Today’s story is the miraculous account of how the Norwegian’s saved their gold reserves from the Nazis and spirited them out of the country right under the enemy’s noses. If the Germans had obtained these reserves, they would have gained more wealth to supply their war machine.
Although Norway was neutral during WWII, Nicolai Rygg, the director of Norges Bank where the nation’s gold reserves resided, made preparations in case Norway should fall or a crisis develop. Early in 1940, Rygg brought in volunteers to pack bars of gold in white painted boxes and seal them with iron bands. Bags of gold coins were packed in smaller kegs. Of the 421 million Krone stored in the bank, 300 million was shipped to the United States. The rest was left in the vault because Norwegian law did not allow all the gold to be removed from the country at one time.
After Rygg learned that German warships were headed up the Oslo Fjord on April 9th, Rygg contacted General Laake, the Commander-in-Chief of military forces, who ordered Rygg to immediately evacuate the gold to the bank in Lillehammer. Moments later, Rygg learned that the Germans already occupied major cities but hadn’t reached Oslo (the sinking of the Blücher kept the Germans from seizing the capital for an extra eight hours).
Norges Bank at Oslo 1906-1986. Courtesy of Norges Bank.
Twenty-six trucks were chartered from local merchants, and the drivers were directed to the side entrance of the bank but were not informed about what they would be carrying. Bank guards were placed close to the bank to keep inquisitive eyes away, but the military was not used in order to avoid drawing attention to the operation. The bank employees loaded the gold.
Each truck, along with two armed bank guards, drove away immediately after loading so there was no convoy to draw the attention of the Luftwaffe. The first truck left at 8:15 AM and the last truck shortly before 1:30 PM. German soldiers marched down the main street of Oslo at exactly the same time, and the Norwegian commander of the Oslo garrison surrendered the city at 2:00 PM at the Akershus Fort, only a couple hundred yards from Norges Bank.
A Gold Bar from the Norges Bank. Courtesy of Norges Bank.
The gold shipment totaled 818 large crates, 685 smaller crates, and 39 kegs of gold coins. Lillehammer was 115 miles from Oslo, and the trucks traveled over snow-laden roads. Vehicles and pedestrians fleeing the capital slowed down the trucks, and people became angry because the trucks didn’t stop to help them. The last truck arrived at the bank in Lillehammer at 8:00 PM.
The bank employees in Lillehammer tucked the gold away in their vault; however, they could only unload the cargo when the Luftwaffe wasn’t flying over them. The media picked up on the activity and broadcast that trucks of gold were arriving in Lillehammer. A Trondheim newspaper also reported on the shipment, but the Germans did not pick up on the reports. The Royal Family, the Norwegian government, and the Norwegian gold had escaped for the time being!
The gold remained at Lillehammer for ten days while the Norwegians barricaded the roads and kept the Germans from advancing. Rygg checked on the gold twice and on the second trip, he asked the bank manager, Andreas Lund, to memorize the numbers to the vault lock. Frequent bombing raids forced the bank to close and wait to reopen until the planes disappeared.
Norges Bank at Lillehammer. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons – Public Domain
On April 14th, 15 German transport planes dropped about 180 lightly armed paratroopers in the Dombås area, northwest of Lillehammer. They were spread over a wide area, and the Norwegian troops successfully killed or captured them over a five-day period. This kept the railway lines to the north and the west coast open.
In the mean time, it became obvious that the Germans could overtake Lillehammer at any time. Oscar Torp, the Norwegian Minister of Finance, tasked Fredrik Haslund, Secretary of the Labour Party, with transporting the gold from Lillehammer to the port of Åndalsnes where the British Royal Navy could take it safely away. On April 17th, the British—determined to assist the Norwegians in ousting the Germans—had landed a large number of troops and equipment at three Norwegian ports—Harstad, Namsos, and Åndalsnes.
United States Military Academy Dept. of History – Courtesy of Wikipedia – Public Domain
At midnight on April 19th, orders came to open the bank vault door. Unfortunately due to fear and anxiety, Lund had a difficult time getting the lock to the brand new vault open—it had only been opened once before and Lund was operating by memory. He finally succeeded with the code a little past 1:00 AM.
Haslund had recruited the Lillehammer chief of police who assembled 30 volunteers who met at a secret location at 10:00 PM. They were armed with spades and shovels so they would appear to be preparing to dig trenches. Instead they were quietly transported to the bank and loaded the trucks which took the gold to the railway station, a short distance away. The gold was loaded onto the wooden railcars. A small group of soldiers was ordered to accompany the train, but the men weren’t told what they were guarding. They soon figured out the contents because of the Norges Bank initials displayed on the outside of each container.
Lillehammer Train Station. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons – Public Domain
The train left Lillehammer at 4:00 AM with its lights dimmed in case any Luftwaffe aircraft flew over. When dawn approached, the bullion train stopped at Otta and pulled onto a siding to wait for a safer time to proceed. Later, a train arrived at Otta Station from the north with three carriages full of British soldiers who had their thumbs in the air. The Norwegians were encouraged. Little did they know what dangers lay ahead.
The gold train sat undetected on a railroad siding in Otta. It didn’t run during the day because the German bombers loved to target anything moving. After a twenty-four-hour wait, the gold train left at 10:00 PM and arrived at the port town of Åndalsnes at 4:30 AM on April 20th.
View of the innermost part of the Romsdalsfjord with Åndalsnes up to the left in the picture. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. Public Domain.
Åndalsnes is located at the head of a fjord – a long narrow inlet which connects to the Norwegian Sea. The British had landed troops and secured Åndalsnes two days before, and at 9:00 AM on the 20th, the Germans commenced bombing the port, the British ships, all transport routes, and the town of approximately 2000 people. In spite of their intelligence, the Germans were not aware of the presence of Norway’s gold, which remained at the station awaiting transportation out by British warship to the United Kingdom.
At 11:00 PM, Fredrik Haslund, the official tasked with conveying the gold out of Norway, sent the gold train to a siding at Romsdalhorn, a few kilometers away. Towering mountains guarded the tiny station, making it a perfect place to hide a train. Due to the constant daytime bombing, a crew of railwaymen worked in twelve-hour shifts to repair the area’s rail lines.
On the night of April 24th, Mr. Haslund ordered the gold train to be brought down to the dock in Andalsnes. Norwegian soldiers loaded 200 boxes of gold onto the HMS Galatea which had just unloaded British troops and equipment. The cruiser carried sixteen tons of the gold along with Norwegian officials to Scotland, and from there, the gold was transported to London and the Bank of England. Thirty-four tons of gold remained in Norway, awaiting transportation to the Allies. If the Nazis took possession, the precious metal would provide a tremendous boost to the enemy’s war chest.
A Modern View of Åndalsnes from the Romsdalsjjord Courtesy of Creative Commons via Wikimedia. Author Ludovic Peron.
