He taught in Alaska, and when he married, he met my aunt Donna Smith, Donna Wilson at the time, who is the oldest sibling of mom. She just passed in last December, and they married. They were both teachers, and they met at a teacher's conference in Alaska, and then he ended up moving back to Nebraska and living with Donna in a farmhouse in Nebraska.

Yeah, for the rest...

That's right, so when he was living in Nebraska, he would regularly go and do Holocaust education, you know, visits to public schools, to the public schools, teaching the basics of what he lived through. He was a liberator involved in the liberation of Landsberg concentration camp, which I understand was near the area where Hitler was imprisoned, where he wrote Mein Kampf. And so Norm was 19 years old when he went over as a late replacement at the very end of the war, and when they came upon Landsberg, it was inhabited only by the dead and the dying. And the Nazis had...

They had fled.

They fled. The gates were swinging open, but of course the people inside were, most of them, too far gone to understand that they were free now. So, he, Norm, among the writings, his writings, he was a prolific writer. He enjoyed writing a lot. Among those writings, he gives an account of details of going into that camp. One of the things that was particularly interesting was that they rounded up people in the nearby village, Germans, and at gunpoint marched them into the camp to show them. It was bodies stacked like cordwood. Dead people throughout the camp, and people who had wandered into the nearby woods and the road exiting the camp and just died, fallen, and were where they, lying where they had died. One thing he said was that many of the German villagers who were in the camp were horrified but also claimed that they didn't know that it was going on, which could not have been possible because of the smell. Which Norm says that's the abiding memory that will never leave him, and his other people he served with say the same thing about it. And the second day when they went to round up the villagers to come back and help digging trenches, disposing bodies, both the mayor and his wife had committed suicide and shot themselves in the head. There was another sort of vivid story he told about that, which was that there was a teenage boy that was among the Germans who in the camp, he, um, at one point he did the Sieg Heil and my uncle's commander pitched him into a trench with dead bodies and he had to climb his way back out. I guess he learned his lesson in a rather vivid way there. He said that he and his fellow soldiers made the mistake of giving food to the starving. . .

Survivors.

Survivors, but that it killed them.

Well, or it sickened them, certainly.

Yeah, Al Hassenzahl says four people died that way.

Really.

So I guess they could not process the food at all and they were probably very much on the brink of death already.

Who did you mention who said that? Al?

Al Hassenzahl was the commander of my uncle's group of men. Among the papers in here, his story is outlined, and then I believe there are some writings of his in there as well, so among the stuff that we found, and we still have more to go through, it seems to be sort of never ending. There are lots of handwritten accounts. My uncle wrote letters home to his family that are still in existence, and we hoped that you would photocopy all that stuff, and I mean that would be a good resource, I'm sure. So the big things that my uncle did, notable things were this liberation of Landsberg, and then the standing on guard at the Eagle's Nest, Berghoff, Hitler's home, one of his... his mountain hideaway. And he my uncle received, well of course, they were all pillaging, all looting. He and the guys.

The soldiers.

Soldiers were getting down into... there was underground tunnels of Hitler's home, there in the mountains. And there were some things, you know, it was like King Tut's tomb, they were breaking into safes, and he got a sterling silver framed photographic portrait of Hitler that he gave to his top SS officers as an award for achievements, so my uncle Norm got his hands on one, shipped it back to the United States, it now exists, he donated that to the Eisenhower Museum.

In Abilene.

In Abilene, Kansas, and then another story that he told was that one of the guys in his troop got his hands on a metal bust of Hitler that had been one of many along a fence, fence line, these metal busts, and he brought it home. The weird story is that he bolted it to the front of his car, and other farmers were allowed to like hit it with pitchforks and stab it. So that bust of Hitler is also in the Eisenhower Museum, and shows the dings and wounds of the farmers. That's a colorful story. What else is pertinent? Norm lived... he was born in Seattle, he ended up living in Alaska, he got polio, he had polio, and he was married to a woman before my aunt. She was part native Alaskan. She had mental illness and was institutionalized.

Not permanently, off and on.

Intermittently. Yeah. And then Norm... there was a divorce, and then Norm met my aunt Donna Smith, who was teaching in Alaska, and the rest is history. They moved back to Albion, and I spent a lot of time in their home with, you know, when I was a kid, when I was younger, and I mean all through my life I was very close with aunt Donna and uncle Norm. And I learned what I know, you know, I got my foundation in Holocaust history through his stories and recounting of his experiences in the war. Someone interviewed him, and the interview does exist out on YouTube, but I'm not sure what it's called.

I found part two.

