Some history should not be forgotten.
I was reading a book the other day (you remember what those are, don't you?) and came across something so stunning, wonderful, heartbreaking that I decided to share it in forums so that it might not remain hidden deep within the pages of a book few ever read.
The book is called 'A Life On The Road', by Charles Kuralt. (Copyright 1990)
Charles Kuralt was a reporter for CBS News and later was the host of a long-running show called 'CBS Sunday Morning'. He has since passed on, but before he left us he wrote several books detailing his experiences being shipped around the world to report stories. If not for him a lot of things would never have been reported.
Have you ever looked at an old person and wondered about their life experiences, what they've done, who they've known, where they've been? Every one of us is an individual story and no two are the same.
Here is one that I thought worthy to tell, from 'A Life On The Road'. It is the true story of an old soldier. Though we may fight as soldiers for our own countries, no matter what, we are all still humans of the very same kind.
The Dentist
I went back to the Soviet Union in May 1988. Sometimes - once in a great while - a story on television actually brings people together, and touched them, and helps make their lives whole. I watched this happen that spring. The man who made it happen was a retired Russian dentist.
I carry around in my head memories of hundreds of people I have met in these years of wandering. The memory of this one man haunts me. Hardly a day goes by that I don't think of Nikita Zakaravich Aseyev.
He was a stocky old bulldog of a man who barged into the hotel where I was staying in Moscow while I helped out with coverage of the Reagan-Gorbachev summit meeting. The hotel, the gigantic Rossiya which looms behind Red Square, was closed to Soviet citizens that week. All comings and goings were regulated by KGB men at the doors wearing red armbands inscribed "I am here to help you." "Pals," the wry Muscovites call these grim-faced guards. Those of us who had rooms and temporary offices in the hotel - mostly American and Western European reporters - wore credentials on chains around their our necks to get us into the building past the Pals. Dr. Aseyev got in on his medals.
He wore his World War II medals on the lapels of his suit coat, as do many old soldiers in the Soviet Union. When the KGB men stopped him at the front door of the Rossiya, an aquaintance of mine happened to be there watching. He reported that the old man erupted in indignation.
He thundered, "What do you mean I cannot enter? You children, you pups! You have the gall to tell a veteran of the Great Patriotic War he cannot pass into a common hotel lobby?"
He slapped the place over his heart where his medals hung.
"Where were you?", he demanded of the young chief of the guard detail, who had come striding over to see what the shouting was about. "Where were you when I received these honors for helping repel the fascist hordes from our precious motherland?"
His voice rose even louder as he theatrically answered his own question. "Cowering in a safe corner, a child who never heard the guns!" he roared. "Or suckling at your mother's breast!"
The KGB men looked at one another with resignation. The chief of the detail started to speak, but the old man interrupted him.
"Where were you when the Gestapo gave me this?" he shouted, pointing dramatically to a deep scar in his skull over his right eye.
A little crowd of Western reporters was beginning to gather. The raving old man poked the KGB chief in the chest with a stubby finger.
"Where were you?" he roared at the top of his lungs. He jutted out his old sguare chin and paused for a reply.
The KGB man shrugged. Without a word, he unhooked the chain that barred the door and stood aside.
The old man marched into the lobby of the Rossiya Hotel looking satisfied, his medals swinging from his chest.
He approached the first person in his path and demanded to see a representative of American television. "CBS, third floor," he was told.
Minutes later, he showed up in the CBS News offices, a chunky, obviously unofficial character ranting in Russian, insisting that he be heard. As it happened, everybody in the place was busily preoccupied, preparing for coverage of what seemed more important at the time: the final meeting of the week between the President of the United States and the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. A young assistant, a Russian-speaking foreign student at Moscow's Pushkin Institute who had been hired by CBS for the week of summit duty, took the old man iunto a vacant room in order to get him out of the hall, calm him down and get rid of him. The student listened to a few minutes of what seemed to be a carefully rehearsed speech, explained that everybody was too busy to hear his story at the moment, walked the old man back down to the hotel lobby and sent him home in a CBS-hired taxi - but only after making a solemn promise that a reporter from CBS News would see him the next morning.
And that is how it happened that the next morning, I went for a walk in a park with Dr. Nikita Zakaravich Aseyev.
He wore his medals. He carried a alking stick in one hand and a worn shiopping bag in the other. The tail of his sport shirt hung out over his trousers, which did not match his suit coat. We were accompanied by an interpreter, but Dr. Aseyev kept forgetting to wait for his words to be out into English. He was in a great rush to say what he had to say.
"You have to help me," he said. "You are my hope. Everybody lives in hope, you know, and I am no different. For more than forty years, I have waited for this chance, and now it has come."
He shifted his cane to the hand that held the shopping bag and grasped my arm.
"You can speak to America, is this not true?" he asked, and went on before I could answer. "You must help me find some Americans I knew during the war. I have to thank them for saving my life and the lives of many other Russian soldiers.
We sat dwon on a park bench. He pointed to the scar on his forehead.
"A memory of the Gestapo," he said. "Not a very happy memory. I have another in the sdie of my body."
He cleared his throat and began:
"We were all prisoners of the Germans at a big concentration camp at Furstenberg on teh Oder River. There were eight thousand American soldiers there, captured in North Africa. The camp was laid out this way."
With his cane, he drew a map on the ground in front of the bench.
"Here the town...here the river and the railroad tracks...here the camp, Stalag 3-B. The Gestapo barracks were here, near the gate," he said, "here the French prisoners, the Polish, the Yugoslav, the partisans." He indicated each compound by drawing large rectangles in the dirt. "Here," he said, drawing the largest enclosure of all, "the Russians. And next to us," he said, finishing his map, "just across the wire fence - the Americans."
"Nearly every Friday, the Americans each received a five-kilo food parcel from the Red Cross. But the Germans gave us only one liter of turnip soup per day, and one liter of water. It wasn't enough to keep us alive. We were dying by the tens, and then the hundreds. The Americans could see this. Twenty-five thousand men died in that concentration camp..."
His eyes looked past me for a moment, into the distance.
"I could tell you many stories about those who died,' he said softly. He paused, still looking away. Then, abruptly, returning to me, "But that is not what I am here to do. It's the Americans I want to talk about, you see."
"In all the camp, I was the only dentist. Every living person, can, of course get sick, and the Germans permitted me to treat the Americans. There was no dental surgery. I just accepted patients in an ordinary chair, even when I had to perform complicated operations. I treated hundreds of American soldiers, and I believe there were never any complications afterwards, even in such conditions as perhaps you can imagine. I was the only Russian permitted any contact with the Americans, and the Americans respected me. All eight thousand of them knew me, or had heard about me, and understood that I was a very good specialist, and they held me in respect."
