Steven Karras Read online

  In August 1944, the invasion of southern France took place. The Germans had either not anticipated it or didn’t think it would be massive. At any rate, there was little resistance, and we advanced to north of Grenoble in a few weeks. I spent the days of Rosh Hashanah in Epinal, where the small Jewish community had survived and had come back from where it had been during the war years. This was the so-called unoccupied part of France, where matters were relatively easy for Jews.

  Until then, except for the three months on the Anzio beachhead, my war experience was not too difficult, but the winter of 1944–1945 was a very hard one in Europe, and we in the Seventh Army were in the Vosges Mountains of France, across from the German border. Because of snow and rain and the lack of proper boots, and the prohibition of wearing rubber overshoes, many troops suffered frostbite and frozen feet, a condition that lasted for life. I was fortunate not to suffer. It was in one of these forlorn places where two “Germans” surrendered, and I was able to interrogate them. But these fellows were not even Germans. They were southern Europeans, impressed into the German Army, and knew virtually nothing. Surrendering was probably the high point of their career.

  The battle of Bastogne, north of us, was the real turning point of the war. The famous German General Von Rundstedt had almost succeeded in overrunning the American troops in the southern part of Belgium. Again the U.S. Army’s intelligence work was not too clever, but our troops held out and hoped for the snowy winter weather to lift, so that our bombers could do the job as they had done at Anzio ten months earlier. And they did after the famous General McAuliffe replied to the demand of the Germans to surrender with this one word: “Nuts!” A few days later, our bombers saturated the ground with bombs, Bastogne was free, and the Germans retreated back into Germany.

  Toward the end of the war, I was transferred to the intelligence section of the Seventh Army headquarters. One of my assignments was to monitor the observations of the reconnaissance planes. Their reports came by radio to me. Several times they reported that there were large masses of people on the main roads, and they asked whether they should go down and strafe them. The choice was up to me. I did not think that the Germans would have their soldiers walk en masse as targets for American planes, so these must be different people. My answer was no. Fortunately that was the right choice, because these people were the remnants of concentration camps who the Germans had driven out for a death march. Many were sick and weak and many died on the road. At least some were saved and were not bombed by the Americans.

  We got into Germany the night before Pesach—there’s a picture of me reading the Ma Nishtana at a Seder table in Kaiserslautern. It’s a tremendous thing to get back four years, five years later as a conqueror.

  Toward the end of the war, we were in Augsburg, which was Seventh Army headquarters, and Goering was brought in—he still had his riding crop. I was right next to him when he was brought in; he went upstairs, and I went right after him. Goering went to shake the commander’s hand, and Captain White did not shake it. To be able to do this to your enemy, and to conquer him, gives you feeling of power, gratitude.

  There were many family members trapped in Germany, but we did not know the extent of the massacre until after the war. At one of the first Sabbath services in Augsburg in southern Germany, I met a Jewish woman and her daughter who told me they had been in the gas chamber in a nearby concentration camp. I asked what happened. She said that the gas did not work that day. That incident was the first eye-opener for me. I then tried to do as much as possible for the people in the displaced persons camps as I could. One such occurrence was when my parents sent me a telegram that my first cousin, Leopold Popowsky, survived and was in Feldafing camp. My first attempt to pick him up was unsuccessful, but a week later I got him to live with me, supplied him with clothes and a job, and a year later had him come to New York.

  EVIDENTLY, MY PARENTS DID NOT ANTICIPATE the war or the attempted annihilation by Hitler of the Jews in Europe. If they had, they would have made more thorough attempts to leave Germany earlier. We should have been bright enough to know that Hitler would not stop with Austria and Czechoslovakia. Besides us, 95 percent of the people who thought about it did not expect the war either. Neither did most Americans, except when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor.

  When that despicable act happened, a sort of kinship was felt between refugees from Europe and the American public. We were now in the same boat.

  In May and June 1945, shortly after the war had ended, two important things happened: I was appointed second lieutenant, and I received the Bronze Star medal for meritorious service. I continued work in Seventh Army headquarters in the beautiful city of Heidelberg, where for once the U.S. Army had planned it right. They knew that the Seventh Army headquarters were going to be in Heidelberg, so they did not bomb the city. By February 1946, Congress prevailed on the armed forces to reduce their overblown military might. In the process I was shipped home and discharged. I could have stayed in the reserve and did so, but after a few months it became too boring. I was anxious to make a fresh start.

  I also had an offer from one of my colonels, Colonel Radam, to join the CIA, which had been formed not long before and where he had a commanding voice. He had me come to Washington and tried to sell me on the good life in the new organization. Fortunately, I made the decision to “serve” with a nice religious civilian community in Washington Heights, New York, where my parents had moved from the Bronx during the war—a very good decision that would become apparent many times in my life. I met my future wife at a weekly gathering of our Youth Group in Washington Heights. At first I was cowed by her father, Joseph Breuer, who was the founding rabbi of our congregation and the grandson of the famous Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, a formidable man to know. We were married in 1950.

