Jump to: Tape 01, Tape 02, Tape 03, Tape 04
WWII Veteran Transcript
Subject: Werner Kleeman
Interviewer: Bobby Allen Wintermute
Tape Number: 05 of 05
Interview Date: June 16th , 2009
Transcriber: Matthew McCann
Transcription Date: July 8th, 2009
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Interviewer: Test, Werner Kleeman Interview, June 16th 2009. Thank you
once again for you hospitality and for hosting this.
Kleeman: It’s a pleasure to have you here.
Interviewer: Thank you again. It was very good, and I thank you again it,
it’s been a pleasure. We last week we were just beginning to talk about
the Hurtgen Forest.
Kleeman: About what?
Interviewer: The Hurtgen Forest.
Kleeman: Oh! The Hurtgen Forest.
Interviewer: Right.
Kleeman: Yes, I have a for you the old Life Magazine if you’re interested in
it.
Interviewer: We’ll take a look in a little bit.
Kleeman: Yeah.
Interviewer: But I want hear-
Kleeman: Remind, remind to dig it up.
Interviewer: Again, I want to hear your accounts of the forest, and your
memories of it.
Kleeman: We were, we were in Belgium, October, and thirty days the, the line
companies were patrolling the Sauer River and we were in Belgium right at the
German Border, it was around October Seventh or Eighth, or Tenth, that General
Marshal had come over and paid a visit at the fourth division and around the
General’s trailer and he made a little speech and he told him some of you will
have to go to Japan to finish the war there, in other words he in his mind,
the order was already issued that the 4th Division is soon as the war in
Europe was end would be moving to America, regroup and go to Japan. That was
an accepted, affair and it was so strong that during October was a Jewish
holiday, Yom Kippur and there was a service in St. Vith and during the
religious service in the afternoon something happened the division
psychiatrist came to attend the service, and he normally was never available
for anything like this, so what happened during that service there was a
Jewish reporter from an American paper, and he spoke to the psychiatrist and
the psychiatrist decided he’s to going to go Japan with the 4th division, his
wife was in, in Detroit so he sent here a letter ‘Sign up to the Red Cross
and Volunteer for Japan.’ [laughs]
Interviewer: The idea of seeing her there.
Kleeman: So what happened he came home in June, after the war was over in May,
in June the division went to America, he came home in June and she was in the
Pacific. [laughs] The laugh of the [?]. You never heard a story like that.
Interviewer: Never heard that no.
Kleeman: So anyhow then when the war, the war ended suddenly, when Truman
dropped the bomb, it was in August I believe.
Interviewer: Right.
Kleeman: And then of course the Red Cross couldn’t manipulate to come home to
her poor husband.
Interviewer: That’s still a year away from what we’re talking about today.
Kleeman: What I’m saying is things like this happen.
Interviewer: Oh yeah, oh yeah.
Kleeman: But they didn’t get into a Newspaper.
Interviewer: No, no, and I want to hear more of those stories.
Kleeman: Over-Intelligence [laughs]
Interviewer: I do want to hear more of those types of stories, but again when
was your division slated to enter the Hurtgen forest?
Kleeman: The it, it was in the, October, I think November seventh, it must
have been Colonel Johnson’s book.
Interviewer: Right.
Kleeman: Around November something.
Interviewer: Right.
Kleeman: First the twelfth regiment, that was Colonel Johnson’s regiment was
pushed ahead they were a desperate in some areas up there that needed help.
So they pushed the regiments up, separately from the division to help out up
there. I think it was the twenty-eight division whatever, we moved up, I can
look in a, in a Journal, we moved up some time in November, and we, we took
over the town of Zweifall which was the closest city to live in, that about
nineteen miles or kilometers south of Aachen, we never entered, we were, we
were never told you Aachen but I know the Colonel and Major in my outfit
they took an afternoon off and drove into Aachen and, they knew the history
Charlemagne was the boss up there and blah, blah, blah, blah I didn’t know
about that Aachen history.
Interviewer: Right.
Kleeman: But it was the first large city from Belgian Border.
Interviewer: Right.
Kleeman: That’s I know, and it took them three weeks, first division to conquer
the city.
Interviewer: Okay.
Kleeman: Was house to house fighting.
Interviewer: Yeah.
Kleeman: The Hurtgen Forest was ended and it started out miserable the weather
was bad, the, the Germans knew the forest the had a whole division there
defending it, there was no highways going through all field, roads where tanks
couldn’t even pass, it was soft, they would sink they, the few roads they
needed they had to cut down trees and make these special roads with rolling trees.
Interviewer: Corduroys.
Kleeman: Yeah, yeah, it was absolutely miserable.
Interviewer: Well you mentioned that you were when we last met that you were
especially nervous entering Germany because suddenly you were at greater risk.
Kleeman: I was very careful with myself I didn’t want to get caught to be taken
prisoner and of course you don’t want to be killed.
Interviewer: Right.
Kleeman: So I was very cautious.
Interviewer: Because you were a German speaker.
Kleeman: I was a German speaker, I had a German name, and it wouldn’t take long
for any interrogator to find that out.
Interviewer: Right, but because you were a German speaker were you then in
higher demand.
Kleeman: At, at, in the Hurtgen Forest? Yes, I was in demand in around
Zweifall, the first thing I had to do get in the morning right after
breakfast, drive about three miles, five kilometers to a ranch and pick up
milk for the children of town of Zweifall.
Interviewer: How many children were still in-
Kleeman: I don’t know exactly but I picked up two cans of milk from that
Farm and brought it into town and that was my first mission every morning.
Interviewer: Okay.
Kleeman: One day, the lady on that ranch said to me, she wants to see an
officer, so I wasn’t big enough to be an officer I told her I’d bring her
an officer tomorrow, next morning I said to Major Fusset, ‘there’s a lady
out there, she wants to talk to you, please come with me’ he came with me
and he went into her house I didn’t go in, I knew she was talking English
so he didn’t need me as an interpreter. When he came out, I asked him
what did she want, he says ‘She used to be the girlfriend of General
Collins, she wanted know if I know Major Collins, he was a Major in World
War One, occupying Köplenz area, so and his headquarters was about five
six miles away, his private airport was practically on her ranch, so he
went back and he told the General and they must have called this Collins
and told him the young bride is looking for him. [laughs]
Interviewer: Did, did she get any special privileges out of that?
Kleeman: Can you imagine this happening?
Interviewer: Yeah.
Kleeman: Oh she even told him her husband was a Colonel in the German
Air Force and he’s stationed somewhere in Holland or something.
Interviewer: Did she get any special privileges from General Collins
then?
Kleeman: I didn’t know what happened between them. That’s what I call old
stamping grounds [laughs]
Interviewer: That’s, that’s, yeah, you are not kidding.
Kleeman: So, but those are, next to impossible things to happen in a war.
Interviewer: Yeah, yeah. So after picking up the milk in the morning what was
your, the rest of your duty?
Kleeman: The rest of the day, whatever we were, whatever had to be done, wasn’t
much doing because there was no towns liberated we didn’t have to put up
proclamations or anything, one day at the, the order came the major, another
major not my regular one had to put up proclamations in the small town called
Schmidt at the end of the forest so he made me drive it was a miserable trip
and, and the battalion headquarters was down in a bombed out house, there was
no upstairs hanging, nothing, every level but the basement was a wreck we had
to go down on a ladder so we installed the proclamation so we could come back
and say the proclamation was posted.
Interviewer: Wow. During all this driving through the forests you had a
chance to see the destruction that had taken place.
Kleeman: Well I didn’t dare to go out into the woods if I didn’t have to.
Interviewer: But you would see it from the road?
Kleeman: Yeah. But that, then, also in the same house where we were there was,
the counterintelligence was sharing the house with us-
Interviewer: Right.
Kleeman: -so in that house my friend Salinger used to rub elbows once in a
while so, one after-, one evening after supper, the mess hall was across the
street from the house where we were and there was another house across the
street where the officers used to go in once in a while to, to share a woman
[laughs]. Anyhow we, one night, Salinger says to me, come with me we’re
going up to visit, see if we can find Hemingway. So we walked the half a
mile, north of the town and we found a little caped cod house and it said
the sign ‘P.R.O Public Relations Office’ so we went to the side door and
knocked and walked in and there was Ernest Hemingway in an little alcove
of the kitchen with a shield over his eyes writing on a yellow pad. So he
got up and greeted us and we sat down at the table or someplace and started
talking.
Interviewer: What did he talk about?
Kleeman: We were, well I was a bystander I did not ask any questions,
Salinger and him were exchanging life, life stories, and I was just
listening, to me it was fascinating to see two men, one, one the chief of
all reporters, the chief of America in his profession, and the other one,
the young student growing up.
Interviewer: Yeah, yeah.
Kleeman: It was a wake up experience for me, to watch this.
Interviewer: Did Hemingway address you at all or? Did he greet you at
all or address-
Kleeman: Oh yeah, he, he, I had to be part sitting, they didn’t tell to move
away or anything I was part of the group and they were partly talking about
their personal lives, Salinger didn’t explain to him he didn’t think the army
would take him, he only had one testicle. So Hemmingway said to him ‘Those
doctors were such fool with a touch of the finger they could have put your
other testicle down.’ He was a half a doctor himself.
Interviewer: Yeah.
Kleeman: So I learned a little bit [laughs]. So Salinger must have been all
his life with one testicle.
Interviewer: So what-
Kleeman: But he could make children with one testicle.
Interviewer: All you need is one.
Kleeman: And for me it was fascinating, to listen, I realized those two people
were unusual.
Interviewer: Right.
Kleeman: You, you-
Interviewer: No I understand perfectly. You stated in your book that
Hemingway had gotten pretty down on the war at that point, or the way the
war was being fought.
