An excerpt from the article “From Minsk, to Hollywood, to Buchenwald” by Joanne Palmer, originally appearing in the “Jewish Standard”, reprinted with permission

Harry Feinberg spent a few years playing with the Harmonica Rascals. The group went to Hollywood, where they appeared in movies. That was Old Hollywood, the place of black-and-white glamour and dangerous glittery prewar dreams. Mr. Feinberg lived very well there. “I met Tyrone Power. We worked with Mischa Auer, and Mae West. (“She was blind as a bat,” Mr. Feinberg said. “Her chauffeur was backstage with her to hold her hand and led her whenever she was ready to go on stage. But every time she passed me, she’d say, ‘Hello, Harry.’”) He never went back to [finish] high school. But in 1940, his parents called him home. The war was coming closer, the harmonica wave had crested, and it was time.

Mr. Feinberg’s father and his uncle had become building contractors, and he worked with them. Then he was drafted. That was 1942; Mr. Feinberg was 21. Basic training was in Fort Dix. “It was a cold winter, and we slept in tents,” Mr. Feinberg said. “You had to look at the bulletin board every day to see what your duty was going to be the next day. One night I saw that I was on KP. That’s kitchen police. I thought that I would have to guard the kitchen with a gun at my side, but it was not that at all.

“We went to the mess hall at 5 in the morning. The sergeant said to the other guy, ‘Come with me.’ There was a cubicle, and inside it were piles of potatoes, bags and bags of potatoes. The other guy had to peel potatoes all day long. “I went to the next cubicle, and there were onions, bags and bags of onions. Up to the ceiling. And there was a pot of boiling water. “So from 5 in the morning until about 11 at night, I peeled onions. I couldn’t see from the fumes. I stunk to high heaven. It was unbearable. My eyes were watery red. “From that day until today, I have never eaten another onion.” If all that had changed for him on that day was the acquisition of a lifelong aversion to onions, that would have been enough.

But it wasn’t. “The funny thing is that I got drafted the same day as a trumpet player who played with all the big bands,” he said. “While I was peeling onions, his name and mine kept being blared out all over Fort Dix. Then, at 11 o’clock at night, I came back to my tent, and one of the guys tells me, and says you’d better go see the first sergeant. As I went to him — they were playing cards at night, they were really rough guys — and one of them picks his head up and says ‘Oh yeah, there is some kind of show, and your name was called.’” He was to have been in it, but he missed the call. He was too busy peeling onions. The show was the review “This Is The Army,” written by Irving Berlin. In the movie version, Mr. Berlin sings his own song, “Oh How I Hate To Get Up In The Morning.”

Instead of being a traveling [harmonica] player, Mr. Feinberg fought in Europe. He was in the army from 1943 to 1945 — “three years and ten months,” he said — and “I was one of General George S. Patton’s tankers. “We really spearheaded the European campaign. I was in all five of Patton’s campaigns. We started out in Utah Beach, in France, then Luxembourg, Belgium, the Battle of the Bulge, and on into Czechoslovakia. “I have no idea why I’m alive today.” Mr. Feinberg drove a tank.

“We came face to face with Germany every day,” he said. “I was a gunner. I had a big gun next to me. I would take a big shell, put it in the gun. I had a telescope right next to the gun. I was in the turret, I would see the enemy, and I would shoot. “I saw heads flying, arms flying. When the dust cleared, I would see bodies all over the place. It didn’t look real. Not a thing for a Jewish boy to see. Or actually for anybody to see.” He eventually was made a tank commander. “I took a few hits,” he said. “I lost two tanks. It was no joke. I don’t know how we got out alive. The second tank just burned to a crisp. “When we were hit, I yelled, ‘Let’s get out of here.’ The gunner was such a polite guy that he said, ‘Go out. I’ll go after you.’ I had to pick him up and throw him out, and then I jumped out and ran. I don’t know how many yards. And then I looked back and saw billows of smoke.

“It drove me a little nuts. The medics saw me and tackled me, and put me in an ambulance, took me to a field hospital. I was there three days, under a doctor’s care. They gave me big blue pills to calm me down. “The doctor had a card table, and we would line up. He smoked a cigar. He said, ‘Follow my fingers. How many fingers do you see?’ I told him and he said, ‘You’re ready to go back to the front.’ I said, ‘Please don’t send me back,’ but he said, ‘Sorry. I have to.’ “I went back. “They got me a third tank, and my company commander said, ‘Harry, we got a new buggy for you.’ I said, ‘I can’t get into a tank again. It’s impossible. My head doesn’t allow it.’ And he said, ‘You’re right. You’re not getting into another tank. Do you realize that they cost $30,000 each?’ So he put me in a jeep, and made me a corporal.