  My thought about my time in the military is this: I never would have been called if I didn’t volunteer. It may sound trite, but the army made a man out of me—to become independent, to think, to lead, and to communicate with people, which is a great advantage in life. Most people who have been in the army have a little bit extra. And I also served my country.

  After the war Jerry Bechhofer went into the computer processing business and developed and installed integrated computer systems for companies in the New York and New Jersey areas. He passed away at the age of eighty-six, shortly before this book went to press.

  Chapter 3

  ADELYN BONIN

  BERLIN, GERMANY

  502 Mechanized Ambulance Corps Auxiliary Territorial Service, British Eighth Army North Africa and European Theater of Operations

  Adelyn Bonin was the oldest daughter of Otto and Lilli Bonin. She left Berlin alone in 1937 for Palestine (where the photograph above was taken), then a British Mandate. When the war broke out, she enlisted in the Auxiliary Territorial Service, the women’s branch of the British Army, and saw action as an ambulance driver during the battle for El Alamein.

  After the German surrender in North Africa, her unit, the 502 Mechanized Ambulance Corps, Auxiliary Territorial Service, British Eighth Army, was deployed to Italy and then stationed in Rome before moving up to Austria for occupational duty. In Gratz, the Red Cross informed her that her parents had been deported to Auschwitz, where they perished in 1943.

  When Hitler became chancellor in 1933, I just thought it was the most wonderful thing. My classmates and I all ran around the streets and said, “Heil Hitler!” I bought myself a swastika and put it on my coat. That evening when I came home, my father saw the swastika and said, “We have to have a long talk.” And he told me that I was Jewish.

  I had been baptized a Lutheran, so at first reaction, the news was devastating. My second reaction was: I’ve got to find out what it is to be Jewish. I had no idea. I didn’t know what a Jew was, so I made it my business to learn, but there were no Jews in my neighborhood or in my class.

  I was in my very early teens when the law was passed that you had to leave school if you were non-Aryan o
r Jewish. Then I occupied myself more and more with the idea of what it meant to be Jewish. I met with a famous rabbi in Berlin, learned about Judaism, and soon joined a Zionist youth organization. In Germany, I wasn’t wanted; I was told I was inferior. On the other hand, Zionism told me nothing of that. It spoke of hope, a future. It was something that any young person really would embrace at that time. I wanted to leave and go to Israel, which was Palestine back then.

  All of this I had to do much against my father’s will. He thought Hitler would be over in a few months and what I was doing was terrible. But I finally said, “What do you have to offer me here?”

  Finally, my father said, “Okay, you can go.” So I went with a youth movement, Aliyah, and promised to come back after two years—but of course there was no coming back.

  I spent my first two years at a kibbutz and I didn’t like the life at all. I was small, not very strong, and didn’t take to growing oranges or working in a vineyard. I did not see a future for myself there.

  It was shortly after I arrived in Tel Aviv that I saw the first posters: “Join the British Army.” Since Palestine was a British Mandate and Great Britain was at war with Germany, it didn’t take long before I volunteered. I was accepted in the British Army’s Women’s Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS) at the beginning of 1942.

  First of all, every girl wanted to be the girl on the recruitment poster in a beautiful uniform driving a car. That was just the height of my ambition. I wanted to be a driver, but I knew that everyone else would want this too. So, before I joined up, although I didn’t have very much money, I said, I’m going to a driving school. I learned to drive a car, and then I thought, Well, I’d better learn how to double clutch and drive a truck, too.

  After about a week of ATS training in Sarafan, they said, “Who wants to be a driver?” Of the five hundred there, three hundred raised their hands. Then they asked, “Who has a license?” That put it down to about three. Then they said, “Can anybody double clutch and drive a truck?” I was the only girl with her hand raised.

  I became a camp driver. About four weeks later, my officer asked me, “Bonin, do you speak English?”

  Well, I didn’t speak very much, but I knew enough to understand that, so I said, “Yes.”

  She asked, “Do you want to be an ambulance driver? They do frontline duty.”

  “Yes, yes! That’s what I want!” I told her that I spoke English fluently, so they sent me along with three or four English girls to this British outfit, the 502 Mechanized Ambulance Corps, ATS, part of the British Eighth Army in Alexandria.

  Then life changed completely because I was no longer in a training camp. We were encamped the way the English used to live in India in the time of the great British Empire, with servants and everything. The British are a different race, I think. Everything is different about them. So, I learned English very quickly and adopted a high-class British accent. Mixed with my German, it must have sounded very strange to anyone who might have heard me. The other British soldiers knew that I was German, but it didn’t bother them. Funnily enough, my roommate was from Czechoslovakia, and we both spoke German to one another and it seemed to go unnoticed.

  Alexandria was only about thirty miles from the front, and we were bombed every night; as Rommel came closer and closer, we started to push at El Alemein in the western desert. The British won the first battle and that turned the tables for the first time; it was actually the turning point because the British made a stand.

  There were some Palestinian girls in Egypt, but none of them were at the frontline. There was only our unit, with three or four British girls. Our unit’s job was to get to the line in our field ambulances and bring the wounded back to the big hospitals where they could be treated. The ambulances were built for four, but we could actually fit five stretcher cases.

