Germans are way ahead of the French, the Belgians, the Dutch and the English, too.

I sound too didactic, better change the subject, dear. Let’s see – I wrote you forenoon yesterday, I believe. In the p.m. I went back to our rear area to see a couple of patients. I can’t go into details, sweetheart, but we’re sort of split now and I’ve got a house back in our last area where I keep some sick and not too seriously injured soldiers. By so doing, I’m able to return them to duty much more quickly than if I evacuated them thru channels. It’s very handy in selected cases and our present set-up just happens to allow it. That took a good part of the afternoon and then I was back here in time for chow. The evening was long and boring and I just couldn’t find a way to relax. I’ve got a dozen letters to answer but I’ve been letting them pile up; I just don’t feel like writing and when I write you and my folks – I’m satisfied. I’ll get around to the others some day when I snap out of this mood.

You mentioned – in a letter of yours some time ago – that Nancy was happy because Abbot was going into a new business. The whole thing seems so strange – it’s hard to understand. I can’t conceive of doing such a thing – myself. Anyway – if the stuff we read about the U.S. in the Stars and Stripes is true – he probably won’t be allowed to start any new business. At least that’s what happened to Al Zetlan. Some time ago he planned to try his hand at something other than law – but the gov’t told him no go. I suppose it depends on the type of business; seems to me he (Ab) ought to be re-classified anyway. There’s lots of jobs he could be doing for the Army – bad shoulder or no – but that again, dear, is between you and me.

You made me laugh when you wrote – in closing a letter – that you wished you felt gay and could write something clever or funny. That was funny enough, darling. I suppose I should express the same wish – but I know you excuse me if I’m not witty these days – i.e. – if I ever were before. It’s hard not to be just plain practical and serious – but you must understand it’s only because everything and everyone about us is just that. Warfare has a strange way of being dead serious, despite all the cartoons to the contrary. But it’s temporary and not lasting and one day it will be over and we’ll all be happy and gay and unserious – when we want. Thank God now for our love for each other – which runs constantly true regardless of distance, bad news, cold and disappointment. That love – Sweetheart – means everything in the world to me these days – and that love is the seed that will start us on the right road when all this rottenness is over with forever. So long for now, darling and always remember I’ll love you eternally

Greg

* TIDBIT *

about the Continuing Counter-Offensive

From "U.S. Army in WWII European Theater of Operations: The Last Offensive" by Charles B. MacDonald for the Department of the Army's Office of the Chief of Military History, page 43, published in 1973 in Washington, D.C. comes this excerpt:

The juncture at Houffalize marked the completion of the first phase of the campaign to push in the bulge. It also meant the break in communications between the United States' First Army and Third Army, which had caused General Eisenhower to put the First Army under Montgomery's 21st Army Group command, no longer existed. At midnight on 17 January 1945, the First Army returned to Omar Bradley's 12th Army Group.

From the viewpoint of the First Army, the juncture at Houffalize marked no interval in the offensive to erase the bulge, but it pointed up a shift in emphasis that had gradually been evolving as linkup neared. Having begun to attack early in January in support of the VII Corps, General Ridgway's XVIII Airborne Corps took over the main assignment, a drive eastward on the road center of St. Vith. Collins's VII Corps was to support this drive briefly by also turning east; but because of the northeastward orientation of Patton's Third Army, the VII Corps soon would be pinched out of the line.

A more important supporting role was to be performed by the V Corps, which was to seize a defile along upper reaches of the Ambleve River, thereby springing loose an armored division for a direct thrust southward on St. Vith. The armor, once free, was to come under command of the airborne corps to constitute the northern arm of a two-pronged thrust on St. Vith.

For the Third Army, the juncture at Houffalize did represent a distinct break in the offensive, since it gave Patton an opportunity he would embrace with relish - to return to his original concept of an attack close to the southern base of the bulge. With General Eddy's XII Corps, Patton's Third Army resumed its role in pushing the Germans back with surprise crossings of the Sûre River before daylight on 18 January 1945. The rationale for an attack from the south, directed almost due northward in the direction of St. Vith, was not envelopment, but rather a hope that threat from the south would prompt the Germans to shift enough strength from the vicinity of Houffalize and Bastogne to enable III Corps and VIII Corps to advance with relative ease toward the northeast. The 12th Army Group commander, General Bradley, also proposed that once the First Army took St. Vith, General Hodges should send a corps south to link with the Third Army's XII Corps, a shallow envelopment that might trap any German forces still remaining farther west.

