When Charlie Press enlisted in the US Army in 1945, he became an unwitting witness to the horrors of history in the waning days of World War II. But it took nearly 50 years until he was ready to talk about it.

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rivate First Class Charlie Press may have been a late conscript to the 90th Infantry Division in the waning days of World War II, but for the remaining survivors of the Flossenburg Concentration Camp in Bavaria, his arrival couldn’t have come a moment too soon.

The division had been trailing General George S. Patton’s army during its advance through Germany in the winter of 1945 — an advance that would bring the war to a close with the defeat of Nazi Germany.

Until 1944, Flossenburg was mainly a forced labor camp and counted few Jews. In the last six months of the war, though, nearly 25,000 Jews — mainly Hungarian and Polish — arrived. As US forces approached the camp, in mid-April 1945, the SS began the forced evacuation of prisoners. An estimated 7,000 died en route, while thousands of others escaped, were liberated by advancing US troops, or found themselves freed when their SS guards deserted during the night.

By the time Charlie’s unit arrived at Flossenburg, only about 1,500 of the most infirm people had been left behind. Unaware of the full scale of the Holocaust and Germany’s concentration camp system, it didn’t take long for it to dawn on him that this had to have been a place where the Germans were killing people. “We knew we were going to fight for the US. We really didn’t know anything else until we got there.”

The revolting scenes that he observed became etched in his memory, and subsequently suppressed for decades until he finally recorded it for posterity in a June 1992 interview with the US Holocaust Museum.

Press shared many of those memories with me during an interview this past summer in the Jewish Home of Greater Harrisburg, where he currently resides. It was a couple of weeks after his 94th birthday, and he proudly mentioned that he just read the haftarah during Shabbos services to commemorate his bar mitzvah parshah of B’haalosecha.

Despite the oxygen tube Charlie had to wear during our interview, he looked relaxed, wearing a camel-colored, long-sleeve cardigan sweater, with his World War II cap perched on the desk. But many of his memories of the scenes that greeted him at Flossenburg remain vivid to this day.

Call of Duty

World War II and the Holocaust snuffed out too many lives at young ages. Perhaps Charlie’s generosity and can-do attitude — which come across loud and clear even as he speaks in soft, gentle tones —are among the reasons he has merited a long and full life, but genes seem to have something to do with it, too.

Born in Harrisburg on Memorial Day 1920, Charlie has two brothers and three sisters. While one sister passed away a couple of months ago, his other four siblings —ranging in age from 87 to 96 — are all alive and well. Charlie has one younger brother in his mid-70s.

Charlie’s parents immigrated to the US from Europe at the turn of the 20th century, choosing Harrisburg because they already had family there.

Harrisburg today is still home to about 5,000 Jews, and it has had a strong Jewish presence for more than a century. Congregation Kesher Israel was founded in 1902. Rabbi Eliezer Silver z”l served as its first congregational rabbi from 1907 to 1925, and his son Rabbi David Silver z”l served as rabbi for 50 years, until 1983.

“Mother and Dad were shomer Shabbos and we were brought up in an Orthodox environment,” says Charlie’s sister, Ann Feierman, who is two years older than her brother. “Charlie and I would go to shul with our father and he would take us each in one arm.”

Charlie attended the Harrisburg Hebrew School, a forerunner to today’s Silver Academy.

Tall and athletic, Charlie excelled at basketball, but due to his father’s illness, he was forced to take a job right out of high school managing a department store in Frederick, Maryland, about 70 miles away.

World War II broke out in 1939. By then, Charlie was working as a brakeman for the Pennsylvania Railroad. When the US entered the battle at the end of 1941, his job became vital for the war effort, so he received an army deferment, which he wasn’t happy about.

“All my friends went into the service or were taken in. I felt like I was either a loser or what they called a draft dodger,” he said.

So in 1943, Charlie gave his notice to the railroad superintendent, telling him he was joining the army. The superintendent at first refused to let him go, reminding him that his position in the transportation industry was also a patriotic duty.

Undeterred, Charlie asked the superintendent if he had children. The superintendent had a 15-year old son at the time. “I asked, ‘Will you stop him from going into service when he gets older?

“The superintendent replied, ‘Well, you have a good point.’ So he gave me a letter releasing me.”

Charlie’s flatfeet kept him off the front lines, but the army assigned him to the 572nd Anti-Aircraft Battalion at Camp Edwards, Massachusetts, and trained him to fire bazookas.