"One day, after I had been there about a year, two American brothers named Wowczuk, Michael and Peter, and a third American whose name I forget, spoke to me about conditions in the Russian compound. These brothers I knew by now. They were from Chicago, workers in the stockyards, and I understood already that they were very good people. We were alone in the room that was the dental clinic. This was the beginning of the things I want to tell you. The brothers Wowczuk and this other, whose name I cannot remember, proposed a plot by which the Americans would smuggle food to the Russians. They told me that not only three of them, but many others of the Americans were willing to participate. I instantly agreed. That is how it all started."
"Wasn't this dangerous?' I asked.
Dr. Aseyev threw up his hands. "Oh, of course!" he exclaimed. "We would have been shot if they had caught us. Merely to be found outside the barracks at night was a shooting offense, and many men were executed in that camp for much less!"
"How did the Americans get the food to you?"
The old man smiled to remember. "They waited until the sentry had passed at night and threw the parcels over the fence," he said. "The fence was only eight meters high. Those Americans were strong! They could have thrown those things a hundred meters!' he laughed.
"I organized a group on our side to rush out to the fence and retrieve the packages. In one night, we received 1,350 parcels that way."
Dr. Aseyev took my arm again and gripped it tightly.
"Do you realize what I am saying?' he asked me. "This was nearly seven thousand kilos of food in one night! Do you understand what thos food meant on our side of the wire, where men were dying every night of starvation?"
He released my arm. "This went on," he said, "at least one night a week for many months. At least one night a week, the Americans, many different ones, risked their lives to collect food parcels and dash out at night to throw them to us. Not one parcel ever failed to make it across the wire. Not one ever was wasted."
"Why do you think the Americans did this?" I asked.
"Because we were allies," Dr. Aseyev answered. "And because they were good men."
He reached for the old plastic shopping bag lying beside him on the bench and brought out a fuzzy photograph.
"This was a good man, too," he said. "This was a German corporal, one of the guard detail. He stumbled into knowledge of what we were doing almost from the first night. He turned his back and let us continue. He was a soldier of the Wehrmacht, but he did not like seeing enemy soldiers starve. After the war, I wrote to his family and they sent me this portrait of him." He hadned the photograph to me. "I had a copy made yesterday," Dr. Aseyev said. "It is for you to take home to America. With perfect assurance, you may tell people that Corporal Alfred Jung was an exceptional member of the human race."
"What happened to him?" I asked, looking at the unfocused image of a young man in a German Army uniform.
"The day the plot was finally discovered," Dr. Aseyev said, "they took him out and guillotined him."
He set the shopping bag back on the bench.
"What else do you have there?" I asked.
"I will show you presently," Dr. Aseyev said. "But now I want to tell you about the behavior of the Americans when the plot was discovered.
"All eight thousand American prisoners were assembled on the parade grounds in a great semicircle. This was late in May 1944. It was a hot day. Four SS officers went down the line of them saying to each one, 'GIve us the name of the Russian who organized this plot.' For three hours in the sun, with nothing to drink, the Americans stood in absolute silence. They stood there with clenched lips. The German officers threatened them with severe reprisal. They stood in silence. Not one word was spoken. Not one American gave teh name of the Russian Dr. Aseyev.
"Finally, to bring the thing to an end, the brothers Wowczuk, Peter and Michael, stepped forward. 'We did it,' they said. 'The whole thing was our idea.' A squad of German soldiers seized them, and the two brothers were driven out of the camp in a closed truck. Later, I learned that they were taken to another camp, a place for special punishment, where they were questioned every day for four months by the Gestapo - and the Gestapo was the Gestapo, you know! I was afraid for them, but I had no fear for myself. I knew Michael and Peter would never reveal my name, and they did not."
Dr. Aseyev smiled and lowered his voice. "Later, we were all moved to a different camp,' he said, "and do you know - I found Michael and Peter there. And within a few days, we had organized the plot all over again!"
He beamed triumphantly, and started rummaging around again in his shopping bag.
"After the war," he said, "I wrote dwon the names of those Americans so I would never forget them." He showed me a carbon copy of a document of several pages, typed in Cyrillic characters and dated September 1, 1949.
"This is for you," he said. "It is the only extra copy, so do not lose it. It tells the names of the Americans and what I remember about them. For now, I will tell you the n ames only."
Gravely, he began to read.
"Wowczuk, Michael.
"Wowckzuk, Peter.
"Oh,' he said, "Bennett! I just thought of Bennett. He isn;t on the list. He was on his deathbed and I did an operation on him. I didn't know his first name."
"Jarema, William. He was from New York.
"Harold Symmonds. He was from Mississippi. He lived on that famous river of yours.
"Walhaug, Lloyd. He was a farmer from Illinois.
"Emil Vierling, thirty years old, also a farmer.
"Gut. He was a medic.
"Gasprich. How I loved Gasprich!"
He looked up from the paper in his hand to say emotionally, "What good men they were! What good men they all were!"
He took out a handkerchief and wiped his eyes. "I loved these guys," he said. He continued reading:
"Brockman. Doctor. Captain. I will tell you more about Brockman...
"Dr. Hughes. He was a good friend.
"Dr. Amrich."
I sat on a park bench in Moscow listening to these American names being pronounced in a Russian accent. I knew I was hearing a roll call of heros.
"There were others not written down here," Dr. Asseyev said. "They all took part in smuggling food. I remember Rossbridge, Tossi, Snow - from California, I think - Mangelomani, Audeni..."
He leaned forward and said to me, "There were four if us Russian doctors in the camp who took an oath one night that after the war we would find a way to thank these Americans. You see, I am getting old now. This is my chance.
"Now, because of you," he said, "if these guys are still alive they will know I remember - this dentist who loved them, and whom they did not betray."
He stopped. He exhaled deeply, handed me the list of names and slumped back on the bench. After forty-three years, Nikita Zakaravich Aseyev had just fulfilled an oath.
I invited him to lunch at the Rossiya Hotel. The KGB men stood aside as we entered, not wishing to tangle with him again. At the lunch table, where we wrre joined by CBS News producer Peter Schweitzer and others, Dr. Aseyev produced more keepsakes from his shopping bag.
"Oh," he said, "oh...These are my darlings, my treasures!"
There were photographs of the abandoned camp, clipped from a Soviet newspaper after the war. There were snapshots of the Russian medical doctors who had survived the ordeal of Stalag 3-B with him. There were more medals, wrapped in tissue. Finally, there was a crude cigarette case made of hammered tin.
