Document
Letter home from an American soldier about the end of World War II in Europe
Rudolph Daniel Sichel (b. 1915) left Germany in 1934 for England and then immigrated to the United States in 1936. His father, who had remained in Germany, was arrested during Kristallnacht, sent to Buchenwald for a couple of months, forced to sell his store at a loss, and immigrated to the United States with Rudolph's mother shortly after.
Sichel joined the US Army in 1943, attending courses at the Military Intelligence Training Center at Camp Ritchie, MD. He landed on Utah Beach in July 1944 and was assigned by the Military Intelligence Service to Interrogation of Prisoners of War (IPW) Team 13 as Chief Interrogator. The team was attached to the 104th Infantry Division, nicknamed the "Timberwolves." The 104th overran Nordhausen and liberated the Dora-Mittlebau concentration camp in Germany on April 11, 1945.
This is page 1 of a 2-page letter in which Sichel discusses the end of World War II in Europe. In the letter, dated May 6, 1945, and typed on 104th Division letterhead, Sichel writes that "We have been in this dreary war too long to get all [hyped] up over the outcome now." On the second page of the letter he describes plans to go to the Netherlands to look for relatives including his aunt and grandmother.
Tags
- US Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, gift of Howard S. Sichel and Linda Sichel Strohmenger