As noted in some of the letters, my Father included photos, maps and other materials with his correspondence to my Grandparents, and asked them (pointedly and repeatedly) to store them securely until he could get home and create an album for them. He also asked his folks to send photographic supplies to him in Europe, and purchased a German camera in Munich in 1945. Doing photography then involved using a completely manual camera, using a separate light meter and individually setting up each shot manually for proper exposure and focus. He used several cameras and developed most of the film and prints himself.

My Father created a 60-plus page scrapbook album, with most of the photos he took and memorabilia he saved and he showed it to people from time to time when discussing the war with family and friends. He also told me a lot about his experiences and what he learned from them. The pages of his original album, which he had compiled soon after the War ended, began to deteriorate and fall apart, and I felt a strong responsibility to try to save and preserve these materials, and to be able to display them in a way that others might appreciate them.

Although he ran a small business from before the time I was born, he was by heart, training and education a teacher - and after the war, he had taught Industrial Arts in NYC public school, and also taught skiing in the Catskill mountains.

I knew from my earlier years growing up (mostly, from being in sleep-away camp) that my Father was a seriously good writer and liked to sit at a typewriter and create detailed and thoughtful letters, but I had not been aware of how interesting and rich his wartime correspondence was until after he passed away. For most of his life my Father’s letters and V-mails - which form the core of this collection - resided at my Grandfather’s apartment, and it was only the old scrapbook album that my Father would look at, or show to guests, from time to time. When I first decided to pursue this project I thought it would be a story about how a very young man from the lower east side of NYC helped defeat the Nazis in Europe and directly encountered the results of the Holocaust. And maybe that’s what it primarily is, but to me there’s a many-faceted story here.

My Father couldn’t help but noticing, himself, that by 1945-46 he had come quite far from the 18 year-old sent to California and Kentucky for army training, who turned 20 on the SS Santa Rosa as it made its way to the European Theatre of Operations during the second allied invasion in 1944. A fair account of what’s here could also reference topics like the devotion between members of a family, and the culture of the Lower East Side of NYC and the values of the people during that era. The progression of the letters also involves a real “coming of age” story as my Father matured during this period.

Some letters also touch on broad themes related to America, history, freedom and the future, as well as the issue of the future of Germany - subjects that were familiar to Sy in the Fall of 1945 when he was serving as an “Information and Education Non-Com” Officer, providing training lectures to the troops in Bavaria as part of the denazification directives of the US Military Government.

It should be noted, about the substance in letters and V-mails, that especially during the months before Germany’s surrender in May, 1945, when my Father was in the ETO, including combat operations, he wanted to comfort his parents, to confirm that he was still alive, and to do anything he could to alleviate their worries. So the V-Mails in early 1945, all of which were subject to the Army Censor during wartime, mostly focused on the less significant topics of weather and Army food. As the war in Europe ends and as time goes on there are more letters referencing specific aspects of the war, prisoners, holocaust victims and the German people, and increasingly more thoughtful discussions which continue through the eight weeks he spent taking College courses as part of the US Army program in Switzerland.

He seemed comfortable communicating to both of his parents about almost any topic, including the unsavory ones, although he sometimes wrote separately to one parent or the other.

His responsibilities within the USMG in Bavaria led him to make an inquiry to Senator Joseph H. Ball, a sponsor of the Ball-Burton, Hatch-Hill Senate resolution advising the United States to take the initiative in the formation of a powerful United Nations upon the end of the war.

I find much of his letters to be quite beautifully written, from his almost poetic descriptions of the scenery in France and Germany to the various stories about his Army buddies and the dog he adopted in Germany.

Marc

April, 2024