The Norwegians expected German soldiers to come up the valley into Åndalsnes at any moment. Only hours remained to move the gold. An army captain obtained twenty-five trucks and drivers, and in two hours’ time, all the gold was removed from the train and loaded on the trucks. The convoy navigated over poorly paved roads that were covered with melting snow and mud. Unfortunately, the Luftwaffe returned to Åndalsnes and attacked the convoy. The soldiers and drivers ran for cover and no one was injured during the forty-five minutes of strafing. The convoy continued its journey, and when the next attack commenced, the drivers sped up. The Germans weren’t successful at hitting their targets. After reaching a ferry crossing, some trucks were hidden and some were camouflaged until dark.
A ferry arrived but could only carry two trucks across the water at a time. It took six hours to convey all the trucks to the other side. Because of deep ruts and potholes caused by the winter weather, the road ahead had to be repaired in places before the convoy could pass through. Trucks broke down and had to be replaced, and the crews became exhausted unloading and reloading the gold. Local farmers utilized their horses and equipment to drag one truck out of a ditch and back onto the road.
Eventually the convey arrived at the port of Molde where the Norwegian Government, King Haakon, and Crown Prince Olav were taking cover. They had arrived on April 23rd, and Molde had essentially become the new capital of Norway. The gold was unloaded into a large vault in the basement of the Confectionsfabriken building (clothing factory) in town.
Confectionsfabriken Building – Molde
The people of Molde were very helpful. They assisted with unloading the gold, providing security, and feeding the exhausted soldiers. But the Germans were intent on capturing or killing the King, Crown Prince, and Government. The Luftwaffe attacked Molde and it’s surroundings with bombs and incendiaries. The townsfolk set off the air-raid alarms as soon as they spotted aircraft, which allowed everyone time to escape to the woods.
On April 28th, the German Government announced that they were at war with Germany and that King Haakon was wanted ‘dead or alive.’ This was no surprise to the king or the Government. The relentless air strikes forced the British to send the cruiser HMS Glasgow to Molde and plans were made to evacuate.
The Germans bombed Molde for the first time at night. With debris littering the roads and fires raging, Norway’s gold was loaded on any available truck and transported to various locations at the harbor. Not all the trucks were immediately able to find a safe path through the destruction.
Before the HMS Glasgow could pull into port, a fire had to be extinguished on the dock. A portion of the gold was carried on board from this dock, and some was ferried by smaller ships from other points and loaded by crane onto the ship. The King, Crown Prince, members of the Norwegian Government, and the French, Danish, and British embassy members and staff joined British soldiers aboard the ship.
The Ruins of Molde – 1940. Courtesy of Flickr. No known copyright restrictions.
After the Germans unsuccessfully attacked the ship, the Glasgow left port and sailed down the fjord in reverse for at least an hour. It was too dangerous to turn around in the fjord at night. Not all of the gold had been loaded and not all of the gold had even made it to the dock before the Glasgow was forced to sail.
Along with the gold, the Glasgow carried King Haakon, Crown Prince Olav, members of the Norwegian Government, and diplomatic officials from Britain, France, and Denmark to the Tromso area in the far north of Norway. From here, the Norwegians hoped to form an offensive against the Germans and drive them out of the country.
Summer Night in Tromso (2012). Photo Credit: Mark Ledingham via Wikimedia Commons
After delivering its precious human cargo, the Glasgow turned south and safely landed the second installment of Norway’s gold in Scotland. Norwegian officials accompanied the shipment by train to London where it was stored in the vault of the Bank of England.
Back in Molde, Fredrik Haslund, the official in charge of rescuing the gold, searched for a way to remove the 18 tons which the Glasgow had been forced to leave behind due to the bombings. While Molde was burning, Haslund loaded eight tons of the gold on the steamer Driva, and the ship set off at 2:00 AM, only one hour after the Glasgow had pulled away.
The Luftwaffe dropped a stick of bombs in the water near the Driva, but she wasn’t damaged. During her trip north she was attacked by a German seaplane, and to avoid being sunk, the Driva’s first mate beached the craft on a flat shoreline. Bombs fell but landed in the sea. As the tide came in, another steamer pulled the Driva back out into the fjord.
Molde Under Attack in 1940 Painting by Rolf Groven
In the meantime, near Molde, Haslund decided the gold should be moved to fishing vessels because the Driva was too much of a target for the Germans. Word was sent to the Driva to rendezvous at the village of Gjemnes. The remaining ten tons of gold was transported by truck to Gjemnes and loaded onto fishing boats (puffers) there. Five hundred and forty-seven boxes of bullion were loaded in the dark, including the gold from the Driva. By this time, Norway’s fight against the Nazis was over in southern Norway but still continued in the far north of the country.
The puffers sailed through the fjords, laying over at coastguard stations and villages but not staying in any one place for long. Unfortunately, the captains of the puffers weren’t comfortable moving into unfamiliar waters farther north along the dangerous coast, and Haslund was forced to find other sources to move the gold to Tromso where the new capitol had been established.
Bodo at the time Haslund visited before it was bombed by the Germans on May 27, 1940. Courtesy of Hundholmen
The gold was again unloaded and reloaded on two different fishing boats. The boats split up but rendezvoused at a small port north of Bodo on May 7th. Hasland left the boat and traveled by car to Bodo where he located the local military commander and learned where the British had placed the minefields in a fjord they must pass through. After safe passage through the fjord, they obtained the services of the commanding officer of a Norwegian guard ship who boarded and piloted them safely to Tromso where they arrived on May 9th.
The gold was combined on one of the puffers, and that boat went out to sea with the other fishing boats each day. On May 21st, the gold was loaded on the HMSEnterprise, a Royal Navy cruiser. The Luftwaffe had previously attacked the Enterprise with 150 bombs, and she was in poor condition. She left on May 23rd on a zig-zag course for the UK. She was attacked again, but none of the bombs hit their target. The Enterprise traveled down the west coast of England without destroyer protection and docked at Plymouth in the south. The gold was transported by train to London and deposited in the Bank of England.
Expecting a German invasion of Britain at any moment, the Norwegians made plans to move its gold once again. The British had already removed all of its own gold reserves before the war started in September of 1939. The Norwegian precious metal was split into several shipments and sent across the Atlantic to the Federal Reserve Bank in New York and to the Bank of Canada in Ottawa. A small portion of the gold remained with the Norwegian Government-in-Exile established in England. This allowed them to function independently throughout the war.
Source: Gold Run by Robert Pearson. Casemate Publishers, 2015.
The tragedy of Kristallnacht, Night of the Broken Glass, took place in Germany, Austria, and the Nazi-occupied section of Czechoslovakia (Sudetenland) on November 9-10, 1938. The Nazis damaged or destroyed 1000 synagogues and 7500 Jewish businesses, sent 30,000 Jewish men to concentration camps, and beat ninety male Jews to death.
These events shocked the world. However, many countries, including the United States, only permitted a small percentage of Jews to immigrate, regardless of guarantees of financial support from relatives, friends, and acquaintances in those countries.
Shortly after the events of Kristallnacht, a delegation of prominent Jews in England met with Prime Minister Chamberlain and requested that he allow young German children and teenagers to temporarily enter Britain, retrain, and return to their home countries at a later time.
The Jewish representatives were most concerned about teenagers threatened with arrest and those already in concentration camps. Jewish and non-Jewish agencies assured the British Home Secretary that they would meet the financial needs of the refugee children, apart from government funds, and their stay would only be temporary.
