Welcome to Veterans Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumbus. Our guest once again in this
edition is Frank Kohn. Colonel Cohen is a US Army veteran of World War
Two and spent thirty five years in uniform. In our last edition, Cohen
told us all about growing up in a Jewish family in Breslau, Germany,
and how anti Semitism made life very difficult for his family, even before Hitler
rose to power and especially after that. He also shared the story of his
family fleeing Germany after Christallnacht, coming to the US, his efforts to assimilate
to our country, and being here as World War Two began. At the
end of our previous episode, Cohen told us he was drafted into the Army.
He now tells us what happened after he was drafted, how he was
trained as an interrogate, and his service at the Battle of the Bulge.
When you were draft, did you go to your reception center which was Fort
Tix through Jersey, and you usually stay there four days and then you get
orders for advanced or rather basic training, and after that goes to advanced training.
Well, I was there for four days and the second day you get
KP, they open, they wake you up at four in the morning,
and you're in the kitchen until about eight o'clock at night. And I said
to myself, well, this may be the army, but I'm going to
try to avoid this as much as possible. Well, anyway, the fourth
day came, everybody get orders except me. So I run up to my
sergeant and I said, everybody's leaving except me. What's going on? He
said, well, let me check. He came back. He said,
well, of course you're an enemy alien. I said, amy alien.
I'd never had heard that term, and I certainly didn't think I was one.
I said, I'm not an enemy and he said, well, of
course you are, because you came on a visitor's visa. You never got
naturalized, and you were born in Germany. Your last passport was German,
even though it was revoked. Then you were stateless. You were designated an
enemy alien and the FBI asked to investigate you. And I thought to myself,
my gosh, I'm going to be here and our permanent KP. And
with that thought, I went back to the SUDEN and I said, sudden,
I forgot to tell you I know a little bit about the army.
I was in high school OURTC and I took one hour TC class in college,
and I know about close on a drill. I know about the tactics
of the military. I know some history about the military, so I'm not
a complete novice. Well, the sard said, I'm glad you told me
that, because since you're going to be here a while, I'm going to
make you an acting gadget. What's an acting gadget, he said, Well,
here's an armband that has corporal stripes. But don't get it into your
head that you're a corporal. You're just an acting corporal. You don't get
paid like a corporal. But you can act like a corporal with those new
recruits that come in because you're now seasoned with four days in the army.
So you form them up and you march them to the two movies that you
saw when you came in. I was relieved, I said, thank God,
no KP. And sure enough I had the first group. I got
them together. I marched them to the theater. Uh left left, left,
right left, and it worked fine. They got the say, they
got the rhythm of it, and I had a march and by the time
we get to the theater and they saw the two movies. One was Why
We Fight, was a very good movie that showed why we were in the
war. The second movie was How to Avoid Venereal Diseases. I saw that
movie more time than anybody else in the United States Army. But that was
a record that I didn't particularly was proud of, but I had it anyway.
It sure as heck beat kp now Uh. The FBI finally cleared me
after three months of investigation, and off I went for basic training in Fort
Benning, Georgia. And two weeks after I arrived in Fort Benning, they
took me to the Middle District Court of Georgia in Columbus, Georgia, and
I was sworn in as a United States citizen. Boy was I proud of
that. I patted myself on the back because there was nobody else to do
that, and I went back and I was just gleeful because I now was
no longer an enemy alien. I was a citizen, a United States citizen
like everybody else. And I'm still proud of that to this day, and
whenever I think of it, I patted myself on my back. That's awesome,
congratulations, thank you. So you were eventually assigned to the eighty seventh
Infantry Division and sent over to Europe in late nineteen forty four. In a
short time later, they discovered that you spoke German, so I moved you
to an interrogator role. Did you ever see combat with the eighty seventh?
Oh no, no, The eighty seven separated me. I wasn't one of
their best soldiers because I had been involved in a training accident. The instructor
had gas training and he wanted to make it a little more vibrant, so
he drew a hand grenade, which he saw it was a smoke grenade.