Meanwhile, the state of the weather gave the little Ardennes towns an added dimension as prizes of war. Not only did the towns control the roads needed for tanks and trucks but they also afforded shelter, a chance for the men to thaw out and dry out, to get a night's sleep under cover. The towns, unfortunately, were almost always in a draw or on a reverse slope, making it necessary to seize the high ground beyond and hold it from foxholes blasted out of frozen earth with small explosive charges. It became a matter of constant nagging concern to forward commanders to rotate their men and allow all at least brief respite from the cold.

Partly because the German soldiers, too, wanted shelter, and partly because buildings made good strongpoints, the villages and small settlements at critical road junctions were hardest to get at. Although sometimes delayed by mines hidden by the deep snow, tanks and tank destroyers proved almost essential for blasting the Germans from the houses. Artillery could chase the defenders into the cellars, but it could not keep them there. As men of one battalion of the 23d Infantry entered a village close behind an artillery preparation, Germans emerged in their midst to promote a fight so intimate that at one point an American soldier reputedly engaged a German with his fists.

17 January 1945

438^th AAA AW BN

APO 230 % Postmaster, N.Y.

17 January, 1945       1000

Dearest sweetheart –

I should be starting a V-mail because I could probably finish it – but I’ll give this a try, anyway, dear. Believe me when I say that conditions at the present just aren’t very conducive to writing – and when you wonder how my letters managed to stay relatively clean and unsmooched, well – darling – I wonder too. Usually I use another sheet of paper to lean on. The real trouble now, though, is the cold. Some days it’s kind of hard to thaw out.

But I’d say the present military situation looks pretty good and that sweetheart is the most important thing of all.

As I wrote you in a V-mail yesterday, dear, my last 2 letters were from Verna and Lawrence – both dated 1 January. I enjoyed Verna’s letter very much. It was – as usual – a 3-page V-mail and very newsy. She told me about the early part of New Year’s Eve – at your house, and of having a few drinks and of listening to the clock. It all made me damned homesick – but in a pleasant sort of way, if you know what I mean. I could just picture myself being there too and having some fun like we did such a long time ago. Unfortunately the illusion didn’t last long enough, darling, and I ended up feeling kind of blue. I was reading Time Magazine the other day and it said the Nation was knocked for a loop by news of the “breakthrough”. Everyone here has been getting letters from home of various types of celebrations around the New Year – and most of them just wonder. I think, personally, it’s a damned good thing the people at home can’t accurately visualize what goes on; they’ve got enough to worry about now; but my interpretation of what a lot of soldiers feel – is that they’re still in a fog in the States. It’s Europe that’s fighting this war, with England included, of course. We’ve seen the civilian population and we know. They are living this thing out and in stark reality.

Well, I didn’t mean to preach a sermon, dear; excuse it. I have a V-mail and an air mail letter from you of the 21st of December and I know how you reacted to all this. And the fact that you hadn’t got any mail for several days before didn’t help matters, I know. Your knowledge and daily experience with government telegrams – were no help – but darling, you must stop thinking in those terms. Things were confused in those days and you shouldn’t feel cheated about getting 2 day old news at that time. We were in it, sweetheart. I can tell you now and we too – got old news. We knew only what was going on immediately around us and the news wasn’t good for days in a row. Anyway – we’ll probably get another Bronze Star for another Campaign – and I ought to come back with my share of them.

I don’t know how I got this far with this letter, darling, but I’ll have to stop now. Whatever you hear or read, keep a stiff upper lip and remember that wherever I am – I love you more than ever and as constantly and that I think only of you every moment I’m allowed to think. My love to the folks and so long for awhile.