"Late in the war," said Dr. Aseyev, "Dr. Brockman, who was a gentleman, and with whom I had many long and searching conversations, left the camp. He and some others learned they had been exchanged for German prisoners. Before he left, he came to me and gave me this. It was the only thing he had to give me."
Into the top of the case was scratched the inscription "To N. Z. Aseyev from Sidney Brockman, Captain, U.S. Army."
After lunch, I walked Dr. Aseyev to the taxi that would take him home.
"I know you will not fail me," he said.
I extended my hand, but he didn't take it. Instead, he gave me a rigorous military salute, stepped into the taxi with his cane and shopping bag, and shut the door. As he was driven away, he looked back, and I said goodbye to him on the only way that was now possible. I stood at attention in my best imitation of the form I learned once in the Army Reserves, and returned the salute.
The next morning, June 4, I left Moscow for London by Aeroflot jet, carrying in my hand an orange CBS News shipping bag with the word 'URGENT" printed on it in red capital letters. The bag contained the videotape cassettes of Dr. Aseyev's story. All our news shipments are labelled "URGENT." This one, I felt, really was. On arrival in London, I went straight to the CBS News offices in Knightsbridge, where Al Balisky was waiting for me in an editing room. As we sat with the door closed screening the cassettes, I noticed Al's eyes growing moist.
"Imagine," he said gruffly. "The old guy remembered all these years."
Then, without saying anything more, he began the hard job of editing Dr. Aseyev's story into a form that would fit the stringent time requirements of that night's Evening News. Once more, on tape, Dr. Aseyev recalled the names.
"Wowczuk...Symmonds...Jarema...Brockman..."
"Listen to these names back there in America,' I said. "If your name is on this list, an old soldier is saying thank you."
Watching the news that night, William Jarema, retired New York City police detective, felt tears spring to his eyes. "It was a different kind of weeping," he explained a few days later, still unable to speak without choking up. "These are tears of joy. We were like brothers. I thought he was dead."
Dr. Sidney Brockman, retired from the San Antonio, Texas, Health Department, also wept that night. "We were all very close to Dr. Aseyev," he explained later. "We all had tremendous respect for the man, because we knew the Russian prisoners were having things mighty rough.
"In the wintertime, when the Russian prisoners died in their barracks, their comrads did not report their death to the Germans. They brought them out and stood them up for roll call so that their bodies would be counted for rations."
He took out a handkerchief, just as Dr. Aseyev had done on the park bench, and dabbed at his eyes.
"How could we not try to help them?" he asked.
But to risk his own life for them?
"It was all part of the game," Dr. Brockman said. "We had all risked our lives to begin with or we wouldn't have been in that place. What was one more risk?"
He said, "Look, I have not believed in being a professional prisoner of war. What happened is done with. I want to forget it if I can." Against his will, he started to weep again.
"But I can't," he said. He paused for a while to collect himself.
"I appreciate Dr. Aseyev remembering me. I have never forgotten him. What more can I say?"
He got up, went to a cedar chest in a hall closet, and after a time found what he was looking for. "I keep it in here where it's safe and where I don't have to look at it very often," he said. "I took it with me when I left the camp. It's about the only thing I've kept from the war."
It was a cigarette case fashioned of scrap wood, patiently handmade. He opened the case and shook a small metal plaque into his hands.
The plaque read: "To Sidney Brockman from N.Z. Aseyev."
The typewritten pages Dr. Aseyev entrusted to me on the park bench, when translated, give further details of the sacrifice and heroism that ennobled a miserable place once known as Stalag 3-B. Whe he wrote these notes in 1949, they were meant only as a memorandum to himself, insurance against forgetting some of the men he had vowed never to forget. But as I read his unadorned recital of bravery and brotherhood in a dark time, I could not help thinking of his notes as a message to the world.
"It was a terrific operation," William Jarema said. "Terrific. We were repaid many times by our feeling of satisfaction, knowing we helped people in need.
"See, when you're starving, it is an awful feeling, your stomach tightens up on you. People don't know how it feels. If you've ever been starving yourself, you can't walk away from a person who's starving. We were all in trouble in that camp, and we did everything we could to help one another."
He thought about it for a minute and said, "There ought to be more of that in the world today."
The book is called 'A Life On The Road', by Charles Kuralt. (Copyright 1990)
Charles Kuralt was a reporter for CBS News and later was the host of a long-running show called 'CBS Sunday Morning'. He has since passed on, but before he left us he wrote several books detailing his experiences being shipped around the world to report stories. If not for him a lot of things would never have been reported.
Have you ever looked at an old person and wondered about their life experiences, what they've done, who they've known, where they've been? Every one of us is an individual story and no two are the same.
Here is one that I thought worthy to tell, from 'A Life On The Road'. It is the true story of an old soldier. Though we may fight as soldiers for our own countries, no matter what, we are all still humans of the very same kind.
The Dentist
I went back to the Soviet Union in May 1988. Sometimes - once in a great while - a story on television actually brings people together, and touched them, and helps make their lives whole. I watched this happen that spring. The man who made it happen was a retired Russian dentist.
I carry around in my head memories of hundreds of people I have met in these years of wandering. The memory of this one man haunts me. Hardly a day goes by that I don't think of Nikita Zakaravich Aseyev.
He was a stocky old bulldog of a man who barged into the hotel where I was staying in Moscow while I helped out with coverage of the Reagan-Gorbachev summit meeting. The hotel, the gigantic Rossiya which looms behind Red Square, was closed to Soviet citizens that week. All comings and goings were regulated by KGB men at the doors wearing red armbands inscribed "I am here to help you." "Pals," the wry Muscovites call these grim-faced guards. Those of us who had rooms and temporary offices in the hotel - mostly American and Western European reporters - wore credentials on chains around their our necks to get us into the building past the Pals. Dr. Aseyev got in on his medals.
He wore his World War II medals on the lapels of his suit coat, as do many old soldiers in the Soviet Union. When the KGB men stopped him at the front door of the Rossiya, an aquaintance of mine happened to be there watching. He reported that the old man erupted in indignation.
He thundered, "What do you mean I cannot enter? You children, you pups! You have the gall to tell a veteran of the Great Patriotic War he cannot pass into a common hotel lobby?"
He slapped the place over his heart where his medals hung.
"Where were you?", he demanded of the young chief of the guard detail, who had come striding over to see what the shouting was about. "Where were you when I received these honors for helping repel the fascist hordes from our precious motherland?"
