Category: American Jewish Soldiers

Numerous posts at this blog pertain to or directly focus on the topic of Jewish prisoners of war.  Perhaps this is an inevitability, given that a focus of this blog has (thus far…) been on events in the European and Mediterranean Theatres during the Second World War, in the context of the war against the Third Reich. 

In this regard, here are some prior posts that focus directly or (in)directly pertain to the experiences of Jewish servicemen in German captivity.  Many other names could be added from the European and Pacific (particularly the Pacific) theaters of war, but this will suffice for now.  The abbreviation “zt”l” following the names of some of these servicemen is an abbreviation representing the Hebrew phrase “zekher tzadik livrakhah” (זכר צדיק לברכה), which can be translated as “May the memory of this righteous one be a blessing”.  The abbreviation is used – for the purpose of this post – to symbolically denote that the so-designated airman or soldier did not survive capture or captivity.  But could have.

Europe
United States Army Air Force

Cpl. Jack Bartman – ז״ל

F/O Mayo Israel Larkin

1 Lt. Leonard Winograd

United States Army (ground forces)

S/Sgt. Walter Bonne

2 Lt. Norman Fruman

Jewish Brigade (from the Yishuv – pre-1948 Israel)

Private Y.M. El-Jo’an

Private Asher / Uszer Goldring – ז״ל

Pacific
United States Army Air Force

2 Lt. Wallace Franklin Kaufman – ז״ל

1 Lt. Henry Irving Wood, and, 2 Lt. Joseph Finkenstein – ז״ל

2 Lt. Milton Zack

First World War
Australian Imperial Forces

Pvt. Henry Lamert Thomas, 2466 (parts one and two)

As discussed and explained by Johanna Jacques in her 2021 article in Social & Legal Studies (and as verified by my investigation of various archival records (MACRs, Luftgaukommando Reports, United States War Department lists of MIAs and returned POWs, Casualty Lists in the American and British news media, and many more sources…) the majority – not all – but the majority of the 60,000-odd Jewish servicemen of the Western WW II Allies taken captive by the Axis in Europe – from the armed forces of the United States, the British Commonwealth, France, and Greece – did live to see the war’s end, and, a return to civilian life.  For example, see Yorai Linenberg’s article “German Captors, Jewish POWs: Segregation of American and British Jewish POWs in German Captivity in the Second World War” at Holocaust and Genocide Studies and his video “Jewish soldiers, Nazi captors – what was it like to be a Jewish POW in a Nazi camp?“, the Sydney Jewish Museum, “Pride and Peril: Jewish American POWs in Europe” at the National WW 2 Museum.      

This was entirely unlike the fate of Jewish members of the Soviet and Polish armed forces who fell into Axis captivity, the great majority of whom – perhaps 85% for Soviet Jewish soldiers – did not survive the war.  In that regard, the horrific circumstances of the captivity and fate of all Soviet POWs – in general – is described in TIK’s video of July 29, 2019 (which, substantive, detailed and referenced like all TIK’s videos, addresses the subject of Soviet Jewish POWs), and also at the Bundesarchiv, Yad Vashem, Wikipedia, and United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. 

Of course, the above “just scratches the surface” of these topics… 

But for now, back to the “West”, and March 8, 1944:  “This” post directly pertains to Mr. Linenberg’s journal article and video, for it relates the story of Milton Wallace Stern, a member of the United States Army Air Force imprisoned at Stalag Luft 1 at Barth, Germany.  He was one of about 300 Jewish airmen imprisoned at that POW camp; there were about 350 Jewish POWs at Stalag Luft III (Sagan).  As such, this post addresses the events surrounding the segregation of Jewish POWs at Barth in January of 1945.

And, much more…

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Second Lieutenant Milton Wallace Stern (0-814431), born in Buffalo, N.Y. on July 15, 1923, was the son of Max and Natalie (Schainack / Sheynak) Stern, his family residing at 450 Clifford Avenue in the nearby city of Rochester.  At the time, he was engaged to the woman who’d become his future wife: Marjorie P. Laffer, of 11 Loomis Street, also in Rochester.  His “Missing in Action” status was reported in a Casualty List released on April 29, 1944, he was reported as a POW in a news release on October 21, and his name appeared in a list of liberated POWs published on June 11, 1945.  Accordingly, news items carrying his name appeared in the Rochester Daily Record on 7/13/45, and, Rochester Times-Union on 4/1/44, 8/17/44, 8/21/44, and 5/24/45, and Rochester Daily Record on July 13, 1945.  Otherwise, his name can be found on page 455 of American Jews in World War II, which indicates that he received the Air Medal (albeit the March eighth mission was his third and not fifth sortie) and Purple Heart.

Milton served as a navigator in the crew of 2 Lt. Thomas A. Pirtle, the crew having been assigned to the 532nd Bomb Squadron of the 381st Bomb Group, 8th Air Force.  As explained in greater detail below, the entire crew parachuted from their plane – damaged by German fighters – while en-route back to England.  Nine of the ten attempted to evade capture (Lt. Pirtle was unable to do so due to a broken leg), but, all were eventually apprehended (Milton on May 27) except for the bombardier and ball turret gunner, who both evaded capture.  Milton was eventually imprisoned in North Compound 2 of Stalag Luft 1 (at Barth, Germany), and like the other seven POWs and two evadees in his crew, survived the war, to return to the United States in 1945.  

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Philippe Connart, Michel Dricot, Edouard Renière, and Victor Schutters of The Comet Network have written a detailed account of Milton’s temporary evasion from German capture, last updated on June 24, 2022.  I’ve translated the French text to English, which you can read here.

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Following below are an account of Milton’s shoot-down and capture; transcripts of documents and articles that he either shared with me, or, which had been uploaded and at one time accessible (…alas, it seems no longer…) to the Library of Congress Veteran’s History Project; and, excerpts from my interview with Milton.  

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To begin with, here’s the insignia of the 8th Air Force…

…while this is an image of the insignia of the 381st Bomb Group, via PopularPatches.com…

…and this is an image of the insignia of the 532nd Bomb Squadron, from USWarsPatches.com.

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Milton Stern’s wartime portrait.

Here’s a composite image of Rochester Times-Union news articles published on (left to right) April 1, August 17, and May 24, 1944.  Note that the latter two articles include Lt. Stern’s portrait, as seen above.

On October 21, 1993, I visited and interviewed Mr. Stern at his home in northern New Jersey, a transcript of part of our lengthy conversation comprising much of the latter portion of this (typically for me) very lengthy post.  This image was scanned from a 35mm Kodachrome slide.  (Remember Kodachrome?)

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Shot down over The Netherlands…

Eyewitness account of loss of B-17G 42-38029, from Missing Air Crew Report 3002…

532ND BOMBARDMENT SQUADRON (H)
381ST BOMBARDMENT GROUP (H)

10 March 1944

SUBJECT: Missing Airplane on Combat Mission
TO: Whom It May Concern

At 1400 Lt. Pirtle started dropping behind.  He had #3 engine feathered and it looked like his bomb bay doors were open.  At 1410 he was about ½ mile behind the formation.  He then turned around and headed for home.  When I last saw him, he was heading west with four P-51s above him.

Mark Schneider, 0-673738
1st Lt., Air Corps.

