November 4, 2005
A NATION OF SAINTS IN TANKS:
Saved by a Saint in a Tank: Sam Goetz long wondered about the larger-than-life soldier who liberated him from a Nazi camp. Decades later, they met again. (Sandy Banks, November 4, 2005, LA Times)
For 60 years it percolated in Sam Goetz's mind, rising to the level of obsession — this need to find the American soldier who had loomed so large in the most critical moment of Goetz's life.On May 6, 1945, Goetz, then 16, was among 18,000 prisoners liberated from the Nazi concentration camp at Ebensee, Austria, by the U.S. Army's 3rd Cavalry. The squadron commander, a tall, young sergeant, climbed down from his tank and pronounced them free.
We "kissed his hands and touched his uniform, as if touching a saint," Goetz would recall years later in his memoir, "I Never Saw My Face."
"Each of us wanted to make sure the man was real … that this was neither an illusion or a dream … "
Goetz spent years combing through war archives in Washington, D.C., without ever learning the soldier's identity. "I was haunted by it," says Goetz, now an optometrist in West L.A. "Who was that man in the first tank? What is his name? Is he alive today?"
On Saturday, Bob Persinger — now a bespectacled, gray-haired veteran — strode through the lobby of a Century City hotel and reached out to shake Goetz's hand. The Holocaust survivor stared back, measured reality against his memories, then opened his arms for an embrace.
And the soldier who had seemed so tall 60 years ago stood cheek to cheek with the man he had saved.
Posted by Orrin Judd at November 4, 2005 7:13 AM
What's to say. This made me cry.
Posted by: erp at November 4, 2005 7:31 AMAmerica: Coming to Save a World Near You.
[And Noam Chomsky can choke on his own bitter bile.]
Posted by: Mikey at November 4, 2005 7:36 AMOJ would have let the Nazis kill Sam Goetz without lifting a finger to stop them. I prefer letting Stalin kill his cousins with impunity.
right. public displays of pathological behavior are sad and embarrasing. there has to be an apple somewhere, you can call home.
Posted by: psycho duffy at November 4, 2005 10:14 AMSo OJ, why don't you tell us exactly what you would say to Mr. Goetz if you ever had to explained to him why you believe America should have never gone to war with Nazi Germany.
Posted by: Anon at November 4, 2005 10:45 AMEnlighten me.
Posted by: Anon at November 4, 2005 11:04 AMThe first question is why we actively aided Sophia Karpai's murderers. Why was her life worth less to you than Sam Goetz's?
Posted by: oj at November 4, 2005 11:17 AMdaniel--that's non-responsive. If you want to be enlightened answer the question and I'll guide yoiu to sense.
Posted by: Anon at November 4, 2005 11:45 AMWe actively aided Sophia Karpai's killers because we didn't think that we could defeat the Nazis without them. Or that it would cost too many of our own lives to do so.
Posted by: Brandon at November 4, 2005 12:52 PMQuite. The Sam Goetz's were incidental, not imstrumental.
Posted by: oj at November 4, 2005 1:00 PMoj: We tell ourselves WWII was Good because the Nazis were Evil, and we were fighting Evil. Of course, we didn't fight the war because the Nazis were Evil, nor did we refrain from cooperating with Evil in order to fight the Nazis.
But that's Our Story. It's not the Story of the Poles, or lots and lots of other people, but it's ours, and we like it.
Posted by: b at November 4, 2005 1:20 PMb:
Of course. Nothing wrong with pretending we did it to save the Jews. National myths are more important than the truth. And getting rid of the Nazis was a good thing, even if not the best thing. No one cries for Hitler or begrudges Sam Goetz his salvation.
But no one cares about Sophia Karpai or the fact we aided and abetted her murderers either. And lying to ourselves about that can misshape our future. There's no difference between leaving Stalin in power and the argument we should have left Saddam in power.
Posted by: oj at November 4, 2005 1:33 PMThere's no difference between leaving Stalin in power and the argument we should have left Saddam in power.
Morally maybe, but it would have been much, much more dificult and dangerous for us to remove Stalin from power than it was Saddam.
Posted by: Brandon at November 4, 2005 1:42 PMoj: Hey, you don't gotta tell me. As I mentioned last week, I am currently reading "Rising '44" and it's tough to stomach the way the Western Allies folded to Stalin. The utterly inexplicable thing to me is the jacket blurb from someone at the Guardian which seems to imply that the book demonstrates the futility of claiming to go to war for moral reasons.
much easier to remove stalin; just tell the russkies it's stalin or moscow and give them 1 day to hand him over.
Posted by: Gen. Patton at November 4, 2005 4:02 PMHe came to Yalta, Potsdam and Tehran. We had to go find Saddam.
Posted by: oj at November 4, 2005 5:35 PMHe came with guards and spies to Yalta and Tehran, and with armies to Potsdam.
Posted by: Brandon at November 4, 2005 7:11 PMWere they bulletproof? He walk?
Posted by: oj at November 4, 2005 7:30 PMThey were as bulletproof as ours were.
Posted by: Brandon at November 4, 2005 9:05 PMSo, easy.
Posted by: oj at November 4, 2005 9:18 PMNo, difficult.
Posted by: Brandon at November 4, 2005 9:22 PMheck, FDR sat there in a wheelchair with a blanket over his legs--he could have kept a gun in his lap and whacked Stalin himself. Lack of will isn't tactical difficulty.
Posted by: oj at November 4, 2005 9:41 PMHeck, FDR was dying anyway. He could've gone all Palestinian on Stalin. Kablooey. Problem solved.
Posted by: Jim in Chicago at November 4, 2005 10:57 PMand Beria would have been infinitely better?
it was the Communist system that needed rooting out, not Stalin. Just as had Hitler died in his bed in August 39, the Nazi system would have still needed rooting out. Poisoned ideologies survive men.
Posted by: chambers at November 6, 2005 12:23 AMNazism certainly wouldn't have outlasted Hitler and A dead Stalin in the early 40s with the whole nation armed would have been fun.
Posted by: oj at November 6, 2005 10:48 PM