His voice rose even louder as he theatrically answered his own question. "Cowering in a safe corner, a child who never heard the guns!" he roared. "Or suckling at your mother's breast!"
The KGB men looked at one another with resignation. The chief of the detail started to speak, but the old man interrupted him.
"Where were you when the Gestapo gave me this?" he shouted, pointing dramatically to a deep scar in his skull over his right eye.
A little crowd of Western reporters was beginning to gather. The raving old man poked the KGB chief in the chest with a stubby finger.
"Where were you?" he roared at the top of his lungs. He jutted out his old sguare chin and paused for a reply.
The KGB man shrugged. Without a word, he unhooked the chain that barred the door and stood aside.
The old man marched into the lobby of the Rossiya Hotel looking satisfied, his medals swinging from his chest.
He approached the first person in his path and demanded to see a representative of American television. "CBS, third floor," he was told.
Minutes later, he showed up in the CBS News offices, a chunky, obviously unofficial character ranting in Russian, insisting that he be heard. As it happened, everybody in the place was busily preoccupied, preparing for coverage of what seemed more important at the time: the final meeting of the week between the President of the United States and the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. A young assistant, a Russian-speaking foreign student at Moscow's Pushkin Institute who had been hired by CBS for the week of summit duty, took the old man iunto a vacant room in order to get him out of the hall, calm him down and get rid of him. The student listened to a few minutes of what seemed to be a carefully rehearsed speech, explained that everybody was too busy to hear his story at the moment, walked the old man back down to the hotel lobby and sent him home in a CBS-hired taxi - but only after making a solemn promise that a reporter from CBS News would see him the next morning.
And that is how it happened that the next morning, I went for a walk in a park with Dr. Nikita Zakaravich Aseyev.
He wore his medals. He carried a alking stick in one hand and a worn shiopping bag in the other. The tail of his sport shirt hung out over his trousers, which did not match his suit coat. We were accompanied by an interpreter, but Dr. Aseyev kept forgetting to wait for his words to be out into English. He was in a great rush to say what he had to say.
"You have to help me," he said. "You are my hope. Everybody lives in hope, you know, and I am no different. For more than forty years, I have waited for this chance, and now it has come."
He shifted his cane to the hand that held the shopping bag and grasped my arm.
"You can speak to America, is this not true?" he asked, and went on before I could answer. "You must help me find some Americans I knew during the war. I have to thank them for saving my life and the lives of many other Russian soldiers.
We sat dwon on a park bench. He pointed to the scar on his forehead.
"A memory of the Gestapo," he said. "Not a very happy memory. I have another in the sdie of my body."
He cleared his throat and began:
"We were all prisoners of the Germans at a big concentration camp at Furstenberg on teh Oder River. There were eight thousand American soldiers there, captured in North Africa. The camp was laid out this way."
With his cane, he drew a map on the ground in front of the bench.
"Here the town...here the river and the railroad tracks...here the camp, Stalag 3-B. The Gestapo barracks were here, near the gate," he said, "here the French prisoners, the Polish, the Yugoslav, the partisans." He indicated each compound by drawing large rectangles in the dirt. "Here," he said, drawing the largest enclosure of all, "the Russians. And next to us," he said, finishing his map, "just across the wire fence - the Americans."
"Nearly every Friday, the Americans each received a five-kilo food parcel from the Red Cross. But the Germans gave us only one liter of turnip soup per day, and one liter of water. It wasn't enough to keep us alive. We were dying by the tens, and then the hundreds. The Americans could see this. Twenty-five thousand men died in that concentration camp..."
His eyes looked past me for a moment, into the distance.
"I could tell you many stories about those who died,' he said softly. He paused, still looking away. Then, abruptly, returning to me, "But that is not what I am here to do. It's the Americans I want to talk about, you see."
"In all the camp, I was the only dentist. Every living person, can, of course get sick, and the Germans permitted me to treat the Americans. There was no dental surgery. I just accepted patients in an ordinary chair, even when I had to perform complicated operations. I treated hundreds of American soldiers, and I believe there were never any complications afterwards, even in such conditions as perhaps you can imagine. I was the only Russian permitted any contact with the Americans, and the Americans respected me. All eight thousand of them knew me, or had heard about me, and understood that I was a very good specialist, and they held me in respect."
"One day, after I had been there about a year, two American brothers named Wowczuk, Michael and Peter, and a third American whose name I forget, spoke to me about conditions in the Russian compound. These brothers I knew by now. They were from Chicago, workers in the stockyards, and I understood already that they were very good people. We were alone in the room that was the dental clinic. This was the beginning of the things I want to tell you. The brothers Wowczuk and this other, whose name I cannot remember, proposed a plot by which the Americans would smuggle food to the Russians. They told me that not only three of them, but many others of the Americans were willing to participate. I instantly agreed. That is how it all started."
"Wasn't this dangerous?' I asked.
Dr. Aseyev threw up his hands. "Oh, of course!" he exclaimed. "We would have been shot if they had caught us. Merely to be found outside the barracks at night was a shooting offense, and many men were executed in that camp for much less!"
"How did the Americans get the food to you?"
The old man smiled to remember. "They waited until the sentry had passed at night and threw the parcels over the fence," he said. "The fence was only eight meters high. Those Americans were strong! They could have thrown those things a hundred meters!' he laughed.
"I organized a group on our side to rush out to the fence and retrieve the packages. In one night, we received 1,350 parcels that way."
Dr. Aseyev took my arm again and gripped it tightly.
"Do you realize what I am saying?' he asked me. "This was nearly seven thousand kilos of food in one night! Do you understand what thos food meant on our side of the wire, where men were dying every night of starvation?"
He released my arm. "This went on," he said, "at least one night a week for many months. At least one night a week, the Americans, many different ones, risked their lives to collect food parcels and dash out at night to throw them to us. Not one parcel ever failed to make it across the wire. Not one ever was wasted."
"Why do you think the Americans did this?" I asked.
"Because we were allies," Dr. Aseyev answered. "And because they were good men."
He reached for the old plastic shopping bag lying beside him on the bench and brought out a fuzzy photograph.
"This was a good man, too," he said. "This was a German corporal, one of the guard detail. He stumbled into knowledge of what we were doing almost from the first night. He turned his back and let us continue. He was a soldier of the Wehrmacht, but he did not like seeing enemy soldiers starve. After the war, I wrote to his family and they sent me this portrait of him." He hadned the photograph to me. "I had a copy made yesterday," Dr. Aseyev said. "It is for you to take home to America. With perfect assurance, you may tell people that Corporal Alfred Jung was an exceptional member of the human race."