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Milton’s recollection of his last mission, from his 1993 interview…

If you want to hear a little about the mission…  The first part of it was the same as all the other missions.  You get up there, and you start in formation.  We were flying with contrails, first of all.  I think probably around 22; 23,000 feet.  I don’t remember.  We were coming to the IP…Initial Point, where you turn towards the target…
Incidentally, there another thing:  To go from the Initial Point, on to the bomb-run, and the bombardier takes over the plane, and the plane stays straight and level with no evasive action, again, the bravest thing that anybody could possibly do.  Especially with those contrails.  Because, all they had to do was sight on the contrails, and then they had you.
At any rate, we lost an engine to flak.  And, we were up near the front of the formation.  Of the entire formation, I guess.  I think we were flying composite with the 91st that day.  At any rate, we lost an engine, and with three engines…you’re in a deep penetration…if you increase the what we called “inches of mercury”, I know that you used more fuel with three engines, than you do with four.  In order to keep up the speed.  And fly formation and all that stuff.
So, we kept dropping back from one group to another, because you didn’t want to be alone.  We kept dropping back from one group to another, and finally there wasn’t anybody to drop back to.  We were alone in the sky; all alone up there at twenty-odd-thousand feet.

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Was this before you had dropped your bombs?
Yeah.  And, I don’t know how he made the decision, but the pilot decided that we would dive for the tree-tops, to avoid radar, and head back on our own.  Which wasn’t a bad idea.  We did that.  We dove.  The next thing you knew, we were flying at tree-top level.
Was it a steep dive?
Oh yeah.  Oh yeah.  As steep as you could in a B-17, without tearing off the wings.
And, during the trip down I computed a course for home.  And we started back across Germany, at tree-top level.  Now, the bombardier’s up there with the chin turret, and I’m on the sides with guns.  The top gunner’s there, and the ball turret gunner’s there, and the other guys, and you get a lot of targets of opportunity.  We went down, remember, to avoid radar.  To avoid detection.  So, like stupid asses, we starting shooting up everything in sight.  We shot up locomotives, we shot up an airfield, we dropped our bombs on a factory!  We were having a great old time.  We really enjoyed ourselves!  At ground level!
Did you shoot the gun yourself?
Oh yeah!  To hell with the books!  So we were shooting it up, but it was stupid!
Because you attracted attention?
Attracted?  I’ll say we attracted attention!
We finally had made our way over to Holland, and I had just got on the intercom, and I reported to the rest of the crew, “Hey fellows!  We’re in Holland.  We’ll soon be over the North Sea and on our way home!”
“Hooray!”
No sooner…  Cheers had hardly stopped; we were attacked by three Messerschmitts.  They followed us.  One made a pass…came in from the rear, and we’re still down at ground level…  He came in from the rear, and the tail gunner got a shot at him.  He pulled up, and the top turret gunner got a shot at him, and the radio gunner got a shot at him.  And, he came up in front, and even the bombardier, I think, got a shot at him, and he just blew up.
The other two sat out there, and they were shooting twenty millimeter cannon shells at us.  One blew off the nose; the whole plexiglass nose was gone.
Was the bombardier hurt?
No.
And, the right wing was burning.  I didn’t know it; we didn’t know it, because the flames are going back.  We’re up ahead of that.  But then we get the call from the pilot, “Prepare to abandon ship!”  But we’re at tree-top level.
So, he pulled up…he said, “I’m going to climb.”  He climbed to about 500 feet, and then he rang the bell.  And, there’s a nose hatch, and I pulled that open.  Remember, I’m twenty years old, and I’m thinking about my poor sick mother at home, whom I had never had a letter from, by the way.  Never got a letter from the time I left in January.  It hadn’t caught up with me.  And, from nobody.  From my girlfriend or anybody.  And, I thought, “Gee, it’s going to be a long time before they hear what the hell happened…”  That was what was going through my mind.  And I’m sitting there, and I’m debating.  You know, I let myself down.  Instead of rolling out of the hatch, I let myself down.  I was holding on by my fingers, here.  And my body was going “this way” (horizontally with the wind), and the bombardier wanted to get out!  The plane was on fire!  He’s stamping on my fingers, “Get out you bastard, get out!  Let go!”
So I did.
I must say this, though.  The day before we got shot down, we had guy who came around the base, who was shot down in France.  At 20,000 feet he bailed out, and did a delayed fall.  And he told us all…  He stressed, “Delay opening of your chute!”  Well he didn’t mean from 500 feet!  So, in the adrenaline packed body, I’m floating out there in free space, and I see the next man out and the chute open up.  I said, “Holy shit!”  I pulled my ripcord…a little bit farblunget!  (Farblunget or farblondjet (פארבלאנדזשעט) is a Yiddish adjective that aptly describes the state of aimless wandering, or being hopelessly lost and unsure where to turn next.)  I pulled the ripcord, and I remember seeing the little chute open up; the little pilot chute.

When you were shot down, what kind of thoughts were going through your head?  Were you thinking in detail about bailing out, or was it mostly automatic?
Well, we knew it was time to bail out.  The plane was burning.  We were in the nose.  We had to bail out.  It was just that moment of indecision, when, “Should I let go, or shouldn’t I let go?!”  And I told this story…  Like I say, I can laugh at myself.  Always thinking how the bombardier stood over me, and I never got hold of him again.  He was tramping on my fingers, telling me to get the hell out.  So he could get out!  I don’t blame him.
But…  That’s why they send young people to war.  …who wants to do that now?  Even a little older than we were; I mean, than I was then, would have made it more difficult.  You had to be young, and…
Gung-ho?
…gung-ho, and brainwashable.  But I’ll tell you.  I have letters in there that I wrote to my wife…my girlfriend at the time…in which…while I was in Cadets…and I said, “My fondest wish…my greatest desire, of all time, was to be in the first wave of airplanes to go over Berlin.”

And I hit a tree.  I don’t think I was in the air more than ten seconds!  It was like the flash of an eye.  I caught on a tree.  It was March of ’44, and it was cold, and the tree was brittle, and the branches kept breaking, and I dropped to the ground.
So you didn’t get snagged in the tree?
I didn’t get snagged.  I hit the tree pretty hard.  I remember hitting it with my back, pretty hard.  But I landed on the ground, and there’s a bunch of Dutch people around me.  And they said, “Go!  Quick, go!  The Germans are coming.”
So I started off across the field.  I left my chute there.  I started off across the field, and I jumped into a ditch.  I happened to look back, and I saw the big, black smoke coming from where the plane crashed.

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According to the verliesregister (loss register) at Studiegroep Luchtoorlog 1939-1945, 42-38029 (a.k.a. “VE * M”) “crashed near the Oude Molen (Old Mill), Deventer to Holten Road, near Lettele, OverIjssel Province.”

Scanned at NARA in College Park in August of 2009, this image, from Luftgaukommando Report KU 1170, shows the crash site of “VE * M”.  The location is consistent with the location as given at Studiegroep Luchtoorlog 1939-1945, and actually, probably the source of that data.  As can clearly be seen, the aircraft completely disintegrated on impact and left a substantial crater in the Dutch earth.  This is the only photograph in KU 1170, probably because there wasn’t much left of 42-38029 to begin with.  

Contemporary (2024) Oogle satellite images show that the area is still largely agricultural, so perhaps some pieces of the plane still remain, albeit a few feet below the surface, awaiting discovery by someone with a metal detector, persistence, and patience.  

This Oogle map shows the general location of the crash site:  About halfway between Appeldoorn and Enschede, near Highway A1…

…while this much smaller scale map zooms in on Oude Molen, the crash probably having occurred somewhere within the red oval. 

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Here’s an image of the Pirtle crew, with the names of the crewmen listed below.  As noted in the caption, only two men succeeded in evading capture:  Ball turret gunner William Kinney and bombardier Harry Cooper.

