One Tiny Ray of Sunshine

This was a horrible subject to write about; however, the Holo­caust happened, it was real and far worse than I felt comfortable writing about. But we can never forget what happened; we must constantly remind ourselves that a mere seventy years ago this hor­ror

took place. It is estimated that Nazi Germany murdered twelve million people during the war; six million were Jews and among the rest were gypsies, homosexuals, Jehovah Witnesses, the mentally and physically infirm, political enemies, and the peoples from the captured countries that they had no use for, mainly Poles and Russians. Twelve million people murdered over and above the war casualties. Let me tell you one more story, a story with a very surprising end­ing. Mauthausen was a dreadful concentration camp located near the city of Linz, Austria. Among concentration camps, as opposed to death camps, Mauthausen was number one in executions, with a total of 36,318 dutifully recorded in the camp Totenbuch. (Death book.) It should be noted the Ger­mans kept very precise records of such matters. LeRoy “Pete” Petersohn was a T/5 Medic with the 11th Armored Division, and on May 5, 1945 his unit was ordered to leave the Gus­en

sub-camp and proceed to the main camp, Mauthausen. When they came within five miles of the camp they began smelling a foul odor.

When Pete arrived in camp his commanding doctor, Major Har­old Stacey, went to secure an of­fice for them to work out of. Pete was approached by an inmate who spoke perfect English; he had been a teacher, and he offered to take Pete on a tour of the camp. Pete accepted, and was shown the still-burning crematorium furnaces, piles and piles of dead bodies, and other horrible sights.

Pete had been warned by Dr. Stacey to stay away from the in­mates as they were no doubt dis­eased. Because he wore the helmet with the Red Cross, he was recog­nized

as a medic and was swarmed by people begging for help, and he did his best to help despite the warning.

It was now that fate intervened. Pete went into a women’s barracks and discovered a mother with a lit­tle baby girl only twenty-four days old. The baby was a mass of infec­tions covered with pus-filled boils, which if not treated would result in a staph infection and kill the baby. The baby, Hana, was saved twice prior to this, once when the mother and infant were scheduled for execution and they ran out of poison gas in the gas chamber, and a second time when a guard tried to kill the baby and another guard interfered.

Pete brought the baby to Dr. Stacey, who ordered the baby brought to the hospital at Gus­en. As soon as they arrived Peter­sohn went to the infirmary for vi­als of penicillin. The doctor began lancing boils and Pete took swabs and penicillin and cleaned them out. Some were so large they had to stitch the skin back up.

The penicillin saved the child and she was given back to her mother. Dr. Stacey offered to “pull some strings” and get mother and baby Hana sent to the States for any further treatment that might be re­quired,

and for resettlement. The mother refused saying she wanted to return to Bratislava, Czechoslo­vakia and look for her husband, from whom she had been separat­ed some seven months prior. Near the end of May, mother and baby departed, and Pete wondered for the next six decades what had be­come of them. The rest of the story is magnificent. In 2003, Hana, now fifty-eight years of age, was Hana Berger Mo­ran, Ph.D., a U.S. citizen and living in the San Francisco, California area. Hana’s mother had encour­aged/

badgered her daughter to find Pete and thank him. Finally, after some fits and starts, she found the 11th Armored Division website, and wrote a letter asking for help in finding the men who saved her life. She quickly received responses from soldiers who had liberated Mauthausen and soon after she heard from Pete. After exchanging some email messages Pete called her and when she re­alized

who it was she let out a scream, “Pete, Pete!” He said she thanked me for saving her and she loved him. They promised to keep in contact.

In 2005, the Austrian gov­ernment had ceremonies to commemorate the sixtieth anni­versary of the liberation of Mau­thausen. Pete and his two sons were flown over, all expenses paid, and when Hana discovered Pete was going to be there she made plans to attend. When they finally met, Pete recalled, “She came in the door and she hugged me so tight I thought she was going to kill me.”

When Hana met Pete she re­members the moment thusly: “When I met him it just kind of made sense. It just felt very safe. It felt very comfortable to meet him. I was just totally choked up. As hokey as this may sound, I have two birthdays. I was born on April 12th and then, thanks to LeRoy Petersohn and the 11th Armored, I was born again on May 5th.” To close the loop on this story let me tell you more of Hana’s story. She fled Czechoslovakia in 1968 when the Soviets invaded and went to Israel, where she had family. She earned a doctorate at the Weizmann Institute of Science in 1977 and came to the United States on a fellowship to the Uni­versity of Chicago as an organic and natural products chemist. Baby Hana, whom Pete helped save, now speaks five languages and has been responsible for more than thirty investigational new-drug filings with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and has had nine drugs approved by regula­tory authorities both in the United States and Europe. Twelve million people rounded up and murdered by the purveyors of the “Master Race.” How many doctors, scientists, and social leaders had their lives snuffed out in the name of racial purity? What madness. But worse yet, please contemplate, if you will, what might have been had this Holo­caust

not occurred. The strides we might have made in medicine, in government, and in education, among others. The losses are in­calculable and make this horrible event all the more heartbreaking, if such a thing is possible.