WEBVTT

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Welcome to Veterans Chronicles. I'm Greg
Corumbus. Our guest once again in this

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edition is Frank Kohn. Colonel Cohen
is a US Army veteran of World War

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Two and spent thirty five years in
uniform. In our last edition, Cohen

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told us all about growing up in
a Jewish family in Breslau, Germany,

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and how anti Semitism made life very
difficult for his family, even before Hitler

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rose to power and especially after that. He also shared the story of his

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family fleeing Germany after Christallnacht, coming
to the US, his efforts to assimilate

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to our country, and being here
as World War Two began. At the

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end of our previous episode, Cohen
told us he was drafted into the Army.

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He now tells us what happened after
he was drafted, how he was

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trained as an interrogate, and his
service at the Battle of the Bulge.

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When you were draft, did you
go to your reception center which was Fort

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Tix through Jersey, and you usually
stay there four days and then you get

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orders for advanced or rather basic training, and after that goes to advanced training.

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Well, I was there for four
days and the second day you get

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KP, they open, they wake
you up at four in the morning,

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and you're in the kitchen until about
eight o'clock at night. And I said

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to myself, well, this may
be the army, but I'm going to

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try to avoid this as much as
possible. Well, anyway, the fourth

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day came, everybody get orders except
me. So I run up to my

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sergeant and I said, everybody's leaving
except me. What's going on? He

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said, well, let me check. He came back. He said,

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well, of course you're an enemy
alien. I said, amy alien.

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I'd never had heard that term,
and I certainly didn't think I was one.

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I said, I'm not an enemy
and he said, well, of

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course you are, because you came
on a visitor's visa. You never got

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naturalized, and you were born in
Germany. Your last passport was German,

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even though it was revoked. Then
you were stateless. You were designated an

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enemy alien and the FBI asked to
investigate you. And I thought to myself,

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my gosh, I'm going to be
here and our permanent KP. And

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with that thought, I went back
to the SUDEN and I said, sudden,

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I forgot to tell you I know
a little bit about the army.

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I was in high school OURTC and
I took one hour TC class in college,

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and I know about close on a
drill. I know about the tactics

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of the military. I know some
history about the military, so I'm not

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a complete novice. Well, the
sard said, I'm glad you told me

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that, because since you're going to
be here a while, I'm going to

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make you an acting gadget. What's
an acting gadget, he said, Well,

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here's an armband that has corporal stripes. But don't get it into your

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head that you're a corporal. You're
just an acting corporal. You don't get

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paid like a corporal. But you
can act like a corporal with those new

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recruits that come in because you're now
seasoned with four days in the army.

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So you form them up and you
march them to the two movies that you

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saw when you came in. I
was relieved, I said, thank God,

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no KP. And sure enough I
had the first group. I got

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them together. I marched them to
the theater. Uh left left, left,

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right left, and it worked fine. They got the say, they

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got the rhythm of it, and
I had a march and by the time

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we get to the theater and they
saw the two movies. One was Why

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We Fight, was a very good
movie that showed why we were in the

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war. The second movie was How
to Avoid Venereal Diseases. I saw that

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movie more time than anybody else in
the United States Army. But that was

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a record that I didn't particularly was
proud of, but I had it anyway.

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It sure as heck beat kp now
Uh. The FBI finally cleared me

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after three months of investigation, and
off I went for basic training in Fort

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Benning, Georgia. And two weeks
after I arrived in Fort Benning, they

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took me to the Middle District Court
of Georgia in Columbus, Georgia, and

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I was sworn in as a United
States citizen. Boy was I proud of

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that. I patted myself on the
back because there was nobody else to do

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that, and I went back and
I was just gleeful because I now was

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no longer an enemy alien. I
was a citizen, a United States citizen

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like everybody else. And I'm still
proud of that to this day, and

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whenever I think of it, I
patted myself on my back. That's awesome,

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congratulations, thank you. So you
were eventually assigned to the eighty seventh

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Infantry Division and sent over to Europe
in late nineteen forty four. In a

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short time later, they discovered that
you spoke German, so I moved you

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to an interrogator role. Did you
ever see combat with the eighty seventh?

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Oh no, no, The eighty
seven separated me. I wasn't one of

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their best soldiers because I had been
involved in a training accident. The instructor

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had gas training and he wanted to
make it a little more vibrant, so

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he drew a hand grenade, which
he saw it was a smoke grenade.

