"After his ship moved away from Japan, they went on down to the Hawaiian Isles, and they went to Pearl Harbor and picked up a lot of sailors that had enough hours in to get out. They chugged in to San Diego in November right around Thanksgiving…

"I just about knew it was gonna happen. I was the right age. I was about…18, 19 at that time, and…I felt I was gonna go. I did learn, however, that if you volunteer, sometime you can pick the service that you want, and when I got to…

"A C-54 came over with President Roosevelt in it. And he came over to do whatever he was gonna do to Patton. And a bunch of generals were waiting there for him. And when Patton came up, they all walked away from him. They wouldn’t have anything…

"But he was also sitting out on the water when they raised the flag on Iwo. Out in-- on the carrier. Half of the carrier medics went to the shore. Half of them were killed. And then after the war – after they raised the flag, he went and picked…

"It was at Arlington Station which used to be a girls' school. It was just a big old open room with desks kind of like this (makes sweeping gesture with hand), and we sat there and did work all day. Eight hours. But we had 45 minutes for…

"Then, after a few weeks in Japan, I asked the lieutenant if I could have a few days off to go look for my parents. He wasn’t going to give it to me, but the major sitting right by him said, ‘Give the man a ten day pass.’ So I got ten days to go…

"So we were sitting there, we started [to] crazily dance. First of all we were shocked. We were free. It was over. The nightmare was over. And we couldn’t react to it. One of them, all of a sudden dancing and jumping up and down in the hay. We…

"Well, the first week that they were there, they erected eight gallows in the city center and just randomly selected eight Jews and hanged them. They came to the Jewish synagogue and trashed it, burned the Torah scrolls and the prayer books, and…

"When he was liberated-- Russian troops came through and liberated Romania at the end of 1944 beginning of 1945. He was freed, but of course he was sick. So they put him in a hospital for him to recover. He came back and when he walked into the…

“I have a family tree that goes back to 1490, so we lived in Germany a—500 years my family, over 500 years. We were steeped in German culture, European culture: music, art, literature, Goethe, Schiller. Both of my grandparents and my father fought…