My Dears,
If you have a good memory you will recognize this stationery – I once received it as a birthday present – 7 or 8 years ago. It so amused me to find it, that I kept it to bring with me.
From the moment at which my father and his family slammed the door on their lives to narrowly escape Brussels, four days before Hitler’s bombs exploded on their adopted city, until the moment when he finally arrived back to his building on Christmas Day, five and half years later, EVERYTHING worked in tandem to bring him full circle. His return from exile so soon after the end of the war allowed him a sense of CLOSURE – the sort of CLOSURE which lay forever beyond the reach of most victims and surviving refugees of the Holocaust.
SOMEDAY YOU WILL UNDERSTAND is about one refugee’s odyssey and a family who beat the odds. Asking that the echo of memory not only be heard, but that it be amplified through study; by bringing people of all faiths together, in order that the atrocities of the Holocaust be brought forward into the context of current events and human rights issues; which are perennially pervasive.
Whether we speak of the shooting of young Malala in Pakistan who was merely riding on a makeshift school bus and standing up for the right of all young women everywhere to be educated, or the ongoing atrocities committed by Assad in Syria, to the conflicts and uprisings in the greater Middle East – to Rwanda, Darfur and elsewhere in Africa, to North Korea.
The lessons of the Shoah, and the stories of those who experienced it, resonate as deeply today as they ever have.
WE – must be the gatekeepers of these memories, while continuing the fight to protect and insure that atrocities and genocide become a thing of the past and so that the future may bring an end to political snd religious tyranny.
The question for my father was never whether or not he would fight in the war, but, how he would run his war to engage his enemy and defeat him? His, was a war of intelligence requiring him, more often than not, to suppress his Jewish identity and hide out in the open.
Unlike the average American soldier, he and the young Jewish refugee soldiers like him, who became known as The Ritchie Boys, had a head start in understanding their enemy; they were European refugees who had fled on the heels of the Nazis.
In some cases, these once stateless refugees had lost loved ones to Hitler’s war against the Jews, before returning as intelligence officers to vet and send war criminals to prosecution. These were seasoned civilians turned warriors whose intelligence and education outweighed their brawn.
In my father’s case, he always felt that the army was a period of calm and safety by comparison to his16 month escape out of Nazi occupied Europe, while he and his family managed to dodge bombs and bullets until arriving to New York in September of 1941, just 3 months before the attack on Pearl Harbor.
In fact, the freighter on which they arrived, the SS. Navemar, was bombed and sunk by the Germans on its return across the Atlantic. Theirs was a truly miraculous voyage out of a somewhat benevolent Spain; ruled by a somewhat benevolent dictator, Franco; on one of the last refugee ships out.
SOMEDAY YOU WILL UNDERSTAND: My Father’s Private WWII brings us front and center on a unique story of survival and closure. My father’s unique coping mechanisms allowed him to find normal within the boundaries of his circumstances. He was able to compartmentalize his anguish and work around the unbearable, to make a personal contribution outside of his military duties. He knew that it could have very easily been him who perished, or walked from the gates of hell at Liberation. As a result he felt a special connection to the Displaced People.
As my father came face to face with the consequences of that war, and the ensuing genocide, he became a staunch advocate for the Surviving Remnant. He encountered Displaced People, refugees and survivors by the tens of thousands as he made his way north through Italy. One of his first assignments upon arriving to Caserta in the South, was to translate part of Mussolini’s Order of Surrender, as well as to vet war criminals from the masses at POW camps in Ghedi and Verona; before making his way to Austria and Germany. All along the way, he was confronted with the results of Hitlerism and the fight to save civil society.
My father decided to take matters into his own hands when he appealed first to his best friend’s mother and then directly to Eleanor Roosevelt to improve conditions at the former concentration camps turned into refugee camps. Then he hunted down the man who would become the greatest Nazi hunter of all time, the president of the Executive Committee for Jews where he was stationed – Simon Wiesenthal.
Then just a survivor on a mission, my father consulted Wiesenthal about the refugees and the conditions at the camps, and what he could do to help. It was sometimes easy to forget that before the war, the survivors came from all walks of life and were not stateless and destitute, on the verge of starvation and death.
My father turned the army mail system on its ear to provide care packages for as many as he could. As the winter of 1945 approached, an already unbearable situation was made worse by the oncoming privation, cold weather and illness.
