Howard Saul Silber Veterans History Project Testimony

Okay, I'm Howard Silber, S-I-L-B-E-R. My middle name is Saul, S-A-U-L.

And we're here at the Jewish Community Center in Omaha, Nebraska. We'd like to thank the ADL and the Jewish Community of Omaha for helping us with these projects and encouraging these interviews. Now, I'd just like to start with a little bit about New York and where you're from, so I get a good feeling of who you are.

Okay, I was born and raised on the Upper West Side of Manhattan and a wonderful place in which to grow up in those days. And I attended Stuyvesant High School, which is an outstanding school in New York, and then from there went to the University of Alabama. Why did I go to Alabama? I had a football scholarship, although I never was good enough to really play. The scholarship helped me get through school because this was in the depths of the Depression, and my family, my father, had lost his business. And we were not, I'd say we were pretty poor at that point.

So you were affected by the Depression, and do you remember the stock, stock market crash of '29?

I remember the crash not too well because it really didn't affect us that early, and it was something going on in the world. I was reading the newspapers then. It was a pretty early age, but I'm afraid most of my attention was on the sports pages. But the failure of banks, I think, hit hard because that's where we lost, my family lost out.

So you had a business. And then where did you enlist, and with who?

Well, I was at the University of Alabama on Pearl Harbor Day, and all of us went down the next day, I say all of us, many, many, many of the students went to enlist. And I tried first for the Navy to become a flight cadet, and I found out for the first time that I was partly colorblind, and they wouldn't accept me, so I tried for the Army Air Forces, as they were then, and they also would not accept me. I tried for the Marine Corps. They wouldn't accept me for flight training because of that. And so I went back to classes, and then the following May, they gave us an opportunity to go into the armed services and continue our education toward a degree by doing some correspondence work. And I wound up in the Army that way.

Okay. And you didn't enlist with anyone, or were your friends accepted?

There were a number of friends of mine who enlisted at the same time, half a dozen perhaps, but we all went to different places.

Now, these were Jewish or not Jewish boys?

There was one Jewish boy, and the rest were ordinary Gentile people.

Now, was a lot of this sparked by the bombing of Pearl Harbor?

Oh, yes, yes.

So you remember when Pearl Harbor was bombed. Where were you?

At that time, it was a Sunday, I was playing bridge instead of hitting the books. And somebody came into the room where we were and told us about it. Heard it on the radio. Of course, we stopped everything, and we just huddled around the radio, and it was a horrible, horrible thing. And then the next thing I did was to call home and tell my folks, be careful, because they might try to bomb New York City.

And do you remember the government advertising at this time for soldiers and war preparations?

Well, they actually had been doing quite a bit of recruiting, and there was a draft on that preceded Pearl Harbor, because under Franklin Delano Roosevelt, this country was arming for the eventuality of war.

Now, what was the general attitude of the people at this time? Do you remember how they felt about the war? How they felt about the Japanese people and the Germans and the Nazis?

The attitude of the nation was pro-war after Pearl Harbor. It was unreal, almost, the way people were just hepped up about this country going to war and supporting it and supporting the troops. And I remember in the period when I was still a civilian, I was dating, or had a date with a woman in the WAVES, as they called it, which was the Navy branch for women. And kids would, were taunting me on the streets as a slacker, because she was in uniform and I wasn't. And it was really that sort of attitude around the country. It was an unbelievable support for the war. As far as the Nazis were concerned and the Japanese, personally and with, with obviously most Jews in this country, were very, very anti-Nazi and were boycotting German goods. That had been going on for a number of years and were obviously very unhappy with the situation in Europe. Although the story of the death camps, the crematoriums was not, had not been told. The American public, at least from where I stood, was really not aware of how bad that had gotten. We knew the Jews were in trouble, we knew that perhaps the Nazis were killing Jews, but never imagined the mass, the tremendous amount of people who were killed, 6 million eventually, Jews and maybe 5 or 6 million others.

And what political party were you in at that time and how was their attitude towards the war?