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I had my gas mask on,
which was very lucky because he threw that

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grenade and it turned out to be
white fox first and that burned me around

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the ears, around the edge of
the gas mask, on the wrists,

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on the hands. My pack caught
fire and I had to get rid of

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that. I was in the dispensary, the first one. I had run

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right in there, and they didn't
know what it was until the instructor came,

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who had gotten a blest right into
his face, just terrible, and

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it was white phosphorus that burns until
its soaked in water, and they put

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my hands into a bucket of water
and applied wet compresses of the air.

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Anyway, I was in the hospital
for a month and they had progressed from

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five mile full field Geer of March
to a twenty five mile one and when

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I got back a month later,
about fifteen miles, I concked out and

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they had to take me in a
jeep. So I wasn't their best soldier

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and they got rid of me.
When they were assessed infantry replacements to replace

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the losses of D Day, I
was one of those, and I left

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the eighty seventh Infan Division for overseas
England, France and then into Belgium.

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And as you said, Belgium,
they found out that spoke Garman and I

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went to Levesna near Paris for a
two week course. There were a lot

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of refugee kids like me who had
gone to Camp Ritchie and they had a

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eight week intelligence course. They had
taken most just some of the lessons and

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put it into this two week course. And then I was placed into a

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team interrogator Prisoner of War Team number
sixty six IPW sixty six, which had

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two officers, two interpreters and a
sergeant in charge and a driver. The

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officers and the interpreters like me or
us US and US no in rankin sing

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and I tore off my PFC stripe
and I had us US and I looked

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just like the officers. I outranked
the driver, but he didn't know that,

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and I ordered him around all the
time. Had he known, he

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wouldn't have listened to me, but
he listened anyway. The team went to

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Luxembourg and married up with a twelve
with a T Force twelve Army Group,

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which was a large intelligence unit right
under General Bradley. It was General Eisenhower,

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then General Bradley, and then General
Patten and Hodges as the army commanders.

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So we were a high level intelligence
unit operating in both in the First

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and Third Army area. And we
got back to the Belgium one week before

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the Battle of the Bulge, and
we were committed in the Battle of the

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Bulge to look for German infiltrators who
had come through our lines four in a

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jeep in American uniforms, and they
were causing havoc in back of our lines,

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and we were told to circulate through
Belgium to see if we can intercept

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any of these teams. We went
all away Belgium, Cnae, Roach for

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Dina Namur, all kinds of Remouchan, all kinds of cities, and it

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was just miserable because we had to
circulate in a jeep with a windshield down

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because you can't shoot through the windshield. And the weather was absolutely horrendous.

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It was either sleeping or freezing rain
or snow, and the wind at twenty

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five miles per hour with that windshield
down was just brutal. Now, I

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was actually a PFC, which meant
I was in the back seat. The

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captain was in front with the driver, and I got behind the captain and

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he shielded me a bit. That
full blast went on him and I had

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a little bit less bless. This
was still miserable. That's Frank Cohne.

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He and his family were forced to
flee from Nazi Germany. They came to

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the US and he served in the
Army during World War Two and for thirty

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five years in all. When we
come back more from the Battle of the

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Bulge and more about his role as
an interrogator of German prisoners of war,

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I'm Greg Corumbus and this is Veterans
Chronicles sixty seconds of Service. This sixty

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seconds of Service is presented by T
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Lifescape Community Service's Adult Day program honored the

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veterans with coins made by the Rock
Valley College Student Veterans Association and presented to

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the veterans by members of Love's Park
BFW Post ninety seven fifty nine. Kelly

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Sandford, the director of Lifescape,
explains, our clients come to us when

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they're in a more vulnerable state.
They need a little bit more help with

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things than they used to and it's
important for us to recognize the things that

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Prevagen and the Vitamin Aisle in stores
everywhere. This is Veterans Chronicles I'm Greg

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Corumbus. Our guest in this edition
is Frank Kohne. He's a US Army

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veteran who fled Germany as a child
and was later drafted into the Army during

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World War II. Still ahead,
we'll hear Cohn's reflections on the Holocaust and

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while he still speaks out about it
as he nears his ninety ninth birthday,

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and we'll hear much more about his
interrogation of Nazi POWs. But Cone now

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picks up his story of service with
more memories from the Battle of the Bulge.

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Well, we suffered for about seven
days, circulating in de Now.

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We found one of the teams had
been wiped out by an infantry roadblock and

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they had taken a berzuka, and
I guess team could didn't know the password,

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and they figured it was German and
they wiped it out with the bazuka.

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We searched those people. The four
Germans were dead outside the jeep and

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all we found was dog tags,
which meant they had taken him from either

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pow so from dead Americans, and
they had explosives. They had maps,

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but nothing of intelligence value that we
could turn in except for the dog tags.