“I would have to go from company to company with a secret message.” It would be on a small scroll of paper that he would hide in a slit cut into his uniform, right next to the zipper. “That was my job until the end of the war,” he said. “It was scary. Everything happened at night, and here I was, driving by myself at night. “One night, my first sergeant and I got to a town in Germany, and we smelled something wrong. “He looked at his map, and said that this is a town called Jenna — and I don’t think this town has been taken. We were the first Americans there. “We said that we’d better get the hell out of there. “As we turned around, we saw two Germans standing there in uniform, a major and his aide. My sergeant says ‘Stop,’ and he runs out and points his gun at them. They both come out with their hands up. He took their guns, and asked me which one I wanted. “I still have it.”

Mr. Feinberg spoke Yiddish, so he interrogated some of the Germans the army captured. “They were happy to give up,” he said. “I mentioned Patton, and they’d stand up. The name would freeze the blood in their veins. “We were not there to liberate anyone,” he continued. “Just to find and destroy. That’s what our outfit did. We were a combat outfit. We would get up, eat breakfast, and shoot.” After attacks, General Patton would come by, drive in his jeep with the four stars, and call us all over to say, ‘Good job, boys. Mr. Feinberg stood close to him at one of these sessions. “I was interested not in looking at him or listening to him, but in looking at the two ivory-handled guns on his belt,” he said. “He was big. Tall. His eyes were always bloodshot. I think he drank a lot of booze. “And he shortened the war for us.”

Although his job was not to liberate, his unit — the Fourth Armored Division — liberated a concentration camp, and then got to Buchenwald six days after its liberation. Mr. Feinberg and his unit entered Ohrdruf, a concentration camp near Weimar, Germany, on April 4, 1945. “We were driving into Germany; we got into Gotha without firing a shot,” he said. “We took over the town. There were no cars, no people, no activity. Of course, everyone was hiding from us. We kept going until we came to the town of Ohrdruf. We had no idea about labor or concentration camps. “We went up into the woods. There were signs on the trees saying ‘Verboten.’” Forbidden. “We came up to the edge of the woods, and we saw fences, and a gate, with only two men there. One was 65 years old and one was 70. They were in German uniforms, with helmets and rifles. As soon as they saw us, they threw them down.

“We saw the ugliest thing that anyone had ever seen, toothpicks walking around. There were bodies in the courtyard, with striped uniforms. We thought that everyone in the pile was dead, but there were barracks. I got off my tank and looked around, with my handkerchief over my mouth. I spooked a man lying on his back, with his head shaved, in a striped uniform, gasping for air. I knelt down, and he sensed that somebody was there. He looks up, and he didn’t have the strength for it but he said, ‘Amerikaner?’ and I said “Jah. Amerikaner.’ He didn’t have the strength, but he put his hands together, thanking me for freeing him.” Mr. Feinberg got a doctor and an ambulance for the man, but he does not know the end of that story. General Dwight D. Eisenhower was there, and so was General Patton. “As tough a guy as Patton was, I saw him go back behind one of the barracks upchucking,” Mr. Feinberg said.

As for Buchenwald, amid all the horrors he saw — the people were gone by then, as were their murderers, but their tools remained — what haunts him most, “what drove me crazy, was a wooden crate with babies’ shoes,” he said. After the war, as part of the Army of Occupation, Mr. Feinberg helped police towns in Germany. “We were on guard night and day to make sure that there was no uprising,” he said. “They gave me a territory of 13 little towns. They were very quaint. Very cute. It was my job to find the mayor of each town. I would go into the town — the road would be lined with cattle. At 4:30 or so, the kids in town would have the job of bringing the cows back home. The cows knew which house to go to, and the kids would make sure that they didn’t stray, but only went to the house they belonged to. I would interrogate the mayor. I was a tough guy, a tough sergeant. No smiles. I told them that I had to know what was going on. I had to know about all meetings. If they had any guns or ammunition or explosives or hand grenades, they had to bring them to their yards, and we would destroy them.