At that time I was a strong Democrat and the attitude was very pro-war after Pearl Harbor and actually a little bit somewhat before Pearl Harbor, but it was never as enthusiastic for war until after the Japanese struck.

Now back to when you enlisted, could you describe to me the first day of enlistment and how your military career began?

Well, I went home to await my call and they sent me, after about three or four weeks I had my notice, to report to Camp Upton on Long Island, New York. And I remember my father took me, accompanied me down to the railroad station and I took the Long Island Railroad to Camp Upton. And it was a, I arrived there, there were troops meeting us at the airport, put us into buses, took us to the camp. And there was all kinds of confusion it seemed to me, but it was orderly confusion. And eventually we got into our barracks and we were issued uniforms and other equipment, blankets, mess kits, things like that. And settled in.

Now did your family support you in your career in the military?

Oh, very much so. They didn't like the idea, of course, obviously, but they knew that I had to do what I wanted to do and the whole attitude of the country was that way, so it was pride.

Now, as a Jew, how did you celebrate your Judaism while you were in the military?

Well, that's difficult. I'm sorry to admit, I really, even though my mother was Orthodox and my father was strongly Jewish, although he violated things here and there, like Kashrut and such, but I hadn't drifted away from Judaism by any means, but I certainly wasn't active as a Jew. They often said, once you got in and into combat, you've got foxhole religion. Well, maybe I did, I prayed with everybody else, but I wasn't actually Jewish to the standpoint of, I wasn't observant at that point. I wore my dog tags and they had an H on them for Hebrew. I went to services a couple of times because some of my friends were going. And when I first became, I think, indignant about anti-Semitism in the military, I think that helped me become more involved as a Jew.

I was wounded on December 16, 1944, and I was in a large hospital in Vittel, France, a U.S. Army hospital. And on Christmas Eve, I was in a room with three other men, and on Christmas Eve, the, a chaplain came through with three or four or five soldiers who were ambulatory, and he was leading them in Christmas carols. Well, that was fine with me. And then toward the, as he was about to finish, one of my roommates said, how about singing God Bless America? And this chaplain, who was southern from his accent, stood up tall and said, we will not sing that song written by a son of the devil, meaning Irving Berlin, Jewish. And that bothered me a great deal. I didn't, unfortunately, I should have dressed him down. I didn't. However, one of the other fellows in the room asked for an interview, who was not Jewish, asked for an interview with the hospital commander the next day. And even though it was Christmas Day, one of the commander's assistants, a lieutenant colonel, came in and talked to the man. He told him what had happened. We never saw that chaplain again. But that made me more involved as a Jew.

And there were other incidents of, instances of anti-Semitism that I encountered. And I can say at times it was fairly widespread. We had quite a few southerners all through our unit, and many of them had never seen a Jew, never talked to one. But they were, in a sense, anti-Semitic in some ways. We were, we shipped out to Europe from Camp Shanks, New York, which is near Nyack, which was near Nyack, New York, and it was a port of embarkation, as it was called, close to New York City. And I remember some of the guys in my unit coming back, and I pretended I was asleep. I heard them talking about, gosh, how many Jews they encountered, in Man. .. having gone into New York in Manhattan. And some of them were calling it Jew York. That sort of thing. I think some of them may have been trying to out smart, outdo each other in that regard. It was the thing to do for them. Well, once we got into combat, a lot of that changed because there was a bond that was created. And I felt there was a lessening in my own unit of anti-Semitism, anti-Semitic remarks. And that's as far as it really went. There was no hazing because we were Jewish or that sort of thing. It was just a remark here and there.

So you did experience anti-Semitism, and you also said something about foxhole religion. Would you say that praying with all these other men that weren't Jewish was as religiously fulfilling for you?

I prayed alone, for the most part, and that was fulfilling. Now, those were different times. I was praying, hoping that that would be one way to continue to live. And some wise man said there were no atheists in foxholes, and it turned out to be true. I did go to a couple of non-sectarian services, largely because other guys went. And I would say those were reasonably fulfilling. They were not as fulfilling as a Hanukkah service that I attended shortly before I was wounded.