Rear, left to right

Flight Engineer: S/Sgt. George W. Cassody – 18192553 – Evaded, then POW (Arrested Belgium 5/27/44)
Gunner (Right Waist): S/Sgt. James W. Warren – 14163587 – Evaded, then POW (Arrested Belgium 5/27/44)
Gunner (Left Waist): Sgt. James C. Estep, Jr. – 35622610 – Evaded, then POW (Arrested Belgium 5/27/44) {2/29/24-2011)
Radio Operator: S/Sgt. Robert W. Burrows – 36732722 – Evaded, then POW (Arrested Belgium 5/27/44)
Gunner (Tail): Sgt. William L. Bull – 32747053 – Evaded, then POW (Arrested Belgium 5/27/44) (9/25/22-3/28/88)
Gunner (Ball Turret): Sgt. William C. Kinney – 39375359 – Successfully Evaded (Liberated in Limburg, in the Neeroeteren region of Belgium; Escape & Evasion Report 2272)

Front, left to right

Pilot: 2 Lt. Thomas Alexander Pirtle 0-805976 – POW (9/10/16-3/22/02)
Co-Pilot: Lt. John Allenberg (Not on March 8th mission)
(Not in Photo: Co-Pilot – 2 Lt. Paul H. Schlintz 0-813070 – Evaded, then POW (Arrested Belgium 6/16/44))
Navigator: 2 Lt. Milton W. Stern – 0-814431 – Evaded, then POW (Arrested Belgium 5/27/44)
Bombardier: 2 Lt. Harry F. Cooper – 0-754890 – Successfully Evaded (Liberated in Liege; Escape & Evasion Report 2110)

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Newspaper Article from 1991…

Published in Hi Mach in October of 1991, this article, by Kristi Hacker (SSI Public Affairs) covers the history and experiences of the Pirtle crew, primarily through the memories of left waist gunner James C. Estep, Jr., right waist gunner James W. Warren, and, Milton.  The article was provided to me by Milton.

Two errors: First, VE * M was shot down on March 8 and not July 25.  Second, there is absolutely no evidence that tens of thousands of American POWs were liberated from German captivity by the Red Army and then taken to the Soviet Union, to disappear without trace the Gulag.  It is not praising Stalin or Communism to assert that this simply never happened.  On the other hand, that at least some – a few – American airmen who were lost during Cold War (the first Cold War?!) reconnaissance and surveillance missions did disappear into the Gulag is certainly possible.   

On to the article…

The Days of the 381st…

AEDC recently hosted a tour for a group of POWs from World War II history.  Five members of the 381st Squadron of RAF Ridgewell in England were reunited for the first time since July 25, 1944 – the day their B-17 Bomber was shot down over Holten, Holland.  The group stayed with James and Mary Alice Warren of TuIIahoma.  Warren, an Army Air Force Staff Sergeant during the war, and a former AEDC [Arkansas Economic Development Commission?] employee, brought the group for a tour of the Center.  While touring, they shared stories of their WWII experiences.

On their third and final mission together, the crew was in route to bomb the Erkner ball-bearing Plant in Berlin.  Their plane began experiencing trouble with one engine.  About 30 minutes from their target, the second engine was knocked out by flak.  “With our bomb load, we couldn’t keep up with the formation, so we ‘hit-the-deck’ – we flew at treetop level because the enemy’s heavy guns couldn’t reach us there,” said Warren.  “But we flew right over a German airfield, so it wasn’t long before they were in the air with us.”

There were three German fighters, Messerschmitt Me-109s, tailing the B-17 crew.  The crew shot down one enemy plane, but the firepower from the other two Me-109s overcame the B-17.  Their plane went down beginning an experience the group has never forgotten.

One of the pilots, Thomas Pirtle of Nashville, Tenn., suffered a broken leg in the crash and was taken to a German hospital.  With help from the Dutch Underground, two crew members remained free in Holland until the end of the war.  The remainder of the crew evaded capture for three months.

The crew stayed with different families throughout Holland, moving at night with help from the Underground.  Posing as dates of the crew, females in the Underground guided the men, on bicycles, about 10 miles each night to a different house.  The Germans, however, had established a reward system which ended their journey to freedom.  The Germans agreed to pay 25,000 francs and release a family member from a concentration camp for turning in an Allied flyer.  The remaining crew members were turned over to the Gestapo in Liege, Belgium.

According to Warren, they were held in a civilian prison in Liege for one to two months.  “We were interrogated for several days by the Gestapo.  They scared us to death, but they never harmed us,” said Warren.  “We were there until the Allies invaded Normandy on June 6, 1944.”

The officers and enlisted members were then split up and taken to Dulag Luft, the German transition and interrogation center where captured British and American airmen were taken before being assigned to permanent camps.  There they encountered a greater level of interrogation.

“They knew more about us than we knew,” said Warren.  “They knew the mission we were on, the number on the airplane and all kinds of information about the crew.  All they wanted was for me to sign a piece of paper verifying this information.  Of course, I couldn’t do that.  I could only give them my name, rank and serial number.  And that’s when they scared me.  Because I was in civilian clothes, they accused me of being a spy.  That really shakes you up.  I showed them my dog tags, but they continued to interrogate us three of four more times.  They finally sent us on to the prison camps.”

Warren and James Estep were taken to Stalag Luft 4 in Prussia.  The navigator, Milton Stern, was taken to Stalag Luft 1, the permanent officer’s camp.  Pilot Thomas Pirtle was taken to Stalag Luft 3, after his release from the German hospital.  The crew, except for Warren and Estep, remained in those camps until the end of the war when their camps were liberated.

Warren recalls his experience at Stalag Luft 4.  “We arrived the day after an air raid on the camp had killed a commandant’s family.  When we got off the train, there were guards with dogs and fixed bayonets as far as you could see.  They told us it was five miles to the camp and we had to run the entire way.  We were really weak by this point.  We had ridden in cattle cars for days.

“After we started running, one of the guards jumped in front of us with his bayonet causing us to fall all over each other.  And when we fell, the guards stuck us with those bayonets until we bled.

“We found out later it wasn’t more than a half-mile to the camp.  They lied to us so we would get rid of the Red Cross bags we had been given, which contained soap, a towel, razor and so on.  We knew we couldn’t run five miles carrying a suitcase, so we left them on the side of the road.  The civilians were running off with them as fast as they could pick them up.”

According to Warren, food was scarce.  “They gave you enough to keep you alive, but you were hungry all of the time.”  Aside from the barley cereal the men were given about once a week, two men shared a Red Cross parcel, containing butter, crackers, raisins, cigarettes, coffee and canned beef.  “The guards made us eat the meat as soon as the cans were opened,” Warren continued.  “We had to line them up when we were finished for the guards to count.  They wanted to make sure we couldn’t save food for escape purposes.”

Warren and Estep remained at Stalag Luft 4 until February 1945.  They were told they were being transferred to another prison.  Hot meals were promised to the men after a three to four day journey.  But they never found those hot meals, nor did they see another camp.  Instead, they walked nearly 800 miles until the war’s end in May.

Warren recalls, “The young troops were fighting on the front lines, so elderly men, who were more concerned with being at home with their families, were in charge of us.  They told us we could escape at any time and they would not shoot at us or anything.  But they warned us that the area was saturated with SS troops and we all knew they took no prisoners; they just killed people.  It was safer in numbers, so we chose to stay for that reason.”

But freedom soon prevailed when the British surrounded the area.  They used any transportation possible – wagons, horses, etc. – to make the 40-mile trek to the Elbe River, where they crossed to Western territory.  “It was over, “ said Warren.  “All that mattered then was just to get home.”

From Brussels, Belgium, the troops were divided according to the part of the nation they were from and flown home.  The Air Force flew them out to prevent the men from being sent to Russia.  According to Milton Stern, a crew member from New Jersey, “About 20,000-25,000 American POWs who were liberated and taken to Russia were never heard from again.”