Kleeman: Yeah. He was very disgusted, he saw the, the, the replacements coming
in, going in for a few hours and being shot and coming out wounded, and he, he
didn’t approve of that he wrote about it in the, I think the story Across the
Woods, Across the River and Into the Woods. It didn’t become a best seller-
Interviewer: No.
Kleeman: -But it was published I believe.
Interviewer: What was your opinion of that-
Kleeman: My opinion was, it was a waste of time to fight in the Hetgen Forest.
My opinion was, when you have, if you have to go to the area behind it, go
around, don’t go through it, where the Germans knew every road and they had
artillery shells that exploded that the trees branches would come down and
kill soldiers. That was, to me it was a suicide mission.
Interviewer: Right.
Kleeman: But, who was I? The officers had no choice but carry out the orders
that came down, even if an officer wanted to protest it, his voice wasn’t
heard.
Interviewer: Did you hear amongst the rank and file, the common soldiers that
same kind of bitterness or contempt, or anger, with officers?
Kleeman: I, I didn’t at that time I didn’t have too much contact with, I had
contact with our own officers and-
Interviewer: But I meant the enlisted men.
Kleeman: Yeah, we nice young Lieutenant there, who had come in about two
months before, Lieutenant Bailey, he came in to Major, Captain Hart who was
wounded on D-Day, and Bailey was a very fine fellow, he didn’t have the
chips on his shoulders of being an officer, he was a human being, his father
was a Senator from North Carolina and he already had a good life behind him,
he was a member of the FBI, he already had a Pilot’s License to fly his own
airplane, he was an educated fellow. But he had, his father made him swear,
that he would never tell the military that he had a pilot’s license. So that,
was out for him.
Interviewer: Right.
Kleeman: In other words the Air Corps didn’t ever find out that he had it,
because the father didn’t want him up there flying, which I can understand.
Interviewer: What do you, was you, excuse me, what were your thoughts about the
pilots.
Kleeman: Well the officer in the evening sat in one of the rooms what used to be
our general office and were shooting the breeze, there was no electricity in the
town and the water was running cold, was no hot water, anyhow they, they took a
Jeep, and put it outside the window, and they let the motor run and they hooked
up a wire from the battery to the room with a certain bulb in it and they had
electric while they were sitting in that room.
Interviewer: Right.
Kleeman: And of course they had their bottles and they were consuming liquor
slowly, they weren’t drunk but it was a social evening for them.
Interviewer: Right.
Kleeman: They had nothing else to do so, that was few hours we didn’t, we the
enlisted men, we weren’t allowed in with them.
Interviewer: Right.
Kleeman: Because there was big separation between officers and enlisted
men. We sat in another room on the same floor, one night, the, the
captain of the counterintelligence Salinger’s boss came in, and he must
have been half drunk, he told him he has to go up to regiment and sleep
up there, and, and that was the 12th Regiment and poor Salinger had no
choice but pack up and leave. I ran upstairs to my, duffel bag and I
pulled out a pair of socks my mother had knitted and sent me and I gave
it to him, I said to him ‘Take it with you, you might need them,’ I also
gave him and extra blanket I had stolen at the, at Hotel Atlantic in
Cherbourg a new wool blanket with a name on it ‘Hotel Atlantic’ I said
‘You might need it, I, I don’t need it, here take it.’ So he left that
night bout, eight thirty, nine o’clock and I really felt sorry for him.
Next day when I met him I said ‘How was the night?’ he says ‘I spent it
in the back of a private home a few doors away.’ [laughs]
Interviewer: Very good.
Kleeman: I figured he was a smart fellow.
Interviewer: Very good.
Kleeman: If you know what I mean.
Interviewer: I know exactly what you mean.
Kleeman: We were close, so during the same week or a day before or after, they
brought in a German woman who was caught out after Curfew, it was Curfew in the
town it must have been maybe seven o’clock at night, they brought her in she
violated the curfew, so Lieutenant Bailey set up a court martial, I was the
interpreter, in the officer’s room. So, so whatever happened he listened to her
story, I translated it and then he said, ‘Well fine her twenty marks and she’s
allowed anymore to be out after six o’clock’ so anyhow that was the verdict.
A few weeks later, this one officer who took me with him to the, into the
forest and the colonel they had to sign, recommendation papers every month,
three months for the officers attached to the division who were working there.
So they sign the paper about Lieutenant Bailey ‘He’s not qualified to be
promoted to the rank of captain.’
Interviewer: On what grounds?
Kleeman: That they didn’t like him. [laughs]
Interviewer: Really?
Kleeman: So anyhow, that, that what they signed, the two officers, the big
colonel and the asshole who kissed his ass.
Interviewer: Yeah.
Kleeman: Of course somewhere along the line it leaked up and we heard about it.
Interviewer: Right.
Kleeman: And after I think January Seventh we were, December Seventh we were
relieved from Hurtgen Forest, and move down to Luxembourg, we were moving into,
in to occupy Luxembourg and the troops were up on the Sauer river.
Interviewer: Right.
Kleeman: They had orphans all those village, so while we were there, the Bailey
was transferred to another division, a hundred and sixth division had come in
from the States, and they making a military government team, and Bailey was
transferred over.
Interviewer: Right.
Kleeman: Not on his free will, but because of the, tension.
Interviewer: Right.
Kleeman: Anyhow, he was, he was a kind fellow, anybody else would have sent a
letter to his father in Washington, and from Washington, would have come the
order.
Interviewer: Oh yeah.
Kleeman: To change the other fellow, not him.
Interviewer: Right, right.
Kleeman: But he was too kind to do that.
Interviewer: And of course the 106th division-
Kleeman: Was new.
Interviewer: -was new, and was in the path-
Kleeman: Right.
Interviewer: -of the uh-
Kleeman: Right-
Interviewer: -First Panzer Army
Kleeman: So he joined, he got out of the division, and of course in the hundred
and sixth he would sooner or later become captain.
Interviewer: Right.
Kleeman: That was, probably the understanding of the transfer, I don’t know.
So he was with the the 106th division, a week or ten days and the, the Bulge
came.
Interviewer: Right.
Kleeman: And he, the hundred and sixth division had their headquarters in St.
Vith, which was a big stretch behind the lines.
Interviewer: Right.
Kleeman: They didn’t move up front like we used to. Anyhow he was up at with a
regiment, and two regiments were surrounded the first night and captured, Bailey
refused to be captured, somewhere along the line, he had an education that I’ve
never seen before he could look on a tree and say which direction is north,
south or west, the way the tree, the leaves were pointing.
Interviewer: Wow.
Kleeman: So he was caught off track, no compass, nothing, but he went into hiding
at night. And at night he moved, he walked.
Interviewer: Right.
Kleeman: Three nights in a row he walked and he ended up at the Fourth Division
headquarters.
Interviewer: Back with you.
Kleeman: Yeah, that was a rare accident if you know what I mean.
Interviewer: Almost like the dog that gets lost.
Kleeman: And those two guys felt like throwing him out.
Interviewer: Wonderful.
Kleeman: I mean a story like that we witness.
Interviewer: Yeah.
Kleeman: You understand what I mean? Now you, you live something the books
don’t tell you.
Interviewer: Yeah, well that’s true. Before we leave the Hurtgen Forest.
Kleeman: Let me finish the Bailey story.
Interviewer: Oh okay, alright.
Kleeman: Bailey was a human being, like you and can talk, and I don’t know what
happened when he got home and this, oh after he came into the fourth division
he wanted to married. And he had a ceremony, witnessed by officers, married by
proxy a woman, which must have been his girlfriend, home, he wanted her to get
an allowance so she could live comfortably.
Interviewer: In case…
Kleeman: I guess he didn’t want his father to send her money or something.
Interviewer: Right.
Kleeman: So he married by proxy, we witnessed that. Which, which was very
unusual.
Interviewer: Yeah.
Kleeman: Yeah, but he did it. Then, after I came home, and got into civilian
life I was traveling in the south Alabama, Mississippi, and one time I drove
through Raleigh, and I stopped at his office, and said hello and he was
flabbergasted to see me, he says ‘I want to come home to my house for dinner
tonight, and I, went with him to his house for dinner and it was, a reunion and
I told him the son of bitch who signed the papers for him not qualified was in
New York, you see that Colonel, he says to me ‘Why didn’t you shoot him, I
would have sworn you were in Raleigh that night!” [laughs] So you understand?
Interviewer: Yes, yes.
Kleeman: The feelings.
Interviewer: Yeah.
Kleeman: And my, eldest daughter got married, I invited him to the wedding.
Interviewer: Good.
Kleeman: He flew up to Westchester in his own plane, and attended the wedding
with Colonel Gatling and some other people.
Interviewer: That’s wonderful. That’s wonderful.
Kleeman: Unbelievable right?
Interviewer: Yeah, no that’s-
Kleeman: He went to Abercrombie and Finch and bought himself hunting equipment,
and from here he flew to Canada to go hunting.
Interviewer: My goodness.
Kleeman: He was an outdoorsman.
Interviewer: Right, right. It’s amazing too, to hear about these ties
established in wartime have lasted.
Kleeman: You understand what I mean?
Interviewer: Yeah.
Kleeman: Never, prouded himself that the father was a senator close to Franklin
Roosevelt. But we knew it from the newspapers.
Interviewer: Sure.
Kleeman: But, that was a, that what can happen in the army, how they, two men
can condemn another man if they don’t approve of him.
Interviewer: Right.
Kleeman: It was a disgrace said a good man like him had to be treated like
this. You understand?
Interviewer: Your place and your position as interpreter attached to
headquarters staff you saw a lot of this.
Kleeman: I had to behave, I had to listen to the two different sides.