“They were nervous the Nazis would invade the East Coast,” says Charlie, “so this battalion was based in Boston. They put me in a cadre outfit that just came back from Pacific.”

After the Battle of the Bulge, which ended in January 1945 with more than 100,000 American casualties, the army needed a manpower boost in Europe. Flatfeet notwithstanding, Charlie was sent to Camp Livingston in Louisiana for infantry training, then on to Europe.

 “All Bones”

After trailing Patton’s army, Charlie and his division poured into Flossenburg, where he first encountered Jewish inmates he describes as “emaciated” or “all bones.”

“When we arrived, the crematorium was still smoldering and there were shoes piled up against the building,” says Press. “You wondered how they had survived. We were so flabbergasted and angry that anything like this could have happened. We just could not believe it.”

His battalion had captured many of the SS troops as they were trying to move the last prisoners out of the camp. The US troops marched them back to Flossenburg at bayonet point. From then on, Flossenburg was converted into a prisoner-of-war camp. In his testimony to the US Holocaust Museum, Charlie clearly recalled the arrogance of the Nazi soldiers rankling him: “They were very — the word shtoltz comes to mind. They didn’t think anything they had done was wrong. If we [the US soldiers] had not been told not to harm them, I don’t know what the guys would have done.”

Angry as he was about the Nazis, Charlie reserved the bulk of his emotional resources to assist the camp’s former inmates.

Shortly before his arrival, his battalion had been assigned to Merker’s Mine — a potassium mine operated by a company that was part of the German war machine. The Nazis had stashed the bulk of their gold and cash reserves there for safety when the Allies began bombing Germany in earnest.

The mine contained 8,198 gold bullion bars; 55 boxes of crated gold bullion; thousands of loose bags of gold and silver bars and other valuables, including gold Reichsmarks, British gold pounds, French gold francs; US twenty-dollar gold pieces; and hundreds of bags of foreign currency looted from countries Germany had conquered in the early war years. The total stash was valued at upward of $500 million.

Charlie remembers being stunned at the sight of the caverns, stacked with treasures. He and his colleagues carted it out in wheelbarrows. Some couldn’t withstand the temptation to grab a few loose coins, or wads of bills, which Charlie explained how he put to good use.

The vast bulk of the valuables was turned over to international commissions for distribution to countries whose central bank gold had been stolen by the Nazis, and for restitution to the victims and heirs of the Nazi persecution.

With what he was able to grab, Charlie made restitution of his own, handing some cash to Flossenburg survivors. “I had a big pack, which I gave to them and told them to use for whatever they could buy.”

That spring, Charlie “celebrated” Pesach at Flossenburg. After receiving a Pesach package from Rabbi David Silver, which Charlie recalls contained some matzah and some baloney, and a Yom Tov note saying the rabbi hoped to see him back home, safe and sound, Charlie wrote back his first detailed account of what he saw. “I figured as a rabbi he would be interested in hearing what we’re witnessing.”

Dear Rabbi,

At present my outfit is located at the Flossenburg Concentration Camp guarding Hitler’s elite. This camp was at one time a living hell for many Jewish, Polish, Czech, and German political prisoners. The atrocities which I have witnessed are uncountable. At this moment I am in a guard tower which is equipped with weapons to hinder any attempted break by the criminals. At one time though, this same tower was occupied by some of the criminals who are now inside the fence.

To the left of this tower is a crematorium where daily human beings were burned. In the rear of this crematorium is a room with small vases in which the ashes of only the German dead were placed and sent to their families. The other prisoners’ ashes and bones were piled in a small ravine and covered up. The rain washed all the dirt off and uncovered the hideous evidence. In another section of the field is where human bodies were stacked crosswise on top of wood, and oil was poured over and lighted. When one row would be burned, the next row would be started, and so they kept the fires burning continuously.

The past few Sundays I have been visiting in a small town called Floso, where there are about fifteen Jewish displaced persons who at one time have been in this camp. We go there and have services and sing songs and tell stories. It’s really wonderful to make them happy although in their hearts there is unrest from what they have gone through. They are having a synagogue rebuilt and as soon as it is finished I am going to try and have services there for all of the soldiers and civilians around. It will be great to go to Shul once more.

I thank you again for the holiday greetings, and hope next Pesach I can be home with the family in a civilian suit, and enjoying a good Pesach-dig Seder.

Sincerely yours,

Charles Press

On Guard at Nuremberg

Charlie had one last run-in with German war criminals, when he was assigned briefly to guard the balcony overlooking the courtroom where the Nuremburg war crimes trials began in November 1945.