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To this day when somebody says ball
of the bulge, it wasn't about

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the shooting and the rumors and all
that in that bowel of the bulge.

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It was the weather that comes to
mind to this day, I still enjoy

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a bath because we didn't even have
a shower nothing. But after they bulge,

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we went to the age and I
got into a shower and I stayed

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there for twenty minutes while people were
yelling get the heck out of there.

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But I needed that shower, and
I stayed there. And to this day

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I'm reminded every time I take a
bath because we never got a bath,

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and I enjoy it and I think
of the ball of the bulge. How

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soon did you start interrogating German POWs
Well? The mission of the t force

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was to follow the infantry into all
the big cities that they were capturing,

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and we had building targets and personality
targets in each one of these cities.

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And the building targets were anything of
use to the occupying force to the United

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States, such as utilities and government
buildings, and also in support of the

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prosecution of war criminals, and the
personality targets were the war criminals. Anyway,

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we went to Cologne as the first
city, and then across the ray

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Margen Bridge when that was captured,
into Disseldorf and then Ziegen, and then

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we went into Frankfurt and then the
Wisbaden and the next one was Castle,

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but we passed Castle because the Russians
had already reached the Alba at Macdeburg,

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and we went to Macdeburg to be
on the other side of the Alba.

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Anyway, you said the first people
that we were really interrogating, It wasn't

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in Cologne, because in Cologne the
Nazis who were in charge of Cologne withdrew

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to the other side of the Rhine
River and we didn't find any personality targets

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there. But when we started to
get into Disseldorff, there were some people

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that we did catch and we started
to interrogate. Our interrogation was always preliminary

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and now, of course if they
were targets, they were going to be

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prosecuted, so it was just a
preliminary investigation to ascertain that this was actually

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the target and he had to be
kept separate in a confinement awaiting trial.

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But when we got to Frankfurt,
for example, there was a large group

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of officers who had been captured,
and before we even went to our first

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priority target, which was a mistake
by the way, but before we were

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told to start interrogating those officers,
to separate those who have to be kept

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for further investigation and further interrogation versus
those that would go right into the pow

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camp. And we did that,
and because of that, we delayed getting

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to our first priority target, which
was the Ig Farm Building in Frankfurt.

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Because the Ig Farm Building had been
saved in the bombings, it was going

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to be Eisenhower's headquarters, and because
we hesitated getting there, some infantry unit

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had a bunch of forced laborers on
their hands and didn't know what to do

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with them, so they put him
into that Ig Farm building and the laborers

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were furious at the German government,
and to let out the anger, they

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smashed open all they smashed all the
windows, and they threw all the furniture

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out of the building, and they
caused a million dollars worth of damage that

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had to be repaired before Eisenhower could
use the headquarters. So whenever you get

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deviated from your plan, it's not
a good idea. That's Frank Cone,

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a US Army veteran who was born
in Germany, fled to the US as

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his Jewish family was persecuted by the
Nazis, joined the military, and ended

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up interrogating German prisoners of war.
Coming up up, Cone tells us about

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his most famous pow and offers his
reflections upon learning the extent of the Holocaust.

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I'm Greg Corumbus, and this is
Veterans Chronicles. This is Veterans Chronicles.

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I'm Greg Corumbus. Our guest in
this edition is Frank Kohn, a

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US Army veteran of World War II, during which he interrogated Nazi prisoners of

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war and served at the Battle of
the Bulge. Over the course of our

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two part conversation, Colonel Cohne told
us about growing up Jewish in Breslau,

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Germany, suffering anti Semitism before and
especially after the rise of Adolf Hitler,

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fleeing Germany for the United States,
all the work he did to assimilate as

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an American as quickly as possible,
and getting drafted into the Army. He

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also shared how his citizenship status delayed
his deployment to Europe and how his assignment

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in the army changed once superiors knew
he spoke fluent German. In our final

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segment, Cohne will discuss the end
of the war, learning the extent of

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the Holocaust, and doing everything he
can, even as he nears ninety nine

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years old, to make sure it
never happens again. But he picks up

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his story now by discussing the information
he was most interested in getting from German

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prisoners of war. Well, it
was mainly what their position was. And

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now the most dramatic one that I
had in Frankfurt, well, he was

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a two star general. Here he
is in full attention in front of me.

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The irony of it, you know, a Jewish PFC have this two

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star general standing at attention in front
of me, which I understood very nicely.

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But of course he didn't understand that. And I asked him of his

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name, and he says August Villan
Honsalen said, oh, my god.

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Because of my German schooling, I
recognized him. I immediately who he was.