Interviewer: Yeah.
Kleeman: But my heart felt sorry for Bailey.
Interviewer: So-
Kleeman: If I, it would have been me I’m sure I would have written a
letter to Washington to get relief.
Interviewer: Yeah. I mean, it’s interesting hearing about it too, cause, you
get the sense from what you’re telling me, I get the sense from what you’re
telling me that, most of the officers in the fourth division, or many of them
were petty individuals. Who were driven by their own insecurities or anxieties.
Kleeman: But Bailey was not, not an officer really he was a human being, who,
who would sit down and talk with you, and normal like, you understand?
Interviewer: Right.
Kleeman: The lieutenant part didn’t make him any higher. He felt of course
he had to be reserve or something in order to be in the service.
Interviewer: Right.
Kleeman: But he was a very fine, elegant fellow.
Interviewer: Two questions about, to close this section up on the Hurtgen,
that I have to ask. First is, you’re in civil affairs, you’re attached to
civil affairs and dealing with refugees.
Kleeman: Yeah.
Interviewer: What was the conditions like for civilians living in the
Hurtgen Forest towns.
Kleeman: Well I had, I don’t know if I told you, I had three strikes when
I was first in the army, the first one was being a refugee, couldn’t hide
it, the accent was a give away, the second one being a Jew, I didn’t hide
it, I was proud of being a Jew, and the third one coming from New York a
Yankee.
Interviewer: Right.
Kleeman: Those were three strikes that didn’t fit in, in the fourth
division.
Interviewer: But, that I understand, but I’m talking about civilian
refugees, in the towns, in the Hurtgen Forest, where you are
responsible for taking care of them, and helping create a post-war
government structure. What were the conditions like for-
Kleeman: Say it again.
Interviewer: What were the conditions like for Civilians in Schmidt, Jarlback
and these other small towns in the forest?
Kleeman: Well we had not much contact with civilians, we were in Zweifall, I
had an experience this Colonel Gatling we were also very close friend, he was
on Bailey’s side and he said to me, ‘I’d like to me with a German family if you
can arrange it’ I said ‘Yeah I can arrange it.’ And I went a few doors away and
I saw a small little farm family and I told the lady I said, ‘there’s an officer
who’d like to talk to you, I bring him over tonight after dinner about seven
thirty.’ She said ‘Fine.’ So I told him, to take him over, meanwhile I see he
had packed his dress uniform with him to carry over, so I realize he wanted
the uniform pressed being crumpled up so many months in a bag.
Interviewer: Yeah.
Kleeman: He wanted it pressed. So we went over there, no electric light, how
the hell can I press a uniform. So I went back to my childhood when a light
was broken my mother had an Iron where charcoal was going into to press, to
press the laundry.
Interviewer: Right.
Kleeman: So I said to the woman ‘You must have an old iron’ she says ‘yes” I
says ‘Get, Warm up some charcoal and fix it so you can press his uniform’
[laughs]
Interviewer: So she did the pressing.
Kleeman: You know what you run into.
Interviewer: Yeah, yeah.
Kleeman: So anyhow we stayed there for an hour he asked some questions he
wanted answered.
Interviewer: What kind of questions?
Kleeman: Well he said to me at the end ‘We came here to win the war and educate
the Germans, and I want to see, and see if they’re willing to be educated and
rebuild their life.’
Interviewer: Yeah.
Kleeman: So he was reaching far.
Interviewer: Right.
Kleeman: If you know what I mean.
Interviewer: Did he, was he comfortable with what he learned.
Kleeman: Know, he just wanted their daily lives and how they felt about the
family, you understand what, normal, normal questions, but in his mind he
felt he accomplished something.
Interviewer: Okay.
Kleeman: You understand what I mean?
Interviewer: Yeah.
Kleeman: I mean the average officer wouldn’t even think about anything like
this.
Interviewer: With being in these towns, did you come across any wounded
soldiers or-
Kleeman: No. There were no wounded soldiers.
Interviewer: -Wounded Germans.
Kleeman: There were no wounded no wounded soldiers there, there was no young
men in that town, if they were of military age they were all gone.
Interviewer: Even, limbless-
Kleeman: Only children and old people, and the women.
Interviewer: Okay. But you hear accounts about some cases Amputees or-
Kleeman: But there were no military, no veterans that returned or anything,
there was no, they was not really much work for us military government,
because there was, first of all there was another division there a month
before who had set up and everything, there was not much to do actually
even the Salinger bunch they, they didn’t have a lot of work to do. There
was no big population around the town.
Interviewer: What about displaced persons? Or, Displaced Persons. Were
there any displaced persons.
Kleeman: No, there were no displaced persons there, this was an area that
was, this was all Germany not far away was an area that always disputed
between the French and the Germans but this area was all, all German.
Interviewer: Okay.
Kleeman: Aachen was about the border line-
Interviewer: So no cases of French prisoners-
Kleeman: Was a permanent, permanent part of Germany.
Interviewer: No case of French prisoners forced to work on farms or any?
Kleeman: That was, that was, and there was not much activity around there, were
not any big anti-aircraft guns stationed there, there was no big activity of
course we, we were like arrested in a town, we couldn’t go any place, of course
you didn’t want to go, you didn’t want to go to Aachen you didn’t want to, do
this. One day I think we took a ride over to the Holland and spent an hour or
two in Liege, which was right at the border.
Interviewer: Right.
Kleeman: But that was about all you could, afford to go to. It was still part
of a dangerous area.
Interviewer: Yeah.
Kleeman: Around, near Zweifall, was a railroad tunnel under a mountain, going
somewheres into Germany, and in that tunnel, they had the big German Guns on
railroad flatcars.
Interviewer: Yeah.
Kleeman: And they claim they come out at night and shoot and go back into the
tunnel. I don’t know if it was true or not but they claim in World War One
these guns were shooting into Paris. I don’t know if it was true or not but
that’s what they claim.
Interviewer: Okay.
Kleeman: They said, they, of course, World War One there was not many
airplanes or anything so they were safe to bring them out at night and shoot
and take them back into the tunnel, in other words they were well protected.
So one time the colonel took a trip to that tunnel to investigate and that’s
all I heard, I never went, they never took me there.
Interviewer: Right.
Kleeman: So, but it was, there was a railroad tunnel right nearby, because
the whole area was mountains and hills.
Interviewer: Right.
Kleeman: Well on the other side of the Hurtgen forest is the Ruhr river.
Interviewer: What does the 4th division do after Hurtgen? Do they advance to
the Ruhr?
Kleeman: Who me? My Division?
Interviewer: Yeah.
Kleeman: We went into Luxembourg.
Interviewer: You went back into Luxembourg.
Kleeman: Yeah we got, we got, supposed to have a rest area we set up in
Luxembourg our headquarters in beautiful château in the middle of a park and
the division was spread out bout thirty kilometer way along the Sauer river
to patrol at night, not as, not supposed to be much activity just rest period.
Interviewer: And they you got the surprise.
Kleeman: Then happened, December 16th happened, hell broke loose.
Interviewer: Yeah.
Kleeman: Everything was going beautiful in Luxembourg, I found the colonel
I had, he was always dragging about being a director for the Lucky Strike
Cigarettes, that they were sending him to cartons a month of Lucky Strike
cigarettes to his military address that’s all they were allowed to send he
said.
Interviewer: Yeah.
Kleeman: So anyhow he was always bragging about his cigarettes, so one time
I said to him, the, the Cigarette King of Luxembourg has come back from
London, he would like to talk to you. I had met him, a fellow, a Jewish
fellow by the name of Strauss, I met him and I had a session with him and
I told him I have a colonel who was a director of Lucky Strike so he says
‘Bring him here! I’d like to talk to him.’ So I told the colonel I said
‘The Cigarette King cam back from London, he’d like to meet with you,’ he
said ‘Set up an appointment tomorrow afternoon.’ So I set up an appointment
I took him there and I left him at the door because the guy spoke a perfect
English.
Interviewer: Right.
Kleeman: So when it’s in English I don’t interfere.
Interviewer: Right.
Kleeman: I was smart enough to leave the two alone. So he must have been
there an hour he gave him a carton of cigarettes, he gave him a carton of
Luxembourg Cigarettes and they were very happy.
Interviewer: Well that’s good it could have gone differently.
Kleeman: He took the carton of Luxembourg cigarettes, shared them with
the General, you know, to him it was an experience.
Interviewer: Sure.
Kleeman: Then I met another guy who owned the biggest department store in
the city of Luxembourg, so I said to him ‘You’ve got to do something for
us, for our officers’ he says ‘You can bring them in Sunday morning to my
store, use a back door, and they can pick out anything they want and pay
for it, and buy it’ So I told the same colonel I said ‘Mr. Greenburg the
owner of this department store will open up for you and any of your
friends on Sunday morning to have privacy in the department store, so
they went, they bought beautiful leather gloves who came from Italy
before the war, I still have a pair upstairs. You never wore leather
gloves.
Interviewer: Oh I’ve had leather gloves, yes. Not like that though.
Kleeman: Anyhow the bought leather gloves and they sent them home they
were…
Interviewer: That’s almost like looting, I mean they’re paying for it,
but they’re taking advantage of their privilege to gain access to goods
they didn’t have.
Kleeman: You know what I mean? I arranged things. Then I met a beautiful
German Jewish woman, in Luxembourg, she came out from an apartment house, I
was driving by and I met her and she had about a five year old girl,
beautiful woman from Berlin, so I said to her ‘I’d like to see more of you,’
I said ‘Tomorrow night at seven o’clock we have a religious Jewish service
at the movie house in downtown Luxembourg’ So I said to her ‘Please come,
you’ll meet some of our friends and we have a rabbi’ So I was looking
forward to her, so what happens that Friday the Hell broke loose.
