This site contains the letters and photographs of Seymour (“Sy”) Schuman, an honor student from the Lower East Side of New York City who was in his second year at NY University, though barely 17 years old, on December 7, 1941. He was having lunch at Borden’s restaurant on Grand Street that day when he heard a radio broadcast with the news of Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor.

Three and a half years later, shortly after Germany surrendered, he and other American soldiers stood on the porch of Hitler’s grandiose retreat, The Berghof, near the town of Berchtesgarten - the spot in the Alps that Hitler had chosen to stage himself and the Nazi Commanders in front of the world’s eyes.

The 14th Armored Division was organized at Camp Campbell, KY during 1944. Arriving in March, after infantry training and advanced studies at Ohio State, Sy was assigned to the Signal Company. On October 13, he boarded the SS Santa Rosa, and the Division as a whole landed at Marseilles, October 28, 1944. The 154 Armored Signal Company handled the 14th AD’s communications and information systems as it moved rapidly up to Alsace, engaged in combat, crossed the Rhine and took control of portions of the Rhineland and Bavaria, from that Autumn through May, 1945.

By May, Sy’s duties placed him at the 14th AD’s headquarters in Wasserburg, and then with the 9th Signal Company in Ingolstadt, under the US Military Government. While stationed there he helped rescue Allied POWs, documented the Dachau concentration camp, and assisted survivors and other DPs. Later in 1945, in Wasserburg again, he gave several training sessions per week under General Truscott’s Directives concerning Denazification in Bavaria.

As 1946 began, he took up studies in Basel under the Army’s college program there, and skied at St. Moritz, Engelberg, Waldenburg and Arosa before leaving Switzerland.

In the first week of April, 1946 he left Europe, sailing home from the Port of LeHavre on the SS Frederick Victory. The following week, as the ship entered NY Harbor, he photographed the Statue of Liberty from its deck, just before he returned safely home to New York City in time to spend the Passover and Easter holidays with family. The day he arrived was April 13, 1946, exactly 18 months to the day since he left America on the SS Santa Rosa.