All my everlasting love

Greg

* TIDBIT *

about Raoul Wallenberg

Raoul Wallenberg was born in 1912 near Stockholm, where his maternal grandparents had built a summer house in 1882. His paternal grandfather was a diplomat and envoy to Tokyo, Constantinople and Sofia. His parents, who married in 1911, were Raoul Oscar Wallenberg (1888–1912), a Swedish naval officer who died of cancer three months before his son was born, and Maria "Maj" Sofia Wising (1891–1979). In 1918, his mother remarried.

In 1931, Wallenberg went to study architecture at the University of Michigan in the United States. In college, he learned to speak English, German and French. He used his vacations to explore the United States. Although the Wallenberg family was wealthy, he worked at odd jobs in his free time.

On his return to Sweden, he found his American degree did not qualify him to practice as an architect. Eventually, his grandfather arranged a job for him in Cape Town, South Africa, in the office of a Swedish company that sold construction material. Between 1935 and 1936, Wallenberg was employed in a minor position at a branch office of the Holland Bank in Haifa, Israel. He returned to Sweden in 1936 and obtained a job in Stockholm at an export-import company trading between Stockholm and central Europe, owned by Kálmán Lauer, a Hungarian Jew.

Beginning in 1938, the Kingdom of Hungary, under the regency of Miklós Horthy, passed a series of anti-Jewish measures modeled on the so-called Nuremberg Race Laws enacted in Germany by the Nazis in 1935. Like their German counterparts the Hungarian laws focused heavily on restricting Jews from certain professions, reducing the number of Jews in government and public service jobs, and prohibiting intermarriage. Because of this, Wallenberg's business associate, Kálmán Lauer, found it increasingly difficult to travel to his native Hungary, which became a member of the Axis Powers in 1940 and joined the German-led invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941. Wallenberg became Lauer's personal representative, traveling to Hungary to conduct business on Lauer's behalf and to look in on members of Lauer's extended family who remained in Budapest. He soon learned to speak Hungarian, and from 1941 made increasingly frequent trips to Budapest. Within a year, Wallenberg was a joint owner and the International Director of the company. In this capacity Wallenberg also made several business trips to Germany and Occupied-France during the early years of World War II. It was during these trips that Wallenberg was able to closely observe the Nazi's bureaucratic and administrative methods, gaining knowledge which would prove quite valuable to him later.

Hitler ordered the occupation of Hungary by German troops in March 1944. Once the Nazis were in control, the relative security from the Holocaust enjoyed by the Jews of Hungary came to an end. In the spring of 1944, Adolf Eichmann arrived in Hungary with orders to dispose of the country’s Jews. In April and May 1944 the Germans and their accomplices began the mass removal of Hungary's Jews to concentration camps in occupied-Poland, with deportations at a rate of 12,000 individuals per day.

In a bid to mount a secret rescue effort, the USA’s newly formed War Refugee Board (WRB) approached neutral Sweden with a plan to send an agent to Budapest to work under diplomatic cover in the Swedish embassy. Intelligent, determined and – as a member of one of Sweden’s wealthiest families, sure to impress the Nazis – Raoul Wallenberg emerged as the ideal candidate. By the time he reached Budapest in July, some 400,000 Hungarian Jews had already been sent to Auschwitz for extermination. Approximately 200,000 Jews remained, and Wallenberg determined to save them all.

Together with fellow Swedish diplomat Per Anger, he issued "protective passports", which identified the bearers as Swedish subjects awaiting repatriation and thus prevented their deportation. Although not legal, these documents looked official and were generally accepted by German and Hungarian authorities, who sometimes were also bribed. The Swedish legation in Budapest also succeeded in negotiating with the Germans so that the bearers of the protective passes would be treated as Swedish citizens and be exempt from having to wear the yellow badge required for Jews.

He cajoled, intimidated and bribed Axis officials. He established an elaborate network of spies within the Hungarian fascist party and the Budapest police. When Jews had no authentic identification papers, Wallenberg forged documents and flourished them authoritatively – even placing himself between Nazi officials and Jews. Upon receiving a threatening message from Eichmann – “Accidents do happen, even to a neutral diplomat” – Wallenberg ignored it. “When there is suffering without limits,” he countered, “there can be no limits to the methods one should use to alleviate it.”