Interviewer: [laughs] The Germans invaded.
Kleeman: The town went under curfew, seven o’clock at night, the religious
service was cancelled.
Interviewer: And that was the end of that.
Kleeman: That was the end of that beautiful lady.
Interviewer: You bringing her up raises another question. Your talking
about her raises another question. Did you, when did you notice or did
people notice or bring to your attention what had been happening to Jewish
communities in Belgium, in Holland, in Luxembourg.
Kleeman: Oh we, we, we quite, I forgot to tell you, when we came to Luxembourg
from Hurtgen forest I was snooping around and so, there was a lot in the
middle of the town where only big boulders of stone were laying.
Interviewer: Yeah.
Kleeman: So I found out that the temple was standing there and it was torn down
and it’s an empty field, right in the middle of the city.
Interviewer: Yeah.
Kleeman: So then I find out there was a Jewish man, I forgot his name was
Greenfeld or something who came from Germany and he supplied the Gestapo with
all the names of the Jewish people in town. So, I faced him I went up to meet
him in his apartment someplace and I told him, so nothing I could do to him he
didn’t do any crime against the American Army.
Interviewer: Right.
Kleeman: And it was not our policy to research.
Interviewer: Well you hadn’t formally known yet, I mean the magnitude had not-
Kleeman: You know what I mean?
Interviewer: Yeah.
Kleeman: I knew he saved his life by giving the Gestapo a list of the Jews he
knew-
Interviewer: Right.
Kleeman: -of the town.
Interviewer: Right.
Kleeman: And I, I don’t, I didn’t even think he had a Jewish wife, he probably
had a mixed marriage or something.
Interviewer: Did you expect that these people had been deported to a death
camp?
Kleeman: By that time the people had been deported already.
Interviewer: Did you suspect that’s what happened?
Kleeman: Yeah. I suspected because we heard it all along we, we interviewed
people in Cherbourg I asked ‘Any Jews here’ and they all told me ‘Jews Al
Abati’ they were taken away, so we, we heard from the beginning.
Interviewer: Were you thinking that they were taken to labor camps or to
death camps?
Kleeman: Well they didn’t know but there were taken away.
Interviewer: Right.
Kleeman: So that we heard. And one time in Normandy a Jewish woman was come out
of hiding or something, and we had a Jewish mess sergeant at the division, oh
god damn it, artillery at the, give me a minute, signal…
Interviewer: The signal company.
Kleeman: Signal Corp! They had a Jewish mess sergeant from New York, from the,
dairy restaurant on eighty-sixth street and Broadway.
Interviewer: Okay.
Kleeman: And he was a nice fellow, he could take garbage and make the beautiful
meal out of it. Once, once a week I took my Jeep and I drove over gave him a
bottle of wine and got myself a decent meal there.
Interviewer: Right, right.
Kleeman: It was, a warm friendship. So one time he says, didn’t tell me, he
told the Rabbi ‘A Jewish Woman came in he gave her a large basin with water
and told her to take a bath, she might have been dirty, pushed her in a little
wooded area and she took a bath and he said to the Rabbi ‘from the outside
she’s clean!’ [laughs]
Interviewer: Okay.
Kleeman: We, we had our own liberation. You never heard anything like this.
Interviewer: No, not like that.
Kleeman: Yeah this Jewish fellow was a real Jewish, he had a beautiful mess
he had his own spices and stuff.
Interviewer: Yeah.
Kleeman: And he could take garbage and make a meal.
Interviewer: Yeah.
Kleeman: Signal corps.
Interviewer: So I mean-
Kleeman: So that’s how we found out there were a few Jews hiding and left.
Interviewer: Yeah.
Kleeman: But as a rule, they came out in Paris, the first time.
Interviewer: Right.
Kleeman: In quantities.
Interviewer: Did you ever hear anything from division anybody in the division
headquarters commenting or being curious about this or?
Kleeman: No, I never heard anything I know from Major Fusset after the war when
they were in England and the officers had a special house where they were
Seniors in one house and the Juniors in the other, but Fusset was an aid to the
General so he lived with the Seniors with the ‘private club’ they called it.
Interviewer: Yeah.
Kleeman: He also felt neglected because they didn’t like Catholics, he said-
Interviewer: Right.
Kleeman: He said they persecuted Jews and Catholics they were the old WASP
from America.
Interviewer: Right.
Kleeman: Well anyhow he said, when they discussed Jews at night privately
they didn’t call them the Jews they called them ‘the Arabs’ [laughs]. You
can verify that when you talk to him on the Telephone, visit him in San
Antonio, Texas.
[END OF SIDE A]
[BEGINNING OF SIDE B]
Interviewer: The armies officers there was-
Kleeman: Yeah
Interviewer: -a level of Anti-Semitism.
Kleeman: Yeah, yeah, well division headquarter was very, no Jews allowed
normally, they, they, they had to tolerate me they couldn’t find anyone else
fluent in German what they needed so I was tolerated and another one was,
but normally no Jews were, no Jewish officer was ever allowed into Division
headquarters.
Interviewer: Did you come across examples where the, the local people tried
to hide Jews or to help Jews?
Kleeman: In Belgium.
Interviewer: Yeah?
Kleeman: In Belgium we had people to hide not, there were Jews hidden in
Belgium but they were hiding American officers that bailed out over Belgium.
Interviewer: Okay.
Kleeman: Because on their flight back to London maybe plane run out of gas
or maybe the plane, plane was damaged or something, quite a few used their
parachutes to come down in Belgium.
Interviewer: Okay.
Kleeman: And then of course they didn’t know where they were landing, but
the Belgian people found them fast.
Interviewer: Yeah.
Kleeman: And took them in to their homes and gave them clothes to take their
uniforms away so if the Germans did come to search for them, they wouldn’t
find them in a pilots uniform.
Interviewer: Okay.
Kleeman: And they even built up special rooms for them by putting another wall
in front of a wall-
Interviewer: Built like the closet rooms yeah.
Kleeman: -yeah make it a private hiding, if the Germans came. Because the
Germans must have looked for pilots if the planes came down.
Interviewer: Yeah. Oh yeah. Were the Belgians afraid that I mean before
December 16th, were the Belgians afraid that the Germans would come back?
Kleeman: The Belgians were, were, were more protective then the French-
Interviewer: Yeah.
Kleeman: As far as Americans are concerned or Jews, of course we didn’t know that
Jews were hiding but I know from my hometown a horse dealer, he went to Belgium
into hiding.
Interviewer: And he survived?
Kleeman: Yeah, he must have climbed aboard a freight train to get to the German
Border, and from there he must have walked across at night and found himself, he
must have known some Belgian horse dealers or farmers-
Interviewer: Right.
Kleeman: -and he was hiding in what two, three years? When he, war was over he
came back to the hometown.
Interviewer: Okay.
Kleeman: So there must have been, more like that in Belgium-
Interviewer: Do you-
Kleeman: -In other words the Belgian people were not fanatic to turn a neighbor
in, if they knew he had a stranger in his house.
Interviewer: -Right, that’s good. That’s good to hear.
Kleeman: Yeah.
Interviewer: Going back to Germany, though…
Kleeman: The Germans never were hiding anybody.
Interviewer: Did you get the sense the German the, the small German farmer-
Kleeman: Would never hide a Jew.
Interviewer: Would you, do you think they knew what was really happening?
Kleeman: The German would be afraid that his neighbor would turn him.
Interviewer: But-
Kleeman: If no one else, the Germans were very, were bitter.
Interviewer: But the story is that some Germans claim they didn’t know what was
happening.
Kleeman: They claimed around the concentration camps they claimed five miles
away they didn’t know there was a, I have a better one! They used to have a
German girl living in Forest Hills so the, somebody told me about it, so I went
to meet her, took her on a date. So sa he came from a, from a little town
called Hannoburg, so she claimed she didn’t’ know there was a prisoner of war
camp on the outside of Hannoburg.
Interviewer: Right and the was pretty famous.
Kleeman: And the prison, the largest prison camp in Germany.
Interviewer: That was a famous one too, because-
Kleeman: It was a famous one right.
Interviewer: -it’s where Patton’s son was.
Kleeman: Right, right, so you don’t know whom to believe.
Interviewer: Yeah.
Kleeman: If you know what I mean.
Interviewer: So you think that the Germans knew what was happening?
Kleeman: Yes, the Germans knew that was happening. The Germans they got it from
soldiers who came home for furlough who were stationed in Poland around the
areas and some of them took pictures and everything, they knew.
Interviewer: Yeah.
Kleeman: They knew what happened. And, and the guys the party people who were in
the, to get the people ready to move to leave their houses and luggage and
everything they knew they wouldn’t come back.
Interviewer: Yeah.
Kleeman: They knew they were going to be exterminated definitely.
Interviewer: Yeah.
Kleeman: That is no, no question about it. If it wasn’t official it was the
rumors, and from soldiers who went through some of those camps.
Interviewer: So how do you process that, as a young soldier, in civil affairs
who has to deal with Germans every day.
Kleeman: Yeah well, when I came back that interest was not that great at that
time to research it we were more concerned to what was inside of Germany.
Interviewer: Right.
Kleeman: When we were, when we were occupation.
Interviewer: But you were at Dachau. You were at Dachau?
Kleeman: I said, we, we knew already that we knew already, the survivors from
the camps had come back already, so we didn’t.
Interviewer: But even, but even, you had a special insight that nobody else
had.
Kleeman: Yeah, I-
Interviewer: You had been in Dachau.
Kleeman: Yeah well I, I…
[phone rings]
Interviewer: Let me pause this.
[Recording pauses, then resumes]
Interviewer: Maybe I should register and blow them up.
