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MN: So in terms of your actual presence in the area, about how many days do you think you were in that Dachau area?

KM: Our record, see, we have a daily record of where our headquarters spent the night all the way from March 12th to May 6th, and April 28th to the May 6th, that whole corridor that we passed through, from the 28th to May 6th was what we called the "Death Corridor." These people were all on the road, and it took a while before our voices could  corral and I really don't know how they did it. But besides the Jewish, bulk of the Jewish inmates in Dachau, the other camps were labor camps where people from... and I vividly remember that one camp that we met with inmates. The best we could get was they were Ukrainians, and I don't know whether they were Ukrainian Jewish people or not. You know, we talked about Dachau, but I also remember, before we came to Dachau, there was one town that we had, we were passing by, we had some time. And so my friend and I, my scrounging partner, every chance that we had, we would go looking for chickens or eggs or whatnot. We came across one town where we got into a gymnasium-like building, went down to the basement., and lo and behold, we found a bucket full of eggs. And these eggs were preserved underwater in a bucket. There was a, I don't know, about probably two dozen eggs, and the bucket filled with water to preserve it like a refrigerator. But I remember that it was this town that we came across some civilians in what was obviously prisoner garb. Not olive drab, I forget the color of this uniform with a painted P on the back. And in the front, I think it was the Star of David. And my recollection is that -- and this is before Dachau now, way before Dachau -- and my recollection of these people, the ones that I met were young, pretty girls, around maybe eighteen-, nineteen-year-olds. And I wish they could have spoken English or I could have spoken German because they were obviously prisoners. My guess today is that these were domestic servants that the Germans used for all type of special category of prisoners, because clearly there were big Ps on the back of the uniforms. And I recall some Star of David on the front, so they were evidently upper level prisoners, we'll call it prisoners, or Jewish members, as compared to the inmates of Dachau. Later on, when I thought about it, I recall that I did say, and I would estimate, I would guess that these were, very little has been written about it, but I recall someplace that there were different categories of Jewish, what you would call prisoners.

MN: And this was before...

KM: Before Dachau, before Dachau.

MN: And then when you were in Germany, were there other occasions where you were in contact with civilians?

KM: After the war, we were occupation forces, yes, we were. After the war, we occupied this little town. We were in the vicinity of Dachau, I mean Donauworth. Because Donauworth had a bridge crossing the Danube River, going from south to north, especially from Munich, Augsburg, up the road to Nuremberg, this is the main highway. And the bridge crossing the Dachau at that point was damaged and destroyed during the war. And so there was a temporary bridge for a thoroughfare from Augsburg to Nuremberg, which the German civilians had to utilize, going from north to south, south to north. And our job, primary job, was to guard this bridge and control traffic. And sure enough, within the first month, I recall within the first month of our occupation there, from the south of Augsburg... no, no.  In the vicinity of Munich, after the American forces came in, an art dealer or something that was released, the people in charge of the camp wanted to have him come back again for further investigation. And so there was a bulletin out to look out, on the lookout for this particular individual. And one of our boys who was on duty looked over the wanted individual list, to be on the lookout for so-and-so, the character. And sure enough, that same day, somebody happened, came by and looked, this guy thought, wait, wait, this is probably the guy. So they stopped him and then turned out that he was the individual they were, the army unit down in Munich was looking for. And the net result of it, the rest of the story is that the 44th "Ack-Ack" Brigade was in charge of some prison camp in the vicinity of Munich, and the 44th "Ack-Ack" Brigade, previously, in southern France, when we were in France, was attached to the 522. The "Ack-Ack" Brigade was attached to each battery of the 522, some anti-aircraft unit, they're anti-aircraft guns, they gave us protection, supposedly, from possible enemy aircraft attack. And so throughout our four months' stay in southern France, we had this "Ack-Ack" Brigade boys attached to each battery. And the commanding officer of the 44th Brigade, when it looked at the report, that the wanted individual was caught by the 522, suddenly recognized the 522 and said, hey, that's the outfit that our boys were attached to. And at that point, the 44th "Ack-Ack" Brigade was in charge of rest and recuperation camp down south, which was called Koenigssee. Koenigssee was the, before the war for the Germans, it was a very high class resort area in the mountains of Bavaria. And the general said, "By the way, got in touch with Colonel Harrison, and I'm in charge of this, resting camp, R & R camp, and you boys will be more than welcome to spend three-day furloughs over here." So this was very early on our seven-month occupation that we were privileged to... and we were outside the zone of the 44th but we were, we had three-day passes thereafter, and I think I went to two different, two three-day passes to Koenigssee. It was a beautiful, beautiful resort area. And the lake that's up there, Koenigssee is supposed to be the deepest inland lake up in the Alps, near Berchtesgaden. But the A Battery boys who captured the wanted individual were given a lot of praise by the rest of the battery because we ended up with three-day passes.

<End Segment 13> - Copyright © 2021 Densho. All Rights Reserved.