The crew’s first reunion since the war will probably be their last.  The group spent several days laughing and reminiscing about their days with the 381st Squadron [sic], but have not planned another reunion.  As the days of the war helped write the pages of history, so too have the memories of these former POWs.

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Milton’s PTSD Claim…

Originally accessible via the Library of Congress, here’s Milton’s decades-delayed Disability Claim for PTSD.    

I believe my disability rating for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder should be raised from the 10% I am now receiving, and I further believe I should be given a rating for arthritis.  If you will please bear with me I will attempt to show why.

I was a navigator on a B-17 with the 381st Bomb Group on March 8, 1944.  The mission was Berlin.  “Big B”!  We had also gone to Berlin on March 3rd and March 6th.  These were the first, second, and third daylight raids on Berlin.  The flak was very heavy all the way in!  Enemy fighters were out in full force.  We were hit by flak before we got to the I.P. and we had to feather one engine.  With three engines we could not keep up with the group.  We kept dropping back from one group to another, until we were all alone, a sitting duck for enemy fighters!  At this point the pilot decided to dive to the deck (tree-top leve) to avoid radar, and we did, successfully almost to the North Sea.  Then we were attacked by two Me-109s.  One was destroyed on his first pass.  The other managed to blow off our plexiglass nose (where I was stationed) and set our right wing and another engine on fire!  We were about 50 to 100 feet from the ground at this point.  The pilot gave the order to abandon ship and started to climb so we could bail out.  Our altitude was between 100-1000 feet when we jumped.  I only remember the pilot-chute opening and a sudden shock, and intense pain.  I had hit a tree!  I felt excruciating pain in my back from my waist up, so much so that I guess I momentarily blacked out.  The branches kept snapping as I came down, so I must have hit very hard.  That collision with the tree was probably the beginning of the arthritis I now have in my lower back, which limits my activities to the extent that when I bend over a table doing something for a few minutes I cannot straighten up without pushing on the table!  Also if I get into a squatting position to do something.  I cannot get up without pulling myself up on something.

In the rush and danger of the moment, and because I was so young and in excellent condition from the rigors of aviation cadet physical training, I was able to get away from there and hid in a ditch.  A short time later a young Dutch boy helped me to hide in a haystack in the middle of a field.  He left me there and returned that evening after curfew with a sandwich, coffee and a pair of “knickers”.  He said I could have to hide there in the haystack for three or four days until the Germans stopped searching for our crew.  That night I almost froze to death.  Early the next morning I began walking in a southerly direction, mainly to get some circulation and warmth into my feet, which had suffered frostbite.  I made contact with members of the underground later that evening, about fifteen miles from where I had come down.  After many, many experiences and near capture I finally made my way to Liege, Belgium, where I managed to evade capture a total of eighty days.  On May 27th, after going through a dozen or so bombings by both the 8th and 9th Air Forces, who were destroying bridges, roads, and marshalling yards, all transportation before the invasion, I was captured by the Gestapo!  They were informed of my presence by the double agent who had placed me in the last home I was hiding in.  He also told them that I was a Jew, so when I was awakened that morning with several machine guns in my face, and heard the words, “Araus!  Araus!” the first thing I got was a beating by the Gestapo officer in charge.  I was punched about the face and head and kicked in the stomach and buttocks.  When he was through punching and kicking and shouting at me, I was allowed to get dressed.  My radio man, Bob Burrows, and I were chained together and were lined up with the members of the family, who were also captured.  We had always heard that if they were caught we would all be shot, and it sure looked like that was going to happen when they marched us out into the yard.  After several minutes, we were taken out front and loaded into a large police type black van.  When we arrived at Gestapo Headquarters, there were eight other Americans there who had been arrested at the same time, including four more of my crew.  While all the rest were allowed to sit on a bench, I was kept with my hands tightly manacled behind my back and chained to a radiator in the waiting room.  I was kept this way for about 12 hours.  During that time the Gestapo officer would often come up to me and pound on the head and shoulders, pull my hair and say “This Jew is for me!”  I recently received a letter from one of the crew who reminded me of the incident.

On the morning of June 6th (D-Day) we were moved from the St. Leonard’s Prison in the city of Liege to the “Citadel” a fortress on a plateau of a small mountain in the center of Liege.  This was where the Gestapo usually executed civilians they captured who were in the Resistance.  The move was made in the wee hours of the morning and we were taken off the trucks just as dawn was breaking.  There were soldiers with bayonets and others behind machine gun emplacements.  There were ten of us Americans (all in civilian clothes) and 200-300 Belgians and we were all sure that we were about to be shot!  Fortunately we were not…  We were separated and I was put in solitary confinement where I stayed foe thirty days on bread and water.  During the almost two months that I was in Gestapo prisons I slept on cold damp hard stone or marble floors.  I was repeatedly interrogated about many things, especially how I had been moved from Holten, Holland to Liege, Belgium.  On July 15, 1944 fourteen Belgian patriots, one of them a priest, Father Andre, were taken into the courtyard and were executed one at a time, by firing squad.  I was also taken into the courtyard and made to witness all fourteen, with the prison commandant threatening I would be next if I did not tell him the answers to his questions!  It happened to be my 21st birthday and I’ll never, never forget it.  Now almost 46 years later, I still wake up in a cold sweat, sometimes even screaming after one of these nightmares.  Of course, after that sleep is impossible…

This was apparently a last ditch attempt, because five days later we began our trip to Dulag Luft at Oberursel, Germany.  I spent fifty-four days in the hands of the Gestapo, a curly headed Jewish boy in civilian clothes, no dog tags, never knowing what terrors tomorrow would bring, or indeed, if there would be a tomorrow.

After Christmas of 1944 Red Cross Parcels at Stalag Luft I were few and far between.  Four men would hare one parcel and finally in February there were no more.  From then on we existed on German rations, i.e., a dish of dehydrated vegetables and a lot of water once a day.  We were allotted one loaf of “sawdust” bread per man per week, and ersatz tea or coffee.  We all lost a great deal of weight and strength.  I was already very thin from my Gestapo days so I didn’t have much to spare.

On January 17, 1945, almost all of the Jewish officers were segregated into one block in North Compound I.  The “gen” as it was called, was that we were going to be moved out of there to a concentration camp and probably would have wound up in a furnace or a ditch covered with lime.  However at that point the Russians were not that far away, thank god, and we were never found.  Since, the barracks was locked at night including the wooden shutters, we feared that one night we would be set afire!  This also is very prominent in my dreams.

So from the time I was shot down till the end of the war, it was stress, worry, fear, uncertainty, and live for the day.  To say nothing about hunger, cold, privation, and STRESS.

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A Newspaper article from 1991…

Milton also provided me with this article by Jean Levine from (New Jersey) Sunday Star-Ledger of September 29, 1991.  Note that the article mentions the monthly meetings of Milton’s Ex-POW support group.  Milton mentions this topic in one of the interview excerpts “further down” this post, which concludes upon a bitterly disillusioning realization.

Ex-POW helps others get ‘home from the war’

WW II flier belongs to support group

For Milton W. Stern of Edison, the nightmares of a half-century ago never seem to end.

The 68-year-old former prisoner of war vividly recalls when he was forced to witness the firing-squad execution of 14 Belgian patriots, including a priest, who had fought the Nazis during World War II.

He wants the U.S. government not to forget the plight of ex-POWs, some of whom have never received any disability pensions.

“Once you’ve been a POW, your life is never the same.  I used to beat myself up for having had one job after another – something which never had afflicted me before the war,” the commander of Garden State Chapter 1 of the American Ex-Prisoners of War said, adding that he had 25 jobs in 40 years after the war.