Did you?

Yeah.

Oh, good.

Jason, uh, John sent it to me, um, just yesterday, um, and so that we're, we've got, it is on YouTube.

That's correct.

It's from 2010.

Yes.

Um, and so we're gonna keep trying to track down, at least, part one, I don't know if there's a part three, but we'll see what we can find.

That is great.

We've got that one. It looks like it's maybe taken in his kitchen.

Yep, it is.

Yeah. So, um, uh, that's, that's a fantastic resource, of course.

Yeah.

And then, um, we'll, we'll see what else we can find.

Norm was sort of immortalized when he was invited to a ceremony in the rotunda of the Capitol building that the Holocaust Museum was doing to honor the liberators. And there, he was photographed with, um, Petraeus. General Petraeus, who took a special interest in him. Um, I guess.

Because of the Screaming Eagles, he...

He was Screaming... I guess he had also been. . .

I guess so, I don't know.

In the 101st Airborne or something.

There was a connection.

There was a military connection. And Norm had, um, had noted, had told, described to him how when there was a Nebraska's ceremony to honor veterans, that his, his group was overlooked. They were not honored in the formal ceremony. And Petraeus thought that was so, so important that he then prioritized my uncle's battalion. Like he was the, the person carrying the flag of his, you know, group was allowed to lead a processional in response to my uncle telling him that story. And there is a picture of Petraeus leaning down with his hand on my uncle's shoulder, speaking to him. My aunt is behind him in the background. And that photo went on the Associated Press coast to coast and was sort of one of the signature photos of the event. So that was sort of a distinction. Um, he's received a million different plaques and honors and certificates through his life, which like now we're sort of liquidating the home because my aunt has passed away. And there was just a stack that high of framed, you know, honors and things. He was a humble man and fairly liberal minded politically and was very appalled at "W" doing preemptive things. He said, "There is no such thing as 'preemptive.'" He was opinionated and he would write into the paper. He sort of took on some white supremacists that were doing their thing here in Nebraska at one point.

Do you know who?

The name was Curry. CU-R-R-Y, Curry. It might have been in the eighties or nineties. I'm not sure when it was, but there are letters that he wrote into the newspaper, uh, and things that letters this Curry wrote into the newspaper. The man was attempting to pay different, um, universities to allow an anti-Semitic spokesperson to do a debate with someone. He was trying to buy platforms for this anti-Semitic, uh, agenda, anti-Zionist specifically.

And was it denying the Holocaust?

It was denying the Holocaust. Yeah. And my...

Did ADL get involved, do you know?

What's that?

Did the anti-defamation league get involved?

I think that they did. I think they did. But there's a folder about that situation among the stuff here.

I want to break just for a second. Can you give us a little bit of your background and how, how hearing these stories... like what, what are you doing now? And are you connected directly with Holocaust education?

Well, that's an interesting...

Come sit, come sit, please. Oh, it's so important.

So I'm Jill Anderson. I am a theater artist, a storyteller. A musician, by trade. Also a theater director and a writer; a theater writer. And a composer of music. So a lot of different things, uh, involved in, um, performing arts. And my aunt Donna and uncle Norm - Norm Smith is who we're talking about here - uh, what were, you know, very, um, involved in my life through my formative years and beyond, and great supporters of what I do, always encouraging and supporting what I do. Uh, I learned, you know, about Norm's story. He told me the details of what he had lived through in the war. And that was sort of the foundation of my understanding of the Holocaust. And then of course, Diary of Anne Frank. And then I played Anne Frank in college, in a production in college. Um, and then, um, I don't even... I think that Nebraska schools do such a poor and insufficient job of telling the story of the Holocaust that I don't even honestly remember any details of what I learned in junior high or high school.

And that changed drastically.

Good.

Yeah. Where, so you grew up in Omaha? You grew up here?

I did grow up here. Yeah, I did.

Um, and where did you go to junior high and high school?

I went to Norris Junior High and then Central.

Okay. So if it's any comfort, Central has had a year long Holocaust course for the last 20 years.

Yes.

18 years

Yes.

with Jen Stastny. And then there are two other teachers who teach this course, either semester course or through the English language course.

Very good.

So, and that's just an example of the things that have happened with Nebraska.

Oh my goodness. It's good to know.

We've got many, many educators who are very committed. They're fellows of the Holocaust museum. They're doing other programs. Um, so Jill was just saying that we didn't get a very good education and Holocaust studies as students. I went to West Side and had very little as well.

Wow. And while I'm glad it's being rectified, I hope it is across the public school system. Central is a very liberal school.