"What happened to him?" I asked, looking at the unfocused image of a young man in a German Army uniform.
"The day the plot was finally discovered," Dr. Aseyev said, "they took him out and guillotined him."
He set the shopping bag back on the bench.
"What else do you have there?" I asked.
"I will show you presently," Dr. Aseyev said. "But now I want to tell you about the behavior of the Americans when the plot was discovered.
"All eight thousand American prisoners were assembled on the parade grounds in a great semicircle. This was late in May 1944. It was a hot day. Four SS officers went down the line of them saying to each one, 'GIve us the name of the Russian who organized this plot.' For three hours in the sun, with nothing to drink, the Americans stood in absolute silence. They stood there with clenched lips. The German officers threatened them with severe reprisal. They stood in silence. Not one word was spoken. Not one American gave teh name of the Russian Dr. Aseyev.
"Finally, to bring the thing to an end, the brothers Wowczuk, Peter and Michael, stepped forward. 'We did it,' they said. 'The whole thing was our idea.' A squad of German soldiers seized them, and the two brothers were driven out of the camp in a closed truck. Later, I learned that they were taken to another camp, a place for special punishment, where they were questioned every day for four months by the Gestapo - and the Gestapo was the Gestapo, you know! I was afraid for them, but I had no fear for myself. I knew Michael and Peter would never reveal my name, and they did not."
Dr. Aseyev smiled and lowered his voice. "Later, we were all moved to a different camp,' he said, "and do you know - I found Michael and Peter there. And within a few days, we had organized the plot all over again!"
He beamed triumphantly, and started rummaging around again in his shopping bag.
"After the war," he said, "I wrote dwon the names of those Americans so I would never forget them." He showed me a carbon copy of a document of several pages, typed in Cyrillic characters and dated September 1, 1949.
"This is for you," he said. "It is the only extra copy, so do not lose it. It tells the names of the Americans and what I remember about them. For now, I will tell you the n ames only."
Gravely, he began to read.
"Wowczuk, Michael.
"Wowckzuk, Peter.
"Oh,' he said, "Bennett! I just thought of Bennett. He isn;t on the list. He was on his deathbed and I did an operation on him. I didn't know his first name."
"Jarema, William. He was from New York.
"Harold Symmonds. He was from Mississippi. He lived on that famous river of yours.
"Walhaug, Lloyd. He was a farmer from Illinois.
"Emil Vierling, thirty years old, also a farmer.
"Gut. He was a medic.
"Gasprich. How I loved Gasprich!"
He looked up from the paper in his hand to say emotionally, "What good men they were! What good men they all were!"
He took out a handkerchief and wiped his eyes. "I loved these guys," he said. He continued reading:
"Brockman. Doctor. Captain. I will tell you more about Brockman...
"Dr. Hughes. He was a good friend.
"Dr. Amrich."
I sat on a park bench in Moscow listening to these American names being pronounced in a Russian accent. I knew I was hearing a roll call of heros.
"There were others not written down here," Dr. Asseyev said. "They all took part in smuggling food. I remember Rossbridge, Tossi, Snow - from California, I think - Mangelomani, Audeni..."
He leaned forward and said to me, "There were four if us Russian doctors in the camp who took an oath one night that after the war we would find a way to thank these Americans. You see, I am getting old now. This is my chance.
"Now, because of you," he said, "if these guys are still alive they will know I remember - this dentist who loved them, and whom they did not betray."
He stopped. He exhaled deeply, handed me the list of names and slumped back on the bench. After forty-three years, Nikita Zakaravich Aseyev had just fulfilled an oath.
I invited him to lunch at the Rossiya Hotel. The KGB men stood aside as we entered, not wishing to tangle with him again. At the lunch table, where we wrre joined by CBS News producer Peter Schweitzer and others, Dr. Aseyev produced more keepsakes from his shopping bag.
"Oh," he said, "oh...These are my darlings, my treasures!"
There were photographs of the abandoned camp, clipped from a Soviet newspaper after the war. There were snapshots of the Russian medical doctors who had survived the ordeal of Stalag 3-B with him. There were more medals, wrapped in tissue. Finally, there was a crude cigarette case made of hammered tin.
"Late in the war," said Dr. Aseyev, "Dr. Brockman, who was a gentleman, and with whom I had many long and searching conversations, left the camp. He and some others learned they had been exchanged for German prisoners. Before he left, he came to me and gave me this. It was the only thing he had to give me."
Into the top of the case was scratched the inscription "To N. Z. Aseyev from Sidney Brockman, Captain, U.S. Army."
After lunch, I walked Dr. Aseyev to the taxi that would take him home.
"I know you will not fail me," he said.
I extended my hand, but he didn't take it. Instead, he gave me a rigorous military salute, stepped into the taxi with his cane and shopping bag, and shut the door. As he was driven away, he looked back, and I said goodbye to him on the only way that was now possible. I stood at attention in my best imitation of the form I learned once in the Army Reserves, and returned the salute.
The next morning, June 4, I left Moscow for London by Aeroflot jet, carrying in my hand an orange CBS News shipping bag with the word 'URGENT" printed on it in red capital letters. The bag contained the videotape cassettes of Dr. Aseyev's story. All our news shipments are labelled "URGENT." This one, I felt, really was. On arrival in London, I went straight to the CBS News offices in Knightsbridge, where Al Balisky was waiting for me in an editing room. As we sat with the door closed screening the cassettes, I noticed Al's eyes growing moist.
"Imagine," he said gruffly. "The old guy remembered all these years."
Then, without saying anything more, he began the hard job of editing Dr. Aseyev's story into a form that would fit the stringent time requirements of that night's Evening News. Once more, on tape, Dr. Aseyev recalled the names.
"Wowczuk...Symmonds...Jarema...Brockman..."
"Listen to these names back there in America,' I said. "If your name is on this list, an old soldier is saying thank you."
Watching the news that night, William Jarema, retired New York City police detective, felt tears spring to his eyes. "It was a different kind of weeping," he explained a few days later, still unable to speak without choking up. "These are tears of joy. We were like brothers. I thought he was dead."
Dr. Sidney Brockman, retired from the San Antonio, Texas, Health Department, also wept that night. "We were all very close to Dr. Aseyev," he explained later. "We all had tremendous respect for the man, because we knew the Russian prisoners were having things mighty rough.
"In the wintertime, when the Russian prisoners died in their barracks, their comrads did not report their death to the Germans. They brought them out and stood them up for roll call so that their bodies would be counted for rations."