As a result, the British government gave permission for unaccompanied refugee children under the age of seventeen years to enter Britain and didn’t announce a limit to the number of children who would be admitted.
The non-Jewish groups consolidated and formed the non-denominational Movement for the Care of Children from Germany (later called the Refugee Children’s Movement, RCM). Agents of the organization traveled to Germany and Austria and set up the selection, processing, and transportation plans.
A representative of the Jewish refugee agencies met with Jewish leaders in Berlin, and volunteers gathered the names of the most threatened children. These included teenagers in danger of arrest or already in concentration camps, children in Jewish orphanages, children whose parents were in concentration camps, children who could no longer be financially supported by their parents, and Polish children or teenagers at risk of deportation.
Through radio broadcasts, the BBC Home Service appealed to the British people to provide foster homes. Five hundred people answered the call. Jewish and non-Jewish volunteers visited the homes of these potential foster parents and reported on their suitability.
Several hundred immigrant applications from Germany arrived in London each week, demonstrating the urgency of the situation. British volunteers processed the applications, many of them working around the clock, grouping the children in lists and sending travel arrangements to the parents and guardians in Germany, Austria, and Czechoslovakia.
The Nazi government only permitted the refugee children to take a small amount of money out of the Reich, but it wasn’t unusual for parents to place valuables in their children’s luggage. Some children were excited about the journey, but others were angry with their parents and felt rejected. Later on, guilt plagued these children for how they had responded.
The first Kindertransport left Berlin on December 1, 1938, and the first transport from Vienna left ten days later. The trains traveled across Germany and into the Netherlands and then Belgium. At the border crossings, German guards terrified the children by looting their baggage. After reaching the coast, they boarded ferries and sailed to either Harwich or Southampton, England. The German adults who had accompanied them returned to Germany as required by arrangements made between England and Germany. One of these adults was later imprisoned in Auschwitz and lost his own wife and child to the gas chambers.
For the first three months, most of the Kindertransports were from Germany, but later the number of transports leaving Austria increased. Nicholas Winton, a twenty-nine-year-old stockbroker from Britain, witnessed the plight of the refuge children in Czechoslovakia and organized Kindertransports from Prague. Many of these children had previously fled with their families from Germany, Austria, or the Sudetenland and were living in squalid refugee camps.
The transports continued after the Germans occupied Czechoslovakia in March of 1939, but they were halted when Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939. Hundreds of children waiting to leave Nazi-occupied territory could no longer escape. Most of them did not survive the war.
Close to ten thousand lives (70% Jewish) were saved through the Kindertransports, but the majority of these children never saw their parents again. Some of the rescued teens eventually joined the Allied armed services and fought to free their homelands from the vicious grip of the Nazis. Many remained in Britain after the war, but others emigrated and settled in various countries around the world.
Source:
Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport by Mark Harris and Deborah Oppenheimer
For the past two months, I’ve posted individual stories about children who fled the Nazis and survived the Holocaust by taking the Kindertransport to England. An earlier post explains how the Kindertransport program was created. If you missed that post and would like to read it, here’s the link: The Kindertransports: Nearly 10,000 Children Rescued from Nazi Territory.
Lory Gruenberger lived a happy childhood with her brother and parents in Breslau, Germany, close to the Polish border. To her doting father, Lory could do no wrong. Mr. Gruenberger, a partially paralyzed WWI veteran, had a flourishing law practice and refused his government disability pension. After the Nazis took power in 1933, they didn’t harass Mr. Gruenberger due to his veteran status.
By 1937, Lory’s parents recognized the rising danger for Jews and searched for a way to leave Germany. They applied for quota numbers to the U.S., but the wait was long. In the meantime, Lory’s aunts in South America sent papers for the family to emigrate there. The Gruenbergers sold their house, bought passage for South America, and shipped all their belongings ahead. Two days before their scheduled departure, the Argentine consulate informed them that Hitler would no longer allow siblings to sponsor each other to emigrate from Germany. They were unable to find a way to leave.
Map Showing Location of Breslau, Germany, near Poland in 1938 Courtesy of Dr. John Heineman – Boston College
The Gruenbergers had money, but very few stores would sell to Jews. They lived in a hotel in Breslau and started over, purchasing what they could. Lory’s brother completed secondary school three years early, and the family sent him to a small university in Czechoslovakia to get him out of Germany. During the summer break, they sent her brother to stay with Lory’s uncle who taught at Cambridge and Oxford in England. He never returned to Germany.
One morning in November, 1938, Lory road the trolley car to school as usual. During the trip, she passed store after store with smashed windows. In the center of town merchandise littered the sidewalks. She realized all the damaged businesses belonged to Jews. After leaving the trolley car, she could only see the top of their synagogue, but she spotted flames shooting from the edifice. She was so frightened, she crossed the street and took the next trolley back home, refusing to look out the windows on the return trip.
Lory arrived home, and the family maid, with tears running down her face, grabbed onto Lory. German officials had just arrested Lory’s father and taken him away ten minutes earlier. Lory’s mother was also distraught. But three or four hours later Mr. Gruenberger returned home in a police car. The Iron Cross belonging to a WWI veteran still provided protection for some Jews.
German WWI Iron Cross (Wikipedia – Public Domain)
Lory applied and was accepted for the Kindertransport. Her father wanted her to go to England, but at the same time he didn’t want her to leave. On the prearranged day, the Gruenbergers boarded the Kindertransport train with Lory and put her suitcase up. Her father lowered her window all the way down so she could lean out of the train – the German passenger trains had very large windows. They hugged and kissed, and Lory’s parents disembarked. While waiting on the platform, her father’s face turned whiter and whiter, and her mother couldn’t hide her suffering.
As the train started to move, Lory’s father asked to hold her hands through the window. Before the train gained speed, Mr. Gruenberger pulled Lory out the window. She fell on the train platform, causing injury and bleeding. Her father was extremely happy to have his little girl back, but Lory was devastated. After arriving home, her father admitted he probably shouldn’t have pulled her off the train, but after losing his son, he didn’t want to live without her.
Mr. Gruenberger chose to believe that nothing would happen to their family and stated as much to Lory and her mother. Lory was no longer allowed to attend school or the movies, but Lory and another Jewish friend decided to defy part of this order. Neither girl looked Jewish, so they removed their yellow stars and went to see Shirley Temple movies. When Lory’s father discovered from the other girl’s parents where she was, he went to the theater with a light and pulled her out. He slapped her, which he had never done before.
Most stores posted signs informing Jews they weren’t allowed to shop in their establishments. When Lory and her mother entered stores where they were welcome, they were greeted with “Heil Hitler.” They responded with “Drei Liter,” which means three liters, and because it sounded so close, no one challenged them.
In 1940, the authorities called women up for forced labor. Lory was fifteen years old and was assigned to clean the streets in another part of Breslau. She wasn’t allowed to ride on the trolley car because she was Jewish, so she had to get up at 4:00 AM and walk by herself in the dark almost 45 minutes to the assembly place. Lory was next assigned to work in a uniform factory where she mended and cleaned dirty uniforms. She did this until close to the end of 1941.