With the money raised by the War Refugee Board, Wallenberg rented 32 buildings in Budapest and declared them to be extraterritorial, protected by diplomatic immunity. He put up signs such as "The Swedish Library" and "The Swedish Research Institute" on their doors and hung oversize Swedish flags on the front of the buildings to bolster the deception. The buildings eventually housed almost 10,000 people.

Sandor Ardai, one of the drivers working for Wallenberg, recounted what Wallenberg did when he intercepted a trainload of Jews about to leave for Auschwitz:

... he climbed up on the roof of the train and began handing in protective passes through the doors which were not yet sealed. He ignored orders from the Germans for him to get down, then the Arrow Cross men began shooting and shouting at him to go away. He ignored them and calmly continued handing out passports to the hands that were reaching out for them. I believe the Arrow Cross men deliberately aimed over his head, as not one shot hit him, which would have been impossible otherwise. I think this is what they did because they were so impressed by his courage. After Wallenberg had handed over the last of the passports he ordered all those who had one to leave the train and walk to the caravan of cars parked nearby, all marked in Swedish colours. I don't remember exactly how many, but he saved dozens off that train, and the Germans and Arrow Cross were so dumbfounded they let him get away with it.

The pressures on Wallenberg intensified in October 1944 when the Hungarian Nazi Party, the Arrow Cross, seized power and vowed to finish what Eichmann had started. With Budapest’s remaining Jewish population in danger of imminent deportation, Wallenberg and his staff – including many Jews he had recruited – embarked on the large-scale issuance of forged passports that carried the protective Swedish royal seal. The Hungarian Nazis were at first duped by the flashy objects, but they soon grew intolerant of the impudent Swede. With his own life in ever-increasing danger, Wallenberg refused to abandon his crusade – but by the end of 1944, he was forced to retreat into Budapest’s dangerous underground network of safe houses. And so it was with great relief that Wallenberg greeted the occupying Russians. Although his mission was officially over, he requested a meeting with the new liberators to discuss the resettlement of Jewish refugees. The Soviets – who hated Jews almost as much as the Nazis – were equally eager to speak with this suspicious American-associated savior.

On 17 January 1945, Raoul Wallenberg was summoned to Red Army headquarters in Budapest, Hungary. Before setting off, he confided to one of his closest associates: “I do not know whether I am a guest of the Soviets or their prisoner.” Wallenberg was never seen a free man again – disappearing forevermore into the Soviet Gulag. It was a cruel fate for this wealthy, soft-spoken thirty-two-year-old Swede who had saved tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews from certain death. Wallenberg had miraculously survived the Nazi occupation of Hungary and Adolf Eichmann’s personal threat to kill him. He’d also survived the equally ruthless and fascistic Hungarian Arrow Cross regime. So when the Soviet Army entered Budapest in January 1945, Wallenberg’s superhuman mission to save the Hungarian Jews was seemingly over – 100,000 Jews were still alive in the capital, and most owed their lives to the fearless efforts of the Swedish diplomat. Wallenberg should have returned home to Sweden in honor. He had gone to Hungary, in his own words, “to save a nation” – and survived one unfathomable tyranny only to fall victim to another.

For years after the disappearance of Raoul Wallenberg, the Russians maintained that he was not in their custody. On February 6, 1957, the Soviets released a document dated July 17, 1947, which stated "I report that the prisoner Wallenberg who is well-known to you, died suddenly in his cell this night, probably as a result of a heart attack or heart failure. Pursuant to the instructions given by you that I personally have Wallenberg under my care, I request approval to make an autopsy with a view to establishing cause of death... I have personally notified the minister and it has been ordered that the body be cremated without autopsy." However, the last reported sightings of Wallenberg were by two independent witnesses who said they had evidence that he was in a prison in November 1987. In 1989, the Soviets returned Wallenberg's personal belongings to his family, including his passport and cigarette case. Soviet officials said they found the materials when they were upgrading the shelves in a store room.