He took out a handkerchief, just as Dr. Aseyev had done on the park bench, and dabbed at his eyes.
"How could we not try to help them?" he asked.
But to risk his own life for them?
"It was all part of the game," Dr. Brockman said. "We had all risked our lives to begin with or we wouldn't have been in that place. What was one more risk?"
He said, "Look, I have not believed in being a professional prisoner of war. What happened is done with. I want to forget it if I can." Against his will, he started to weep again.
"But I can't," he said. He paused for a while to collect himself.
"I appreciate Dr. Aseyev remembering me. I have never forgotten him. What more can I say?"
He got up, went to a cedar chest in a hall closet, and after a time found what he was looking for. "I keep it in here where it's safe and where I don't have to look at it very often," he said. "I took it with me when I left the camp. It's about the only thing I've kept from the war."
It was a cigarette case fashioned of scrap wood, patiently handmade. He opened the case and shook a small metal plaque into his hands.
The plaque read: "To Sidney Brockman from N.Z. Aseyev."
The typewritten pages Dr. Aseyev entrusted to me on the park bench, when translated, give further details of the sacrifice and heroism that ennobled a miserable place once known as Stalag 3-B. Whe he wrote these notes in 1949, they were meant only as a memorandum to himself, insurance against forgetting some of the men he had vowed never to forget. But as I read his unadorned recital of bravery and brotherhood in a dark time, I could not help thinking of his notes as a message to the world.
AMERICAN ANTI-FASCIST PRISONERS OF WAR,
MEMBERS OF THE UNDERGROUND IN THE CONCENTRATION CAMP 3-B
IN THE TOWN OF FURSTENBERG-ON-ODER, 1942-1945, GERMANY.
1. Michael Wowczuk. Senior sergeant. 25-30 years old, bond, native of the town of Chicago, former worker at a slaughterhouse...active member of the underground...organizer of help to our prisoners of war and to our partisans. Continually informed me about the situation on the Soviet-German fronts...In the American blocks, there were two radios under the platforms in barracks 13 and 15. Michael Wowczuk continually organized collection of food parcels...
2. Peter Wowczuk. Brother of Michael. 35 years. Blond. Was always with Michael. He helped Michael in all undertakings to organize more food provisions for our prisoners. He also obtained English leaflets, translated them into Russian, and passed them to me in the American medical unit. He also actively helped Michael in collecting food parcels for Soviet partisans in May, 1944. He also was imprisoned with Michael together with a third whose surname I have forgotten in a prison in Frankfurt-on-Oder. There they were convicted by a fascist tribunal. The Germans were seeking the name of the Russian Communist who helped organize food parcels for the Soviet partisans. Neither they nor the other 8,000 American POW's gave me up as the organizer, though the Gestapo sought me for four months. The brothers Wowczuk and the third person during four months in the prison were subjected to interrogations, but did not give my name and thus saved me from death at the hands of the Gestapo.
3. William Jarema. 25-30. Blond. Native of the town of New York. Formerly a New York courier. A remarkable and warmhearted person. Active member of the underground. Constant companion of the Wowczuk brothers. Constant organizer amongst the Americans of collecting food parcels for Soviet prisoners of war and also for our long-suffering tormented partisans.
4. Harold Symmonds. 20-25. Blond. Senior sergeant. Medic with the American infirmary with whom I had a close relationship, especially when I worked in their infirmary where there was not even a dentist's chair for the dentist. So Harold Symmonds always stood behind an ordinary chair and held the had of the patient as if he were a headrest, and also helped me in my specialist work where necessary...
He always said that such a war as the fascists had conducted against all countries would not happen again, that Marshal Stalin would come to an agreement with our President Roosevelt and that then there would be no war.
Harold Symmonds was from the town of Mississippi. His house was on the banks of the river. He studied in a technical college for three years, but since he didn't have enough money to continue studying, he was forced to take out a contract with the Army for two years. Then the war started and he was sent to Africa, either to Tunis or Algiers. I don't remember very well, but as I understand they were captured in the fortress of Tobruk, taken captive by Rommel's army, and ended up with us.
Symmonds was a good antifascist underground member for more than three years, and when we were liberated from captivity in the town of Luckenwald in April 1945 by the tanks, Symmonds came to our meeting and seeing me, ran to embrace me. He took me in both arms and wept for joy that both he and I were alive. In all my life, I can't remember such tears, especially from a young man, such as those wept by my dear friend, my American savior, and all of them. 8,000 men, were my saviors when they stood on the parade ground in May, 1944, in a semicircle before the head of the Gestapo, Krautzer, who expected that one of them would step forward and say who was the organizer of the collection of food parcels for the Russian partisans. but no one gave the name of the Russian Dr. Aseyev.
5. Lloyd Walhaug. American medic...Walhaug was 20-25 years old, a farmer from the state of Illinois...Loved to joke, very communicative, helped in every way the Soviet POW's, especially in throwing food parcels over the wire barricade...He continually told the Americans that the Russians were good people and that they were suffering from starvation, being driven to hard labor and being brough home dead from work. He would say, "Why, why, why? It is not their fault that the Germans don't feed them but force them to work, beat them and kill them." Lloyd Walhaug in Luckenwald in Camp 3-A obtained for our underground, I do not know how, much medication and many bandages, three liters of iodine, 500 bandages, 300 vials of 2% novocaine..."
6. Emil Vierling. A farmer with a lettuce plantation from the state of Iowa. He was an active underground member, often threw materials from the infirmary courtyard over the wire barrier. Next door to the infirmary was the general camp bath area in which worked 17 of our Soviet doctors who were assigned to this wash area with great difficulty through the fascist Dr. Kruger who agreed to the doctors being taken away from heavy work on the railway and uprooting tree stumps in the forest. It was necessary to save the doctors by feeding them and this was achieved. The bath area was common to all foreigners...The American medics collected food, packed it all in bags and kept it in the infirmary stores and upon my direction, the American medics threw the bags to our doctors in the wash area under the cover of darkness...
7. Gut. Medic of the American infirmary. An American of Spanish origin, 20-25 years, brunet, a quiet type, rarely entered into conversation...but helped to collect food parcels in the infirmary...and threw food sacks to our doctors. I remember [Gut's parcels being picked up by] the surgeon from the town of Voronezh, Nikolai Alekseevich Petrov...But in general, I remember hazily.