I had my gas mask on, which was very lucky because he threw that
grenade and it turned out to be white fox first and that burned me around
the ears, around the edge of the gas mask, on the wrists,
on the hands. My pack caught fire and I had to get rid of
that. I was in the dispensary, the first one. I had run
right in there, and they didn't know what it was until the instructor came,
who had gotten a blest right into his face, just terrible, and
it was white phosphorus that burns until its soaked in water, and they put
my hands into a bucket of water and applied wet compresses of the air.
Anyway, I was in the hospital for a month and they had progressed from
five mile full field Geer of March to a twenty five mile one and when
I got back a month later, about fifteen miles, I concked out and
they had to take me in a jeep. So I wasn't their best soldier
and they got rid of me. When they were assessed infantry replacements to replace
the losses of D Day, I was one of those, and I left
the eighty seventh Infan Division for overseas England, France and then into Belgium.
And as you said, Belgium, they found out that spoke Garman and I
went to Levesna near Paris for a two week course. There were a lot
of refugee kids like me who had gone to Camp Ritchie and they had a
eight week intelligence course. They had taken most just some of the lessons and
put it into this two week course. And then I was placed into a
team interrogator Prisoner of War Team number sixty six IPW sixty six, which had
two officers, two interpreters and a sergeant in charge and a driver. The
officers and the interpreters like me or us US and US no in rankin sing
and I tore off my PFC stripe and I had us US and I looked
just like the officers. I outranked the driver, but he didn't know that,
and I ordered him around all the time. Had he known, he
wouldn't have listened to me, but he listened anyway. The team went to
Luxembourg and married up with a twelve with a T Force twelve Army Group,
which was a large intelligence unit right under General Bradley. It was General Eisenhower,
then General Bradley, and then General Patten and Hodges as the army commanders.
So we were a high level intelligence unit operating in both in the First
and Third Army area. And we got back to the Belgium one week before
the Battle of the Bulge, and we were committed in the Battle of the
Bulge to look for German infiltrators who had come through our lines four in a
jeep in American uniforms, and they were causing havoc in back of our lines,
and we were told to circulate through Belgium to see if we can intercept
any of these teams. We went all away Belgium, Cnae, Roach for
Dina Namur, all kinds of Remouchan, all kinds of cities, and it
was just miserable because we had to circulate in a jeep with a windshield down
because you can't shoot through the windshield. And the weather was absolutely horrendous.
It was either sleeping or freezing rain or snow, and the wind at twenty
five miles per hour with that windshield down was just brutal. Now, I
was actually a PFC, which meant I was in the back seat. The
captain was in front with the driver, and I got behind the captain and
he shielded me a bit. That full blast went on him and I had
a little bit less bless. This was still miserable. That's Frank Cohne.
He and his family were forced to flee from Nazi Germany. They came to
the US and he served in the Army during World War Two and for thirty
five years in all. When we come back more from the Battle of the
Bulge and more about his role as an interrogator of German prisoners of war,
I'm Greg Corumbus and this is Veterans Chronicles sixty seconds of Service. This sixty
seconds of Service is presented by T Mobile. T Mobile offers exclusive discounts for
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At mobile dot com slash military to learn more about how they support our military
community. From Rockford, Illinois, eight local veterans received special gifts last week
to show appreciation for their service. Lifescape Community Service's Adult Day program honored the
veterans with coins made by the Rock Valley College Student Veterans Association and presented to
the veterans by members of Love's Park BFW Post ninety seven fifty nine. Kelly
Sandford, the director of Lifescape, explains, our clients come to us when
they're in a more vulnerable state. They need a little bit more help with
things than they used to and it's important for us to recognize the things that
they have done. Today's sixty seconds of Service is brought to you by Prevagen.
Prevagen is the number one pharmacist recommended memory support brand. You can find
Prevagen and the Vitamin Aisle in stores everywhere. This is Veterans Chronicles I'm Greg
Corumbus. Our guest in this edition is Frank Kohne. He's a US Army
veteran who fled Germany as a child and was later drafted into the Army during
World War II. Still ahead, we'll hear Cohn's reflections on the Holocaust and
while he still speaks out about it as he nears his ninety ninth birthday,
and we'll hear much more about his interrogation of Nazi POWs. But Cone now
picks up his story of service with more memories from the Battle of the Bulge.