Oh, across all schools and private, Catholic. Yes.

Really?

Duchesne, we have a project going. Yeah.

Thank goodness.

I see you're right next to the Our Lady of Lords. I don't know if they have programs.

Oh, I don't know, Our Lady of Lords is very, very, very conservative.

Yes.

Anti-abortion.

But the Catholic schools in Nebraska and specifically in Lincoln, have Holocaust studies and it's very, it's very much on their radar.

It is? Good.

Does it follow all of the protocol that we would like? Not always, but they, we have, we've had trainings for Catholic educators over the years.

Oh, good.

Specifically through the Anti-Defamation League, the Holocaust museum.

And Central had a program a couple of years ago, right, when they honored, was it, when he gave his last name from the War Refugee Board, John Pehle?

Pehle, yes.

Yeah. So, was that two, three years ago now?

Yes.

He was a Central High grad and ended up as the director of the War Refugee Board for the Roosevelt administration.

Yeah.

And it was not a story, I think, that people really spent a lot of time talking about.

I don't think they knew because the archive had been closed for so long.

Yeah.

But one of the things I'd like to do, if it's okay with you, is have Ethan... Ethan actually prepared some questions.

Okay. Very good. Ethan, fire away.

So I'm a little curious about Norman's return from service. So when did he return home from service?

Well, he went in 1945, so I'm sure he came back, you know, at the end of 1945.

Yeah or 46.

46.

There's probably some information in there.

And how was his adjustment back to civilian life?

I think that he was, he was hit with some very hard things. When he arrived back, and was on the west coast, and met his first wife, he was in his 20s, and then was grappling with her mental illness and then was hit with polio. He just got hammered by some very rough circumstances. And I think that his life after he returned was very unhappy for some time. Actually, I don't think he adjusted well. You know, I don't know about lasting scars or PTSD from what he had seen in the war, but it could not have, you know, had no effect on his mind. 19 year old kid in the middle of a concentration camp, seeing that. I think. I'm just conjecturing, but I would think that it added to, you know, the, the stew pot that was his psyche, post-war. Yeah.

From your conversations with him, how did it seem to impact him?

He, when he was talking to me about it, he never showed emotion. Not really.

It was always very matter of fact.

He was matter of fact.I think he had taught it to kids so many times that, you know, it had become something that was by rote. And he was sort of, when I knew him, which was from his middle years on, he was more of a solid. He had his feet under him. He was more stable. I think that meeting my aunt turned his life around in a very big way and that he found happiness and stability after that point.

Tell me that story. How did he meet your aunt? How did he meet your sister?

Well, mom, you could tell that story.

I didn't catch the question.

Yeah. How did Norman meet your sister? Tell me that story.

Well, Donna had gone, was a teacher in Skagway, Alaska, and he was teaching in Hanes and they met at a conference that was in Skagway, I guess, and he had come there for a teacher's conference and that's how they met and had an immediate connection.

It was a love at first sight.

Yeah, that's the way Donna described it, certainly.

They would always tell this amazing story that Norm was lonely and unhappy and he was on a ship out in the water with a friend and he was lamenting, you know, I guess he was lamenting about his love life and the man said, "You know, the best woman that I ever met stays in that cabin across the water." It was evening and the lights were on in the cabin. "Her name is Donna Smith."

Or it wasn't Smith.

Donna Wilson, and she's a teacher and he was teaching at the same time, so when he first met Donna, it was at this teacher's conference and I guess she was drinking from a water fountain and when she stood up, there was Norm and there was love at first sight and she was playing the role of the femme fatale in some kind of a melodrama that he saw that evening.

The entertainment for the conference.

For the conference was this melodrama and he asked her if she would go to the cast party or, you know, a gathering afterwards with him and it was true love.

True love. They wrote to each other pretty much every day. Before the time that you talked on the phone or texted constantly, they wrote letters.

And ended up back in Omaha, in Albion, Nebraska, in a farmhouse, yeah.

But, like you know, I don't know for sure... I always admired Norm. He had been a gas station manager when he was hit by polio. He had not had, you know, more than a high school education and they told him he'd never walk again. He was in an iron lung for the whole magilla, and so when he came out of that, he, he did struggle back to being able to walk and everything, but his right side was kind of withered and he limped. But he got an education and I think it was the GI bill probably that saved him on that. He got the education to become a teacher and that had to take a lot of gumption with all the other problems that he was dealing with in his life. So, just wanted to put that in.

Yeah, he did survive. It was a tough go of it for, I think, several years. Any other questions?

Tell me about their life together in Albion, Nebraska.

