Death could be smelt billowing from inside Dachau. (Photo courtesy of Alfred Fontana)

Dachau Reflections:

Alfred Fontana was 28-years-old when he was drafted into the service in 1941. Prior to the war, Fontana worked at the Gordon Gin Plant in New Jersey. In 1937, he organized the plant into a union.

Fontana was one of the first groups of civilians to be drafted into the war. He accepted the fact he was drafted and wanted to do his part for his country.

He thought of the war as an adventure, but he never expected to see the nightmare he witnessed on April 29, 1945.

Fontana remembers vividly the horror of the Nazi's concentration camp, Dachau.

He remembers the cheering prisoners as the 42nd liberated the camp. He remembers seeing so many innocent prisoners dead and castoff aside as if they were no one's child or parent.

Dachau was a horror to all the young soldiers who witnessed it. It is a day that will forever live in Fontana's mind.

(All information gathered from 1/18/04 interview; Al Fontana passed away on December 27, 2008 at the age of 94.)

A young Viola went off to war never expecting to witness a horror such as Dachau.(Photo courtesy of Ben Viola)

Dachau Reflections:

For Ben Viola, Dachau was the ultimate horror.

He said he could to this day still smell the scent of the dead bodies in his nose. Viola was one of the first men into Dachau when his unit, CO F 222 Infantry, broke the gates of the concentration camp wide open.

He said his unit knew in advance that they were going to Dachau to save the people that were still barely alive. He said his unit was forced to kill many German officers in the process of liberating Dachau, but he said it was necessary to survive.

Many of the German officers who had performed the worst horrors possible had fled the camp the night before, leaving young German officers to defend it. One young German officer who had been captured told Viola that the Germans left behind in the camp knew they never had a chance against the prestigious Rainbow Division. He then begged not to be killed.

(All information gathered from 12/29/03 interview)

42nd Rainbow History: Dachau

Facing Evil:

The day had dawned and the Rainbow was in pursuit of evil as they crossed the Danube River. On April 29, 1945, the 42nd Rainbow Division came right into the path of the Nazi's Dachau concentration camp. It was on April 29, that Brig. General Linden and his party accepted the formal surrender of the Camp (Daly 96). Prior to the 42nd and the 45th Divisions attacking the camp, most of the German military and its officers had already left. Some German officers changed into prison garb to blend with the 33,000 inmates in an escape attempt (Daly 99).

Horror

Upon the confusion and excitement of seeing American troops, this initial group of inmates were pushed and shoved into an electrical compound fense. Several were killed. Other inmates wildly fought against remaining German guards clubbing, stoning and beating them to death (Daly 99). Other German soldiers were thrown in the moat and shot with their own guns.

These inmates had been starved, tortured and witnessed their families being murdered. To stop the frienzy Rainbowers had to shoot over the inmates heads (Daly 99).

The sights of this camp were beyond horror. Outside the camp proper, 1500 bodies were found in 50 boxcars.

These naked and barely clad inmates had been transferred from Camp Buchenwald. Due to lack of housing room, these inmates were left in the boxcars whithout food until they died. Rainbowers found only one survivor (Daly 99).

Scattered spirits

Prior to the German evacuation of its soldiers the night before, they killed important prisoners first then randomly others. Over 2,000 bodies were scattered everywhere. Inmates had stacked the bodies "like cordwood" (Daly 99).

This death camp opened in 1933. It systematically killed up to 200 men, women and children daily. They were stripped naked, led to gas chambers to die, their bodies thrown in a room to await cremation (Daly 99). However, the Nazis had no more coal and were unable to cremate the bodies (Daly 99).

They continued to either starve or gas the inmates. Now the bodies went to open graves or in the moat, causing a human dam of the water (Daly 99).

Hell

The stench was nauseating and overpowering everywhere. The hospital was a place where inmates died either on board beds with no linens or on the floor. Living conditions were worse than that of animals (Daly 99).

Within hours of liberation, medical personnel, food and supplies were brought in and the dead were buried. The camp was a living nightmare. It was worse than anything witnessed on the battlefield.

The average age of the Rainbower was 19 - 20. Tours of the camp were given so these young men would not forget. "Now I know why we are fighting," Rainbowers said (Daly 104).

