Special insight on humanity:
Veteran's Judaism made him a POW target
in Nazi Germany
By Jennifer Kavanaugh / News Staff Writer
Saturday, June 5, 2004
MARLBOROUGH -- Life sometimes forces
choices that are too awful to be considered real choices, and William
Feinberg weighed his fate as a 19-year-old Army soldier in a World War
II prison camp. The Germans had captured Feinberg during the Battle of
the Bulge in Belgium, but in December 1944 Feinberg had an even bigger
problem: He was Jewish.
The dog tags issued to soldiers bore
initials such as P, C, and H, for "Protestant," "Catholic," and
"Hebrew." The designations told chaplains how to minister to wounded and
dead troops, but in Europe in 1944 they advertised Jewish soldiers to
the Nazis. Feinberg had a terrible wager to make.
"It was dangerous, no matter which way you
go," Feinberg said. "If I said I was Jewish, the Germans were going to
treat me badly. If I threw away my dog tags, possibly I could have been
executed for being a spy. So I finally decided to step forward and admit
my religion."
Feinberg's choice led to a three-month
ordeal of starvation, slave labor and exposure to the German winter, as
well as painful memories and a horrible front-row view of inhumanity.
But it also may very well have saved his life.
"It's a little bit emotional to remember,"
said Feinberg, who will turn 79 this month. "When I talk about it, all
of the memories come back again."
In the quiet of his Marlborough mobile
home, Feinberg recalled his war experiences, some of the memories
clouded by the passage of six decades, while others remained sharp with
exact dates and specific details.
The Mattapan native didn't envision
European combat when he signed up for the Enlisted Reserve Corps after
high school. He thought he was headed to officer candidate school, but
instead the Army shipped him to France.
Unlike later wars that would be fought by
only a segment of the population, nearly everyone sacrificed for World
War II, said Marlborough Veterans Agent Gary Brown.
"You have to understand that virtually any
able-bodied male was in the service," Brown said. "Very, very few people
escaped the military."
Feinberg served in
the 423rd Infantry Regiment of the 106th Infantry Division, and he and
thousands of his fellow soldiers became surrounded and captured by
Germans a few days into the Battle of the Bulge.
The Germans marched the prisoners for days,
refusing to give them gloves. Feinberg remembers going that entire
winter without gloves. "They wouldn't let us put our hands in our
pockets," Feinberg said. "They were sadistic."
Feinberg said the Germans packed the
prisoners into freight cars, where they rode for days without bathroom
facilities, and were fed cabbage soup and roughly sliced pieces of
bread. They arrived in the German prison camp Bad Orb on Christmas Day
1944.
After Feinberg revealed his Jewish
ancestry, his captors sent him to Berga Am Elster, an offshoot of one of
the death camps. There, he and about 350 other people were forced into
manual labor, digging tunnels into the side of a mountain for a
munitions factory.
"I think it was the equivalent of a
concentration camp that he went through," said Feinberg's son Stephen,
who lives in Wayland. "It would have to have had a profound effect on
him."
Dozens of men in Feinberg's group died. In
three months, he lost 60 pounds, going from 195 to 135. The prisoners
got food once a day.
"We were being fed vegetable soup, with
turnips and carrots," Feinberg said. "Maybe once in a while, they'd
throw in a little meat."
In April 1945, as the Germans forced the
prisoners to march to avoid the advancing American troops, Feinberg and
two of his friends decided to escape. They crawled through the
underbrush, and Feinberg said he crawled ahead to scout the area when an
elderly guard caught his friends. Feinberg returned, with a rutabaga in
hand.
"I sneaked up behind the guard," he said.
"It's hard for me to believe it, but I hit him over the head and knocked
him down."
The trio crawled along the ground until
they came upon a farmhouse. They hid in the barn, until discovered by
the family. As the soldiers tried out their German, the family members
offered their help. Feinberg can still remember his first meal at the
farmhouse, the first real one they had had in months.
"I get choked up thinking about it,"
Feinberg said. "Potato pancakes. They tasted good."
The family hosted the soldiers for about
three days, lying to protect them when German soldiers showed up at the
door, as Feinberg and his companions hid under hay. A few days later,
they heard the Americans were coming, and they ran to meet them.
"It was a very emotional time," he said.
Feinberg received medical treatment in
tents in field hospitals before returning home. He reunited with his
family at a hospital in Queens, N.Y.
"And that's the end of the story," he said.
It was also the beginning of the rest of his life. He went on to
Tufts University on the G.I. Bill, raised a family and settled in
Sharon. He co-owned a Dodge dealership for years before turning to real
estate investments. He moved to Marlborough just a few months ago.
But while Feinberg returned to lead a
relatively normal life, his time at the camp shaped his world view.
"I have come to the sad conclusion that
human suffering, and man's inhumanity to man, has always been a fact of
life since we evolved from hunters and gatherers many thousands of years
ago, and will continue to show itself in future generations," Feinberg
wrote in an e-mail, after the interview.
Stephen Feinberg said his father did not
constantly relive memories of his time in Europe.
"I heard about it a little bit, but he did
not make a big deal about talking about it," he said. "More often than
not, he would have to be asked about it. He did talk about it more as he
got older. It was kind of difficult for him, I think."
Stephen Feinberg said he has a hard time
imagining the enormity of what his father did 60 years ago.
"I guess we should be proud of not just
what my father did," he said, "but of what everyone in his generation
did to ensure that we could lead the lives we lead today." MetroWest
Daily News, Boston MS
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Page last revised
11/19/2022