“The Americans would get up at 2 in the morning and raid their houses. It was cruel, but it had to be done. “The mayor knew I was Jewish. They all knew, and they were frightened of me. “One day, I saw a girl who said she spoke English; she said she came from Montclair. I asked, ‘What are you doing here?’ and she said ‘My family was in Germany.’ I said, ‘You mean that your father thought that Hitler was going to take over America, so you’d be safer here.’ She put her head down and wouldn’t answer me. But she was a big help to me.”

Once he came home, Mr. Feinberg took advantage of the GI Bill to go to a school in Paterson that taught building trades, and he got married; he and his wife, Edie, have been married for more than 50 years, and they are proud parents of three children and grandparents of three grandchildren. Mr. Feinberg worked as a contractor until the injuries he’d gotten during the war caught up with him. He is now in a wheelchair. Mr. Feinberg, past president of the national Fourth Armored Division Association, secretary/treasurer of the New York chapter of that association, and past president of the Garden State Harmonica Club, has two Purple Hearts. Last month [November 2013], the French government named him a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor, its highest honor.

Of the many incidents that happened to me while serving in the U.S. Army in World War II, One evening stands out with great clarity. On December 24,1944,1 was a Second Lieutenant, Medical Administrative Corps, commanding a platoon of ten enlisted men, equipped with ten ambulances and one jeep. Our company, the 587^th; had spent a period of rest and recuperation after working in the Alsace region of France, north of Luneville. We received orders to move out and proceed to Luxembourg City.

A few days before we left I had observed very heavy traffic going north. Also, much to my surprise, the vehicles were being driven with their headlights on.   Previously we had always driven under blackout conditions using cats eye illumination. Our company consisting of headquarters and three platoons left the area north of Luneville on December 24 arrived in Luxembourg City in the early evening and reported to a medical battalion headquarters.   It was freezing cold!

Having been through more than a few Windy City (Chicago) December blizzards, I immediately located a Quartermaster store and bought an army trench coat to go with overshoes I had received from the company supply. The trench coat came down below my knees and I had to roll up the sleeves.   I wore an O.D. shirt, an O.D. sweater, a field jacket, the trench coat, G.I. Boots, socks, a helmet with liner and was ready to travel in a jeep with the top down. My platoon was assigned to begin evacuating casualties from the Clearing Station of the 80th Infantry Division at Esch Sur Sur. Not to be confused with another Esch in the south part of the Duchy. One of my men of the Catholic faith had found a church and decided to attend mass that evening. The entire platoon waited outside the church and watched as large flakes of snow started to fall. When mass was over we began motoring north to our destination.

Security was very strict everywhere as there were rumors that the Nazi enemy was infiltrating the American lines with Germans dressed in American uniforms speaking English. Supposedly one of the Germans was Otto Skorzeny, Hitler’s favorite commando. At every village we approached, and there were many of them, we encountered sentries coming out of the darkness with loaded weapons challenging everything and anything. All of them had itchy trigger fingers. At one village, I was sitting in the passenger seat of my vehicle and as we stopped the driver was challenged with the usual sign. That evening it was”eagle” and it was to be answered by the counter sign of “nest”. To my amazement my driver forgot both the sign and the counter sign and Froze speechless! The sentry kept repeating the sign louder and louder all the while poking his rifle through the window closer and closer to me. I finally yelled “you S.O.B. it’s NEST! NEST! And he allowed us to proceed.

It bears mentioning at this point that the 587^th was an unusual and unique U.S. Army formation. It was one of the few medical units composed of all black, now known as African American, enlisted men commanded by all Caucasian, or white, commissioned officers. One of which was me! The Germans may have been masquerading as Americans but they sure weren’t black! The snow filled roads were treacherous but we finally arrived at the clearing station, located in a Castle, in the early hours of December 25,1944. Tired and ready to carry out our assignment, but not  to tired however to refuse when the cooks offered me a night cap. They had “found” some medical alcohol (normally used to make cough medicine and other liquid medicines) mixed it with some powdered lemon and Viola, a cocktail. It was the best cocktail I have ever had. I proceeded to find a space on the floor of the castle spread out my bedroll and fall asleep.

Christmas Day we were treated to a traditional repast of turkey with all the trimmings.  The weather had cleared and when we looked up we could see airplanes. To our relief they were American airplanes. The Eighth Air Force B17s flying east to bomb the Germans. After a few weeks in Esch Sur Sur evacuating all kinds of wounded we moved up to Wiltz. Subsequently, we were ordered back to somewhere in France assigned to what was left of the 28^th Infantry Division and continued with our job of moving patients from Clearing Stations to Evac Hospitals.