In May 1996 the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) released thousands of previously classified documents regarding Raoul Wallenberg, in response to requests filed under the Freedom of Information Act. The documents, along with an investigation conducted by the publication US News and World Report, appeared to confirm the long-held suspicion that Wallenberg was an American intelligence asset during his time in Hungary. This disclosure has given rise to speculation as to whether, in addition to his efforts to rescue the Hungarian Jews, Wallenberg may have been pursuing a parallel clandestine mission aimed at politically destabilizing Hungary’s pro-Nazi government on behalf of the OSS. It also adds some credence to the suggestion that it was his association with US intelligence that led to Wallenberg being targeted by the Soviets in January 1945. In November 2000, Russia announced that Wallenberg had in fact been executed by KGB agents in Moscow’s Lubyanka Prison. No date was given, and no documented evidence for this claim has been found thus far.

Memorials to Raoul stand in the following nations: Argentina, Australia, Austria, Canada, German, Hungary, Israel, Russia, Sweden, United Kingdom and the United States. Schools were named for him in Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Ecuador, Germany, Hungary, Sweden, Uruguay, the United States and Venezuela.

The United States Congress made Wallenberg an Honorary Citizen of the United States in 1981, the second person to be so honored, after Winston Churchill. In 1985, the portion of 15th Street, SW in Washington, D.C. on which the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum is located, was renamed Raoul Wallenberg Place by Act of Congress.

This Memorial to Raoul Wallenberg in Budapest
was removed by the communist regime
and restored on the 50th anniversary of its demolition

16 January 1945

V-MAIL

438^th AAA AW BN

APO 230 % Postmaster, N.Y.

16 January, 1945       1600

Hello darling!

Didn’t think I could write today because of the most plausible reason – but just got temporarily settled and I’m sneaking a few minutes off.

Got some mail last night, sweetheart, at the last minute – but none from you! Heard from Verna and my brother by V-mail – both dated 1 January and the latest mail so far to date. Verna wrote about New Year’s Eve – although she didn’t go into detail about the Party or who ran it. Also told me about the Levines – the reception to come (and now past) etc. Enjoyed hearing from her.

Lawrence wrote about Carlisle – of course - and he didn’t seem to mind it very much.

Sure wish I’d hear from you, darling. It would help immeasurably on some of these particularly confusing days to read that you still love me as I do you. But you know it and I do and that’s one great consolation – believe me, dear. Don’t know if I can write tomorrow or not. All for now. So long for awhile.

All my love for always

Greg

* TIDBIT *

about the End of the Bulge

CLICK TO ENLARGE

Dashed red line shows how far the Germans penetrated
by 26 December 1944
Solid red line shows how far the Germans were pushed back
by 16 January 1945

Here is more of Sgt Theodore DRAPER's story of the 84th:

By 1745, 16 January 1945, elements of the 2nd Armored held the northern part of Houffalize, while elements of the 11th Armored Division held the southern portion. When was the Bulge wiped out? That may never be decided to everyone's satisfaction because a number of patrols were frantically trying to make contact with a number of other patrols at the same time. I can merely report how and when the 84th Infantry Division closed the Bulge for itself.

A 33-man patrol, led by Lieutenant Byron Blankenship, representing the 334thInfantry Regiment of the 84th Infantry Division, left Filly at 1100, 15 January 1945. At 1145 they crossed the Ourthe in two 400-pound rubber boats, which they carried. The rest of the afternoon they spent in an old mill on the other side of the Ourthe.

At the camp-site, the water-mill is still present.
Here, the 33 soldiers of Lt. Blankenship
(84th Infantry Division)
stayed overnight before the meeting.

Just before dark, Lieutenant Blankenship led a small patrol into the village of Engreux, about one thousand yards from the Ourthe, where he expected to meet a patrol from the Third Army. He found the village free of the enemy but he found no sign of the Third Army's patrol. Late that night, Lieutenant Blankenship received word that the rendezvous had been changed. Starting off again at midnight, the patrol moved out across some more woods and over a 1,200-yard ridge.

Houffalize - January 1945

At 0220, 16 January 1945, in the dead of night, they stopped at a small Belgian farmhouse. The whole family, papa, mama, a son and a daughter of 22 turned itself into a reception committee. There were bread, butter, and hot coffee. The patrol decided the rendezvous had been changed for a good reason.