His personal war effort raised well over 1600 care packages, which he personally delivered when he organized a Chanukah party in Gmunden that November of 1945. Although he complained that he didn’t really want to go, not only did he remember it for the rest of his life; it would prove an enduring memory for generations to come; as it least one of the men who attended the party, kept a photograph of my father in his special box for the rest of his life.
Today’s BREAKING NEWS concerning the refugee crisis seems to have popped randomly up on history’s timeline, but if we look back and beyond the headlines, we can see that this second biggest wave of migration in human history, this genocidal war against the Syrian people, the religious extremism of DAECH, the uptick in global terrorism, and now the danger of porous borders and the birth of home grown extremism here in the US, is part of a cycle that is not random at all.
Some say that we are in the midst of a 3rd Jihad, a continuation of a mandate dating back to the birth of the Islamic Empire in the 7th Century. The desire to force the world to live as a global caliphate under Sharia law has its origins in early Muslim Expansionism, which developed into today’s version of Jihad; being carried out by an army of young people, some barely out of their adolescence.
Once again, we are caught in the vortex of history. The fight against terrorism, for example, is not just a bunch of DAECH barbarians on a killing spree throughout Europe. They have spread across the continents; battlefronts have blurred and diplomacy issues dating back to the close of World War Two have resulted in a political climate between superpowers reminiscent of the Cold War, or the proxy war which has erupted between Russia and Turkey over Syria.
The DAECH strategy pits nation against nation, in an increasingly xenophobic climate meant to rally the mostly moderate 1.6 billion adherents to the Muslim faith, over 22% of the global population, by motivating as many moderate Muslims as possible to adopt more extreme views in hopes that they will further blacken a grey zone to further polarize western nations; who embrace freedom and liberty to provoke an all out war against innocent people. The hope is to radicalize as many as possible through the use of their propaganda and acts of terror.
This brings up the subject of the similarity between DAECH and the Nazis. They share a common goal with Hitler. Wipe out the Jews, wipe Israel off the map, and take every civil society down their path by galvanizing the Muslim extremist Diaspora.
To quote an article in the Washington Post written just days after the Paris attacks, “The strategy is explicit. The Islamic State explained after the January attacks on Charlie Hebdo magazine that such attacks compel the Crusaders to actively destroy the gray zone themselves . . . . Muslims in the West will quickly find themselves between one of two choices, they either apostatize . . . or they [emigrate] to the Islamic State and thereby escape persecution from the Crusader governments and citizens. The group calculates that a small number of attackers can profoundly shift the way that European society views its 44 million Muslim members and, as a result, the way European Muslims view themselves. Through this provocation, it seeks to set conditions for an apocalyptic war with the West.”
Propaganda and terror campaigns. This is where we begin to see a similarity between the Nazis effort at religious superiority and the recruitment strategy of DAECH. The difference between the two is the development of technology in the information age. The disbursement of information now works at the speed of light multiplying across the globe through the internet, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. The internet is truly the newest theater of war and we must learn to move as fast as the terrorists do to strategically wipe out their communication capabilities and their “Mafioso” means of raising the 2 billion dollars a year which they extort to run their campaign of terror. This means that we must hit them on at least two fronts in hopes that the severity of the third is lessened. One: remove their ability to function over the internet, two: sever their financial capabilities and third: military action. This will cause casualties but could save masses.
Why then, must we continue to gather the testimonies of survivors and continue to educate about the Holocaust if history is a cycle and it clearly repeats itself? Because, if we take for example the Yazidi, a 4,000 year old religion, and among the oldest in Mesopotamia; the day before the Paris attacks in November, The United States Holocaust Museum issued a report stating that the attack by ISIS on the over 500,000 followers living in Iraq is considered genocide. The Islamic State performed targeted mass killing, rape and enslavement of the Yazidi women as well as forcing young men and boys to join and fight for them.
What is the point of continued education on the subject of the Holocaust if success seems unattainable and war and genocide are cyclical? Because Hitler’s ideology and a hatred against a people ignited the Holocaust in much the same way that this holy war, this fatwa, is being directed at the contemporary world. Holocaust Education is a form of condemnation. We must draw on the similarities of these two periods on the timeline of humanity to educate future generations and to look to that most egregious period in history, so that we may find coping mechanisms for this wave of terror and war.
Most of the time we are content to leave behind our family’s history as we go about our busy and stressful lives, chasing the proverbial carrot. We learn not to dwell on the past. Pieces are left in real or imaginary boxes in attics or closets, or safely buried deep in our subconscious.