It was a most memorable Christmas Season. I would like to pay tribute to the junior officers and enlisted men who by their bravery and perseverance won the battle, despite the miscalculations of higher headquarters.

I was in the 16th Field Artillery Observation Battalion, Battery A. We were the eyes and ears of the Field Artillery. We fought our way from Utah Beach to the border of Belgium & Germany at a place named Auw, GERMANY, not a town just a place.  We were there in the winter.  Our area was considered a light fighting area. The heavy fighting was North of us at Cologne, Germany and South of us in Southern France. We were fired on by German artillery and the German infantry was very close.

The Germans fired Buzz Bombs over us frequently. A Buzz Bomb is an unmanned airplane that flew very low and is filled with flammable liquid and shrapnel. We could near the motor as it flew over us and when the motor stopped, we knew it would crash in seconds.  We had three land close to us, but no one was injured. Buzz Bombs killed & injured many Americans.

We were in the Hurtgen Forest in the Schnee Eifel Mountains where the snow was deep, the ground was frozen and we did not have winter clothes. On Dec. 16, 1944 Nazi General Von Runsted made a break thru on a fifty mile front. He came thru with the 5th Panzer Army, the 6th Panzer Army and the 7th German Army. He had brand new King Tiger tanks, new heavy artillery and thousands of infantry, most dressed in white for camouflage. Auw, Germany was in the very center of this onslaught.   We lost much equipment and pulled back to St. Vith, Belgium.  We were overpowered there and retreated back to Bastogne where we were surrounded Many of the American soldiers there were killed, wounded or went insane from the constant bombardment.

When the Battle of the Bulge started, it was cloudy and very foggy.  We could hear Tank treads coming toward us, but could not tell if it was a Nazi Tiger Tank or an American Sherman Tank.  General George Patton ordered the 101st and 82nd Airborne up to Bastogne.  They could not jump from planes because of the fog. They were brought up in 6×6 Army trucks and it took them two days to reach us. A paratrooper ask me where the front line was and I told him he was standing on it_.  Somehow our battery escaped the Bastogne encirclement. Three us came upon a Belgium farmhouse in the middle of the battlefield.  We went inside and there was a father, mother and two children, a boy and girl about 7 or 8 years old.  The mother gave us some soup and black bread and we save them some candy.  This was Christmas Eve.  We sang Christmas songs that night.  We sang Jingle Bells and Silent Night, the words were different, but the music was the same.   We were wet and cold, but we dried off that night.  We could hear machine guns rattle and Artillery shells bursting all night.  We didn’t get much sleep, but we got warm and dry.

We left the next morning and the family didn’t want to see us go, The 16th was badly shot up and the 285th FAOB in the same area was badly shot up.  The two Observation Battalions decided to form one unit, so they could be more effective in the war.  This did not happen, the Nazi SS Troops captured a Battery of the 285th and herded them into an open snowy field and machine gunned them down in cold blood_.  This was not war, this was murder and was known as the Malmedy Massacre.

The clouds and fog started to break up and the Air Force flew thousands of sorties over the area.  They bombed tank positions, artillery positions and machine-gunned infantry troops and supply lines.  We watched C-47 planes fly low over the battlefield and drop by parachute food, guns, gasoline and medical supplies,we were out of everything. We begin to hold our own and gradually fought our way back to Auw, Germany.

On January 30th, 1945 we were at the same location we were on Dec 16, 1944. Up to now were liberators, from now on we will be conquerors.  Over one million men fought in the “Battle of the Bulge”, 600,000  Americans, 500,000 Germans, and 35,000 English, French, Canadians and others.  This is the largest land battle ever fought by any American Army_. We fought our way to Koblenz, Germany, crossed the Rhine River, was at the liberation of the Ohrdruf concentration camp, the first camp liberated on the Western Front, fought thru Nuremberg into Czechoslovakia, met the Russian Army and on May 8, 1945 was V.E. Day.  The War in Europe was over.  From the time we went ashore on Utah Beach, until we met the Russians, I was on the front lines the whole time.  I know that Freedom is not Free!

A Friend in Need is a Friend Indeed
by John P. Malloy, 75^th ID, 291^st IR

I worried and wondered if my best friend, Dean Lusjenski, had survived the recent vicious fighting at Grand-Halleux. Dean was with L (Love) Company in a machine gun section, in the 291st heavy weapons company. That company had sustained serious casualties in that battle. I decided I should find his company and see if he was still ok.