That morning at 0930, Private First Class Rodney Himes, second in command of the patrol,spied a soldier walking outside the farmhouse. since the patrol had been ordered to stay inside the house, Private First Class Himes began to "Bawl him out" and asked him "What outfit he was from". The answer was a platoon of Cavalry from the 11th Armored Division, U.S. Third Army.

A half-track makes its way over the Ourthe River

Infantry and Lieutenant Lucas of the 11th Armored Cavalry. The Bulge was wiped out after thirteen days of hard, continuous fighting.

Memorial commemorating the meeting of
the 1st Army and the 3rd Army on 16 January 1945.
(Photo by: Geert-Jan van Glabbeek)

The memorial consists of three plaques on a natural rock, at the entrance of the camp-site "Du Moulin de Rensiwez", near a bridge across the Ourthe. The top-plaque contains a picture of the meeting. The other plaques contains the following text in English and French:

HERE ON 16 JAN 1945
THE BULGE WAS WIPED OUT
BY THE JUNCTION OF
THE 84TH. INF. DIV. AND THE 11TH. A.D

15 January 1945

438^th AAA AW BN

APO 230 % Postmaster, N.Y.

15 January, 1945        1130

Good morning, sweetheart –

Just time enough to get a little start but I hope to be back right after lunch and finish up. It’s been a pretty busy morning, dear, but I like that on Monday because it sort of gets the week started. The weather is clear again today and that’s always good news around here. I get so depressed on a bad day because I know that one way or another – it’s delaying the war and that, darling, is always a source of great irritation to me.

One of the boys – just came in and is waiting for me to go to chow, dear, so I’ll be off and be with you in a short time –

1430

Hello, again – sweetheart –

My – doesn’t time fly! At lunch – a meeting was announced for 1300 and then following that, I had to see a couple of patients from a neighboring outfit. The meeting, by the way, dear – was about the usual – namely plans for the immediate future, new locations etc. Annoying as it is to continually roll up your bed roll, let out the air from your mattress, and gather up your junk – we still don’t mind too much so long as we’re going in the right direction. You can imagine, darling, how aggravating it must have been to us to go in the opposite direction.

Last night we played Bridge again – the Chaplain and I challenging the Col and our personnel adjutant. Usually we change partners after each rubber and keep individual scores. We beat them 3 rubbers straight – all 700 rubbers. The score was something like 4400 to 390 – which is quite a drubbing, I think.

I got no mail yesterday and none today (it got in early today) and the mail service is really becoming smelly. Of course I have “my love” to keep me warm, darling – but I sure do love to hear from you and I feel quite disappointed on the days I don’t.

I did want to mention something you brought up some time ago, dear – namely the casualty lists – and the number of them that must have a depressing effect on you – and I can understand it. But you must learn to become impersonal about it – otherwise your imagination will

1545

It’s just a tough day today, darling, and you’ll have to excuse the lack of continuity. I’ve been in and out of my room. Maybe I can finish this in one more sitting. I started to say that you ought to pay no attention to the casualty lists. It won’t do any good and more often – it will do harm. Just remember that I’m always looking out for myself and that’s the most important thing of all in a combat zone.

I never did answer your question in reference to Cyn and her desire for excessive amounts of salt. I’m not sure I know. Sometimes it represents a disturbance in the salt balance in the blood and that of course may be due to half a dozen different causes. Often it is lost in the urine, or it isn’t absorbed correctly from the diet; the adrenals may be the seat of the trouble – or it may mean nothing at all. An M.D. would want to know about her appetite, loss or gain in weight, easy fatigability, change in the complexion of the skin and with that information he would still want to do half a dozen blood tests. You’ll have to tell me more, dear – and at no extra cost – either.

I was sorry to hear about Irv Fine's mole – but it's probably better by now. Herb Fouger should know what he’s talking about though, dear – because he’s been doing pathology and been working with a top-notcher – Don Nickerson – at the Salem Hosp.