Kleeman: That’s not part of the interview.
Interviewer: Like I’m saying, you were at Dachau, you knew.
Kleeman: I knew yes, I knew and I was happy to help the ones who came back, to
settle them, to write, let them write letters I mailed their letters to
relatives in America, I was able to do personal goodwill.
Interviewer: Did it upset you that you couldn’t convince other Americans that
this was, Were you upset that you could not convince, that other Americans
didn’t believe that they could do that.
Kleeman: I didn’t discuss it with the Americans so much, I did, I did my work
to help these people, to make sure they get food, to make sure they the mail
they were hungry if you know what I mean.
Interviewer: Right.
Kleeman: So I did my best. I did, good work, I knew people who came back, whom
I knew from before.
Interviewer: Right, right.
Kleeman: The aunt of this great rabbi I told you, she was one of them, who
returned from the town.
Interviewer: Okay.
Kleeman: Her husband was killed but she came back. So you, you understand what
I mean?
Interviewer: Yeah, I do, I do.
Kleeman: And every night I had to right a big letter to my father, censor was
finished so I could write in German what went on.
Interviewer: Yeah.
Kleeman: And of course he was interested.
Interviewer: Oh sure.
Kleeman: That-
Interviewer: Let’s-
Kleeman: It was unusual that I was there when these people came back and they
knew me.
Interviewer: Well that’s…
Kleeman: You understand?
Interviewer: No, it’s a tremendous responsibility and it’s a tremendous-
Kleeman: Yeah, You understand what I mean, it, it was a most unusual case
that I was right there to help them and so on. Of course the language,
was, I was everything, you under…
Interviewer: Yeah, no, you were in a special position.
Kleeman: Yeah, yeah, that’s why the Museums here are after me because I do
have such a history.
Interviewer: Well again I can’t say enough how much I appreciate-
Kleeman: Very, Of course I did this on my own, the government didn’t know
it, and didn’t function, sanction it.
Interviewer: Right.
Kleeman: You understand what I mean?
Interviewer: I do. Let’s-
Kleeman: I, I felt when the war was over that’s a mission I should be able to
help them. Which was, for them it was like a miracle.
Interviewer: It was life or death, yeah. Absolutely.
Kleeman: Because at that time, oh I have to show you another book, at that
time, Germany was down and out.
Interviewer: Yeah.
Kleeman: If you know what I mean. The Germans were at the end of their
existence more or less.
Interviewer: Right.
Kleeman: Like Rommel, the son said to me ‘After two years, Secretary Burns
came over with a blank check and gave us all the money we needed to rebuild
Germany.’ You never heard that.
Interviewer: That’s part of the, impetus for the Marshal Plan.
Kleeman: I mean that started to turn them around.
Interviewer: Yeah.
Kleeman: If you know what I mean. And by that time they had an Ardeneur,
they had people wake and felt they must do something.
Interviewer: Right. Before, Let’s, let’s bring the war to a close-
Kleeman: Yeah
Interviewer: -though. Cause we know about the-
Kleeman: Let me tell, finish one more story.
Interviewer: Yes, please.
Kleeman: I had, you know I had a luncheon with the German Consulate.
Interviewer: Yes.
Kleeman: D-Day. We discussing what would have happened if the D-Day invasion
would have been a failure.
Interviewer: Right.
Kleeman: Did I tell you that?
Interviewer: Yes when we, the idea is that the Soviets would have occupied
Western Europe.
Kleeman: I told you this story?
Interviewer: Yes.
Kleeman: Okay, then I don’t have to repeat it.
Interviewer: Okay. Well let’s bring it to the, bring us up to the end of the
war, bring us up to the end of the war, because it’s a short time from December
nineteen forty-four to the end of the war. During the Battle of the Bulge,
what was your responsibility?
Kleeman: During the Battle of the Bulge?
Interviewer: Yeah.
Kleeman: We were moving, we were, we were, we didn’t retreat we stayed in
Luxembourg and our outfits up on the hill stopped the Germans.
Interviewer: Right.
Kleeman: They fell back about three, four miles, Mondorf and Constorf and
Berdhoff, but they the line. They, they recruited cooks and police, military
police, extra help that grew from all the units and they stopped the line.
Interviewer: Were you put at that line at that point?
Kleeman: I was up front back and forth with the Colonels and the Majors we were
evacuating people they, they, they instigated a narrow railroad from Radio
Luxembourg to evacuate people to bring them back to the city. The city of
Luxembourg was in danger, that the Germans might push us back. But the division
held out.
Interviewer: Were you…
Kleeman: I was spared, I wasn’t put up front.
Interviewer: Right but…
Kleeman: I was spared.
Interviewer: Who-
Kleeman: I was scared.
Interviewer: You’re evacuating people, is that include wounded personnel from
hospitals?
Kleeman: I know some people who had been moved up front and everything but it
was a miracle that we were able to stop the southern part of the attack force.
Interviewer: Right.
Kleeman: So, and, we lost a whole regiment in, Berdhoff in, on the Mosel in
a small town they were captured, they couldn’t get out. The town was
surrounded and the company had to surrender.
Interviewer: Where did-
Kleeman: Eschternon, in Eschternon.
Interviewer: When did-
Kleeman: It was the bridge going across the Mosel.
Interviewer: When did you hear about the incident at Malmady?
Kleeman: That was very fast. Only a few days because once, one of the prisoners
played dead, and he crawled out during the night and reported.
Interviewer: What was your feelings?
Kleeman: Well our feelings were bitter, to, to, but you couldn’t catch them
because they came on the truck opened the back gate, and they had machine guns
set up and in no time they killed hundred and eighty people, and those people
had no chance. They were already prisoners of war.
Interviewer: Well you knew would have been your fate anyway?
Kleeman: That was in Malmady.
Interviewer: Yeah, that would have been you fate though, had you been captured.
Kleeman: Yeah so. That, that was, I think the worst of the atrocities that,
they faced.
Interviewer: : It was one of the biggest ones there were many atrocities, the
first SS-
Kleeman: I don’t even know if after the war they were able to research and
catch them and kill them or whether or not, whether the Americans were not
smart enough to identify.
Interviewer: The perpetrator was, he was, indicted and I think he served five
years. That was Joachim Peiper.
Kleeman: Whatever, whatever. The Americans were never smart enough to catch
all the real bad fellows. You know they went to South America, they went to
Rome to get false papers from the Catholic [?], you understand? They were,
they were protected.
Interviewer: Were involved in any interrogations during the Bulge, were you
involved in any interrogations during the Battle of the Bulge?
Kleeman: Yeah, yeah we were involved. We were, we had been to Bliouf[?] in
September Forty-Four the Blial was overrun by the attack, and when, when we
were we weren’t pushed back, we were in Luxembourg.
Interviewer: Right.
Kleeman: But when [?] started to recoup the area, our division was sent back
to fight around Bliouf again, and liberate, a second time, the area. So one
time I came up in a small town and, a back yard and a fence and I went up
there and I tried to make a speech to them, and one guy comes forward he
says “Oooooh! He was the old mayor from Bliouf he had pushed back by the
Germans, and I call, met him maybe twenty miles behind. So we knew each
other so I said to him, ‘you will be reinstalled in Bliouf[?] when you-
Interviewer: When it’s over.
Kleeman: -When we liberate it. Was unusual.
Interviewer: Yeah, yeah.
Kleeman: If you know what I mean.
Interviewer: I do.
Kleeman: So, you, it was dangerous, because amongst those people could have
been Nazi spies to kill me.
Interviewer: Well I mean it’s the other thing too was that large number of
the Germans involved in the attack were SS.
Kleeman: Yeah, you know what I mean? You never know if one of their spies
would be wearing an old mans outfit and pull a gun out.
Interviewer: Well that raises another question, because one of the tactics
the Germans used, was to parachute in American uniforms-
Kleeman: Right that was at in the Luxembourg area.
Interviewer: -Behind the lines.
Kleeman: Up on the, up on the hills.
Interviewer: You’re, you’re a German, in American uniform. Did you get
stopped, did anybody ask you who’s Babe Ruth?
Kleeman: I was very careful. I know, I know that besides wearing uniforms and
having Jeeps, they came the night before and turned the road directions around.
Interviewer: Yeah. Yeah.
Kleeman: And any sign that says ‘To Bliouf[?] Five Kilometer,’ it was turned
around the opposite way to confuse our troops.
Interviewer: Yeah. You could have gone-
Kleeman [?] they were smart, they were night fighters, they did their dirty
work at night.
Interviewer: A lot of them were caught, and executed.
Kleeman: You understand what I mean?
Interviewer: Yes.
Kleeman: Their night work was, they were trained for that, they sneaked
through the lines and did damage at night.
Interviewer: Were you accused of being one of them?
Kleeman: No.
Interviewer: Not at any time?
Kleeman: No, no.
Interviewer: But I mean you were German, in American Uniform, you have
a different accent.
Kleeman: Yeah, no, I was very careful. That, that was a very dangerous
time, even the city of Luxembourg for a few days was-
Interviewer: Yeah.
Kleeman: -for a few days very scary.
Interviewer: Yeah.
Kleeman: Because if they wanted to drop in from the air they could have
done it, you know they-
Interviewer: Well they bombed Luxembourg.
Kleeman: Yeah, they had many ways of, but we already had General Bradley,
had already established his headquarters in Luxembourg.
Interviewer: So there’s a lot of risk there. So 4th division moves into
Bliouf[?], again. Liberates Bliouf[?]. What was you opinion of how the,
the counter attack into the Bulge was managed.
Kleeman: Well the attack could have been avoided. If the Americans
wouldn’t have been out, wine, women and song. And going into the party
circuit, they should have been able to identify it.
Interviewer: Yeah.