Various judges and lawyers visited Lory’s father and warned him that he and his family would eventually be arrested. The SS came at 4:30 one morning and nearly broke the door down. The Gruenbergers were only allowed to take what they could put on and nothing else. Lory’s father had a very high fever, and he was taken out on a stretcher and loaded on a truck.
Lory and her mother were taken on another truck to the huge yard of a synagogue and, along with hundreds of others, waited outside in the March cold for about two days and nights. They were then taken by truck to the railroad station and loaded into cattle cars. Thirty-five to forty frightened people traveled in the cattle car, in complete darkness, with no food, for two days.
After two days of traveling in the dark cattle car with 35 to 40 people and no food, the guards opened the door and ordered the prisoners to quickly disembark. The daylight blinded their eyes. Lory’s father waited outside the train for Lory and her mother, and he appeared perfectly fine. The prisoners traveled by truck to their final destination—Theresienstadt, a Jewish ghetto in Czechoslovakia. Because of his WWI service, Mr. Gruenberger had been given the opportunity to pay the German government to send him and his family to Theresienstadt, rather than to another camp or ghetto.
Theresienstadt – Prisoners Wait for Food Rations Courtesy of YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, New York & the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Lory and her mother lived in a barrack with 300 other people. They slept on straw mattresses in bunk beds with three people per mattress. Lory’s father lived in a house with older, sickly prisoners.
Lory contracted spinal meningitis and stayed in the camp hospital for four months. The doctors were also prisoners, but they were able to get medicine for her through the Swiss Red Cross.
The Germans “beautified” the ghetto, dressed up the prisoners, and put on a good show for the representatives of the International Red Cross, visiting from Switzerland. Lory performed for them in a children’s choir. After the visit, more prisoners were crowded into Theresienstadt, and it became necessary to sleep in shifts, one group sleeping during the day and the other at night.
Theresienstadt Photo Taken During Red Cross Inspection Courtesy of United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
One day Lory was ordered to report to the railroad station and meet with an SS officer. He informed her she wasn’t going on the transport and sent her back home. This happened four times, and each time she said goodbye to her parents. The fifth time she was called she told the SS officer that she wanted to go. He gave her the chance to back out, but she had made up her mind. He crossed her name off the list and loaded her on a cattle car. Her trip ended at Auschwitz.
Selection of Jews for the Gas Chambers at Auschwitz-Birkenau Courtesy of Yad Vashem & the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
The guards opened the door, and Dr. Josef Mengele stood outside the car with his stick, hollering and cursing at the prisoners. The officers chased the prisoners out of the train, and Lory’s glasses fell off and broke. Since having spinal meningitis, Lory wore glasses to take the pressure off her nerves. Her inner voice told her not to pick up the glasses, and she obeyed. Mengele divided the prisoners, sending those with defects to the left, including those wearing glasses. This group went directly to the gas chambers, but Mengele sent Lory to the right, and she lived.
After a six to eight-week stay at Auschwitz, the Nazis transferred Lori to several different camps—Buchenwald, Dachau, Kurzbach and Gross-Rosen. At the beginning of 1945, she arrived at Bergen-Belsen where people died by the hundreds.
Courtesy of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
One month before Lory’s twentieth birthday, the prisoners hollered and many ran outside. The English Army had arrived to liberate Bergen-Belsen. Lori only weighed fifty-eight pounds and was so weak she could only crawl halfway out on her hands and knees. She lay on the ground and prayed to God. A soldier approached and asked if he could assist her. The liberators wanted to help the inmates and gave them chocolate and chicken soup, but more people died from consuming the rich food.
Survivors & British Soldiers outside Bergen-Belsen Courtesy of United States Holocaust Memorial Museum & Lev Sviridov
Attachments of soldiers from the French, Russian, and American Armies accompanied the British Army when they liberated Bergen-Belsen. They put together lists of the names and nationalities of the internees. Lory was fascinated when an American soldier from Germany spoke to her in German. The soldiers took her to a hospital for treatment, and she was surprised to see many people she knew, even folks from her hometown of Breslau.
One month after liberation, the British soldiers burned the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp to the ground to prevent the spread of Typhus. The survivors were relocated to a former German Army camp nearby.
The British Burn Bergen-Belsen Courtesy of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Lory traveled by bus to Hanover, a city nearby, to register as a survivor. There she found a man who had lived in the same building with her father at Theresienstadt. He recognized her but said she didn’t look too good. He shared that her father was still at Theresienstadt, but her mother had been transported to Auschwitz three months earlier and had gone to the gas chamber. He pointed out a bus driver whose route went to Theresienstadt once a week. Lory spoke with the driver, and he promised to ask about her father on his return trip. Lory wrote her name on a slip of paper so Mr. Gruenberger would see her handwriting and believe the bus driver.
Lory took the bus back to Hanover the day before the Theresienstadt bus was scheduled to return. She didn’t have a watch, so she waited on the street all night long to meet her father’s early morning bus. The bus arrived, but Lory’s father didn’t. The driver had checked on him and learned that he had left on a bus for Berlin two or three days earlier. Lori had no way to travel to Berlin and didn’t know how she would ever find her father.
Bergen-Belsen Displaced Persons Camp Courtesy of United States Holocaust Memorial Museum & Herbert Steinhouse
Lory met two young men who’d been traveling around Germany on foot, looking for family. They had come across a little town in Bavaria that wasn’t damaged, and the officers at the American military installation in charge of the area told the young men they’d be happy to have Jewish people locate there. The fellows asked Lory and her girlfriend to join them, and they traveled for a couple of days, begging for food along the road and sleeping with animals, including pigs, to stay warm.
Lori and her group rode into the Bavarian town on an army truck and were sent to a very nice furnished house. Jewish American soldiers, originally from Germany, brought them food the next morning. One of the soldiers was Walter Cahn, and Lory recognized him as the soldier who had taken her information right after the Bergen-Belsen liberation. She was astounded to see him again.
Walter helped Lory locate her father through the Red Cross and Military Intelligence, but it took eight months. After four more months, her father traveled to see her. They had been apart for four years. Lory was thrilled to receive his hugs and kisses.One year later, in 1947, Lori immigrated to the United States and married Walter Cahn. Over the years she corresponded with her father, but they didn’t see each other again until Lory returned to Germany with her son in 1962. She and her family visited her father two or three more times before he died in 1972.
Lory often pondered what would have happened if her father hadn’t pulled her off the Kindertransport and if she hadn’t been able to help her parents through the tragedy they had faced. She didn’t want to hurt her father, so she never brought the topic up with him. But Lory realized she wouldn’t have a normal, happy life if she hated the Germans. She spent many years speaking at universities, schools, and organizations, encouraging others not to forget what the Germans had done, but not to hate them. Lori had a wonderful, happy marriage to Walter Cahn for sixty-one years. She passed away in 2008.
Lory often pondered what would have happened if her father hadn’t pulled her off the Kindertransport and if she hadn’t been able to help her parents through the tragedy they had faced. She didn’t want to hurt her father, so she never brought the topic up with him. But Lory realized she wouldn’t have a normal, happy life if she hated the Germans. She spent many years speaking at universities, schools, and organizations, encouraging others not to forget what the Germans had done, but not to hate them. Lori had a wonderful, happy marriage to Walter Cahn for sixty-one years. She passed away in 2008.