8. Gasprich. A huge man, 35, blonde, from New York, one of the organizers of the collection of food parcels...After we were moved to Concentration Camp 3-A, he became representative of the American Red Cross. In Camp 3-A in February, 1945, he learned that I also had arrived and came to visit me. Michael and Peter Wowczuk, William Jarema, Gasprich and I organized amongst the Americans the collection of 800 5-kilogram parcels which were conveyed to our block in the first days of April. This helped to put a stop to the recruitment of our starving people into Vlasov's criminal plot. [A scheme by which Russian prisoners were offered normal rations and release from the camp in return for joining the German Army and fighting on the German side.] The attempt collapsed and burst liek a soap bubble. In this way, the Americans helped me fulfill the tasks set by the underground group opposing fascism in Camp 3-A. The head of the underground unit was Pilot Captain Victor Ivanovich Yuschenko.
9. Brockman. Doctor, Captain, blonde...He was very communicative and related to me very well. He always greeted me in the infrimary with some chocolate and invariably opened a golden cigarette case and said, "Please, Doctor, have a smoke." He said that he was apolitical, although I didn't ask about that. He put questions to me such as, "Tell me, Doctor, is it true that in Russia when a child is born it is taken from it's mother?" I asked him where he got that idea. He said that's what they write in American newspapers. I said to him that a newspaper is just a bit of paper and you can write any nonsense you like on it, but if you want the truth I'll tell you. This conversation took place in the presence of my convoy, Alfred Jung, who brought me to visit Brockman at his invitation, illegally, under cover of darkness. I told Brockman that we have nurseries, thousands of them, and if any mother decides to work in industry or anywhere else, then she can leave her child in a nursery and after work collect her child and take it home. We have thousands of nurseries in the USSR!
Brockman looked hard at me and listened attentively. Then raising both hands, he said loudly, "Very good, Doctor. We don't have that in America!"
As far as politics was concerned, of course, he was a gentleman with a batman like a baron. He treated me to good food that night, even omelet with sausage. Before the convoy left, having turned out the light in the corridor, Brockman entrusted to me one food parcel and another one to his batman, and having said good-bye, we left with the two parcels by the camp road and the convoy took me back to the Soviet block and returned with the batman.
10. Hughes. Doctor, captain, blond, perhaps 35 years old. A fine person. He sympathized with the Soviet POW's whom the Germans treated so cruelly. "Why?" he always asked me. What could I answer to his why? Especially since I knew where I was and amongst whom. So I always answered I don't know. Dr. Hughes gave the Soviet POW's much food from his personal supply. He would say to me, "I would like you to accept for the Russian prisoners..."
Dr. Hughes was killed when the town of Brandenburg was bombed by American aviation, along with the Yugoslav Doctor Rado Savlevich Manchino. He also was a fine person.
11. Amrich. Doctor, captain, brunet from New York. I did not know this person well. He always kept to himself, talked little. On rare occasions, he spoke to me in English, Once in the American infirmary, I stood by the window and looked at the forest, which was situated not far way to the east of the infirmary. Dr. Amrich came up to me and said, "Tell me, Doctor, is it true that in Kiev at Babi Yar the Germans shot 90,000 Jews?" I answered that this was a fact, that I personally in September, 1941, talked with people who were there. Amrich burst into tears and I could not get him to calm down. Oh no, I thought, now I am in trouble. Amrich will tell the Germans and I'll get a bullet in the head. But everything turned out all right. Amrich calmed down. He was Jew.
N. Aseyev
1 September, 1949.
I did my best to deliver Dr. Aseyev's message of gratitude and remembrance to all those on his list. I found that some have died,among them the brave brothers Wowczuk. One or two find the memory of Stalag 3-B so painful that they refuse to discuss it, even now, even on the telephone. In spite of a diligent search by the Military Field Branch of the Department of Defense and by the Center of Military History in Washington, several remain unaccounted for. By recent act of Congress, World War II prisoners of war have been awarded decorations, years after their imprisonment. So far as I know, none of the heros of Stalag 3-B has ever been honored for what he did there, except in the memory of an aging Russian dentist.IN THE TOWN OF FURSTENBERG-ON-ODER, 1942-1945, GERMANY.
1. Michael Wowczuk. Senior sergeant. 25-30 years old, bond, native of the town of Chicago, former worker at a slaughterhouse...active member of the underground...organizer of help to our prisoners of war and to our partisans. Continually informed me about the situation on the Soviet-German fronts...In the American blocks, there were two radios under the platforms in barracks 13 and 15. Michael Wowczuk continually organized collection of food parcels...
2. Peter Wowczuk. Brother of Michael. 35 years. Blond. Was always with Michael. He helped Michael in all undertakings to organize more food provisions for our prisoners. He also obtained English leaflets, translated them into Russian, and passed them to me in the American medical unit. He also actively helped Michael in collecting food parcels for Soviet partisans in May, 1944. He also was imprisoned with Michael together with a third whose surname I have forgotten in a prison in Frankfurt-on-Oder. There they were convicted by a fascist tribunal. The Germans were seeking the name of the Russian Communist who helped organize food parcels for the Soviet partisans. Neither they nor the other 8,000 American POW's gave me up as the organizer, though the Gestapo sought me for four months. The brothers Wowczuk and the third person during four months in the prison were subjected to interrogations, but did not give my name and thus saved me from death at the hands of the Gestapo.
3. William Jarema. 25-30. Blond. Native of the town of New York. Formerly a New York courier. A remarkable and warmhearted person. Active member of the underground. Constant companion of the Wowczuk brothers. Constant organizer amongst the Americans of collecting food parcels for Soviet prisoners of war and also for our long-suffering tormented partisans.
4. Harold Symmonds. 20-25. Blond. Senior sergeant. Medic with the American infirmary with whom I had a close relationship, especially when I worked in their infirmary where there was not even a dentist's chair for the dentist. So Harold Symmonds always stood behind an ordinary chair and held the had of the patient as if he were a headrest, and also helped me in my specialist work where necessary...
He always said that such a war as the fascists had conducted against all countries would not happen again, that Marshal Stalin would come to an agreement with our President Roosevelt and that then there would be no war.
Harold Symmonds was from the town of Mississippi. His house was on the banks of the river. He studied in a technical college for three years, but since he didn't have enough money to continue studying, he was forced to take out a contract with the Army for two years. Then the war started and he was sent to Africa, either to Tunis or Algiers. I don't remember very well, but as I understand they were captured in the fortress of Tobruk, taken captive by Rommel's army, and ended up with us.