Kleeman: We came to Luxembourg, twenty five years later on a trip to
Europe, with my division, and then the people were telling us two weeks
before the attack the German soldiers were patrolling the neighborhood,
they came at night to the back door asked for some bread and something
to drink, and they were there every night for two weeks before the
attack started.
Interviewer: Sneaking through the lines.
Kleeman: So, like I told you they did their dirty work at night.
Interviewer: Yeah. The counterattack-
Kleeman: But the Americans, wine, women…
Interviewer: War was over right? The war was over right?
Kleeman: Practically, yeah.
Interviewer: This is the map of it, there have been criticisms about ending the
Bulge that instead of doing this, and I’m illustrating they could have cut off
the, the Bulge at it’s base, Montgomery insisted upon a slow, gradual attack
all along there.
Kleeman: They had to turn Patton around to come from the south.
Interviewer: Right.
Kleeman: And they had to turn, from the north, they had the British Montgomery
to come down.
Interviewer: Right
Kleeman: And like you said they were criticizing that they didn’t cut it off.
Interviewer: Right.
Kleeman: That was the, the American Generals who claimed to know everything
better then anybody else, whether it was Collins, or Eisen-, well Eisenhower
played golf in France he I don’t think came back to Germany that time.
Interviewer: It was a little yet.
Kleeman: He, he directed from the golf course I think.
Interviewer: Yeah, but that this is criticized because it took too much time.
Kleeman: Yeah, I know, it took a lot of time. Slow, it took what, two and a
half months?
Interviewer: Yeah.
Kleeman: To get, capture the area back, yes. And, and, hundred thousand men
were lost, Colonel Johnson’s book must have written it up.
Interviewer: Yeah, he talks about it yeah.
Kleeman: Yeah, yeah. Well the average fellow had nothing to say.
Interviewer: Yeah.
Kleeman: It was all in the hands of eight or ten generals.
Interviewer: One of the things that begins to happen during this period, is
you begin to see Black soldiers appear in the line.
Kleeman: Well, we knew it would, it prolonged for six months.
Interviewer: Right you could have, been in Berlin.
Kleeman: Yeah.
Interviewer: During this period you begin to see Black soldiers in the
American army appear in combat.
Kleeman: Yeah, they, they brought some in. During this period, we suffered and
the Germans suffered. We had diarrhea like you have never seen. In February
forty five.
Interviewer: Really?
Kleeman: You had stop your Jeep, shit on a, sit on a ditch and let it out. You
couldn’t control it. One day, two days.
Interviewer: Dysentery or diarrhea?
Kleeman: But the thing is, when we had it on the American side, the Germans had
it on the German side the same way. Whether it was water or air or we don’t
know, the doctors could do nothing but give you something to clean you out
completely.
Interviewer: Yeah.
Kleeman: So there was nothing left inside of you. That was, at that time you
could have walked across the German Line, they could have walked across our
line. That was in February. There was days when the army was practically s
tandstill.
Interviewer: There’s another condition of Trenchfoot.
Kleeman: Trenchfoot was another condition, yes.
Interviewer: Did you come across that, did you have did you have any?
Kleeman: I didn’t, I was lucky, I had good boots, but trenchfoot, big, wipe
out a lot of soldiers who were up front.
Interviewer: Yeah.
Kleeman: Yeah, they stand in water all the time, and, yeah trenchfoot was a
big, big killer.
Interviewer: How good were the doctors in treating you at this point? How
good were the doctors at this point?
Kleeman: How big was?
Interviewer: Good were the doctors?
Kleeman: …The doctors they were not prepared for trenchfoot, they evacuated
the people to warm tent to start the swelling down, there’s nothing much
they could do for them.
Interviewer: What about and the diarrhea all they could do was give you
pills?
Kleeman: Yeah, yeah, no, that was a rest period for a man ten days, twenty
days I don’t remember exactly. But it was a, killer.
Interviewer: Yeah.
Kleeman: From being wet feet all the time. Yeah that was, February, it
started after Christmas forty four.
Interviewer: The period after the Bulge is gone, there’s a bit of a rest
period in March.
Kleeman: Yeah, after the Bulge then, then they were building up gasoline
storage.
Interviewer: Right.
Kleeman: Because in order to attack once they got into the real Germany
they had to have tanks, and trucks that moved.
Interviewer: They also had to get across the Rhine.
Kleeman: Yeah.
Interviewer: Which was big deal.
Kleeman: So that started the end of March. Yeah, that, that was the new, a new
campaign.
Interviewer: What was you responsibilities from March-
Kleeman: I didn’t, I didn’t cross the Rhine, I got sick and I sent to, into a
hospital in Dechan[?] in about early April.
Interviewer: What happened to you?
Kleeman: I got an attack of appendix or something.
Interviewer: Appendicitis?
Kleeman: Yeah. So I got into a station hospital and they sent me to another
hospital and one doctor decided I didn’t have to operate but I needed rest so
they sent me on a hospital train to Dechan[?].
Interviewer: What was the conditions in the hospital train like?
Kleeman: There was all kinds of wounded all kinds, that was already in
Southern France. It was like a rest camp.
Interviewer: Yeah.
Kleeman: And I was there when the war ended, then I came back to Germany.
Interviewer: So the war ends you're in your hospital bed.
Kleeman: No, I don’t remember if I was in the hospital or whether I was back in
the replacement, I don’t remember exactly, but I know I was not with the
division when it ended.
Interviewer: What was your response to the end of the war? What was your
response to the end of the war?
Kleeman: Well, I knew it had to come I’m surprised they lasted as long as they
did, because they were fanatics that’s all.
Interviewer: Yeah.
Kleeman: Because I have a report from a German Soldier who spent ten years of
his life in the Army, and he wrote in his report how they retreated slowly,
and he came from my home town and he came back a few days before the war ended
and he was hiding under a haystack for a three days so no one would catch him.
He was a great, the Germans were killing each other.
Interviewer: Yeah.
Kleeman: The fanatics were killing soldiers, if they went the wrong way.
Interviewer: Yeah.
Kleeman: So this guy had to walk way home, three, four hundred miles. And he
didn’t want to get killed so he was hiding under a hay stack for three days.
Interviewer: Did you know the guy?
Kleeman: Yeah.
Interviewer: You knew him personally?
Kleeman: He wrote, he wrote his whole life story. At night he knocked at his
mothers window he says ‘I’m Alive!’ [laughs].
Interviewer: Wow.
Kleeman: You can’t believe everything!
Interviewer: No, no.
Kleeman: See if I could have time to write it up it would make a good movie,
right.
Interviewer: It’s gonna, this is a good story, it’s fantastic story.
Kleeman: You would help me!
Interviewer: I would.
Kleeman: But the Germans they had the police force out to check their own
soldiers if they had passes to go the wrong way.
Interviewer: Right.
Kleeman: And if they were isolated, if they were like prisoner they would kill
them on the spot.
Interviewer: Yeah. Yeah.
Kleeman: They were that sworn fanatics they were near my home town was another
one. The father had a gusthoff, and the son was home, also from the army he
only said ‘It’s no sense fighting anymore the war is lost’ so some of the Nazi
officer heard it and shot him. So you understand what I mean?
Interviewer: Yeah.
Kleeman: They had to fight another war.
Interviewer: Yeah, yeah.
Kleeman: They, they were afraid of marching home. They were afraid of
surrendering.
Interviewer: Well you leave Lyon or Le Mans, Dijon, you leave Dijon you
go back to the replacement depot, you go to the replacement depot.
Kleeman: Yeah.
Interviewer: What was that like, the replacement depot?
Kleeman: Well the replacement depot were places from all over the hospital they
were sent there. Then they sent me to Six Army Group for a month or so, to work
there as the military government so I worked there I go, they gave me a Jeep I
was driving, I was, one weekend I went to Austria drove a man, an officer,
another one I went to Frankfurt, I was living.
Interviewer: Yeah, yeah.
Kleeman: That was in Heidelburg.
Interviewer: Okay.
Kleeman: I spent the month in Heidelburg and I had a friend in the signal corps
who was stationed in Heidelburg.
Interviewer: Oh good, okay.
Kleeman: So I had to a civilian friend [?] from before the war.
Interviewer: Were you, what was your opinion of how the Americans were behaving.
How were the Americans behaving in Germany, at this point?
Kleeman: At that time it was forbidden to fraternize.
Interviewer: Oh really?
Kleeman: Really.
Interviewer: How many soldiers obeyed that order?
Kleeman: Well I didn’t check it out [laughs]. I know around, we were, they
occupied an apartment for us, Military Government, and they had their own motor
pool and everything and around the corner was another apartment house where the
Germans were living. And one of the guys, had a, a lady friend around the corner,
and another friend the lady friend had the lady friends daughter! And the both
screwing together at the same time [Laughs].
Interviewer: So there was prostitution then was?
Kleeman: So you know what was going on when there was no more war.
Interviewer: Yeah. Well Heidelburg was lucky it wasn’t-
Kleeman: Heidelburg was not touched.
Interviewer: Yeah.
Kleeman: The city was I would say one of the few cities in Germany that refused
to name a street Hitlerstrasse.
Interviewer: Right.
Kleeman: They refused just about everything, and at the end they had a Dutch
fellow, and they sent him out to the American lines as they were approaching
to tell them they can come in and take over the city without shooting. And
that’s how the city surrendered to the American forces.
Interviewer: Which is amazing because I means, the-
Kleeman: Yeah there was bombed, nothing damaged the city was like before the
war, the University every was in perfect shape.
Interviewer: Cathedral?
Kleeman: The Hotel up on the mountain the Schlauss Hotel was beautiful the
Villa next to it belonged to Mr. Bosch, B-O-S-C-H, the Bosch-
Interviewer: Yes.