Oh, they lived in a ramshackle, little old Victorian farmhouse on the edge of town, 10 acres, with a creek that ran by and Norm had his office. He loved to type and write and, you know, created pieces, written pieces and he became the, he called himself "The Clerk," always in his writing. He was the sort of the architect of this ongoing annual reunion of the 101st Company C airborne guys. And so, he gathered them together all over the country.

He was the historian of them. I don't know about the organizer, but he was definitely the historian.

But it was by his initiative that they started having these regular reunions and they would, I don't know if it was-

It didn't start until 30 years after the war.

But then these old guys would meet up in different cities all over the U.S. and he was involved in helping to organize all the details to make that happen.

Where's the collection of their writings and things?

Well, the scrapbooks would have, and those we are going to-

We're going to go today, actually, to bring back a whole bunch of scrapbooks and stuff, like Xerox copies of-

I'm almost not breathing, I want you to know.

And there are some writings here, too, some of the accounts, the war stories of some of those.

Yeah. Like a lot of the scrapbook stuff is like, this is the hotel we stayed in for the reunion. You know, there's a lot of stuff that is of no historical significance whatsoever. But there, yeah, there are- He had lots of spiral-bound Xerox copied things of various relatability to the war service. There's, there's . . . And stacks of magazines, it's called The Five-O-Sync was one of the magazines. There's another magazine called The Screaming Eagles. He has a tube, a bound book called Currahee, which is all about his basic training here in the United States. This Currahee mountain that they ran up and down and, you know-

For paratroopers. He was a paratrooper.

Yeah, he was a-

He trained as a paratrooper.

That's right. And he was sent over to Scotland, and then was in England, and then they parachuted into France.

But I'm not sure, did they actually jump in?

Oh, they jumped.

Yeah, okay. I didn't remember.

They had their clickers, their cricket clickers, these little metal clickers that they couldn't say, "Hey, Joe, I'm over here in the hedgerow." So they had these little metal things that made a cricket sound [makes cricket sound] like that [makes cricket sound] . And that would be how they would communicate with one another after they landed.

To get together.

They parachuted in at nighttime. And then they-

Does he write about those stories as well?

I think it's in there. Yeah, one of the guys in his team says he parachuted in. He was in a hedgerow, hiding in a hedgerow, terrified, terrified. He was 19 or 20 years old. He didn't see any of the other guys. He heard some rustling nearby, and he did his clicker, click, click, and nobody said.

Nobody clicked back.

Nobody clicked back. And he clicked it again, a little more rustling. And he said he just opened fire. He just shot his gun. And he heard, he heard a cow hit the ground. He shot a cow.

Well, I guess that's better than-

Yes, one of his buddies. Yeah, much better. Yeah. What other questions do you have?

So I'm curious, why did Norman want to share his service experiences with students?

I think that he was just so stricken by the inhumanity of it that he knew. he knew. And he was, he made a lot of notes about deniers, you know, and revisionists. Handwritten notes in there, they're just sort of lists, you know, they're brainstorming lists of how am I going to put my education program together? What am I addressing? What are the topics we need to talk about? And that word "revisionist" and "deniers" come up a lot in his stuff. He was, and he wrote to the World Herald saying, you know-

Just to their local paper.

"This Curry guy is saying it never happened. Tell that to the, you know, the thousands and thousands of liberators who saw it first hand and smelled the smells." And yeah, he was vehement that it should never happen again, I think. And wanted to use his eye witness... he understood the importance of his eye witness account of it. That's what he understood.

What is his legacy? What is Norman's legacy?

It's in there on the table. His legacy. What is his legacy? I mean, every, every student he spoke to, how they carry that visceral knowledge that he talked about, that's his legacy. And what they tell their friends, and their family, and their children, it's the only hope we have, you know, to keep it from happening again. I mean, it does happen again. It's currently happening in various places in the world. It does happen. That's, my passion about it is that the education never detach from the current, what's currently happening in the world. It can never be detached. Like educators, it's just, I feel strongly that it is crucial that educators say, here is genocide that happened in 2019. Here's genocide in the world that happened in 2023. And here, and here are the parallels. Here's what to look for. I don't think that most kids have a clue what fascism is. In fact, I don't think most adults know what fascism is. But my uncle, when he was alive, he was an outspoken man. He didn't mince words. And he wasn't one of those veterans who are too injured to speak aloud about what they went through. He knew he had, it was his obligation to humanity to speak about what he saw. I mean, now the liberators and the survivors, how many are left in the world? You could count them on two hands, I'm sure, because they all, they'll all be up around a hundred years old.