Source:
Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport by Mark Jonathan Harris and Deborah Oppenheimer. Warner Bros., 2000.
In 1938 and 1939, the British provided homes for nearly ten thousand children and teens from the Nazi occupied countries of Germany, Austria, and Czechoslovakia, saving them from sure death in the ghettos, concentration camps, and gas chambers of WWII Europe. To read how this amazing endeavor began, click on the link to my earlier post: The Kindertransports: Nearly 10,000 Children Rescued from Nazi Territory.
Who were these rescued children and what are their stories?
Jack Hellman lived in the little village of Tann, Germany, population fifteen hundred and eight percent Jewish. His parents owned a general store where they sold feathers and down, piece goods, and ready-to-wear items. Jack’s family observed Jewish holidays, ate strictly kosher meals, and attended the local synagogue faithfully.
Anti-Semitism was evident in the late 1920’s, and it increased with the rise of unemployment in the district where Jack lived. Shortly before Hitler came to power, the SS entered Jack’s home and beat his father unconscious. The Nazis held torchlight parades in Jack’s village. He lay in bed haunted by the shadows flickering across the walls of his room and the marchers’ songs of violence against the Jews.
The local schoolmaster unmercifully beat the Jewish children with a cane, including Jack who managed to receive said discipline at least every other day. Most of Jack’s friends had been non-Jewish, but now they would no longer talk to him or his parents. When he was nine-years-old, a group of boys attacked him, throwing him through a plate-glass window, leaving him with severe cuts. In 1935, after Jack’s sister was also attacked, their parents sent her to live in a large Jewish community in Hamburg, and they sent Jack to live in a children’s home and attend the Philanthropin School in Frankfurt. Ironically, Jack’s Jewish headmaster was just as sadistic as the schoolmaster in Tann.
Boernestrasse Synagogue in Frankfurt on Kristallnacht Courtesy of USHMM
One November morning while riding his bicycle to school in Frankfurt, Jack observed two big synagogues on fire. Every Jewish business he passed had broken windows, had been looted, or merchandise had been deposited in the streets. School was cancelled and he was sent home. A message from Jack’s uncle awaited him—he was to tell his parents who were visiting him not to return home. Their store back in Tann was ruined, their car had been pushed down the hill, and their apartment had been looted and their furniture thrown in the street.
Jack quickly rode his bike to the train station and warned his parents, but they refused to stay in Frankfurt. After arriving home in Tann, Jack’s father was immediately arrested and sent to the Buchenwald Concentration Camp. He wasn’t released until early January.
That evening the Nazis broke the windows of the children’s home and took away the house father and everyone sixteen to sixty-five years of age. Jack was twelve years old and knew he and his family needed to leave Germany as soon as possible. His sister had already emigrated to the United States earlier that year (1938). The rest of the family had received quota numbers and had secured an American who guaranteed they wouldn’t become a burden to the U.S. government, but the number allowed into the country from Germany was so small that they had a five to six-year wait before they could leave.
The daughter of Jack’s house parents wrote to Baron James de Rothschild in England, requesting his assistance. Rothschild sent an emissary to Germany who arranged for the house parents, their children, and twenty-six of the boys in their care to move to England under Rothschild’s sponsorship. They left with the Kindertransport on March 16. Some parents refused to let their boys leave the country without them, but none of the boys who stayed behind survived.
Jack Hellman’s Teddy Bear He Carried on the Kindertransport Courtesy of USHMM
The boys and their house parents lived on the 6000-acre Rothschild estate at Waddesdon. The manor house reminded Jack of a castle he’d seen in pictures. His group lived comfortably in the eight-bedroom servant’s house called the Cedars. The boys played soccer on the lawn the first day they arrived, and the village boys came out to join them. When the villagers left for dinner, they told the newcomers they would see them the next day. Jack was so excited he ran in and told his house mother, ”’Somebody who’s not Jewish wants to see us tomorrow.’”
Jack commenced a campaign to convince his first cousin in London to get his parents out of Germany. The cousin agreed to get visas for Jack’s parents if Jack’s father had a work permit. Jack went to the manor house and personally asked to see Baron Rothschild. Rothschild asked if Jack’s father would be willing to work on the chicken farm, and Jack told him his father would do anything. The Baron went to the local notary, wrote out the work permit, and Jack’s parents soon received permission to enter England.
When they tried to leave Germany on August 30, 1939, only Jack’s mother was allowed across the border because his father didn’t have a “J” for Jew on his passport. Jack’s mother refused to leave without her husband, and together they went to a local bureaucrat. After Jack’s father emptied his pockets, the official corrected the passport. Jack’s parents arrived in Harwich, England, on September 1st, 1939, the day World War II began. Jack was one of the few children from the Kindertransports to ever see his parents again.
Jack found a place for his parents to live—a little six-foot by eight-foot flat with an open stairway. They were more happy and content living in that little flat than Jack remembers them being at any other time in their lives. Jack’s father also enjoyed his job at the chicken farm.
After two years in England, the Hellman’s emigrated to the United States where they were reunited with Jack’s sister and his mother’s brother. Their quota numbers came up much sooner because they moved from England to the U.S. rather than from Germany. Jack went on to become a building contractor in New York City.
Sources:
Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport by Mark Jonathan Harris and Deborah Oppenheimer.
In 1938 and 1939, the British people rescued nearly ten thousand children from the Nazi occupied countries of Germany, Austria, Poland, and Czechoslovakia. The background information can be found in last month’s post – The Kindertransports: Nearly 10,000 Children Rescued from Nazi Territory.
Who were these young people and what are their stories?
Ursula Simon and her family lived in the small town of Quakenbruck in northwest Germany. Her mother sent extra rolls and sandwiches to school for other less fortunate children — those who were hungry because their families didn’t have enough food to feed them. Unfortunately, the recipients grew to resent these acts of charity and the Jews in the town who always had enough to eat.
After the Nazis took power in 1933, anti-Semitism flourished in Quakenbruck. The Simons’ old friends stopped visiting them, isolating the family from the community. Yearly birthday parties were normal in Germany, and Ursula’s mother prepared one for her when she turned eight. Not one child attended. Ursula now understood that she was different from the other children.
Ursula’s father, a loyal, patriotic German, had fought in WWI as a volunteer. He wouldn’t consider emigrating—not from the country he had fought for, not the country to which he belonged. He sincerely felt that the German people would remove the Nazis from power, that the problems were only temporary. But the persecution gradually increased and Mr. Simon had a nervous breakdown. He spent a long period of time in a psychiatric hospital.
Attending school became more and more difficult. Ursula was forced to sit alone in the back corner of the classroom, and the other children threw ink over her work. Her classmates terrorized her during playtime.
On the morning of November 9, 1938, soon after Ursula arrived at school, flames flickered in her classroom window. Fire engulfed a small, ordinary house across the street which served as the local synagogue. The students streamed outside to join the onlookers who clapped, jeered, and shouted. A family lived in one of the downstairs rooms of the synagogue, and their belongings had been thrown out a window into the street. Ursula made it home only to discover that her father had been arrested along with all the Jewish men in their town. They were sent to the Buchenwald concentration camp.