“But after joining this group about 10 years ago, Stern continued, “I learned that this is a common aftermath of being a POW, as are recurring flashbacks, bad dreams and night sweats.  It is something that never seems to diminish for the average man who’s experienced this kind of situation.”

His 200-member group, one of five chapters in New Jersey, is fighting for the rights of ex-POWs.

“When you meet other POWs, you feel they are brothers under the skin.  There are 70,000 of us in the country and about 2,000 in the state.  What we’ve been through is hard for most people to understand, unless they’ve been there themselves,” said Stern, a widower with three grown children.

After the Iran hostage affair in 1981, World War II POWs began to see that they had been neglected by the Veterans Administration, he added.  “Very few were getting any sort of disability payments.  In Canada, all POWs since the Second World War have gotten 50 percent of disability.  In the U.S., a POW getting disability checks will receive about $400 monthly.  It’s very little money when you think of the price they’ve paid for their country.  Very few are getting anything at all compared to Canadian veterans.”

Stern’s non-profit group generally meets four times a year at different locations throughout New Jersey.  He also attends monthly meetings of a POW support group conducted at the Veterans Administration Medical Center In Lyons.

“About 30 to 40 POWs attend those sessions (at the VA).  Most of those who attend belong to our chapter, and the majority of us live in Middlesex County for some reason,” he said.  “We discuss how we can help each other.”

Started in the mid-’50s as largely a social group, Garden State Chapter 1 disbanded for 15 years before being reformed again a decade ago, Stern said.

“The initial organization was seen as a way to swap war stories,” he explained.  “When it re-formed, the focus was different.  Our current motto is to help other POWs who can’t help themselves.

“We are still recruiting and we require that prospective members be former POWs.  Although perhaps most of our membership consists of World War II veterans, even those who’ve been POWs during the Persian Gulf crisis are eligible.  We serve as an emotional support group and help them to fill out VA application forms for disability.”

A Buffalo, N.Y., native who grew up in Rochester, N.Y., Stern went to work after high school at Bausch and Lomb, a producer of optical equipment and later a manufacturer of Navy rangefinders.

“Rangefinders were these 60-foot-long, telescope-like instruments for naval weapons,” the retired salesman said.  “The company made them for the defense industry.”

In October 1942, Stern enlisted.  After basic training at Selfridge, Mich., he applied for aviation cadet training and was sent to the Army Air Corps Classification Center in Nashville, Tenn., where he took tests to become a navigator.

“I received navigator training at Selman Field in Monroe, La.  Next I went to the Pyote Rattlesnake Army Air Base in Texas, where I spent five months receiving final training,” he recalled.  “Then we were shipped to Goose Bay, Labrador, before landing in Prestwick, Scotland.  That’s where we were assigned to our various groups.

“I was assigned to the 38th Bomb Group Base, which was part of the 8th Air Force at Ridgewell, England, near Cambridge.  We went out on the first, second and third daylight bombing raids over Berlin.  The Americans bombed during the day and the British at night.”

It was during one of those raids that the 10-man crew, including Stern, aboard a B-17 heavy bomber was shot down by the Germans in March 1944.

The plane was hit by flak, the exploding shell fragments from German anti-aircraft guns.  “It knocked out our right outboard engine” he said.  “There were four engines on the plane-two on each side.  We gradually lost power and got behind the 38th Bomb Group with which we flew in formation.  We were all alone and crippled in the sky.”

The lone American bomber was a vulnerable target, according to Stern.

“In order to dodge German radar, our plane had to dive to treetop level.  We had four officers – a pilot, co-pilot, navigator and bombardier and six crewmen, one of whom functioned as a radioman and the rest as gunners,” he recalled.

“We managed to get back as far as Holland and very close to the North Sea near England,” he said.  “Then we were jumped by two German Messerschmitts.  We still managed to fly at treetop level before we shot one of those enemy planes down.  But the second set our right wing afire and our aircraft’s Plexiglas nose, where I was sitting.”

After the crippled craft’s pilot gave the order to bail out at 500 feet, Stern’s parachute hit a tree.  Although dazed, he was virtually unhurt when he landed.

“The Dutch were sympathetic to the Allied forces,” he said.  “They told us to run. I left my parachute in a ditch and began to run.  A Dutch boy of about 20 offered to help.  He hid me in a haystack in the middle of a field near Holten, Holland,” Stern said.

Joining the Maquis, a combined Dutch-Belgian freedom movement, Stern was moved to Liege, Belgium, with the underground and lived with several families in that small town.

“The underground was supposed to move us every few weeks to keep us ahead of the Nazis.  We were scheduled to be taken by guides to neutral Switzerland and then returned to England,” he said.  “We never got to Switzerland because the Allied forces were bombing roads, bridges, railroads, telephone and telegraph lines.  Everything was bombed, so nothing moved.”

On May 27, 1944, Stern was captured by the Nazis, who had been informed of his whereabouts by a Belgian double agent.

“The Germans entered the home of a family who was hiding my radioman and me,” Stern said.  “I was badly beaten because the double agent had told the Nazis I was Jewish.  I spent two months in a Gestapo prison in Liege.  Most of it was in solitary confinement with only bread and water.”

On July 15, his birthday, Stern was forced to watch the execution of the 14 Belgian patriots.  It is a memory that haunts him still.

Less than a week later, he and several other prisoners were moved to Stalag Luft I in northern Germany, a prisoner-of-war camp for fliers, most of whom were officers.

“There were 9,000 American prisoners there,” he related.  “I was reported as missing in action, and my family didn’t know of my whereabouts until September 1944, when the Red Cross notified the Air Force and my family got word from the War Department by way of telegram.

“At first, we got food packages from the Red Cross, but, because the railroads had been bombed out, the Germans said they had trouble getting the packages to us.  We received less and less and finally nothing.”

The daily fare for the prisoners consisted of dehydrated vegetables, to which water was added to make soup, and heavy bread made mainly of sawdust.

“We’d toasted it, which made it less vile than if you ate it raw,” Stem said.  “Occasionally, the Germans would toss us a head of cabbage from the fields nearby.”

On May 1, 1945, the POW camp was liberated by the Russians.

“There were as many as 25,000 American POWs liberated by the Russians and taken back to the Soviet Union with the promise they would leave from that country and return to the U.S.,” Stern said.  “The same thing would have happened to us if our commanding officer, Col. Hubert Zemke, had agreed to their proposal.  He refused to let us go.  He called in the 8th Air Force to fly us out of Germany.

“But those other American POWs weren’t so fortunate.  In reality, they were kidnaped.  To this day, no one knows what happened to them.  It is widely believed that they were imprisoned behind the Iron Curtain to train Russians how to pass as Americans for spy purposes.  But this is only a theory.”

Stern and his fellow POWs were flown to Rheims, France, and then to U.S. Camp Lucky Strike in Normandy, where they “fattened up” before going home.

“It was a camp for returning POWs,” Stern said.  “There were up to 100,000 of us there.  Because of malnutrition, most of us had lost a lot of weight.  Before the war, I weighed 150 and my weight had plummeted to 110 pounds.”

Three weeks after his discharge, Stern married Marjorie Laffer, his childhood sweetheart, whom he had dated since he was 16.  They moved to Elizabeth from Rochester with their three children in 1961, when he got an opportunity to work with a relative managing a furniture storage warehouse.  Stern’s wife died last year, and he said he is slowly getting his life back to normal.

“I took her death very hard because we had a happy marriage,” he said.  “But life goes on.  Now I fill my time helping others.”

Anyone wanting to join Garden State Chapter 1 can contact Stern at (908) 754-5969 after Sept. 30.

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Interview Excerpts…

Now we’ve come to excerpts from my interview with Milton on October 21, 1993.  But first, here’s an image of a fragment of Milton’s POW Personalkarte, the image at one time available via the Library of Congress Veteran’s Project.