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The fun Sullen was the aristocracy,
and this one August Wilhelm, with

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a nickname of Prince AUVI. He
was the second to the throne of the

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previous Kaiser. He was the son
of the Kaiser, and he would have

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been Kaiser after the application of the
first Kaiser, and here he was a

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two star Waffness general. So I
stopped the interrogation immediately. I went to

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my captain. I told, hey, we got a big one, and

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he said, who do you got. I said, I got the son

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of the Kaiser. Hei you.
That was the end of my conversation with

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the son of the Kaiser. He
took him away immediately, and not necessarily

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with him, but with other prisoners
that you questioned, what were the most

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effective tactics for getting information from them? Well, actually I never had to

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really probe deeply. But what always
scared the heck out of him was we

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could say we will, by the
way, if you don't talk to us,

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we're going to let you go and
give you to the Russians and you'll

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be a prison of the Russians.
And they certainly didn't want to be a

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prisoner of the Russians. Now,
that was really dramatic when we hit Magdeburgh

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because on our trip to Magdeburg,
the Germans were on both sides of the

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Outer Bahn, and we knew that
the war was coming to a close.

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This was now in April of nine, Team forty five, and of course

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we waved off the Germans. We
didn't have time to take him prisoner.

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They wanted to get some to eat. That's why they were trying to be

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prisoners of the Americans. And they
were not afraid to become our prisoners at

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all. They were anxious because they
thought we were going to get they're going

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to get food. Well, when
we hit the Alba, the Russians were

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on the other side, and my
captain got orders to go across and to

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talk to the Russians. Now,
they needn't explain it to me, but

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I understood what it was, because
he was to twell them, stay where

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you are, don't come across the
river, even though Magdeburgh and areas further

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to the west are going to be
in the Russian zone. But stay until

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we withdraw in about two or three
months from now, and then you go

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ahead ahead and you get your your
zone and stay where you are in the

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meantime. And that was the idea
of General Eye. Now he drew a

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line. The elbow was the line
the Russians weren't gonna supposed to come across,

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and we weren't supposed to get across, so that the two armies would

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stay apart from each other. Anyway, when the captain, who was looking

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for a Russian linguist, couldn't find
anyone, and he turns to me,

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he said, the cone come with
me. I'm trying to get out of

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this, because I said, Captain, only no one word of Russian,

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and that's Tovari's friend. That's it. He said, I don't care carry

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the map. I carried the map
well. Halfway through the river. He

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had ordered a German boatman to take
him across, and he gets up in

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the middle of the river to make
sure the Russians see that it's an American

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come across. We get across,
and you can't imagine the reception we received.

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They hugged us, they kissed us, they carried us around, and

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they applied me with vodka. I
was nineteen years old than ever had a

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slug of vodka before, and I
took one sip and I knew I better

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stay away from that stuff. But
I had some cigarettes to reciprocate, and

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of course I was of no use
to the captain. They had to take

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him to the rear, where they
found an interpreter. I stayed at the

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river's edge communicating with the Russian who
Nancio took a shine to me. He

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said me Moscow, I said me
New York. He said you come Moscow.

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I said, you come New York. That's how we talked. Anyway,

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After a while, the captain came
back and he was smiling, he

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was all happy, and we went
across and we told the about the reception

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we received, how great it was, and then you forget about it.

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And then a couple of weeks later, a wake up from a dream or

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whatever it was, and suddenly I
had a recognition. I understood why did

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we have such a reception. And
it was really obvious if I had thought

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of it before. Because when the
Germans moved into Poland and Russia, they

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mistreated the Russians terribly. So when
the tide of battle changed and the Russians

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started to move against the Germans,
they took their revenge on the Germans.

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So no German ever wanted to be
taken prisoner by the Russians. They fought

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the Russians every inch of the way. They fought them all the way up

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to the Alber so when they finally
saw an American uniform coming across, they

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recognized they had survived the war,
and they were celebrating their survival. That's

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why we got a reception of that
sort. What did you know before the

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end of the war about the extent
of the Holocaust? Very very little before

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the war. The only thing that
we we had liberated a Russian labor camp.

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I was in Wiesbaden, and that
was a complicated camp anyway, because

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half of the people were forced laborers
that had been drug drug into Germany,

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while the other half were volunteers.
They had volunteered to work for the Germans.