Occasionally, the capriciousness of fate steps in to remind us of its importance, and can lead us down a road of discovery. Memory is persistent. Clues are left by intention or coincidence for us to discover in our own time.
My time came when my father handed me a green metal box, filled with 700 letters he had written home to his family while he served in the US Army during and in the early aftermath of World War II.
I am the gatekeeper of my father’s memories. By telling his story, my hope is, that on some level I can make a small contribution against revisionist history.
To that end it requires us not only to read history, but to FEEL its impact. To feel history we need to hear the stories of those who experienced it first hand. I am commanded to never forget. Each and every “Survivor’s” story is vital and must be told, because for every story there are Holocaust deniers, such as Iran’s former President, Ahmadinejad, a fervent denier who fed his propaganda to the masses under the guise of education. His replacement, Hassan Rouhani is said to fall on the moderate side of denial. Perhaps a small improvement, but as long as they and others have a voice and the freedom to express themselves, it is imperative that every story become part of a shield against Anti Semitism and to that end a shield against genocide no matter who the intended victims are.
As the quantity of Holocaust survivors who can tell their stories first hand diminish daily, the onus is on us, their children and grandchildren, to tell it for them as accurately as possible, and work toward ending current crimes against humanity no matter where they occur; or pose a threat.
Ours is one more account to put a nail in the coffin of every denier who questions the veracity of the Holocaust. Politics and laws do not seem to prevent crimes against humanity but perhaps through the lens of survivors and their descendants we may serve as a lens through which to see history.
My father’s letters sent me on a journey through his unspoken past on an odyssey where the true heroes were those my father encountered on the long road from exile to return, who numbered in the thousands of living and in the millions who perished. Along the way I found one other hero, the unsung hero who was my father, if only because he kept his silence and allowed me to have an unburdened childhood; unencumbered by the weight of his past.
The letters were primarily written to his mother and family but they were intended for anyone in their circle who was interested. When my son was 8, I handed him the first stack of translated letters when he ran out of reading material for school. A few minutes later I heard him laughing in his room.
“DO YOUR HOMEWORK!” I yelled to him.
He yelled back, “I AM MOM! I’M READING WHAT YOU GAVE ME AND I FEEL LIKE GRANDPA IS IN THE ROOM WITH ME!”
Tears welled in my eyes and I ran into his room, hugged him and promised to translate every last letter – FOR HIM. I am a painter. I studied architecture. The last paper I wrote was in college, but I must tell you that from the moment I began to translate, the words flowed like water. Every child knows their parent’s voice. I found mine in his.
The letters were written from the perspective of a young surviving refugee, in exile if you will, who chronicled his life in the army on an almost daily basis. We text, he wrote. He spoke several times of needing to record his thoughts, and use his voice as a vehicle. The letters were written on the most amazing stationery, including Nazi letterhead in full color.
Ultimately, he wrote what I think is the most incredible of all of the letters, Nazi stationery not withstanding, on his monogrammed bar mitzvah stationery which he found upon recovering his family’s belongings in Brussels that Christmas Day in 1945.
I find it tremendously moving because it gives a precise accounting of every item he found and what exactly he was going to do to insure their safe return to their rightful owners. He had all of their things brought to the JDC (Joint Distribution Committee) office located in the building next door to the Grand Synagogue where he was Bar Mitzvah.
Coincidence or fate?
His journey took him full circle and I am certain that he never forgot a thing. One of his last and certainly the most chilling revelation came when he said, upon hearing an alarm go off over the hospital’s loudspeaker,
– “When I hear that sound, all I can think is: I AM A JEW, I AM A JEW,I AM A JEW!”
The letters can at times be misinterpreted as mundane, but to read between the lines is to disambiguate frustration from banality. It is there at the space between the commas, at the pause between his words, where I could reflect upon the unsaid. What my father chose not to convey served to sharpen the larger picture of events unfolding around him.
This allowed history into focus.
Where he gave voice to his experiences during his training and later upon his return to Europe during the early aftermath of the war, my job evolved into giving voice to his evasiveness.
Four years after arriving in the U.S., my father Walter Wolff, who by then was fluent in German and French and conversant in Spanish with some knowledge of Italian, returned to Europe as one of the Ritchie Boys an exclusive branch of the army which developed into what we now know as the CIA.
The once persecuted returned to prosecute, sending many to trial in Nuremberg.
He was barely twenty years old.