First, let’s start with a central facet of this post: Milton’s comments on the implications of being a Jewish POW of the Germans…

Being Jewish, did you ever worry about that possibility?  The implications of having “H” on your dog-tags?
No, I didn’t, really.  I don’t think I did.  We were invincible.  We weren’t going to get shot down.
Guys really had that mindset?
In spite of seeing everybody getting shot down.  Our actual chances of getting through at that time were next to nothing.
What was your quota at that time?
Twenty-five missions, but…but the average number of missions for a crew at that time, was about five.  It had been lower, ever before.  In “Big Week”, it was even lower; before the
P-51s got over there.  It had been lower.
The amount of deaths and losses in the Eighth Air Force is…one of my friends told me about 47,000 Americans.  (Wrong.)
In spite of all that, people figured, “We’re going to make it!”?
Today, after having gone through what I went through, and seeing guys come into camp…prison camp…with 25; 30 missions, because it was raised later on…and seeing how nervous and how bloody they were, what we now call PTSD, I have only the greatest admiration for the guys that went on flying, day after day after day.  Because, it’s like the “Charge of the Light Brigade”.  How they could do it, day after day!  I’m so happy that I got shot down on my third mission!  I…I think it was just the bravest thing that anybody could have done.  Was to fly a tour over there.  I mean, to finish a tour…! 

Being captured by the Gestapo…

Eventually, we were taken out and five of us were put into one room.  One cell.  Not a cell with bars, but a cell with a steel door.  We were left together for a day or two.  And then they took us…well, I don’t know about the rest of them…but they took me out, and put me in a room with several Belgians.  Ostensibly, as far as I know, they were all good people.  They were…I have a problem; certain words will leave my mind…they were like saboteurs.  They worked against the Germans.  They were people that took care of people like me, and so forth.
I was with them for a while.  Some of them were taken out and beaten within an inch of their lives.  Interrogated.  Tortured.  I was taken out, and questioned by a…
We were now in a prison in Belgium, called Saint Leonard’s.  A prison in the center of town.  Not the Gestapo Headquarters anymore, to another prison.
They transferred everybody out?
Yeah.  And, on the night of June 6…I guess it was during the night…two o’clock in the morning, they suddenly turned on the lights, opened the doors, and said, “Raus!”  We got onto these great big trucks.  Big vans.  Everybody.  The whole prison.  Civilians, as well as us guys.  And they pushed us in there so tight, that if your hands were up in the air, that’s where they stayed!  You couldn’t get them down.  If your hands were down, they stayed there.
At any rate, we got in this truck.  There was a couple of truckloads, and there must have been two hundred people in the damn truck.  We realized where they were going:  They were going up this circular road, up to the Citadel.  And we had always heard, while we were in this prison, that the Citadel was where they did their executions.  So again, we thought we’d had it.  Everybody.  The civilians were yelling the same thing, you know?  Those people were crying and shouting and you know.  It was a pretty horrible thing.  And this is two or three o’clock in the morning.
And when we got up there, and they opened the doors of the truck to let us out…  You’ve seen movies; I know you must have seen movies like this:  But there were gun emplacements…
machine gun emplacements…there were soldiers with their bayonets drawn.  It’s a gray dawn.  It was the most scary thing.  I mean, you thought, “Oh my God!”
It really fit that stereotypical image you see on movies?
Yeah.  Yeah.  And again, we thought we were going to be taken out and thrown in a lime pit, or something.
You were with your crew and these Belgian civilians?
Yeah.
Now they took us into a great, big room.  Great, big room.  And seemingly forgot about us for a while.  We didn’t get anything to eat for a couple days.  Remember, the Invasion’s going on.

There are no Case Files about this incident in the Records of the Judge Advocate General’s Office (Records Group 153) at the National Archives.  On a very different note, a review of Milton’s POW diary (like other records mentioned in this post, once but no longer accessible via the Library of Congress) reveals absolutely no entries about this incident.  Perhaps Milton’s epistolary silence in that personal chronicle is entirely understandable, given that the diary entries were made – of course – while he was a POW.

The execution murder of fifteen Belgian anti-Nazi patriots…

I was taken, and put in solitary confinement.  I don’t know what happened to the rest of the guys.  At that time, I didn’t have any idea whether they were all in solitary, or whether they were with other people.  But I was taken…  From June 6 on, I was put in solitary confinement for the rest of my time at that prison.
How long was that?
We got out of there on July 25.
You were in solitary?
Yeah.  Not only that, but my birthday is July 15.  On that day, I was taken out…  And, I was interrogated constantly.  They wanted to know how I got from Holland, where they knew I was shot down, by the way…they knew more things about me than I knew about me.  They knew my girlfriend’s name.  They knew my father’s name; what he did.  My mother’s name.  They knew my colonel’s name at the base.  They knew whose crew I was on.  They knew everything.  Through newspaper clippings.
But, they were interrogating me.  They wanted to know how I got from Holland to Belgium.  They wanted to get everybody in the Underground.  So, they were interrogating me almost on a daily basis.
On July 15, they took me out early in the morning.  Out into the courtyard.  And, they brought out fourteen Belgian patriots.
And one at a time, they executed them by firing squad.
In front of you?
In front of me.  Happened to be my birthday.  Just happened to be my 21st birthday.
But, after every execution…I was standing next to the commandant of the prison…he would give me a nudge and say, “You’re next if you don’t tell me what I want to know.”
So…I didn’t, and five days later I think they gave up on the whole bunch of us.  From what I’ve heard later on, the other ones weren’t subjected to it.  It was only the “Jewboy”.
Did the other guys verify this for you?
In fact, they don’t believe me!  But, at any rate, that’s what happened.  One of the guys they shot was a Priest.
Do you know the names of any of those people?
No.  The Priest was “Father Andre”, that’s all I know about him.  But, the other people were not part of the Underground unit that we were captured with.  They had been there for some time.  Saboteurs, I’d suspect.

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When Milton related this horrific story to me in 1993, I felt uncertainty (not skepticism) about his account.  A brief chain of correspondence starting with an inquiry to the Belgian Embassy eventually brought a clear and more-than-informative response about this event from Colonel Staff Brevet Holder Head of Department, Centre for Historical Documentation, Belgian Armed Forces – M. Paulissen (Kolonel Stafbrevethouder Diensthoofd, Centrum voor Historische Documentatie, Belgische Krijgsmacht), to whom I offer highly belated and symbolic thanks (ahem (!) three decades later). 

The information Colonel Paulissen provided to me confirms in my eyes Milton’s story of his experience on his 21st birthday, the most telling “clue” being the number of resistance fighters who were murdered: Milton stated 14; the actual number was 16, I think a more than coincidentally close match, given the passage of time.  Photographs of the sixteen, provided to me by Colonel Paulissen (I composited the individual pictures into a single image) appear below.  The names of the men (and their dates of birth and capture, and, reason for arrest) appear below the composite, each set of five names successively corresponding to each of the above rows of images, reading left to right.  