And where were you wounded, and where were you first deployed to?

Well, first we were deployed to, we landed in southern France... In August of 1944.

Can you just clear that up for me real quick? So you weren't involved with D-Day you were there after D-Day?

Right. And we made our way into Marseille, liberated the city, the second largest city in France then and now, I think. And we actually, the French who were liberated, the French unions went on strike. And we were an infantry outfit, a combat outfit, but we were sent down to the docks to unload ammunition and other supplies coming in by ship because the French stevedores were on strike. Well, we had that duty for three or four weeks, and then we started moving north, more toward the combat areas. Well, there had been combat on the way up the Rhone River Valley, and, but the Germans were largely retreating at that point until they reached, in our situation, until they reached the Vosges Mountains. And then they stiffened and gave us resistance. Where was I wounded? We had crossed the Vosges Mountains, defeating the Germans as we went, in quite a bit of heavy fighting. And I don't know whether you're familiar with the Maginot Line.

Um hum.

The Germans, the French had built to keep Germans out, and it was futile because the Germans outflanked it. Went around 'em. But as we approached the Maginot Line, the Germans had fortified it against us. And I was wounded in the Maginot Line, about one and a half or two kilometers from the German border. We were in combat, and my unit actually pierced the line then and went into Germany that day, but I was wounded in the morning, about ten o'clock in the morning.

And where were you wounded?

You mean physically?

Yes, sir.

Both my arms were broken. My left rib cage was smashed in part, and I had some shrapnel wounds.

So it was a grenade or a mortar shell?

It was a shell from an 88 millimeter cannon on a tank.

So from there you didn't see any action after that?

No, that put me out of the war. And I was back in, I was in an army hospital, ready to go back to duty, and probably would have been, I had orders to report to the west coast where I probably would have been sent into the Pacific for the invasion of Japan when the war ended. Those orders were rescinded immediately.

Now, did time pass slow or fast for you before you were injured and once you were injured and after that?

Well, time passed actually very fast during the time we were in combat. And I can say it slowed down, obviously, when I was in a hospital patient.

And then once you were again out of the military, where did you go from there?

When I left the military? Well, I had been a budding journalist. And while I was at Rhoads General Hospital, an army hospital, in Utica, New York, as a patient, I became ambulatory. And I was speaking of fast and slow time, a lot of slow time in that hospital. You just went nuts trying to find things to do, although we could go into town and such, but still time dragged. So I went down to what they then called the public information office, sort of public relations office, and asked the lieutenant in charge if I could do some work for him, just to keep busy. And he was happy to have me, and he put me to work writing some news releases. I also wrote a radio show that was presented on the local station, and kept busy that way. Well, in that time period, I became acquainted with some of the editors and reporters at the local newspaper. Because I would take releases down to them, or sometimes when they wanted something done, have a reporter and a photographer do something at the hospital, I would escort them. And I got to know them pretty well, and they offered me a job when I got out of service. Well, I shed my uniform in the morning one day and went right to work at the newspaper.

Just real quick back to the war. While you were enlisted and in Europe, did you ever hear about concentration camps, the Jews being mistreated, anything like that?

We knew the Jews were being mistreated. We. . . while I was still with the unit, we were very close to what turns out a concentration camp, the only, supposedly the only German concentration camp in France, but I didn't see it and I didn't hear about it at that point. It was liberated by another division. We knew that something was going on, but we had no idea. I had no idea of the scope, the horrible scope of it.

And did you stay in touch with your family while you were enlisted?

Oh, yes. We had what they called V-mail, which was a mail that was photographed, reduced in size for shipping, and sent home. It was censored, but I would write them as often as possible, and I heard from them frequently. I got goody packages from them now and then.

Those kept you going, right?

You bet.

Goody packages. Did you come out of the war with any close friends that you didn't have when you went in?