Role Call for Buchenwald Prisoners, Mostly Jews Arrested on Kristallnacht Courtesy of United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
At Buchenwald, the guards took away the men’s shoelaces and braces. When Ursula’s father objected to the treatment of the older people, the officials beat him to death in front of the other prisoners to stamp down further opposition. Ursula’s family learned the truth from men who were later released from Buchenwald.
After the events of November 9th (Kristallnacht), Jewish children were no longer allowed to attend German schools. At the end of November, Ursula’s mother sent her and her sister, Hella, to a Jewish orphanage in Hamburg, Germany. The girls were thirteen and fourteen years old. By the summer of 1939, Ursula and Hella were placed on the list for the Kindertransport. Their mother prepared their clothes and embroidered their names on each item.
The girls had mixed emotions—they wanted to go to England but didn’t want to leave their mother behind in Germany. Even if she could find a position and sponsor in England, their mother needed to stay and take care of the girls’ blind grandmother in Quackenbruck. Mrs. Simon travelled to Hamburg in July of 1939 to send her girls off on the Kindertransport. Normally very controlled, she couldn’t hide the hurt and agony welling up from deep within. Her face contorted with grief as she and the girls parted for the final time.
The Simon sisters and fellow Kindertransport passengers arrived at the Liverpool Street Station in London and were taken across the street to a gym to wait for their foster parents to arrive. Ursula, Hella, and three others did not find homes that day and felt that nobody wanted them. They were sent to a hostel near Kensington to spend the night, and the next morning they were directed to the Refugee Committee in Bloomsbury.
The girls traveled unaccompanied in a country where they couldn’t speak or understand the language. Nevertheless they found their way to the Refugee Committee, and Ursula and Hella were assigned to live with a widow in Sussex. They were given a ticket, but they had to find their way to Sussex on their own. Their luggage was lost and the Committee promised to forward it to them, which they did—three months later. In the meantime, the girls wore one set of clothes and washed their underwear and blouses once a week while wearing a bathing suit their mother had put in their rucksacks.
Kindertransport Children in England Courtesy of United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
The girls arrived at their new home only to discover that their host had expected little girls, and she only had a single bed for them to sleep in. Ursula and Hella were now fourteen and fifteen. The widow was very nice to them but didn’t understand that teenagers needed more food than she did (she had a very small appetite).
She told the girls that the Refugee Committee didn’t pay her enough for them, so they gave the widow the sixpence pocket money the Committee sent each week. Ursula wrote to her mother but wasn’t able to mail all her letters because she couldn’t afford pay the postage. One month later, WWII began, and she could no longer send or receive mail from Germany.
Ursula and Hella attended school in England and loved it. Ursula learned to speak English by devouring books from the school library, and she developed a love for English literature. But the girls desired to be independent. After Hella turned sixteen in November of 1939, she found work in a fever hospital (for those with infectious disease) and earned enough to provide for herself. Ursula attended school for nine months and then apprenticed with a very high-class dressmaking establishment. The Refugee Committee continued to support her, and Hella secretly contributed to Ursula’s rent. She also took evening classes to continue her education.
After the war, Ursula and Hella learned through the Red Cross that their mother had been deported to Minsk, Russia, where she was probably killed. The girls never obtained more information. On June 1, 1946, Ursula married Peter Rosenfeld, a fellow refugee from Germany. They raised four children and made England their permanent home. Ursula’s recorded testimony can be found on YouTube.
Kindertransport Memorial at Liverpool Station. Courtesy of Loco Steve from Bromley, UK in Wikipedia Commons
Resource:
Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport. Mark Jonathan Harris and Deborah Oppenheimer.
What: In a surprise move on the seventeenth day of the German invasion of Poland, the Soviet Union invaded from the east. The Nazis and Soviets had secretly agreed the month before to divide the country. Because the Polish military leadership had ordered the Polish forces not to engage the Soviets, the Red Army advanced rapidly with little opposition.
Problem: Stalin and the NKVD (the secret police and forerunner of the KGB) planned to quickly transform the eastern portion of Poland into a communist society and incorporate it into the USSR, but the educated classes stood in the way.
Lvov, the third largest city in Poland, was under German attack when Soviet troops arrived on September 19, 1939. Polish General Langner rejected German demands to surrender and abdicated to the Soviets instead. The negotiated agreement called for the 30,000 Polish troops in the city to surrender at 15:00 hours on September 22. The agreement allowed the soldiers to return home and the officers to cross the border into Romania or Hungary.
The Polish officers assembled at the designated time and laid down their arms, but the Soviets marched them off and transported them around the country for four days without food or water.
At station stops the soldiers scrounged for roots in unharvested gardens, and strangers thrust food at them. They eventually landed in prison camps to the east.
Polish prisoners of war captured by the Red Army after the Soviet invasion of Poland – Wikipedia
Before the war, the Polish government had required every non-exempt university graduate to join the military reserves. University professors, physicians, lawyers, engineers, teachers, writers, journalists, pilots, and chaplains made up the pool of reservists mobilized when Germany invaded. Those that weren’t captured in the initial surrender were easily rounded up later and transferred into the custody of the NKVD. This included police officers, border guards, landowners, refugees, and a prince.
From October 1939 through February 1940, the soldiers endured lengthy interrogations and constant political agitation in concentration camps established on the former grounds of orthodox monasteries in the western USSR. If the captives resisted the Soviet government, they were condemned to die as enemies of the state.
In March of 1940, Stalin signed the death warrant for over 20,000 officers, soldiers, and civilians. They were secretly shot and buried in mass graves. One such grave site was in Katyn, Russia. Although the captives were executed and buried in various locations, Katyn Forest became the symbol of the atrocity. In all, the NKVD annihilated almost half of the Polish Officer Corp.
Professor Stanislaw Swianiewicz was condemned to die at Katyn, but a NKVD colonel pulled the professor out of line while he waited to board a bus to the execution site. Swianiewicz had studied in Moscow before the Russian Revolution, was an internationally recognized expert on forced labor in Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany, and had written books on the Soviet economy. He was sent to various prisons, interrogated, and eventually incarcerated in Siberia.
Another officer, General Wladyslaw Anders, had commanded a cavalry brigade which had engaged in heavy fighting with the Germans. While fleeing to the Hungarian border in late September of 1939, he and his troops fought the Soviets. He was injured, captured, and eventually sent to prison in Moscow, thus avoiding the same fate as his fellow officers.
The NKVD arrested, tortured and killed thousands of other Poles, Jews, Ukrainians, and Belorussians from 1940 to 1941. Estimates vary among historians, but it’s believed that 300,000 to 1.2 million Poles were deported to Northern Russia, Siberia, and Central Asia during this time period.
Many died in transit or in exile.
After the Germans overran Eastern Poland and attacked the Soviet Union in 1941, the Soviets formed an alliance with Great Britain and the Polish government-in-exile in London. As part of their agreement, Stalin released all surviving Polish prisoners with the understanding that they would assist in the fight against the Nazis.
General Anders was freed and given command of the Polish Army in the east. It was his responsibility to gather and train the recently released Polish prisoners to form the new army. When inquiries were made regarding the whereabouts of the thousands of missing Polish officers, Stalin claimed that he had lost track of them in Manchuria.