Symmonds was a good antifascist underground member for more than three years, and when we were liberated from captivity in the town of Luckenwald in April 1945 by the tanks, Symmonds came to our meeting and seeing me, ran to embrace me. He took me in both arms and wept for joy that both he and I were alive. In all my life, I can't remember such tears, especially from a young man, such as those wept by my dear friend, my American savior, and all of them. 8,000 men, were my saviors when they stood on the parade ground in May, 1944, in a semicircle before the head of the Gestapo, Krautzer, who expected that one of them would step forward and say who was the organizer of the collection of food parcels for the Russian partisans. but no one gave the name of the Russian Dr. Aseyev.
5. Lloyd Walhaug. American medic...Walhaug was 20-25 years old, a farmer from the state of Illinois...Loved to joke, very communicative, helped in every way the Soviet POW's, especially in throwing food parcels over the wire barricade...He continually told the Americans that the Russians were good people and that they were suffering from starvation, being driven to hard labor and being brough home dead from work. He would say, "Why, why, why? It is not their fault that the Germans don't feed them but force them to work, beat them and kill them." Lloyd Walhaug in Luckenwald in Camp 3-A obtained for our underground, I do not know how, much medication and many bandages, three liters of iodine, 500 bandages, 300 vials of 2% novocaine..."
6. Emil Vierling. A farmer with a lettuce plantation from the state of Iowa. He was an active underground member, often threw materials from the infirmary courtyard over the wire barrier. Next door to the infirmary was the general camp bath area in which worked 17 of our Soviet doctors who were assigned to this wash area with great difficulty through the fascist Dr. Kruger who agreed to the doctors being taken away from heavy work on the railway and uprooting tree stumps in the forest. It was necessary to save the doctors by feeding them and this was achieved. The bath area was common to all foreigners...The American medics collected food, packed it all in bags and kept it in the infirmary stores and upon my direction, the American medics threw the bags to our doctors in the wash area under the cover of darkness...
7. Gut. Medic of the American infirmary. An American of Spanish origin, 20-25 years, brunet, a quiet type, rarely entered into conversation...but helped to collect food parcels in the infirmary...and threw food sacks to our doctors. I remember [Gut's parcels being picked up by] the surgeon from the town of Voronezh, Nikolai Alekseevich Petrov...But in general, I remember hazily.
8. Gasprich. A huge man, 35, blonde, from New York, one of the organizers of the collection of food parcels...After we were moved to Concentration Camp 3-A, he became representative of the American Red Cross. In Camp 3-A in February, 1945, he learned that I also had arrived and came to visit me. Michael and Peter Wowczuk, William Jarema, Gasprich and I organized amongst the Americans the collection of 800 5-kilogram parcels which were conveyed to our block in the first days of April. This helped to put a stop to the recruitment of our starving people into Vlasov's criminal plot. [A scheme by which Russian prisoners were offered normal rations and release from the camp in return for joining the German Army and fighting on the German side.] The attempt collapsed and burst liek a soap bubble. In this way, the Americans helped me fulfill the tasks set by the underground group opposing fascism in Camp 3-A. The head of the underground unit was Pilot Captain Victor Ivanovich Yuschenko.
9. Brockman. Doctor, Captain, blonde...He was very communicative and related to me very well. He always greeted me in the infrimary with some chocolate and invariably opened a golden cigarette case and said, "Please, Doctor, have a smoke." He said that he was apolitical, although I didn't ask about that. He put questions to me such as, "Tell me, Doctor, is it true that in Russia when a child is born it is taken from it's mother?" I asked him where he got that idea. He said that's what they write in American newspapers. I said to him that a newspaper is just a bit of paper and you can write any nonsense you like on it, but if you want the truth I'll tell you. This conversation took place in the presence of my convoy, Alfred Jung, who brought me to visit Brockman at his invitation, illegally, under cover of darkness. I told Brockman that we have nurseries, thousands of them, and if any mother decides to work in industry or anywhere else, then she can leave her child in a nursery and after work collect her child and take it home. We have thousands of nurseries in the USSR!
Brockman looked hard at me and listened attentively. Then raising both hands, he said loudly, "Very good, Doctor. We don't have that in America!"
As far as politics was concerned, of course, he was a gentleman with a batman like a baron. He treated me to good food that night, even omelet with sausage. Before the convoy left, having turned out the light in the corridor, Brockman entrusted to me one food parcel and another one to his batman, and having said good-bye, we left with the two parcels by the camp road and the convoy took me back to the Soviet block and returned with the batman.
10. Hughes. Doctor, captain, blond, perhaps 35 years old. A fine person. He sympathized with the Soviet POW's whom the Germans treated so cruelly. "Why?" he always asked me. What could I answer to his why? Especially since I knew where I was and amongst whom. So I always answered I don't know. Dr. Hughes gave the Soviet POW's much food from his personal supply. He would say to me, "I would like you to accept for the Russian prisoners..."
Dr. Hughes was killed when the town of Brandenburg was bombed by American aviation, along with the Yugoslav Doctor Rado Savlevich Manchino. He also was a fine person.
11. Amrich. Doctor, captain, brunet from New York. I did not know this person well. He always kept to himself, talked little. On rare occasions, he spoke to me in English, Once in the American infirmary, I stood by the window and looked at the forest, which was situated not far way to the east of the infirmary. Dr. Amrich came up to me and said, "Tell me, Doctor, is it true that in Kiev at Babi Yar the Germans shot 90,000 Jews?" I answered that this was a fact, that I personally in September, 1941, talked with people who were there. Amrich burst into tears and I could not get him to calm down. Oh no, I thought, now I am in trouble. Amrich will tell the Germans and I'll get a bullet in the head. But everything turned out all right. Amrich calmed down. He was Jew.
N. Aseyev
1 September, 1949.
"It was a terrific operation," William Jarema said. "Terrific. We were repaid many times by our feeling of satisfaction, knowing we helped people in need.
"See, when you're starving, it is an awful feeling, your stomach tightens up on you. People don't know how it feels. If you've ever been starving yourself, you can't walk away from a person who's starving. We were all in trouble in that camp, and we did everything we could to help one another."
He thought about it for a minute and said, "There ought to be more of that in the world today."
I
Sal
When the Roads and Paths end, learn to guide yourself through the wilderness
Beyond the Path
Sal
When the Roads and Paths end, learn to guide yourself through the wilderness
Beyond the Path
Tons of FREE Public Domain content you can use to make your own content, PLR, digital and POD products.
Free Training for SEO Providers in the United States - https://happyseoclients.com/happy-seo-clients-training/
Tons of FREE Public Domain content you can use to make your own content, PLR, digital and POD products.
We can all do our part
Candle fundraiser|Non-profit fundraising
Non-profit fundraiser