Not really. Largely because I was separated from my unit and then in hospitals. I did make a couple of friends in the hospital, but they weren't lasting friendships, largely because we were so far apart geographically.

How do you think the Army changed you, if at all?

To be totally honest with you, I matured slowly. And I learned, I think I became a man, even though I'd been in college, I became a man in the Army. I got away from a lot of the kid stuff. I was having a great time partying through college, for example, and that all changed with the Army.

So what kind of changes did you see in yourself?

Well, I became a more serious person, a person willing to work hard, and I think just generally I was a changed person. That's one of the reasons for years I advocated a universal military training in the United States. Sending kids into service or public service for a couple of years between high school and college.

You were a recruiter then?

No, no. I just personally was in favor of that.

All right. So would you suggest for me to join the military myself?

I think it depends on the individual. You're, you're. What I've seen of you, the last few minutes, the last half hour or so, you're a pretty mature guy for your age. You're kind of with it. I wasn't at that point.

Now, do you remember when V-J Day was declared and Victory in Europe was declared?

Oh, yes. Both very well.

Could you describe them for me?

What I did?

Mm-hm.

Okay, for V-E Day, I had become an ambulatory patient, and with lots of other guys, I went into town, and we just had one great time. We drank a lot. We chased gals, and some of us caught them. It was just a wonderful celebration. And then when V-J Day came, and we realized immediately that we were, the war was over, we were, if we wished we'd be out, the imminent danger of invasion of Japan was over. Of course, we knew that when the bombs, A-bombs were dropped, why it was even more of a celebration. They were both wonderful occasions.

At that point, where were you stationed or hospitalized?

I was at Rhoads Army General Hospital in Utica, New York. That's R-H-O-A-D-S.

And what did you think of nuclear technology at that time? Had you heard much about it, or was it pretty much a secret of the governments?

It was a secret. I knew a little bit. I had physics a year of physics in college and some in high school, and knew a little bit about the potential for nuclear energy. I had no idea it could ever be made into a bomb or anything like that. Really, once we heard of the bomb dropping, being dropped on Hiroshima, we heard about it immediately after the news was released. Why, it just shocked me that anything like that could be devised.

Did you find that everyone in the military had strong hate for Hitler and wanted to end his reign?

Very much so, yeah. I wouldn't say everybody, but I would say 99 percent. And we were a. .. more than. . . In my unit, we had been up against SS units, Waffen SS. These were the fanatics. These were the Nazi Party members, and they had their own military units. They were elite units. We took a great deal of pride and pleasure in defeating them and in killing some of them.

So you were up against the elite?

For a time, not all the time, but for a time, yes.

That was in France?

In France.

So, you said that they had turned the Maginot line around and used it to defend their own German borders and then based it into France.

They had a double line. They used them where we were. The Maginot it was in the province of Alsace, Alsace in eastern France, essentially. We had to go through that. Of course, I never made it. Beyond that was a Siegfried Line, which was built by the Germans, largely anti-tank. And our- my unit went through both of them on that day.

So they were fairly close together and very near the German border?

Well, the Siegfried Line was inside Germany. The Maginot Line was just very within, what should I say, home run distance of the border.

Do you have any stories of major battles you're involved in or anything else like that you'd like to talk about before we move on from your war experience?

Well, I haven't talked too much about a lot of that, but I think I brought something with me. This is an SS.

Hold it up just about.

This is a ceremonial dagger, and the inscription is Alles für Deutschland, Everything for Germany. And I took this from an SS captain, a Hauptmann. And this was the Waffen SS, that I mentioned, the fighting branch of the SS. As you know, they also were prison guards and had police duties and were under, except for tactical control, in combat they were under Heinrich Himmler, who also had the concentration camps, the death camps, and they were enemies. We took, as I mentioned, we took pleasure in defeating them. But I took it from him, and I killed him.

Do you remember the day and time and how?

November 22, 1944, and it was in hand-to-hand combat. I had a knife in my boot, and I used it.

