Intelligence Officer Fighting in Europe: From the Archive

My background is as follows.

I'm Jewish, and I was 12 years old when the Nazis took over.

Then by the time I was 15, and it was clear that it was very dangerous for Jews to live in Germany, my parents sent me to Switzerland to school.

And so I was raised in a high school situation in Switzerland, in a French-speaking part of Switzerland.

and went back to Germany until shortly before the war broke out.

And then my parents, my father died in Germany.

and my mother got out.

I had applied for a visa to the United States, but you had to wait three, four years before you could get the visa.

You had to wait.

During that period, I was in France and then later on in Palestine.

Eventually, I came to America.

When the visa came, it was 1940.

I was very anxious to get involved in this war.

I felt it was a very personal battle, as it were, to fight a regime of that nature.

On December 7, 1941, I volunteered for the draft and was immediately taken.

In January 1942, I was in Camp Roberts in California in basic training.

Then they didn't know what to do with me because my English It was not very good then, so they didn't know what to do with me.

Everybody else around me was being assigned, and I was not.

And finally I asked why, and they said, well, you're not a citizen, and we don't know what to do exactly.

And so then Congress passed a law very shortly thereafter, May.

In 1942, Congress passed a law that all aliens who had volunteered into the army, not drafted, but volunteered in the army, could become citizens immediately.

And so I became a citizen the next week in San Luis Obispo.

And lo and behold, then I was being assigned to an artillery regiment.

I was in field artillery with my training.

And then there eventually I was assigned to military intelligence.