Well, we suffered for about seven days, circulating in de Now.
We found one of the teams had been wiped out by an infantry roadblock and
they had taken a berzuka, and I guess team could didn't know the password,
and they figured it was German and they wiped it out with the bazuka.
We searched those people. The four Germans were dead outside the jeep and
all we found was dog tags, which meant they had taken him from either
pow so from dead Americans, and they had explosives. They had maps,
but nothing of intelligence value that we could turn in except for the dog tags.
To this day when somebody says ball of the bulge, it wasn't about
the shooting and the rumors and all that in that bowel of the bulge.
It was the weather that comes to mind to this day, I still enjoy
a bath because we didn't even have a shower nothing. But after they bulge,
we went to the age and I got into a shower and I stayed
there for twenty minutes while people were yelling get the heck out of there.
But I needed that shower, and I stayed there. And to this day
I'm reminded every time I take a bath because we never got a bath,
and I enjoy it and I think of the ball of the bulge. How
soon did you start interrogating German POWs Well? The mission of the t force
was to follow the infantry into all the big cities that they were capturing,
and we had building targets and personality targets in each one of these cities.
And the building targets were anything of use to the occupying force to the United
States, such as utilities and government buildings, and also in support of the
prosecution of war criminals, and the personality targets were the war criminals. Anyway,
we went to Cologne as the first city, and then across the ray
Margen Bridge when that was captured, into Disseldorf and then Ziegen, and then
we went into Frankfurt and then the Wisbaden and the next one was Castle,
but we passed Castle because the Russians had already reached the Alba at Macdeburg,
and we went to Macdeburg to be on the other side of the Alba.
Anyway, you said the first people that we were really interrogating, It wasn't
in Cologne, because in Cologne the Nazis who were in charge of Cologne withdrew
to the other side of the Rhine River and we didn't find any personality targets
there. But when we started to get into Disseldorff, there were some people
that we did catch and we started to interrogate. Our interrogation was always preliminary
and now, of course if they were targets, they were going to be
prosecuted, so it was just a preliminary investigation to ascertain that this was actually
the target and he had to be kept separate in a confinement awaiting trial.
But when we got to Frankfurt, for example, there was a large group
of officers who had been captured, and before we even went to our first
priority target, which was a mistake by the way, but before we were
told to start interrogating those officers, to separate those who have to be kept
for further investigation and further interrogation versus those that would go right into the pow
camp. And we did that, and because of that, we delayed getting
to our first priority target, which was the Ig Farm Building in Frankfurt.
Because the Ig Farm Building had been saved in the bombings, it was going
to be Eisenhower's headquarters, and because we hesitated getting there, some infantry unit
had a bunch of forced laborers on their hands and didn't know what to do
with them, so they put him into that Ig Farm building and the laborers
were furious at the German government, and to let out the anger, they
smashed open all they smashed all the windows, and they threw all the furniture
out of the building, and they caused a million dollars worth of damage that
had to be repaired before Eisenhower could use the headquarters. So whenever you get
deviated from your plan, it's not a good idea. That's Frank Cone,
a US Army veteran who was born in Germany, fled to the US as
his Jewish family was persecuted by the Nazis, joined the military, and ended
up interrogating German prisoners of war. Coming up up, Cone tells us about
his most famous pow and offers his reflections upon learning the extent of the Holocaust.
I'm Greg Corumbus, and this is Veterans Chronicles. This is Veterans Chronicles.
I'm Greg Corumbus. Our guest in this edition is Frank Kohn, a
US Army veteran of World War II, during which he interrogated Nazi prisoners of
war and served at the Battle of the Bulge. Over the course of our
two part conversation, Colonel Cohne told us about growing up Jewish in Breslau,
Germany, suffering anti Semitism before and especially after the rise of Adolf Hitler,
fleeing Germany for the United States, all the work he did to assimilate as
an American as quickly as possible, and getting drafted into the Army. He
also shared how his citizenship status delayed his deployment to Europe and how his assignment
in the army changed once superiors knew he spoke fluent German. In our final
segment, Cohne will discuss the end of the war, learning the extent of
the Holocaust, and doing everything he can, even as he nears ninety nine
years old, to make sure it never happens again. But he picks up
his story now by discussing the information he was most interested in getting from German
prisoners of war. Well, it was mainly what their position was. And
now the most dramatic one that I had in Frankfurt, well, he was
a two star general. Here he is in full attention in front of me.