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And we tried to distinguish between the
two groups, and we couldn't do

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that because everybody said they were forced
laborer and it was the other person who

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was not, and they pointed fingers
at each other, and their German was

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just broken German, so our interrogation
couldn't determine who was lying and who wasn't

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lying. We finally just determined how
everybody was forced laborer. Later on I

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found out that when some of these
people were returned to Russia, where they

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wanted to go back home. When
they were received, they were earmarked all

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of them as volunteers, and they
were immediately imprisoned, and the women the

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hair was shaved off and they were
branded as traders. So there was a

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different treatment that they got from US
versus the Russians, and when they found

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out what happens to them, nobody
went back to Russia anymore. Now,

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you have been very active with the
National Holocaust Memorial Museum here in Washington.

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Tell me a little bit about your
work there and why, at ninety nine

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years old, you think it's still
vital for everyone to know what happened.

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Don't exaggerate, I'm still ninety eight. I'll be nine in August. Anyway,

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Well, I thought this is part
of my mission to tell people about

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the Holocaust, and I think it's
important to understand what happens when hate gets

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out of control, and that's what
happened in Germany. Hate got completely out

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of control, and people who never
would have thought about killing others ended up

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in concentration cabs guarding people who were
going to be executed, and were able

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to associate themselves with the people who
were the executioners. And it didn't seem

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so out of the ordinary at all. That was the routine that was developed,

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and all that came out of hate, and we need to tell people

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what hate does to people so that
it has to be avoided. It has

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to be squashed early in the stages, because if it gets into the government,

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and if the government gets control and
has a hateful government, they will

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take measures against anybody who isn't like
them. And other people who are like

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them are people who are going to
be ending up in the position where they

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were either going to be expelled if
nobody takes them. When they are expelled,

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not going to be accommodated. They're
just going to be killed to get

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rid of them. That's what hate
does. And the Holocaust Museum helps us

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to tell about what happened in the
Holocaust. And I felt that was a

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very important point because I owe the
United States, and whatever payback I can

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give, I have to do that, and this is part of my payback.

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Sir, what are you most proud
of from your service? Well,

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I'm certainly proud of my World War
experience, no question about it. And

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I am also proud when I get
into a high school and tell them most

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of it is done by zoom right
now, but in some cases I actually

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00:31:56.880 --> 00:32:05.680
get to the school and have a
face to face accommodation with high school and

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some junior high school or middle school
kids, and when they start asking questions,

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I'm able to answer it. That's
a very satisfying type of accommodation.

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I'm very proud of those inter relationships. And lastly, sir, what does

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it mean to you to have us
record your story and share it with today's

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00:32:29.200 --> 00:32:36.839
Americans and future generations. Well,
this is where I have the experience and

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00:32:37.039 --> 00:32:42.319
I can become believable as to what
happened in the Holocaust. For example,

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00:32:44.039 --> 00:32:52.079
in my family, eleven of my
uncles and cousins were killed in the Holocaust,

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and the remainder were distributed to eight
nations and they were then pulled in

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00:32:59.279 --> 00:33:06.839
later to at three the United States, Israel, and Australia, where the

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00:33:06.880 --> 00:33:12.000
countries that they finally ended up with
when they were able to escape. Anyway,

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I recognize that I can tell my
story and if I am believable and

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I can convince people that they have
to be careful about hate, that just

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because somebody is a political opponent,
that doesn't make him an enemy. You

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can be courteous with your opponents on
the politics and you can shake hands and

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00:33:42.559 --> 00:33:45.720
you can go out to dinner with
them, and then later on you have

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00:33:45.799 --> 00:33:52.880
your political divisions, and each one
will go their way in that respect,

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00:33:52.279 --> 00:34:00.559
but there's no hate involved. It's
just competition. Competition is good, it's

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terrible. And if I can get
that across, I feel I've done my

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job as a refugee who came at
age thirty. Mister Cohne, It's an

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amazing story and you tell it so
well. Thank you for your time today,

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and thank you for your many years
of faithful service to the United States.

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Thank you. Frank Cone born in
Germany, forced to escape to the

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00:34:25.199 --> 00:34:30.159
US as the Nazis persecuted the Jewish
population there. Once he turned eighteen,

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mister Cone was drafted into the Army, first assigned to the eighty seventh Infantry

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Division, and later served as an
interrogator of German prisoners of war. I'm

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00:34:40.079 --> 00:34:54.880
Greg Corumbus and this is Veterans Chronicles. Hi, this is great Corumbus,

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00:34:54.960 --> 00:35:00.960
and thanks for listening to Veterans Chronicles, a presentation of the America Veterans Center.

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00:35:00.559 --> 00:35:06.880
For more information, please visit American
Veteranscenter dot org. You can also

359
00:35:07.000 --> 00:35:12.719
follow the American Veterans Center on Facebook
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00:35:13.400 --> 00:35:17.440
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00:35:17.440 --> 00:35:22.920
features, and of course please subscribe
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362
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