Dean and I had been called to duty on the same day in March 1943. He was a senior at Creighton University in Omaha, and I was a junior there. We had spent the entire war together and had become fast friends. We looked after one another, as soldiers often do. Now I wondered, and worried, what had happened to him during the vicious battles along the Salm River.

The 291 st Regiment had played an important role in counter attacking the retreating German forces. The Gl’s had suffered severe frostbite and trench foot because of the cold and snow. Huddling for days in a wet, cold, foxhole wore men down. This suffering, combined with battle wounds, had taken a severe toll.

I was lucky I was able to track him down. My job, as wire crew chief, gave me considerable independence and freedom of action. I knew my crew would handle any problems while I was gone. Earlier that morning the Third Battalion, Dean’s unit, had attacked a heavily defended hill-casualties were heavy. I knew the current action was centered in a small village about a quarter of a mile to the east. I took our jeep and headed that way. As I approached the village I stopped and proceeded on foot. When I reached the village center, I could see the German defenders had been forced back, perhaps five hundred yards. There was confusion. Medics evacuated wounded. Tanks slowly ground forward. An artillery spotter moved his vantage point.

Infantry units continued the attack. Apparently another unit had just been relieved. Those men were half hidden in doorways. Others hunkered down, waiting, hoping. They were a disheveled, bearded crew. They were exhausted. Most had not been out of their clothes for days. They hadn’t had a truly hot meal for some time. Artillery fire had devastated the area. Buildings were smoking shambles. Some still stood, in others, men sought what shelter they could find. An improvised aid station was operating. Medics treated bloody wounds. There was the awful smell of cordite-a reminder of death.

A winter sun shone weakly on the chaos. Just a month ago a pristine snow had drifted down, providing a beautiful blanket, covering this remote countryside. Now, brown replaced white. Brown clad warriors brought brown tanks, brown trucks, and brown cannon. Brown buildings burned. Dirty, brown soil lay exposed. It was an ugly place. This was not an unusual sight across France and Belgium. Our War Machine destroyed what little the Germans left when they fled.

There was occasional incoming mortar fire now; this was not a safe area. I tried to identify the units present. I could see that some Third Battalion Companies were involved in the firefight but I could not find L Company. I decided my efforts were futile. I couldn’t find my friend so I decided to return to my outfit. I retreated towards my jeep. The late afternoon light was turning to dusk. I worried about the drive. Driving in pitch black darkness was dangerous. I worried I might encounter a trigger happy Gl. He would shoot first and ask questions later.

Then I saw him. He was slumped in a ruined doorway.

“Dean, Dean is that you?”

He looked at me. I moved closer-he had an unfocused, zombie like, gaze. He stared vacantly.

“Lusienski-Lusienski it’s me, John.”

His only comment was,” I’m cold, I’m cold.”

“Dean I’m taking you with me. You need rest and a hot meal inside you.”

He mumbled,” I can’t. I’ve got to get back to my platoon.”

“You are coming with me and that’s that. Don’t give me a hard time.”

I walked him to the jeep. We took off. A commandeered farmhouse served as the Regimental CP. The wire section’s sleeping bags were on a dirt floor in an adjoining barn. I got Dean out of his overcoat. I removed his boots and put him into my sleeping bag. I covered him with an extra blanket. He slept eighteen hours. I brought him a hot meal. He slept again. When he woke he was a different man. We had a good conversation. We exchanged news. He had another good meal. Then it was time to go. His dry clothes and boots were ready. He got into his overcoat, put on his helmet, slung his weapon over his shoulder. I returned him to his company.

I didn’t see him again for several weeks. After the Bulge, the Division headed south and east to Colmar France near Strasburg. There we continued kitting Germans. Dean, in the weeks following the battles in the Ardennes and Colmar, was promoted to Staff Sergeant and awarded the Bronze Star for his leadership in operations in the Rhine River area.

Epilogue: After the war Dean Lusienski returned to his home in Nebraska. He married and had a family/He used the G\ bill to earn a PhD in Educational Psychology at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln. He served for many years as Principal for the world famous Boy’s Town. In later years, I occasionally traveled to Omaha from my home in Milwaukee. Dean and I would have dinner together. We talked about the early years. Dean died several years ago at the age of seventy.

Dean Lusienski was an outstanding example of Brokaw’s “The Greatest Generation”.

I still miss my best friend.