  Combat was scary, but when you’re young, you think nothing can happen to you, and all you want to do is see and experience new things. Also, we didn’t have time to be scared. I would call combat “organized chaos.” That’s what it was, because I can’t imagine the English ever getting excited about anything. Even as we heard bombs coming over and in front of us, and there were tanks with manned machine guns moving back and forth, at all times it was met with a typical British calmness. Let’s say that the Scottish bagpipes were coming up to the front. The MP would stand there directing them this and that way, and were often right there to show units coming to the front their positions. That was organization.

  Being part of this enormous undertaking, this enormous machine that moves forward, you—in your convoy, in your ambulance—are just like a little wheel. It’s a tremendous feeling. I never doubted even in the worst time of retreat that the British would not win. They were so sure of themselves.

  Of course, we saw horrible things, like men without limbs, or with stomach wounds, which are the most horrible ones. One time an ambulance was brought in by one of our girls and another driver. As she opened the door—I was standing next to her—a soldier’s head fell out. We saw a lot of bad things, but they happened every day and we really didn’t think very much about it.

  On one occasion, a corporal jumped up on my ambulance, ordered us to put in five stretcher cases, and shouted, “Back to Alexandria,” which was only a few miles away. Moments after we left, there was a sandstorm. It was not for very long, but when it was over, I noticed that the driver in the other ambulance and I were going in opposite directions! Who had turned? What happened? Which way was Alexandria? There were no roads.

  Of course, we didn’t want to let the wounded know that we didn’t know where we were going. We jumped off the ambulance and said, “Let’s take the middle,” which was right between the two frontlines. We heard all of these shells going over us, and we thought something was very, very wrong. So we veered a little to the left, and after about twenty miles—which is already too long with wounded in the back of a very hot ambulance—we finally saw some tents and cars. I thought, Well, this is it. If they are Germans, we have to get these people to a hospital or something.

  Fortunately, they were the Free French. When they saw two women driving up, it was just the greatest stir for them, and they wanted to take us to their mess. I declined, since we had to get back to Alexandria. We came home about four hours late, and there was a big board in the reception room that said we were missing.

  We were not like the ordinary ambulance drivers. We would try to make the guys comfortable, and apparently there was talk that we were so good that we soon developed a reputation. On one occasion, this wounded fellow who was pushed into the ambulance lifted his blanket, looked up, saw me, and said, “Ah, 502. Thank goodness.”

  After Africa, we went to Italy and landed at the very heel. We drove our ambulances to Naples, and then to Rome, where we would be stationed. And we had a very, very good time in Rome. It was still an open city at that point.

  Pope Pius XII gave daily audiences to the Catholic soldiers, and I wanted to see the pope too. Now, the audience was not as it is today. The room was not much bigger than my living room today, with a podium. He stood and greeted us. Since we were the only three or four girls, and we were standing there in the front line, he came to us first and began to bless us. I was just about to kneel, because when you’re in Rome you do as the Romans do, but when he saw the Palestine insignia on my lapel, he wouldn’t allow me to kneel. He said to me in Hebrew, “Where are you from, my daughter?”

  I said, “I was born in Germany.”

  He began speaking in German to me, and I was just flabbergasted. Here he was, speaking Hebrew and German. Finally he said, “I hope you and your family will be united soon.” I thought that was very nice, so I thought a lot about that pope for many years. Since then, I have heard other things about him, and I don’t think so much about him anymore.

  I couldn’t write to my parents anymore because the war was on, and so I bought my first diary book the moment I joined up. I thought, I can’t write letters to them but I ca
n write the diary, so when I see them, they can read everything that happened to me. When I was in Italy, I started saving all kinds of underwear, pajamas, and all the other things you can get in the hospital, because I wanted to give them to my parents when I saw them. The more we moved north, the more I thought the day was coming when I would see them—but I never did see them again.

  At the end of 1944, we were posted outside of Venice, and that was where we met the first camp survivors who began to tell tales, all of which we could not believe. It was impossible. The English were not very forthcoming with news; they knew about the camps, but it was not publicized. By the time we got to Gratz, Austria, I was a sergeant in charge of a platoon. I contacted the Red Cross to try and find out about my parents, uncles, and cousins. It took several months, but then this letter came that said my parents were on this and that transport, and their final destination was Auschwitz.

  I forged on through though. I always found all through my life that work was the best cure for anything.

  I still have an attachment to Germany, in as much as I teach German literature and history, as well as the language, which really has nothing to do with what happened during the war. The Hitler part, and even the war, is a small, small part of German history. German history is really a very glorious history, with fantastic writers. The world can look, and Germany can look, with pride on that which happened before, and with pride again at what has happened since the war. Many of my Jewish friends cannot understand this, and they cannot make peace with it, but I have made peace with it.

  Adelyn Bonin immigrated to the United States in 1947. She returned to school, earning her BA and MA degrees at the University of California and her doctorate at Nova Southeastern University. From 1959 to 1983, she was professor of German at Orange Coast College. Her autobiography, Allegiances, was published in 1993. Bonin now resides in Mission Viejo, California.