Marcel-Dieudonne Bawin – July 2, 1910 – May 10, 1944 – Resistance
Emile E. Becco – Nov. 24, 1894 – March 23, 1944 – Resistance
Charles-Henri Coppens – Dec. 14, 1920 – Resistance
Alfred Devos – Oct. 27, 1902 – Dec. 27, 1943 – Anti-German Propaganda and Sabotage
Richard F. Ghaye – April 8, 1922 – May 10, 1944 – Resistance

Miguel Gonzalez – July 8, 1912 – March 21, 1944 – Resistance
Michel Jonkers – Aug. 8, 1909 – Resistance
Gaspard J.G. Lehonge – June 16, 1896 – May 10, 1944 – Sabotage
Charles-Francois Louchez – Nov. 25, 1921 – July 13, 1944 – Resistance
Desire H. Malpas – June 26, 1907 – May 10, 1944 – Sabotage

Joseph Mortroux – Feb, 8, 1912 – March 18, 1944 – Resistance
Victor Mousset – June 24, 1906 – June 30, 1944 – Resistance
Leon Nizet – Sept. 1, 1923 – May 10, 1944 – Resistance
Joseph Saelens – Aug. 27, 1920 – July 14, 1944 – Resistance – Attempted Escape
Maurice Snyers – Dec. 7, 1922 – June 12, 1944 – Resistance

Richard Thomas – March 9, 1923 – May 10, 1944 – Resistance

…Not pictured…

Joseph Bertrand – June 16, 1923 – Resistance
Marcel Caudron -Dec. 30, 1898 – Resistance

These two sketches show where the sixteen, and others, were executed murdered by firing squad.

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In the context of Milton’s experience at Prison Saint-Léonard, it’s appropriate here to mention the fate of the Jews of Belgium during the Shoah.  As described at Yad Vashem, “66,000 Jews were living in Belgium when the country was occupied by the Germans in May 1940.  Only 10% of them had Belgian citizenship, the rest were immigrants and refugees.  When the deportations to the death camps in the east began in summer 1942 the foreign Jews were deported first, and only a year later were those with Belgian citizenship rounded up.  When the fate of the deported Jews became known, there was a certain change from the relative indifference to the German anti-Jewish policy that had prevailed in the early years of occupation.  This enabled many Jews to go into hiding.  At the same time, like in other countries, there was collaboration and denunciation of hiding Jews.  An important role in rescue work was played by the church and the Communist underground, as well as the Jews’ organized self-help via the Comité de Défence des Juifs, established in the summer of 1942, which was assisted by non-Jews.  28,000 Jews from Belgium perished in the Holocaust.”

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Moving from the utter darkness of one prison to the ambivalent and eventual (relative) safety of another, here is a moment of prisoner of war humor related by Milton…  (In the following two accounts, the surnames of other POWs at Stalag Luft I are presented in dark red boldface text, like this.  Brief biographical information about these men follows these passages.)  

Murray Brownstein, and a fellow from Tallahassee, Florida…I can’t think of his first name…he went under the nickname of “Studs”…Studs Atkinson…    They were both in our tent.  One day the Germans brought in a bowl of some kind of fish.  Smelt, or something like herring.  Some kind of herring, and they were kind of slippery.  Slimy.
I refused.  You know, you think you can eat almost anything, but at that time I was still…I refused them.  And everybody else in our tent refused them.  Brownstein…I think he was from the Bronx, or Brooklyn…his father had a smoke-house, and he was used to eating smoked fish, and herring and all that kind of stuff.  So he sat down at the table with the bowl in front of him, and started eating.  Well, Stud Atkinson…  You remember the Popeye cartoons?  You remember the guy that always used to fight with Popeye?  Bluto.  This guy looked just like Bluto.
Did he have a beard too?
Yep.  He had a scruffy beard, and big arms.  Big guy.  Black hair.  Looked just like Bluto.  I used to call him Bluto.  And, he always said he wanted his, “Fair share.”  So he didn’t like herring, but he sat down opposite Morris Brownstein…“Brownie”, called him…and Brownie would eat one of these herrings, and he would eat one.  Brownie ate one, he would eat one.  This went on for a while, and pretty soon…!…pretty soon, Studs got up, ran out of the tent, and threw up!  And he came back in and he sat down, and he started eating again!  He wanted his, “Fair share”!  He was a sick man that night!
Never forget it.  In fact, Studs’ name turned up in the POW Bulletin a while back, as a new member.  And I called him.  And I reminded him of it! 

The dramatis personae mentioned above are:

“Brownstein”: 2 Lt. Morris Brownstein, 0-765604, Bombardier
342nd Bob Squadron, 97th Bomb Group, 15th Air Force
Shot down 7/19/44
B-17G 42-102918, “Idiot’s Delight”, piloted by 1 Lt. William W. Williams; 11 crew members – 6 survivors
MACR 6688; Luftgaukommando Report ME 1651
Brooklyn, N.Y.
AJWWII – 285

“Atkinson”: 2 Lt. Vernon Castle Atkinson, 0-705214, Co-Pilot
601st Bomb Squadron, 398th Bomb Group, 8th Air Force
Shot down 7/8/44
B-17G 42-102445, “3O * B”, piloted by 2 Lt. George F. Wilson, Jr., 9 crew members – 8 survivors (Wilson KIA)
MACR 7217, Luftgaukommando Report KU 2455
Tallahassee, Fl.

References to the segregation of the Jewish POWs at Stalag Luft I (Barth) can be found on the Internet, and, in print.  Here’s Milton’s recollection of that event…

“On January 18, we of the Jewish Faith were ordered to move to North I Compound, where we were to be segregated into one barrack.”

Could you describe the events of the segregation?
Well, there really wasn’t a lot of…a lot of…nothing leading up to it.  All of a sudden, one morning, they came, and they said, “You’re to report to barracks,”…I forgot the barracks number… “barracks so-and-so, in North One.”  And I think when I got there I found out that everybody was Jewish.
Who told you that you had to report, the Germans or the Americans?
Germans.
Did they say, “All Jews,” or did they read your names off a list?
I think they read your names off.  I really don’t remember.  I can’t pin that down.  But, when we got there, everybody was Jewish.  There may have been one or two non-Jews in there.  And also there were some Jews that weren’t…picked.
Sonny Elliott.  He was a real outgoing, flamboyant guy.
Does the name Peckerar mean anything?  I was in Atlantic City with him, after we came home.  He used to chew razor blades!  Used to do that, you know, as a … a feat.  I think glass, too.  I don’t know how the hell he did it.
Was the barrack surrounded by barbed-wire?
No.  No.  Just part of the camp.
And you were free to come and go during the day?
Oh yeah.
Was there any talk among the Jewish POWs of, “What does this all mean?”
Well, in my story that I put together, I said that the “Gen”…the English called it the “Poop”…was the “Gen”…was that we were going to be taken out to a concentration camp, and eventually done away with.  But I felt that…that…at the time, the Russians started their Spring Offensive.  They had been camped, I think, on the Oder River.  They started their Spring Offensive, and the Germans saw the handwriting on the wall, and decided…  In my story, I said, “They left us ‘religiously alone’”.  A kind of play on words.  But I wrote that, when I was 21 years old!  “Religiously alone.”
At one point in my speech that I give, I say, “From here I’m going to quote directly from my diary”, because the events started happening pretty quickly, and it’s kind of history, you know.  I always got a lot of interest at that point.
Was there any reaction on the part of the Gentile prisoners when they segregated anybody?  From the commanders of the camp?
I really don’t know.  I have heard stories about other camps, where everybody stepped forward…  You know, when they said, “All Jews step forward!”, everybody stepped forward.  I’ve heard that.  I don’t know.  Maybe it happened.  Maybe it didn’t.
Jerry Alperin…he was in my room.  Adelman I think I remember.  Melvin Brown I remember.  Maury Brownstein…  I could tell you some stories about him!  Martin Burstein…he’s the one that’s a dentist, I think.  There was a Don Epstein.
We had a guy by the name of Captain Margolian, another Jew.  He was supposed to have been the first ace of the war, although I did not see his name in the listing of aces.  While we were there, it was understood that he had five kills, and he was shot down in Africa.  A little short guy.  Jerry Gilbert.

Who are the nine dramatis personae mentioned above?