His letters are riveting, heartbreaking, and often very humorous. He was a charming and resourceful young man, a keen observer of the turmoil and settling of scores that occurred at the end of the war. He returned to the places of his childhood, he ran into old friends, he eventually liberated his ancestral home in Landau from collaborators who bought the expropriated house after his aunt was taken to Gurs, a French concentration camp.
Working as an interrogator in Italy, Austria, Belgium, Germany and France, he walked around at times like a Jewish John Wayne with a yellow Mogen David glued to his gun holster. As a Ritchie Boy one of his first tasks upon returning to Europe as I said, was to read and classify Mussolini’s documents, and translate one part of the orders of the Allied Forces to the Nazis in Northern Italy-for unconditional surrender.
He was a remarkable young man, with tremendous courage and a sense of humor to balance his steadfast determination.
He was determined to make his way home, back to Brussels, to see what was left of their old lives. By the time he returned to Rue de la Loi, he had grown from a gangly teenager into an American Intelligence officer with movie star good looks. When he arrived to his building at 155 Rue de la Loi, he immediately recognized the concierge.
Are you Monsieur Huber he asked. The man looked at him and said, What’s it to you?!
A moment later his wife came out from behind him, screamed and almost dropped her mop and bucket when she saw him. She knew exactly who my father was. The only thing Monsieur Huber could manage to say was, “I thought you all dead, because you never gave me any sign that you were alive.”
Incredibly, he recovered most of his family’s belongings after learning that Monsieur Huber, a pharmacist named Demeure, and an old family friend had gone to great lengths to protect and keep his family’s things. One of them even endured an interrogation at the hands of the Gestapo at the infamous headquarters on Avenue Louise in Brussels.
My father was one of very few Jewish refugees who managed to reclaim a portion of their former lives and finances, giving his family a rare opportunity to regain a sense of financial and emotional stability.
CLOSURE.
After the war, he graduated from Columbia University and opened the renown furniture store chain Bon Marché in New York, and on M Street in Georgetown.
A short excerpt from SOMEDAY YOU WILL UNDERSTAND: My Father’s Private WWII:
“Linz, Austria 30 July, 1945
Dear Mrs. Roosevelt,
Enclosed you will find a rather interesting “publication,” if I may call it that. [It was not attached to the draft because my father must have included it with actual letter.] Unfortunately, I could get only these fragments, but it amused me so much that I thought it worthwhile to send it to you.
At the same time, I would like to take the liberty to inform you that, while Polish, Yugoslav, and Italian refugees are generously taken care of, the remnants of the European Jewry are pushed around from camp to camp, with nobody taking any real interest in them. I was even told about some officers stating that we had come a little too early—had we come later we would have had fewer of these Jews to worry about.This, I trust, is not the general attitude of all concerned, but it does reflect a certain trend.
I was also told by some of these poor people, in a camp near Munich, that they had no contact with any American relief organization so far. The same appears to be true in the case of the Salzburg camp. I am telling you all of this in the hope that a reminder from a person of your prestige and standing should prod some of the organizations (whose moral duty it is to look after these unfortunate people) into action.
Respectfully Yours,
M/Sgt.Walter C.Wolff 32908561
H.Q. Documents Center G-2
USFA /A.P.O. 777 USArmy
I found no record of a response to his letter, but Eleanor Roosevelt’s undying commitment shows in her speeches before Congress, in her My Day syndicated column, and mostly by the work she did with the UNRRA, United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, for which she took a great part in the drafting of the Declaration of Human Rights. She wrote, “There is in Europe at the present time a group of 100,000 displaced persons—the miserable, tortured, terrorized Jews who have seen members of their families murdered and their homes ruined, and who are stateless people, since they hate the Germans and no longer wish to live in the countries where they have been despoiled of all that makes life worth living….
My grandmother Omi, was highly critical of the letter to the former First Lady and found it to be naive. My father wrote back that he wasn’t asking for her opinion. He had chosen to send the letter home first in order to avoid the still-prying eyes of the censors, the idea being that his family would then forward it to Eleanor Roosevelt. What Omi failed to understand was that my father—along with every other Jewish soldier and the thirty or so Jewish chaplains in Germany and Austria directly after the war who took part in both the liberation of the camps and the military occupation—were the first American Jews to lay eyes upon the survivors as they made their exodus into the safety of the American Zone of Occupation. They were in the unique position of being the eyes and ears for a world just beginning to understand the extent of the atrocities committed.”