And those attempted puns – concerning our former location at a dept. store – underwear, ladies – street floor! When I got thru reading what you had to say, my breath was coming in short pants; as puns, I’d call it a series of bloomers, and naturally – even with a two-way stretch of the imagination, I couldn’t take much stockin’ any of it. It was nylon to 10 minutes before I caught on to the first one and then I girdled myself and kept on reading. You sure step-in to a lot when you start something like that and hereafter – try a night-cap first! Now that ought to end that! (Nice try – Cyn!)

Have to quit now, darling. This letter seems jumbled to me – so I won’t re-read it. This part is clear, though, dear – and that is that I love only you and hard! Love to the folks and

All my everlasting love –

Greg

P.S. Enclosed card from Italy – Just a bit gaudy but different.

L.G.

* TIDBIT *

about Struthof-Natzweiler

From TIME magazine, in the issue published January 15, 1945 (Vol. XLV No. 3), comes this articles called: "Science: Nazi Research".

It has been rumored that Nazi scientists have used civilian prisoners as guinea pigs for macabre biological experiments. Last week the rumors were documented. A French investigating commission reported on a huge prison camp in Alsace where hundreds of men & women had been tortured and killed under carefully controlled conditions in order to supply data for Nazi science.

The camp, known as Struthof-Natzweiler, was found in a thick wood in the Vosges foothills, 30 miles from Strasbourg. Near its rows of dark green huts was a "laboratory" equipped with gas and torture chambers, a crematorium, a vivisection room. There some 20,000 people (mostly Jews) were abused and killed.

Some were inoculated with plague and leprosy germs. Thirty women were deliberately blinded, then given a 15-day "treatment" during which they screamed incessantly. (At the end a few recovered their sight, but all were put to death.) In another experiment, a white-uniformed doctor led 84 young women in batches to the gas chamber. German professors watched their dying reactions through a window.

The investigators got this sickening story from captured German assistants in the laboratory and French peasants who lived nearby. Director of the Nazi researchers was a Professor August Hirt of Frankfurt, an SS officer.

Reported Sonia Tamara, New York Herald Tribune correspondent: "The French have a picture of Hirt—a quiet, thoughtful-looking man."

Now here's the rest of the story, much of which comes from the site called Struthof.

After the Armistice of 22 June 1940, Alsace and Moselle were annexed de facto by the 3rd Reich, German civil servants were appointed to run the administrations, the German currency and common law were imposed, the factories and mines "Germanized" and the use of French was banned. Starting in 1942, Alsacian and Mosellan men were conscripted into the Wehrmacht, the German army.

The small village of Struthof, on Mont-Louise, was a tourist resort much appreciated since the early 20th century, in particular by holidaymakers from Strasbourg who came for its hotel and ski slopes. But it was picked for its seam of pink granite discovered by the SS geologist Colonel Blumberg in September 1940. Himmler, head of the Gestapo and the police, and Oswald Pohl, head of the principal administrative and economic section of the SS (WVHA), wanted to build camps close to quarries in order to exploit the deportees, as in Mauthausen and Flossenbürg, as part of the Deutsche Erd und Steinwerke (DEST), the SS mining firm set up by Himmler in 1938.

The first deportees arrived in Struthof in two convoys from Sachsenhausen camp on 21 and 23 May 1941. They built the first huts of Struthof-Natzweiler. Declared a forbidden area, the camp was completed in October 1943.

CLICK TO ENLARGE

The former Struthof-Natzweiler camp's
barracks before their destruction in 1954

Nearly 52,000 people of thirty different nationalities were deported to the Struthof-Natzweiler camp or its annexes: the largest number were Poles, followed by Russians and French (1/4 from Alsace-Moselle), then Belgians, Norwegians, Luxemburgers, as well as Germans, Greeks, Yugoslavs, Czechs, Austrians, Lithuanians, Dutch, Italians and Slovenians...

Natzweiler’s deportees came from prisons, internment camps and other concentration camps all over Europe. The intake process was the same for all of them. They got off the train at the Rothau railway station, walked or rode in trucks to the camp and received a registration number. They were stripped of their identities and personal belongings, deloused, disinfected and given mismatched clothing or, sometimes, striped uniforms. All discovered a world where they were no more than numbers and sub-humans.