Germany uncovered and exposed the Katyn atrocity to the world in 1943. The Soviets denied responsibility, claiming the Germans had killed the soldiers found in the mass graves. The Polish government-in-exile objected, so Stalin broke off relations with them. Great Britain and the United States chose to accept the Soviet explanation of Germany’s guilt rather than rouse the ire of their ally.
General Anders led his freed Polish troops through Iran and Iraq to Palestine where he successfully organized and trained them to fight the Germans. The Anders Army went on to fight in the Italian Campaign, capturing Monte Cassino in 1944. He and his soldiers engaged in other major battles before the war ended. Anders died in London in 1970.
Professor Swianiewicz was released from Siberia, and left the Soviet Union in 1942. He worked with the Polish government-in-exile in London and informed them of the number of Polish officers that were held in the Soviet Union in the spring of 1940. Later he wrote about the Katyn Massacre and lectured at numerous universities around the world. He died near London in 1997 at the age of 97.
The Soviets also released thousands of previously deported Polish civilians, including many women and children who left the Soviet Union with the Anders Army.
It wasn’t until 1990 that Russia admitted responsibility for the massacre and expressed “profound regret” for its actions.
Sources:
Williamson, David G. Poland Betrayed. Stackpole Books, 2007.
Eighty Army Airmen formed the sixteen crews known as the Doolittle Raiders who bombed the Japanese homeland in April of 1942. Many consider this operation to be a turning point in WWII because it boosted the morale of the allies and humbled the Japanese at a time when they had seemed invincible.
After bombing Japan, three of the Raiders died during crash landings and bailouts in China, eight were captured by the Japanese (three were put to death and one died of starvation), five landed in the Soviet Union and were interned until they escaped through the Middle East one year later, and the rest were assisted inland by the Chinese.
So what happened to these airmen after their infamous raid and escape from China?
Pilot Ted Lawson who was severally injured during the crash landing of the Ruptured Duck survived after Doc White of Plane 15 amputated his leg at a remote missionary hospital in China. The Chinese escorted White and Lawson and his other injured crew members to safety, often just ahead of the Japanese pursuing them. Lawson was flown to the United States where surgeons at Walter Reed rebuilt his jaw and performed additional surgery on his leg.
One year later Lawson published Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo, a book about the Doolittle Raid and his experiences in China. A Hollywood movie by the same name was produced and released by MGM in 1944. The black-and-white movie was a hit and won an Oscar and is still available for purchase today. Lawson died at the age of 75.
The Ruptured Duck Logo
When MGM needed a stunt pilot for the movie A Guy Named Joe, the army sent former co-pilot Col. Dean Davenport. Davenport also served as technical adviser during the filming of Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo. He completed his WWII service in Alaska and lived to the age of 81.
Lt.Charles McClure convalesced with Ted Lawson at Walter Reed Hospital and was hospitalized until June of 1943. He became a navigator instructor but retired with a physical disability in June of 1945. He lived to be 82.
Lt. Bob Clever recovered from his head and face injuries from the Ruptured Duck’s crash landing, but was killed on November 20, 1942, the day his flight group departed from Fort Wayne, Indiana. His “airplane spun out climbing up through the clouds.” He was 28.
Sgt. David Thatcher, only 20-years old when he served as gunner on the Ruptured Duck, was the only crew member able to walk after the crash landing. He kept his fellow crewmates alive by tending to their injuries and collecting and giving them rainwater. He was the only Doolittle enlisted man to receive the Silver Star for his gallantry and courage. Thatcher was sent to North Africa and Europe and survived 26 bombing mission. He contracted hepatitis and malaria with ended his military career. He died in 2016 at the age of 94.
Sgt. David Thatcher
Crew Members of the Hari Kari-er
The crew members of the Hari Kari-er bailed out in Japanese controlled territory eighty miles from the coast. Thanks to the help of the Chinese, they each made it safely out of China.
In early June of 1942, Pilot Ross Greening flew back to the states on the same plane with the
Ruptured Duck wounded airmen. Along with many other Raiders he was sent to North Africa later that year, and he was based in Marrakech, Morocco. By July of 1943 he had completed 125 hours of combat, and on July 17th, he took part in a five-hundred-craft run on the Naples, Italy, shipyards.
Greening’s plane was hit by anti-aircraft fire, the cockpit crashed open, and pieces of the plane fell off. The fuselage ripped apart, the plane burst into flames and the men ran to the bomb bay to bail out. The plane was thrown sideways by another burst, and the men were tossed out. Greening floated into the line of fire and “yanked his cords in every direction to” get away. He landed in the smoking crater of Mount Vesuvius and was knocked unconscious. He woke up with his hip out of joint, and the Nazis popped it back in place before carrying him out of the volcano piggyback. Despite his many injuries, he was forced to crawl from a truck to the inside of a jail while an Italian mob spat and threw stones at him.
After Italy surrendered on September 8, 1943, the Wehrmacht loaded the POWs from Greening’s prison on a northbound train. The Allies attacked the train and Greening “was blown out of the carriage by a direct hit, and in the chaos he took off.” He wandered in the mountains for a few days and then hid on a train until he reached Verona. An Italian family who had lived in the U.S. for many years aided him until it became too dangerous.
Greening hid in a cave near Venice with two escaped POWs from New Zealand until a German patrol searching for partisans found them by accident. He spent the rest of the war at Stalag Luft I, 125 miles north of Berlin where 9000 POW aviators were held. Greening “gave the prisoners art lessons and taught them to make their own supplies.” He became commanding officer, and “when the Red Army finally liberated the camp in 1945, the Nazi prison chief surrendered to Greening to spare himself the Soviets’ known brutality.”
Greening’s former co-pilotKen Reddy died in an airplane accident near Little Rock, Arkansas on September 3, 1942, at the age of 22. The three other Hari Kari-er crew members were assigned to the China-India-Burma Theater.
Lt. Kappeler and Sergeant Gardner were sent on a mission from India to bomb Burma and then land in Kunming, China. After they dropped their bombs, “they were immediately attacked by Japanese planes and ducked into the clouds to evade but weren’t familiar with the area’s mountainous terrain.” They tried to cross the hump (the Himalayas) at too low an altitude, and only Lt. Kappeler’s plane, out of the six, made it to China. Sgt. Gardner was killed in action on June 3, 1942 at the age of 22.
Lt. Kappeler survived to fly fifty-three combat missions out of England, France, and Belgium and died in 2010 at the age of 96. After the Doolittle Raid, Bombardier
Second Lt. Bill Birch was sent state-side and participated in War-Bond-selling drives and completed flight training in Texas. As a result of an airplane accident, he spent almost two years in a hospital and didn’t have an opportunity to fly again before the war ended.
After dropping their bombs, all the crews made it safely out of Japan but encountered numerous difficulties later.
3 Raiders died in crash landings and bailouts over China
8 Raiders were captured by the Japanese – 3 went before a firing squad and 1 starved to death
5 Raiders landed in the Soviet Union and were interned – they escaped through the Middle East one year later
64 Raiders were assisted to safety in Free China by Chinese soldiers and civilians
So what happened to the Raiders after they escaped from China?
