Army of Occupation

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“Well, it just so happened after the war ended, the last concentration camp that was liberated was in Ebensee, Austria, which is a sub camp of Mauthausen.  They were liberated two days before the end of the war. Our division was ordered 150 army trucks to go to Ebensee, Austria, load up with the survivors, about 1500 survivors. Transport them to Bad Gastein, Austria. Bad Gastein consisted of luxury hotels. Before the war, they were one of the finest spas in all of Europe. People came from around the world because the hotels had radium baths in the basements.

During the war, the Germans used these hotels as convalescent facilities for wounded German soldiers. That's why they kept the civilian help out of there. So, when the war ended, the U.S. military moved the German soldiers out to whatever health facilities were available for recuperation. So, the hotels were empty. That's why Washington decided that the survivors should be relocated from Ebensee to these empty hotels.

It just so happened that every U.S. Army division in Europe formed a football squad. I heard about it when I applied, made an application, and I was accepted. So that's how I ended up in one of those hotels in Bad Gastein, Austria. That was our training camp.  We used to drive around Europe playing other division teams.

Well, one afternoon, I had to practice, and my roommate and I were walking around Bad Gastein, and coming towards us were four of these survivors.  For a particular reason, I recognized one of them. [He was a survivor who would come to the hotel where the football squad was located because each week the soldiers on the squad received rations of candy, cigarettes, and soap. The soldiers would exchange these goods for money and then the suvivors would use them to barter for goods with other civilians and with Russian and French soldiers.] I stopped to say 'hello, how you doing, glad that you're okay, things like, have you been taken care of?' As we walked away, it was very brief. As we walked away, my roommate, he didn't know I was Jewish.  He said, 'well, looks like Hitler didn't get one.'  Of course, he didn't realize. I said, 'Look, I'm sorry, but you just offended me.  I happen to be Jewish.'  He didn't know what to do. He just quickly walked away from me. And even though he was my roommate, he tried to avoid me as much as possible.

Finally, after about a week or so, I said, 'Look, let’s sit down and talk. I have some questions I'd like to ask you.'  So I asked him, I said, 'Help me understand, what caused you to say what you said?'  He told me that he was born on a farm in Nebraska. Occasionally, he would go with his father on a wagon into town, the nearest town, to buy provisions and some clothes. So he said they would go into this clothing store, his father would select certain things. Then they would go to another store for provisions. Those stores had to be owned by Jewish families.  He says every trip on his way back to the farm, his father would tell him the same remarks. 'Those Jews, they have life so easy. Us poor farmers, we worked so hard. We make very little.  And they have life so easy, they make so much money off of us poor farmers.'

He said he never had any conversation with any Jewish person, he never really knew any Jewish person. That, that was his upbringing. That was behind what he said.  After that, everything was okay, fine, and we got along."