Kleeman: Tools and washing machines.
Interviewer: Yeah the plugs and, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Kleeman: And he had the first electric eye on his driveway when you drove
past the garage door would open.
Interviewer: Oh my.
Kleeman: [laughs] in nineteen forty-four, I don’t think the Americans knew
how to build that.
Interviewer: No, no. So Heidelburg was-
Kleeman: The officers had their private club in that house.
Interviewer: Yeah.
Kleeman: I had to drive a colonel up there Saturday night he used to be
the mayor of Miami, Florida, I guess he knew somebody so he became a full
Colonel and he spent a little time over in Heidelburg. After that somebody
didn’t like him, he was sent home and the order read ‘On a slow boat’
[laughs]. You never heard that one before [laughs]! You stay with me you
learn.
Interviewer: Another thing about these officers, in the occupation-
Kleeman: Can you remember all of these things I’m telling you?
Interviewer: Oh that’s why I have the recorder going.
Kleeman: [laughs] Slow boats. You’re going home on a slow boat!
Interviewer: The, one of the complaints about, or, observations was that there
was a lot of looting by, a lot of looting, by American soldiers and officers.
They saw something they liked it.
Kleeman: In our, in the fourth division, nothing was allowed. They would do
anything to catch you if you stole anything. And it happened in cases one time
in a small village in Germany and some sergeant locked all the Germans in a
church, he ordered them all to the church, then the soldiers looted the homes,
and the Americans found out, the officers found out, they, practically they
demanded that everybody who stole something turn it back in and they checked
all the mail if anybody sent home something they stopped the packages from
going out, they were so tough on their own soldiers that everybody got scared.
Interviewer: Okay.
Kleeman: That was the twenty-second regiment. I came to see an old friend of
the family and I spoke to him, not near the village where I come from, and he
said he had twenty thousand dollars in his dresser and somebody stole it, and
the guy was from my old outfit from the twenty second regiment, that they, it
was the war had finished already.
Interviewer: Right.
Kleeman: So they couldn’t, line them up anymore and identify it. But the
looting in other outfits was tolerated.
Interviewer: Yeah.
Kleeman: But the fourth division, strict orders, they would prosecute they
give you jail, whatever, they would.
Interviewer: Right what about war loot though? Because there was a sense
of like war trophies were accepted, right? Like-
Kleeman: I said there was-
Interviewer: Lugers or uniform pieces or helmets.
Kleeman: Whatever, I mean, I was very careful, I bought a few china pieces from
a woman in Russburg[?] and I paid for them and I had a guy in my military
government pack them in a wooden case and I sent it home, but stealing I didn’t
do. You understand what I mean?
Interviewer: Yeah, yeah I do, I do.
Kleeman: We were so indoctrinated-
Interviewer: Yeah.
Kleeman: -Not to steal and so on, but if you want something buy it! I was one
time I’m in I knew German history.
Interviewer: Well you’re a German.
Kleeman: Yeah. So one time I took my Jeep and I drove to, to Thuringia which
is north of Bavaria.
Interviewer: Yeah.
Kleeman: And there was the factory of the, the little figurines. The Hummels.
Interviewer: The Hummels, okay.
Kleeman: The Hummel Figurines. I drove up to the factory, and woman in charge
she says, we have nothing, the few pieces we have are earmarked and I cannot
give you anything. I cannot sell you anything, it’s all frozen and marked down.
So I said ‘I don’t want to take anything that is not legal’ So that was it.
Interviewer: Right.
Kleeman: I was there, right.
Interviewer: Yeah.
Kleeman: From there I drove to Selb, you never heard of Selb S-E-L-B, that’s a
little town on a mountain maybe two miles from the Czech border. North of
Bayreuth.
Interviewer: Okay, Okay.
Kleeman: So I drove there, it was known the Rosenthall factory, the
Huechinreuter factory, three of the best China factories in the world were up
there.
Interviewer: Yeah.
Kleeman: I, I drove up, and…
Interviewer: That’s [?]…
Kleeman: It says Rosenthall?
Interviewer: It says…
Kleeman: Huechenreuter?
Interviewer: W.H. Gebunwald. Gebunwald, It’s stamped U.S. Zone. It’s stamped
American zone. Gebunwald, that may be…well Schoenwald yeah, yeah, Schoenwald.
Kleeman: [?]
Interviewer: Schoenwald. This is the Huechenreuter.
Kleeman: Yeah, this is Heuchenreuter, those three factories are up there.
Interviewer: Right.
Kleeman: They, they make the best of China for the world.
Interviewer: Yeah.
Kleeman: If you know what I mean.
Interviewer: Well it’s beautiful pieces.
Kleeman: They were known for, excuse me-
[Phone rings]
Kleeman: Hello….hello…hello. The machine didn’t go off.
Interviewer: No. So what about-
Kleeman: I was in the factory.
Interviewer: Yeah.
Kleeman: I knew, I knew from my education in Germany that they were famous.
Interviewer: Right. That’s a complete set it looks, yeah. You, you acquired
a complete set it looks like.
Kleeman: Well this was bought after the war, I got married, the uncle bought
this set and, my in-laws bought a set you understand?
Interviewer: Okay.
Kleeman: They didn’t, I didn’t bring, I didn’t get a plate.
Interviewer: Okay.
Kleeman: The only thing I wasn’t educated enough, I found someplace in Germany
in my area a case maybe thirty or forty tumblers.
Interviewer: Yeah.
Kleeman: Tumblers.
Interviewer: Right.
Kleeman: And on the bottom it says ‘Rosenthalle’ with a Swastika underneath. I
should have sent them home. I, I, left them.
Interviewer: Yeah.
Kleeman: It was, to me it was disgusting if you know what I mean.
Interviewer: Right, right.
Kleeman: Today they would go in an auction unlimited.
Interviewer: Possibly, possibly.
Kleeman: You understand what I mean, this I-
Interviewer: Well I understand not wanting to as, far as-
Kleeman: -I passed it up. It was a tumbler, it wasn’t like this. But the fact is
that is says ‘Rosenthalle’ with a Swastika.
Interviewer: Right. What about-
Kleeman: The first ten years, you wouldn’t have looked at it.
Interviewer: Yeah. What about, the-
Kleeman: That was the only time I made a mistake [laughs].
Interviewer: Yeah, you’re entitled.
Kleeman: But I wouldn’t have kept it ten years.
Interviewer: What about the black market? Did you come across any black market
activities?
Kleeman: Black Market? No. I, no. I had an opportunity in Luxembourg one time,
I think it was after the war or someplace, I can’t recall I had some displaced
persons I paid them a visit in, they had an apartment already, they told ‘You
go with us Czechoslovakia, you’ll become a rich man.’
Interviewer: Yeah.
Kleeman: Well I was not the type to explore and stick my neck out.
Interviewer: Yeah.
Kleeman: You understand what I mean?
Interviewer: Sure.
Kleeman: They would go Czechoslovakia, steal diamonds and god knows what, I, I
did not buy it, if you know what I mean.
Interviewer: Yeah.
Kleeman: Another time, while I was in the Heidelburg, I had to drive an officer
to Austria for a weekend, right at the Mountains, the Alp, the Algoy mountains
one side Germany, one, on the other side of the, there was a lake there, the
other side was Switzerland.
Interviewer: Right.
Kleeman: The Germany was Austria, so the boy says to me, ‘You come with us
tonight, we’re taking a boat over the lake and we’re ending up in Switzerland
and we’ll buy watches’ I said to them ‘I’d like to buy a watch or two but I’m
not going to Switzerland and be a, become arrested and get into that Jail and
not come home.’ And I didn’t go [laughs].
Interviewer: Probably the smartest-
Kleeman: I was not the daring, you should know what I mean.
Interviewer: Did you of, of, aside from those incidents did know anybody
close to you who was active with the black market? Did you know anybody else
who was active in the black market? Or did, you didn’t associate with those-
Kleeman: The, the China was locked up complete, they told me Eisenhower was
sending a railroad train with coal so they could make a set for him for a
hundred and twenty people.
Interviewer: Ah, okay.
Kleeman: So that mean Eisenhower must have-
Interviewer: Got there.
Kleeman: Dreaming about the White House or something. Where else can you
feed a hundred and twenty people.
Interviewer: That’s true, yeah.
Kleeman: So they, they planned when the coal comes to make him a set.
Which a guy had a right to do it [laughs].
Interviewer: He paid for it.
Kleeman: Patton probably didn’t know what a decent plate looks like.
Interviewer: Well he knew but he was probably to busy making other plans
at that point.
Kleeman: But that Rosenthalle was hundreds of years old.
Interviewer: Yeah.
Kleeman: From making, they had, clay or something in the ground that was able-
Interviewer: Special clay, yeah.
Kleeman: And to this day it’s existing.
Interviewer: Yeah. Did you, you mentioned displaced persons when did you first
come across displaced persons?
Kleeman: Well Displaced Person, I guess in Luxembourg I must have come across
some.
Interviewer: What was your opinions of them?
Kleeman: Well, what, they were mostly at that time they were mostly Russians.
Interviewer: Yeah.
Kleeman: And they were taken away in the middle of the night, they didn’t
know what happened to them, where they were taken what the German soldiers
would do to them.
Interviewer: Right.
Kleeman: It…and I didn’t get friendly. They didn’t talk German, they didn’t
talk English, you know?
Interviewer: Right.
Kleeman: They were a bunch of dirty women.
Interviewer: Right.
Kleeman: I didn’t get involved.
Interviewer: Many of them were sent back, in, in.
Kleeman: Couldn’t, couldn’t afford it, if you know what I mean, but there were
lots them around for a while.
Interviewer: Yeah.