The irony of it, you know, a Jewish PFC have this two
star general standing at attention in front of me, which I understood very nicely.
But of course he didn't understand that. And I asked him of his
name, and he says August Villan Honsalen said, oh, my god.
Because of my German schooling, I recognized him. I immediately who he was.
The fun Sullen was the aristocracy, and this one August Wilhelm, with
a nickname of Prince AUVI. He was the second to the throne of the
previous Kaiser. He was the son of the Kaiser, and he would have
been Kaiser after the application of the first Kaiser, and here he was a
two star Waffness general. So I stopped the interrogation immediately. I went to
my captain. I told, hey, we got a big one, and
he said, who do you got. I said, I got the son
of the Kaiser. Hei you. That was the end of my conversation with
the son of the Kaiser. He took him away immediately, and not necessarily
with him, but with other prisoners that you questioned, what were the most
effective tactics for getting information from them? Well, actually I never had to
really probe deeply. But what always scared the heck out of him was we
could say we will, by the way, if you don't talk to us,
we're going to let you go and give you to the Russians and you'll
be a prison of the Russians. And they certainly didn't want to be a
prisoner of the Russians. Now, that was really dramatic when we hit Magdeburgh
because on our trip to Magdeburg, the Germans were on both sides of the
Outer Bahn, and we knew that the war was coming to a close.
This was now in April of nine, Team forty five, and of course
we waved off the Germans. We didn't have time to take him prisoner.
They wanted to get some to eat. That's why they were trying to be
prisoners of the Americans. And they were not afraid to become our prisoners at
all. They were anxious because they thought we were going to get they're going
to get food. Well, when we hit the Alba, the Russians were
on the other side, and my captain got orders to go across and to
talk to the Russians. Now, they needn't explain it to me, but
I understood what it was, because he was to twell them, stay where
you are, don't come across the river, even though Magdeburgh and areas further
to the west are going to be in the Russian zone. But stay until
we withdraw in about two or three months from now, and then you go
ahead ahead and you get your your zone and stay where you are in the
meantime. And that was the idea of General Eye. Now he drew a
line. The elbow was the line the Russians weren't gonna supposed to come across,
and we weren't supposed to get across, so that the two armies would
stay apart from each other. Anyway, when the captain, who was looking
for a Russian linguist, couldn't find anyone, and he turns to me,
he said, the cone come with me. I'm trying to get out of
this, because I said, Captain, only no one word of Russian,
and that's Tovari's friend. That's it. He said, I don't care carry
the map. I carried the map well. Halfway through the river. He
had ordered a German boatman to take him across, and he gets up in
the middle of the river to make sure the Russians see that it's an American
come across. We get across, and you can't imagine the reception we received.
They hugged us, they kissed us, they carried us around, and
they applied me with vodka. I was nineteen years old than ever had a
slug of vodka before, and I took one sip and I knew I better
stay away from that stuff. But I had some cigarettes to reciprocate, and
of course I was of no use to the captain. They had to take
him to the rear, where they found an interpreter. I stayed at the
river's edge communicating with the Russian who Nancio took a shine to me. He
said me Moscow, I said me New York. He said you come Moscow.
I said, you come New York. That's how we talked. Anyway,
After a while, the captain came back and he was smiling, he
was all happy, and we went across and we told the about the reception
we received, how great it was, and then you forget about it.
And then a couple of weeks later, a wake up from a dream or
whatever it was, and suddenly I had a recognition. I understood why did
we have such a reception. And it was really obvious if I had thought
of it before. Because when the Germans moved into Poland and Russia, they
mistreated the Russians terribly. So when the tide of battle changed and the Russians
started to move against the Germans, they took their revenge on the Germans.
So no German ever wanted to be taken prisoner by the Russians. They fought
the Russians every inch of the way. They fought them all the way up
to the Alber so when they finally saw an American uniform coming across, they
recognized they had survived the war, and they were celebrating their survival. That's
why we got a reception of that sort. What did you know before the
end of the war about the extent of the Holocaust? Very very little before
the war. The only thing that we we had liberated a Russian labor camp.