And you put it through his heart?

Well, in his gut. I haven't talked about that much, but after 60-plus years.

This was the only memorabilia that you took from that particular event?

Ah, yes. Well, I also took his watch. I took his billfold, and with his identification, I intended to write to his survivors. It was a picture of him and a woman with some kids, obviously his kids. But I never could bring myself to write to them. I used the watch for a time. I also had, well, I took his pistol, his Luger, and it was stolen from me when I was in the hospital. There were a couple of other things, too, that somehow I was able to hold on to this and a few other things.

I was going to say that the officers did carry Lugers, right, the German officers?

They carried Lugers, or a pistol known as a P-38. This happened to be a Luger, and they were prize trophies if you could get one.

Now, what weapon did you carry?

Well, I was what they call a Mustang. I had been an enlisted man, and I was promoted, commissioned, to second lieutenant along the way. One of the reasons was that the life of a platoon leader, second lieutenant, were platoon leaders, by and large. It was very short. It was a follow-me type assignment. We went through quite a few of them coming up from southern France, three to four. I was a sergeant, and I was given a battlefield commission. What was the question?

It was... I thought I asked you about the weapons that you carried.

Oh, yeah, yeah. I carried an M1 rifle, which was a standard for U.S. troops, infantry troops. The next weapon I would have carried as an officer was a .30 caliber carbine. I didn't want to do that. I didn't want to be identified as an officer because the snipers were picking off the officers. So I just continued to carry, and I liked my M1, I continued to carry it.

Not as a rifle?

As a rifle. Even though I was an officer, but I wasn't the only one who did that. We also hid our identification. We didn't put our, some of them put, you know, you'd have a gold bar, vertical gold bar on your helmet under ordinary circumstances as a second lieutenant, or a silver bar as a first lieutenant. And I didn't put that on my helmet.

That was smart. Just marking yourself. So, as far as military stories, that's all you want to talk about. Is there anything else, medals, decorations?

Well, I did receive one pretty good decoration. I went to my company commander, and the, my men, as a platoon leader, I was responsible for nominally 40 men. I didn't have that many, of course, because of casualties and illness. But the men had done exactly what I had done in a particular situation, and they didn't get it. So I said, I refused to take it. Well, he sent me up to the regimental commander, a full colonel, who ordered me to take it. But I've never displayed it for that reason. So I really don't want to talk about it. I have a purple heart, but that goes with being wounded, and a few other little things.

And then, after you were out of the hospital, and recovered from your injuries, you went to the newspaper, and from there, where did you go?

Well, I spent about a year and a half, or two years, on the newspaper in Utica, New York, the Utica Daily Press. And then I went to New York City as an intern on the New York Sun as a reporter. I stayed there until January 15, 1950. I became a reporter, a regular reporter. And January 15, 1950, there was that terrible notice on the bulletin board that the paper was folding, going out of business. And jobs in that field weren't easy to come by, because other papers were failing also. There were just too many of them in a city like New York. So I kicked around a little bit, went into public relations with an agency as a writer, any job I could get for a while, and I wasn't terribly happy about that job. I wound up in Albany, in the State House Bureau, Albany, the state capital of New York, in the State House Bureau of the Gannett newspapers, which was then a small chain, now the largest newspaper group in the United States.

And I worked there for a couple of years, and then I was interested in a newspaper, I'd heard of some newspapers where they had stock options for regular employees, which was almost unheard of in those days. And also, I wasn't very happy with the American Newspaper Guild, a union, and so I decided I'd look for a job on a newspaper that had both a stock program for employees and was non-union, as far as the news departments were concerned. I identified the Milwaukee Journal, the Kansas City Star, and the Omaha World-Herald. I interviewed, took some time off, I had sent resumes, I interviewed, and about a week after I got back, it was in October of 1955, I received, when I was at the office, in the, we had our office in the State House, and I went in on a Saturday just to clear my desk with not a lot of people around, to answer some letters, things like that, and I went down to the, we had a post office box in the post office in the capital, and I got the mail for the office, and there was a letter from me from World-Herald, the Omaha World-Herald, offering me a job. Well I... decided immediately that I would take it, they were offering me a better salary than I was earning, and it was something that I wanted. I waited until Monday to reply, and went home during the noon hour to make a private call to the paper, and I went to the mailbox at home, and there was an offer from the Kansas City Star for a job also. The Omaha World-Herald was offering $7 a week more, and that's how I got to Omaha. And then I became, specialized primarily in military coverage and aviation coverage, both that had interested me, and stayed with the paper until I retired, and advanced, became an editor, and a fairly substantial stockholder, and I had a very good life here.