Plane #1 – Piloted by Jimmy Doolittle
Doolittle Before WWII Public Domain
After spending the summer of 1942 traveling the U.S. on war bond drives, Jimmy Doolittle was appointed commanding general over the 12th Air Force in North Africa under General Eisenhower. In March 1943, Doolittle became commanding general of the North African Strategic Air Forces. On the one-year anniversary of the Tokyo Raid, Doolittle and the other Raiders also serving in North Africa held the first Doolittle Raider reunion.
First Doolittle Raider Reunion – North Africa – 1943
The Japanese notified the U.S. that the eight captured Raiders had been sentenced to death, but some lives had been spared. They refused give names. When the American military released this information, Jimmy Doolittle replied from North Africa that he and his Raiders were ready to go back to Japan and finish the job they had started. The Japanese responded in a radio address from Tokyo. They stated that “Doolittle, commander of the raid on Japan one year ago, failed to do anything, so we have the pleasure of offering him the title of “Did-little'” (The First Heroes).
After pushing the Germans out of Africa, Doolittle went on to command the 15th Air Force in the Mediterranean Theater and the 8th Air Force in Europe and the Pacific. He ended the war as a lieutenant general and reverted to inactive reserve status in May of 1946. He returned to Shell Oil and served as vice president and later director. In 1985, the U.S. Congress promoted Doolittle to full general on the Air Force retired list, and he became the first four-star general in Air Force Reserve history.
Doolittle was married to Josephine, “Joe,” for seventy years, and he lived to the age of 96.
Plane #1 on a Mountain in China – Courtesy of the Smithsonian
After Doolittle’s crew members bailed out over China and located each other on the ground, Doolittle and his gunner, Paul Leonard, visited their destroyed plane at its crash site on a mountainside. Doolittle sat beside his plane and wondered about the fate of the other 75 men and their aircraft. He “felt lower than a frog’s posterior.” This was his first combat mission, and he was sure it would be his last. He told Leonard he expected to be court-martialed and imprisoned at Fort Leavenworth. At the very least, he “would sit out the war flying a desk.” Leonard disagreed and predicted that Doolittle would be promoted to general, be given a new plane, and receive the Medal of Honor. Leonard was correct on all three counts (The First Heroes).
Leonard was so impressed with Doolittle that he asked to fly as Doolittle’s crew chief on his next mission. Doolittle agreed, and Leonard went with him to North Africa. When Doolittle was called away from the airfield for a meeting with the ground commanders at Youks-les-Bains, Algeria, he left Leonard to look after their airplane. The Germans bombed the airfield that night, and Leonard manned the top turret machine gun until the batteries ran out. He then took refuge in a nearby bomb crater, but a bomb meant for the plane landed in the bomb crater. When Doolittle returned to the field, he only found Leonard’s left hand with his wristwatch still in place. Doolittle stated that losing Leonard was his greatest personal tragedy of the war.
Dick Cole, Doolittle’s co-pilot, served in the China-Burma-India Theater and then became a test pilot with the Douglas Aircraft Plant for the remainder of the war. He served in the military for twenty-six years, rated as a command pilot, and retired as a colonel. Cole was the last living Doolittle Raider. He died on April 9, 2019, at 103 years of age.
Hank Potter, Doolittle’s navigator, served stateside after the Tokyo Raid and later in Germany in the 1950’s. He earned the rank of colonel and lived to be 83.
Fred Braemer, Doolittle’s bombardier, served in the China-Burma-India Theater and then attended bombardier, radar, and observer training schools and was commissioned as a 2nd lieutenant. He served in Korea, retired in 1969 and died at the age of 71.
Former Plane #5 pilot Davey Jones participated in the invasion of North Africa.Leading a dozen P-38 fighters in a B-26, he landed at the airfield in Oran, Algeria, during fighting. They had to land from every direction, straddling bomb craters and avoiding wrecked airplanes. Two or three hundred planes parked there, and the men lived by their airplanes and built fires for cooking. After a few days they all moved to Algiers. From there they ran bombing raids without ground crews. They refueled with five-gallon tins and loaded their 250-pound bombs by sheer muscle.
In November of 1942, Eisenhower started the offensive against Tunis, which was defended by thirty thousand German troops. Davey Jones led a raid on the port of Bizerte, twenty miles north of Tunis. They were forced to bomb at twelve hundred feet because they didn’t have any bomb sights. Jones’ plane was hit and the left engine knocked out. He also lost the trim and engine instruments and was forced to land along the coast between two little sand mounds which took their wings off.
North Africa Campaign – Courtesy of Naval-History.net and the Late Gordon Smith
The crew set off walking and ran into a line of German skirmishers. Jones pointed at his pistol and one of the Germans pulled it out. He said, “‘For you, the war is over.'” He and another guy were taken to the command post where the blond, Aryan-type commander who spoke reasonable English gave him a deck chair, cheese, and wine and asked him not to run away that night.
Jones was sent to Sicily and on to Rome for interrogation where he was in solitary for two weeks. From there he traveled by train in a group to Stalag Luft III, 125 miles southeast of Berlin. He arrived on his birthday. The camp was run by the Luftwaffe instead of the Gestapo or SS and grew to hold around 10,000 captive Allied aviators. In camp, Davey Jones was given the moniker “Tokyo” Jones because of his Raider experience.
The POWs put each other to work “‘building things, hiding things or ‘working to escape’-type things.'” In the spring of 1943, Davey and others moved to the north camp where they built the big tunnel featured in the book and movie, The Great Escape. The dug the tunnel thirty feet down through sand, using their hands or a small trowel and shored up the tunnel with bed boards. They used a little tin with margarine for a lamp but had to keep sending it up to be relit before they realized there wasn’t enough oxygen to support it. They had “a guy word a pump to bring air into the tunnel with beg bellows, and eventually they ran electric lights.”
The Nazi’s built more prisons to accommodate the rising number of captured Allied airmen. The Americans were moved out of Stalag Luft III, so they didn’t participate in the actual escape. Being moved likely saved Jones’s life because many of those who escaped were recaptured and executed. Jones stayed in the service after the war ended and later had the opportunity to test fly the Mach-2 supersonic bomber in 1955. He lived to be 95.
After the capture of Davey Jones and Ross Greening, U.S. Army officials worried that the Germans would hand over any captured Raiders to the Japanese, so they stopped most of the Raiders from flying and sent them home. Plane #14 navigator/bombardier Herb Macia from Tombstone, Arizona, missed the recall and crewed more than seventy sorties all the way to April 1945. He amassed more WWII combat missions than any other Raider. He lived to 93.
Former Plane 2 pilot Lt.Travis Hoover was assigned to train crews for a new squadron of B-25s. Before they were combat ready, they were sent to North Africa to bomb the tank forces under Rommel. Hoover flew missions over Sicily and Italy and then volunteered to fly B-24’s, “doing runs on Romania’s Ploesti oil fields, which were the major source of fuel for the Nazis.” Instead of being sent home after flying about fifty missions, Hoover received permission from Doolittle to stay on as a fighter pilot. He survived the war and lived to the age of 86.