The deportees had been arrested for all sorts of reasons. Most of the camp’s earliest deportees were common criminals, “asocials” and political prisoners from Germany. The first Poles and deportees from lands annexed by the Third Reich (the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia and Alsace-Lorraine) began arriving in 1942. The following year many people from Luxembourg and Resistance members of different nationalities — Belgians, Dutch, Norwegians and French — began streaming in from various concentration camps and prisons throughout Europe. The French included many military men, in particular members of the Secret Army and the Organisation of Armed Resistance. In June 1943 the first convoy of French "NN" deportees arrived in Natzweiler. They had been arrested as Resistance fighters under the Nazi’s 1941 “Nacht und Nebel” (“Night and Fog”) decrees, which aimed at eliminating all the Resistance movements and opponents of German occupation. They were imprisoned, deported, totally cut off from the outside world and doomed to a slow death by work, exhaustion, hunger and disease. Some were eventually sentenced at the court in Breslau; others were kept in the camps without trials. Their loved ones had no news about them. In 1944 the Germans started deporting Jews, mainly from Poland and Hungary, to the annex camps.

The central camp was the only concentration camp in France. Its annexes, scattered over the 2 sides of the Rhine, made up a network of nearly 70 camps, of varying size. Of the nearly 52,000 detainees of Struthof-Natzweiler, about 35,000 did not go through the central camp. From 1941 to 1945, Struthof-Natzweiler was one of the most murderous camps of the Nazi system. Nearly 22,000 deportees died there, although at Struthof-Natzweiler the deportees were not gassed systematically, nor after mass selections.

Beatings, diseases, exhaustion and death were the daily lot of the prisoners. They suffered from the wounds left by blows inflicted on them by the Kapos and the SS, as well as from the bites of the dogs trained to attack them. They could also be punished and sentenced to be beaten on the beating rack or locked up in the bunker on the lower part of the camp. Skeleton-like, exhausted, wounded, ill, deprived of treatment whether or not they were admitted in to the infirmary, many of them died. Detainees who attempted to escape or were simply suspected of doing so incurred the death penalty by hanging or the firing squad. In the central camp of Struthof-Natzweiler, the mortality rate was 40%; in the camp annexes, it could rise to 80%.

Rock Quarry Car and Execution Gallows

The Gestapo of Strasbourg also used the camp as a place of execution. In 1943, thirteen young men from Ballersdorf (upper Rhine region) were shot in the quarry for refusing to be conscripted into the Wehrmacht army and trying to leave the annexed region. In September 1944, just before the evacuation of the camp, members of the Alliance network and maquisards from the Vosges mountains were taken to the camp to be executed. They all died in the oven of the crematorium block.

In addition to forced labor and executions at Struthof-Natzweiler, a series of "medical" experiments were conducted as part of the work of the the Reich University of Strasbourg, and Ahnenerbe, the SS administration attached to the headquarters of Himmler in Berlin. The principal perpetrators of these experiments were August Hirt, a professor of anatomy known internationally, Otto Bickenbach, a professor of medicine and specialist in combat gases, and Eugen Haagen, a virologist who had discovered a vaccination against typhus that put him on the short-list for the Nobel Prize for medicine in 1936.

August Hirt (1898-1945)
carried out experiments on mustard gas
and planned to create a collection of skeletons
using the bodies of 86 Jews deported from Auschwitz.


Eugen Haagen (1898-1972)
continued his work on the effects of typhus

Otto Bickenbach (1901-1971)
carried out experiments on phosgene gas

The gas chamber was designed in 1943 by the camp commandant, Josef Kramer, at the request of Nazi professors of medicine from the Reich University of Strasbourg to carry out medical experiments. The gas chamber was set up in a small room of 9 sq m in the dance hall of the Struthof Inn, already requisitioned for the SS troops. From 14 to 21 August 1943, 86 Jewish deportees from the Auschwitz camp were gassed here; their bodies were supposed to provide a collection of skeletons for Professor August Hirt. The gas chamber was also used to study new gases. Deportees, mostly Gypsies, served as guinea-pigs.

Gas Chamber

On 23 November 1944, the Allies discovered the site evacuated by the Nazis since September.

Strathof-Narzweiler Monument to the Dead


Close-up of the monument tells its own story