Charlie’s wife, Eunyce, says her husband was always reticent about his World War II experiences. “He never talked about this until our nine-year-old granddaughter, Rebecca, had to do a paper for school,” she says.

Charlie’s sister, Ann Feierman, also recalls that it took many years for the topic to surface. “In the community itself, people started to talk about it only when the yeshivah began a project, asking their students to gather recollections of the story of the Second World War. It kind of started there.”

Charlie and Eunyce’s daughter, Sueann Lehner, also remembers her father being tight-lipped about his wartime service, until the day she was rummaging around in the attic.

“I found this box of horrific photographs,” she says. “I don’t know if he took them, or got them, and I asked him why he had them. That’s when I remember him telling me about how they found the concentration camp, and rounding up Nazis, and that if they [the Nazis] had jewelry on them, the soldiers took it off them and handed it to the victims in order to give them something.”

Asked in 1992 by the US Holocaust Museum what impact this had on his life, Charlie told them: “At first, I wouldn’t think about it. It’s only recently that the Holocaust has come to the forefront of my mind, and I try to talk about it whenever I can. I don’t know why I didn’t want to talk about it before. I don’t know whether I wanted to block it out because it was such a terrible experience, or whether I was just young and not thinking about it. Now, it doesn’t make me feel good.

“I think this should be a lesson to all of us. It happened once, and it could happen again, if we’re not careful. There is so much tyranny and immorality in the world. I believe G-d has His ways of taking care of people who are immoral.”

Building a New Life

Except for a broken tooth he got when he was thrown out of a jeep, Charlie escaped the war uninjured.

At the end of World War II in Europe, the US Army’s Information and Educational Branch was ordered to establish an overseas university campus for demobilized American service men and women.

Faced with a choice of staying in the armed forces, or attending one of those universities, Charlie enrolled in Shrivenham University in England for three months, then returned to America in April 1946, a month short of his 26th birthday.

In December of that year, he married Eunyce Perlmutter, also from Harrisburg. Charlie and Eunyce are set to celebrate their 68th wedding anniversary later this year.

He considered going into the iron and steel business, but couldn’t find a suitable location for a plant, so instead he became a member of what he called the “52/20 club.”

“We had to register at the unemployment office, and you would come in every week of the year to collect your $20,” he said.

Eventually, the John Hancock Life Insurance Company hired him as an agent, at a base pay just $1 a week higher than the jobless benefits, but there was the opportunity to earn commissions. He was promoted to assistant manager after 14 months on the job and when he got married, he was earning $54 a week.

“He said he was going to do it part-time, and the part-time job lasted for 34 years,” says Eunyce.

The Presses are dedicated members of the Harrisburg Jewish community. Eunyce still serves on the Chevra Kadisha of Kesher Israel and is a past president of the PTA of the Silver Academy. She also sits on the board of Kesher Israel Synagogue, where she once held the positions of treasurer and financial secretary. Charlie is a past vice president of the synagogue.

“We are very appreciative and fortunate to have both of them so involved,” says Rabbi Akiva Males, current rabbi of Kesher Israel. The synagogue honored the Presses at a special shabbaton almost three years ago on the occasion of their 65th wedding anniversary. “I’ve been here now seven years and Charlie and Eunyce have been the most consistent members, and the most loyal volunteers,” added Rabbi Males.

The Presses have two children: Dr. William Press, 66, an optometrist in Fredericksburg, Virginia, and Sueann Lehner, a Harrisburg schoolteacher.

Charlie retired from John Hancock in 1980, but came out of retirement to sell tombstones and monuments for Romberger Memorials — a position he held until age 93, when an illness forced him to move into the Jewish Home in April 2013.

However, his indomitable spirit and can-do attitude is still there.

“I’m hoping for a miracle, and maybe I can get out of here,” says Press, whose fighting spirit makes you believe that he will succeed, and whose health has improved since our interview. “You have to go with what you’ve got and make the best of it.”

A Brush with Death

Charlie did experience one brush with death.

“By the time we got to Flossenburg, the fighting had already finished, but before that, we encountered a group of Nazis who faked like they were going to surrender. I was walking with my friend who was carrying a launcher. A German came out of a pit waving a white flag, and we figured it was a surrender. We started to come toward him and he ducks back into his hole and he starts shooting at us, so we had to drop back. That’s when we used our weapons. Eventually, he did surrender and we found a few other Germans inside the same bunker.”

(Originally featured in Mishpacha Issue 531)