And when did you come to Omaha? What was the year?

1955.

So you've been in Omaha for over 60 years now?

Right. Well, 50 years.

50 years, right. And have you seen many changes in Omaha?

Oh, yes. Well, it was a smoky, gritty town, downtown, with all the railroads, the trains spewing smoke and cinders, and a lot of people didn't care about that. I don't think I did either, but it was actually a reasonably sophisticated town for its size. And I bought a home immediately near 75th and Frederick Street. My colleagues at the paper were telling me that I was nuts living out in the country that way.

West Omaha?

West Omaha. Well, it was even beyond 72nd Street, from Center on south, was a very narrow, brick, two-lane street, and with no shoulders, as I remember. And pretty soon Omaha came and engulfed me, and I saw it grow and grow and grow, and now I think it's a fabulous town.

Absolutely. So, that's where you've been now, and are still there now, or you live in...

No, I live in Bellevue now.

Bellevue. Which is basically part of Omaha.

Oh, yeah. It is.

It's been taking over, taken over, too. Do you support our war right now that we're currently in there? What are your feelings about that?

I support the war because we're in it. I supported it strongly when we went into it, believing that there were weapons of mass destruction there, and also that Saddam Hussein needed to be deposed. I'm a little more, I'm a little lukewarm about it now, but we're there, and there's no way out without winning, as I see it. And I watched the Vietnam War. I was in Vietnam a number of times as a correspondent, and that was a very winnable war. The politicians and the public in general had been behind it, but we lost that one, and I think if we pull out prematurely, we'll lose this one.

I agree. There's nothing to win but winning itself in that war.

That's right. But it hurts me. It really. .. Even though the casualties in this war, compared to the war that I knew, are very few. We lost so many men, thousands of men, almost every day. But even so, it hurts me when I watch TV or pick up the paper. Another report of two Americans killed in a roadside bombing and this and that. I wish I knew a better answer. The only thing I could say is, we've got to stick with it and do our best to win.

And have you seen the world change, political changes, since you moved to Omaha or since you were out of World War II?

I mentioned earlier that I was a Democrat and a very staunch FDR supporter. I still think a great deal of FDR. He was the man this country needed at the time, and he did a magnificent job. But I've moved my political thinking somewhat to the right. I'm not a right-winger by any means, but I have registered as a. .. I've been a Republican for a number of years. I don't vote a straight ticket. I never have. And for example, I'm proud to say that I never voted for Nixon. But I've seen the country, I think, become more liberal. I've seen greater government services, many good. And I think America probably is a better place in which to live than it was when I was a kid, even though I had a fabulous boyhood.

And as a Republican, what do you think of our current president, George W.?

You had to ask me that. I think he's an earnest, honest man, trying to do a very good job, but not always succeeding. I don't think he's the smartest guy in the world. He, I don't think he's picked particularly good people around him in many instances. I have a high regard for Condoleezza Rice and for some of his other cabinet officers. But his close advisors like Rove and some of the others I'm not happy with.

Now, is there anything else you'd like to talk about?

Oh, not really. I kind of enjoyed getting some of this off my chest, and I think you've done a great job as an interviewer. You might want to consider journalism someday.

Well, you've encouraged me. That's for sure. You seem to have a great career in journalism, and journalism treated you very well.

Yeah.

Thank you.

I appreciate it.