Kleeman: The Germans just treated them like animals they much have marched them
back.
Interviewer: There was even a fear in the American zone, that displaced persons
could be dangerous. That they could criminals or they could be desperate.
Kleeman: You had no way knowing, there were a big headache to American army
when the war ended.
Interviewer: Yeah.
Kleeman: Because they, they, they didn’t, some of them where their home was or
anything, they were like bunch of animals.
Interviewer: Yeah.
Kleeman: Very, very mixed up. And also you don’t, you don’t realize when the
war ended, there was rail system.
Interviewer: Yeah, everything was.
Kleeman: There was no communication, there was no mail system- When’s, when’s
the first time you got to go to a German city and see that devastation from
the bombs.
Interviewer: After the wars was over, you mentioned you were in Heidelburg.
Kleeman: I was in the stationed in a small town and they finally got railroad
going for maybe twenty kilometers stretch.
Interviewer: Right.
Kleeman: They repair the tracks, and they walked the tracks before they could
send a train out.
Interviewer: When’s the-
Kleeman: That’s when they started to run, to open up the tracks slowly to
Munich.
Interviewer: Right.
Kleeman: But it took a long time to get it going.
Interviewer: Did you get to Munich when it was still destroyed? Did you
go to Munich?
Kleeman: I went to Munich by Jeep.
Interviewer: What did you think of the devastation? What happened to the
city?
Kleeman: Well, the, they, some cities were not so badly damaged.
Interviewer: Munich was though wasn’t.
Kleeman: Munich, Munich wasn’t Frankfurt was, but some of them were not too
badly damaged.
Interviewer: What was your thoughts about the damage?
Kleeman: Well whatever you thought it wasn’t enough, that’s all, they deserved
it.
Interviewer: Yeah.
Kleeman: But it wasn’t them it was the fanatics who treated civilians ‘they
must fight to the last ounce of blood.’ If I know what I mean. It was, It was
a stupid mental block for the Germans to fight to the last minute.
Interviewer: Do you think-
Kleeman: You would think a smart people like that that would find a way to
stop it.
Interviewer: How long do you think it took the German people to realize that?
Kleeman: The German people, the ones who were brainwashed-
[END OF FIRST TAPE]
[BEGINNING OF SECOND TAPE SIDE A]
Interviewer: So you were saying the German people...
Kleeman: I didn’t get too warm with them I did not, I was still in danger, I
didn’t allow myself to be caught out alone because you never know who was
around who was after you.
Interviewer: Was there a fear of partisan activity?
Kleeman: There was no official activity but there was lots of threat lots of
problems that I did not go and expose myself.
Interviewer: Okay. Were you called out to help arrest anybody?
Kleeman: I was called out to arrest I was called out to investigate, when a
civilian cried she was raped I was sent out to check it out, stuff like this,
but I was not anxious to go alone anyplace because I, the mentality I knew that
I had to be careful.
Interviewer: Yeah. Yeah.
Kleeman: And, and having lived that long I certainly want a casualty to be sent
home in a box.
Interviewer: No, especially when the war ended.
Kleeman: And I was warned by a good friend that he said ‘they’re after you be
careful.’
Interviewer: How did he know?
Kleeman: He, he heard it from his friends.
Interviewer: Yeah, and who were ‘they’ I mean-
Kleeman: A German.
Interviewer: I mean were they like, I mean like ‘they are after you’ you mean
like former Nazis-
Kleeman: Who gave me the, the leftover from the synagogue.
Interviewer: Okay.
Kleeman: Who was a friend of the Jews, and he warned he says ‘they’re after you
be careful.’
Interviewer: Well let’s, let’s, let’s bring it to that point because, let’s
bring up that story. You went home. You went back to your home.
Kleeman: Yeah, I went back to the village.
Interviewer: Tell us about that.
Kleeman: Yeah, and I went to visit this man, the man, I knew the man and he was,
I know he was a good friend of the Jews and he hated the Nazis and when we sat
down together he was already bedridden, he was poisoned in World War One because
of enemy gases and he couldn’t work all his life, and he told me, he says, ‘be
careful they’re after you’ that means they were ready to, to kill me, because
they figured I know too much and I’m better off being dead they can’t do any
damage.
Interviewer: What was the, I mean, I can’t imagine you, well I mean in your
position, being in your position. Living in a town where the people had taken
over your house they arrested you and your father and sent you to a camp and
then they come back at the end of the war, almost like a nemesis or an avenger.
Kleeman: I mean this is something they never expected that I would be coming
back with a gun, as an enemy soldier.
Interviewer: What was, I can’t even imagine the looks on their faces upon first
seeing you, I mean did they, did they acknowledge you? Did they try to pretend
you weren’t there or?
KLeeman: They, they just couldn’t imagine that this could happen, if you know
what I mean. So I, I was very careful, I had to watch out of my life and I was
really, very, very careful.
Interviewer: How easy was it to find the Nazis in the village did they go into
hiding?
Kleeman: I had no idea I didn’t look for any I didn’t want to face any, because
I felt they had guns. And I they never, if they had guns they never turned them
in, they were brave enough to bury them or hide them someplace, if they wanted
to kill me they found a weapon.
Interviewer: So when were they arrested or were they arrested?
Kleeman: So I, I was very careful because live that long you want to live
longer you didn’t want to be a dead hero.
Interviewer: So you reclaimed the synagogue relics.
Kleeman: Yeah, because you understand-
Interviewer: I understand perfectly I do.
Kleeman: I was there, they knew I was there, but I didn’t want to fronted, to
front me. One time a guy said to me, ‘Oh I know your father very well, I
want a roast,’ not chicken, rooster ‘make a rooster for you Sunday afternoon
come and visit me.’ And I know he lived in a small village, so I said to my,
I said ‘Yeah I’m coming over,’ I said to myself ‘This guy doesn’t know my
father, this is a phoney, he’s probably making a rooster and putting some
poison into it,’ so I decided I don’t go, I don’t give him a chance, and I
don’t give myself a problem. I didn’t go. I went someplace else and I visited
somebody I knew, and that was the end, but I had that sense that this guy was
pushed, to poison, to get poison and get rid of me, and that would have made
him look good, they didn’t shoot me I died on my own.
Interviewer: Or he, I mean not to disagree, I mean he could have been-
Kleeman: You understand what I mean?
Interviewer: -hoping to make positive with you.
Kleeman: I did not want to make a chance-
Interviewer: I understand. I understand.
Kleeman: My senses told me ‘Don’t do it.’
Interviewer: Yeah.
Kleeman: In other, in other words my, my, being awake senses worked on me.
Interviewer: Yeah.
Kleeman: I sensed, you understand.
Interviewer: So did you ever go back after the war?
Kleeman: Do I go back?
Interviewer: Did you go back after the war?
Kleeman: After the war? I didn’t go back for twenty-five years.
Interviewer: Yeah.
Kleeman: I didn’t go back, after twenty-five years my division, a two-month,
two-weeks trip to Europe, England, Normandy, I went with them and I, I was in
Bonn, I took a train to my home town,-
Interviewer: Yeah.
Kleeman: And spent six hours there, I visited a farmer and someone else and I
left quietly again, took the train back to Bonn the same night. I didn’t want
to, another chance, that anybody could find me or do something to me.
Interviewer: You still feel that was,-
Kleeman: Because there was, they were still all alive the Nazis. You know what
I mean, after twenty-five years. I more or less sneaked in secretly and left
secretly again.
Interviewer: Yeah.
Kleeman: But for five, six hours that’s all. Then I probably waited another
ten or twenty years before started visiting.
Interviewer: Yeah.
Kleeman: I was very careful.
Interviewer: Yeah, no I understand perfectly.
Kleeman: I wouldn’t be here.
Interviewer: I understand, I do.
Kleeman: That-
Interviewer: Is there anything else that you feel that is important to
comment on?
Kleeman: Well everything that took place is important sometime.
Interviewer: I know I tried to bring a lot of-
Kleeman: But the mind works slowly if you know what I mean as I talk, new
instances wake up, new, new memories and stuff.
Interviewer: Well we can always do another session, if you-
Kleeman: Yeah we can another, but I have a good dessert for you.
Interviewer: Well that’s, there’s one last question I want to ask you before
dessert, which is ‘is there anything that you want to tell people who may
listen to this…five years.’
Kleeman: Well you want me to prepare some special memories for something.
Interviewer: No I think if there’s something you want to say right now to
anybody who may be listening to this in the future.
Kleeman: Well right now I’m very happy I did what I did, and I contributed a
great deal to the history of this World War Two between the Germans, the Nazis,
the Germans and the American People. I feel my history was worth going there
and coming back in one piece and I feel very good that, I lived through it all
and I’m willing to share, whatever happened with people who realize that it
was worth doing it.
Interviewer: Thank you very much, this transcript of this interview will be-
Kleeman: If you want me to and the memory works I’ll write down other
instances.
Interviewer: You’re more then welcome to, you’re more then welcome to.
Kleeman: My mind, my mind was full of them.
Interviewer: Oh as I was saying the Transcript of this interview will be
put online and everybody who wishes to will be able to-
Kleeman: From what I see everything was life, nothing was made up, every I
recalled mentally or physically was part of my existence, I didn’t have to
create anything special, everything occurred as I lived the life.
Interviewer: That’s great I mean it’s certainly sounds, makes story [?]
Kleeman: That’s one of the things I can sleep at night, I did not make up
any stories I lived them, and they’re impregnated in my brain [laughs].
Interviewer: Well that concludes the interview with Werner Kleeman, conducted
by Bob Wintermute, finishing up, June 19th 2009, thank you very much.
Kleeman: But am I right?
[RECORDING ENDS]
End of Tape 05 ot 05
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