“Elliott” (a.k.a. “Sonny Eliot”): 2 Lt. Marvin Elliott Schlossberg, 0-672878, Bomber Pilot
577th Bomb Squadron, 392nd Bomb Group, 8th Air Force
Shot down 2/24/44
B-24J 42-100344, “W+“, 10 crew members – all survived
MACR 2951
Detroit, Mi.
AJWWII – not listed

Here’s Sonny Elliot very much postwar, in a video from April 19, 2008 at Michael Collins‘ YouTube channel: “Sonny Eliot on 50 Years in Broadcasting“.  (66 comments)

“Peckerar”: S/Sgt. Irving Milton Peckerar, 12151681, Ball Turret Gunner
546th Bomb Squadron, 384th Bomb Group, 8th Air Force
Shot down 10/11/44
B-17G 42-97948, “BK * U” / “Hell on Wings”, piloted by 1 Lt. John W. Peterson, 10 crew members – all survived
MACR 9479, Luftgaukommando Report KU 3170
Brooklyn, N.Y.
AJWWII – 404

“Jerry Alperin”: 2 Lt. Jerome Alperin, 0-1320377, Bombardier
562nd Bomb Squadron, 388th Bomb Group, 8th Air Force
Shot down 7/8/44
B-17G 42-31802, “M” / “Gyndia”, piloted by 1 Lt. Samuel J. Fisher, 10 crew members – 3 survivors
MACR 7361, Luftgaukommando Report KU 2683
Chicago, Il.
AJWWII – 92

“Adelman”: 2 Lt. Melvin Arnold Adelman, 0-723255, Navigator
764th Bomb Squadron, 461st Bomb Group, 15th Air Force
Shot down (wounded) 7/25/44
B-24H 42-52459, “8” / “Winona Belle”, piloted by 2 Lt. Wray M. Stitch, 10 crew members – 5 survivors
MACR 11978, Luftfgaukommando Report ME 1711
Chicago, Il.
AJWWII – 92

“Melvin Brown”: 2 Lt. Melvin Albert Brown, 0-716340, Navigator
358th Bomb Squadron, 303rd Bomb Group, 8th Air Force
Shot down 7/19/44
B-17G 42-31584, “VK * C”, piloted by 2 Lt. Marvin S. Boyce, 9 crew members – 5 survivors
MACR 7415, Luftgaukommando Report KU 2559
Chicago, Il.
AJWWII – 95

“Martin Burstein”: 2 Lt. Martin Burstein, 0-819487, Co-Pilot
422nd Bomb Squadron, 305th Bomb Group, 8th Air Force
Shot down 12/5/44
B-17G 43-37827, “JJ * L”, piloted by 1 Lt. Richard N. Pounds, 9 crew members – 8 survivors
MACR 11043, Luftgaukommando Report KU 3434
Brooklyn, N.Y.
AJWWII – not listed

“Don Epstein”: 2 Lt. Donald Martin Epstein, 0-814884, Bomber Pilot
555th Bomb Squadron, 386th Bomb Group, 9th Air Force
Shot down 7/12/44
B-26B 41-31794, “YA * D” / “Sparta”, 6 crew members – all survived
MACR 7045, Luftgaukommando Report KU 2472
Chicago, Il.
AJWWII – 97

“Captain Margolian”: Captain Leon B. Margolian (see more here…)

“Jerry Gilbert”: 2 Lt. Jerome J. Gilbert, 0-723057, Navigator
569th Bomb Squadron, 390th Bomb Group, 8th Air Force
Shot down 9/10/44 (Dusseldorf mission)
B-17G 42-97577, “CC * E”, piloted by 2 Lt. Thomas H. Markward, 9 crew members – 2 survivors
MACR 8914, Luftgaukommando Report KU 2938
Chicago, Il.
AJWWII – not listed

Did the war change Milton’s religious beliefs?

Did your experiences during or after the war change your opinions about religion or God, whatever they may have been, one way or another?
No.  I was an agnostic before, and I was an agnostic during, and I was an agnostic afterwards.  Still.  I have a healthy respect for people who can believe, without question.  However, I can’t.  And, I also feel that if there is a God, He is not a very just God.  Putting people through what He put them through.

Did the implications and effects of the war (really) change opinions about the Jewish people?

…The only thing is, I recently joined the JWV (Jewish War Veterans) within the last couple years, because I felt it was time to stand up and be counted as a Jew.   Not religiously, but as a Jew.  And, when we have our…   Since I’ve become commander, you know, at these things sometimes they have a benediction before the meeting.  Everybody takes their hat off?   I leave my hat on.
And I’ve been told, you know, “You aren’t respectful.”  I say, “When you’re wearing Tefellin, Jews pray with their hat on.”

So I…I…I…and just a couple of weeks ago, I brought up the fact that about these…   Cemetery up there in North Jersey that was (desecrated) with swastikas.  “Hitler was right!”  It’s a Jewish cemetery.  And I brought it up in a therapy session.  That, “It’s terrible, here after fifty years, we’ve got it again, still going on.”  And, one of my buddies…  He thinks of himself as being very “knowledgeable” about a lot of things…  And he did make some money, earlier on; quite a lot of it.  He says, “Milt,” he says, “don’t you know why people don’t like Jews?”
“No.  Tell me why people don’t like Jews.”
“Because it’s their attitude!  Look at how they…  In Hollywood, where they make movies about the Germans and the Nazis…  And they want to grab the media, and the banks…”
And this is one of your POW “buddies”?
This is a POW buddy.  He’s very helpful along other lines because he’s very knowledgeable about the benefits, and so forth.  And he said, “Your attitude…”
So then I started telling about one of the…  Right here in South Huntington, where we went to the diner (for lunch today)…  The superintendent is a very nice guy.  The superintendent of schools, when they had the Holocaust curriculum.   A nice guy.  And I said, “What was done in South Huntington should be done in the other schools, all over the country.”
“People don’t want that shoved down their throats!”
This guy?
Yeah.  My buddy.  “People” don’t want it, not “he” don’t want it.  “People” don’t want it.
And then I found out…  One of the guys…  Another guy in that group…it’s only a small group; about eleven people…another guy got up and walked out during this “conflagration”.  Almost a conflagration.
And the next week…  I said something again about it.  He says, “There you go again!”  Another guy.  Also a ex-POW.
Was this the guy who walked out the previous time?
Yeah.  The guy who walked out was a … flier.  And he says, “I don’t want to hear any talk about politics or religion!”
“This ain’t religion!  This is what we’re living through.”  And I explained the week before, that it should be in the history books, because it’s history.  It’s part of history.  People shouldn’t make the same mistakes again.
So I…I…I just couldn’t believe that guys would talk like that.  And I don’t think that I’m going to be part of that therapy class any more.
Because of that?
Well, I felt I wasn’t…I’m not doing any good there.  Maybe I should…  I’m not going to shut up, but…  It’s…it’s really a sad, sad thing. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Milton Stern passed away on December 3, 2007, a little over fourteen years after our meeting.  

Here are Four References

A Book…

Dublin, Louis I., and Kohs, Samuel C., American Jews in World War II – The Story of 550,000 Fighters for Freedom, The Dial Press, New York, N.Y., 1947

An Article…

Jacques, Johanna, A ‘Most Astonishing’ Circumstance: The Survival of Jewish POWs in German War Captivity During the Second World War, Social & Legal Studies, V 30 (3), 2021, pp. 362-383

Milton Wallace Stern, at…

… The American Air Museum in Britain

… EvasionComete: “Personne capturée durant son évasion [Person Captured During Escape] Milton Wallace STERN / O-814431″, researched and written by Philippe Connart, Michel Dricot, Edouard Renière, and Victor Schutters (June 24, 2022)