By Harry Zaslow

Harry Zaslow was born in Philadelphia in 1925, the son of Jewish Russian immigrants who had come to America to escape the edicts of the Czar’s government. At the age of 19, he joined the United States Army, serving with the 283rd Field Artillery Battalion, fighting in four combat campaigns and 15 battles in Germany and Europe. On April 29, 1945, he participated in the liberation of Dachau Concentration Camp—one of history’s most gruesome symbols of inhumanity. What he witnessed there, and throughout the war-torn towns and villages of Europe, would remain with him for over sixty years…

Charlori, Belgium

It was September 27, 1944. Other Jewish soldiers in my battalion and I traveled to Charlori for the High Holy Day services of Yom Kippur. Charlori was a beautiful town, and I was reminded that while Jews in America were praying in beautiful synagogues with their loved ones, these battered people were in the remnants of a synagogue that had been burned to the ground by the Nazis.

Of the 500 Jews that had lived in the area, only a small group remained. Most of the men, women, and children had been taken away to Germany or Poland. With my knowledge of Yiddish, I was able to hear their stories as told by those who were left behind. The Gestapo came in the middle of the night and took children away, some as young as two or three-years-old. Each Belgian Jew had someone missing: a sister, a husband, a child, a father, grandparents, uncles, aunts. In spite of these cruel tragedies, they were ecstatic when the U.S. Army liberated the town and what was left of its people.

The Belgian Jews told me that for four years they lived in fear. They dared not walk the streets and hid in cellars. With every knock at the door, they trembled in fear. If the Belgian Nazis found out they were Jewish, they were reported to the Gestapo. Being discovered meant being beaten unconscious, and then being beaten some more. A seven year old boy told of his father being burned alive at the stake, an imitation of the Spanish Inquisition.

Another girl was thrown into a temporary camp behind the enemy’s lines for the pleasure of the German soldiers. The Gestapo agent asked her name and age.

“My name is Ellen, and I am 18-years-old,” she told him.

“You will not see your 19th birthday,” the agent told her, coldly.

Ellen’s father stood by in horror, his wife already having been taken away. Shortly after, however, the American army began shelling the Germans day and night, forcing them to retreat and release Ellen and other Jewish women. There was no time for German soldiers to be entertained by female hostages.

Ellen made her way back to her town of Charlori, but where was her family? I met Ellen the night she fled from the retreating Germans. She told me she had just turned 19. I too was 19. I was an American soldier from Philadelphia. I had freedom and security, with no fear. Ellen’s life was threatened simply because she was Jewish. Each of us, as 19-year-olds from different parts of the world, gazed upon one another—the liberator and the victim of hatred. I was relieved that Ellen was saved, brought back to her home and her father, and could live her young life with happiness and, someday, in a world of peace.