-Written by EMT

Citations: Daly, Hugh C. 42nd Rainbow Infantry Division: History of World War II. Baton Rouge, Louisiana: Army and Navy Publishing Building, 1946.

The Photo: The boxcars were filled with victims murdered by German officers. (Photo courtesy of 42nd Rainbower Al Fontana)

Fritz Krenkler: A Story of Fate, Family and Friendship

Fritz Krenkler chats with ease over the phone from his home in sunny Arizona. He talks about his family, upcoming trips he is planning to the east coast with his wife, Verna, and the beautiful mountains that cradle his home. Ironically, those Arizona mountains aren’t that much different from the mountains he grew up near in the small German town of Grossbettlingen.

Fritz was a young man when he came from Germany and settled in Pennsylvania with his family. He had dreams of attending college and becoming a mechanical engineer when World War II came to American shores. Fritz enlisted in 1942 but was told that all military forces had enough men. He was needed more on the home front, as a toolmaker, to make supplies. However, in 1944, life took an unexpected turn for Fritz. He was drafted into the Army and after completing ordinance basic training in Maryland and low-level intelligence basic training in Georgia, he found himself back in Germany as a replacement soldier in the 42nd Rainbow.

Returning to Germany as an American soldier was initially uncomfortable for Fritz. “These were my people; my relatives, and now I was there not as family but as a soldier,” he explained. It was long-time friend Richard Marowitz, also in Intelligence and Reconnaissance, who told Fritz within a few days of his arrival that the first time he heard bullets whizzing above his head, all of his reservations would disappear. Fritz confirms that his friend’s advice was correct. “I didn’t hesitate one moment,” he said. “I knew what I had to do.”

This included an encounter about a week after the war ended. Fritz was near the border between Germany and Austria, riding his German motorcycle, when he noticed a caravan of military vehicles that he didn’t recognize. With the war ending, he knew that there were many German soldiers traveling through Italy and Austria to reach their homes in Germany. Fritz remembers that German soldiers would receive papers from Allied forces showing they were screened, and from which camp they had been processed. This then allowed them to get work papers and food stamps on their return home. So, he was not that surprised when the caravan of vehicles was in fact German. He pulled his motorcycle to the side of the road and, because of his fluency of German, spoke to the German captain leading the caravan. The German captain wanted to know where he could bring his troops to be processed and ultimately go home. The German captain didn’t recognize the young American soldier right away. But, after a few seconds he asked Fritz: “Are you Frederick’s boy?” Fritz said he answered, “Yes, I am.” The man standing in front of him was not just a German captain, but his Uncle William. Fritz wonders how the scene must have looked to those German troops in the stopped caravan: A scruffy American soldier hugging a well disciplined German officer.

In that moment Fritz shared with his uncle it didn’t matter whether they were American or German. What mattered was that in the end they were only people; family. So, when Fritz learned recently about the Purple Heart Jewel, created by a German man as a token of friendship to those who liberated the Dachau Concentration Camp, it was again another humbling experience. The Purple Heart Jewel was created by Ludwig Stoeckl and on May 28, 2009, Fritz traveled to Germany, with a few others representing the Rainbow, to honor Ludwig as an honored member of the 42nd Rainbow Division Veterans Memorial Foundation.

The Purple Heart Jewel is symbolic of more than just friendship. Ludwig named the jewel after the same Purple Heart created by George Washington during the Revolutionary War. In that time it was the one declaration given to common soldiers (it wasn’t until years later that it was awarded to those soldiers injured in battle). Ludwig wanted to honor those common soldiers that liberated Dachau more than 60 years ago. The Purple Heart Jewel is worth over $20,000 and has 29 diamonds, representing the day in April 1945 that the camp was liberated.

“Ludwig is a very honorable man,” Fritz said, “He was not alive during World War II but he of course knew of it, of things like Dachau, and recognized that the world today has lost sight of important things from our past.” The past is something that Fritz doesn’t forget. That would be something hard to do when the days, months, years he spent in the Army included moments of fright, laughter but most importantly friendships.

Interview conducted on 8/30/2009 by EMT