I was in Wiesbaden, and that was a complicated camp anyway, because
half of the people were forced laborers that had been drug drug into Germany,
while the other half were volunteers. They had volunteered to work for the Germans.
And we tried to distinguish between the two groups, and we couldn't do
that because everybody said they were forced laborer and it was the other person who
was not, and they pointed fingers at each other, and their German was
just broken German, so our interrogation couldn't determine who was lying and who wasn't
lying. We finally just determined how everybody was forced laborer. Later on I
found out that when some of these people were returned to Russia, where they
wanted to go back home. When they were received, they were earmarked all
of them as volunteers, and they were immediately imprisoned, and the women the
hair was shaved off and they were branded as traders. So there was a
different treatment that they got from US versus the Russians, and when they found
out what happens to them, nobody went back to Russia anymore. Now,
you have been very active with the National Holocaust Memorial Museum here in Washington.
Tell me a little bit about your work there and why, at ninety nine
years old, you think it's still vital for everyone to know what happened.
Don't exaggerate, I'm still ninety eight. I'll be nine in August. Anyway,
Well, I thought this is part of my mission to tell people about
the Holocaust, and I think it's important to understand what happens when hate gets
out of control, and that's what happened in Germany. Hate got completely out
of control, and people who never would have thought about killing others ended up
in concentration cabs guarding people who were going to be executed, and were able
to associate themselves with the people who were the executioners. And it didn't seem
so out of the ordinary at all. That was the routine that was developed,
and all that came out of hate, and we need to tell people
what hate does to people so that it has to be avoided. It has
to be squashed early in the stages, because if it gets into the government,
and if the government gets control and has a hateful government, they will
take measures against anybody who isn't like them. And other people who are like
them are people who are going to be ending up in the position where they
were either going to be expelled if nobody takes them. When they are expelled,
not going to be accommodated. They're just going to be killed to get
rid of them. That's what hate does. And the Holocaust Museum helps us
to tell about what happened in the Holocaust. And I felt that was a
very important point because I owe the United States, and whatever payback I can
give, I have to do that, and this is part of my payback.
Sir, what are you most proud of from your service? Well,
I'm certainly proud of my World War experience, no question about it. And
I am also proud when I get into a high school and tell them most
of it is done by zoom right now, but in some cases I actually
get to the school and have a face to face accommodation with high school and
some junior high school or middle school kids, and when they start asking questions,
I'm able to answer it. That's a very satisfying type of accommodation.
I'm very proud of those inter relationships. And lastly, sir, what does
it mean to you to have us record your story and share it with today's
Americans and future generations. Well, this is where I have the experience and
I can become believable as to what happened in the Holocaust. For example,
in my family, eleven of my uncles and cousins were killed in the Holocaust,
and the remainder were distributed to eight nations and they were then pulled in
later to at three the United States, Israel, and Australia, where the
countries that they finally ended up with when they were able to escape. Anyway,
I recognize that I can tell my story and if I am believable and
I can convince people that they have to be careful about hate, that just
because somebody is a political opponent, that doesn't make him an enemy. You
can be courteous with your opponents on the politics and you can shake hands and
you can go out to dinner with them, and then later on you have
your political divisions, and each one will go their way in that respect,
but there's no hate involved. It's just competition. Competition is good, it's
terrible. And if I can get that across, I feel I've done my
job as a refugee who came at age thirty. Mister Cohne, It's an
amazing story and you tell it so well. Thank you for your time today,
and thank you for your many years of faithful service to the United States.
Thank you. Frank Cone born in Germany, forced to escape to the
US as the Nazis persecuted the Jewish population there. Once he turned eighteen,
mister Cone was drafted into the Army, first assigned to the eighty seventh Infantry
Division, and later served as an interrogator of German prisoners of war. I'm
Greg Corumbus and this is Veterans Chronicles. Hi, this is great Corumbus,
and thanks for listening to Veterans Chronicles, a presentation of the America Veterans Center.
For more information, please visit American Veteranscenter dot org. You can also
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