The Astonishing Reunion between a Jewish Soldier and His Parents in a Nazi Ghetto
Perhaps it was Manfred Gans’s cherished childhood memories in Borken, Germany, that drove his desperate search for his parents after the Allies defeated the Nazis in 1945. Seven years earlier, at the age of 16, Gans traveled to England to learn English. It was supposed to be just for the summer. But his parents told him to stay there because of the danger Jews faced back at home. Though Gans stopped hearing from his parents in 1941, he never gave up hope.
Picture-Perfect Childhood
Gans was the middle of three sons, the one assigned to help his mother, Else, in the kitchen sometimes, the one who “had to learn all the practical skills.” Passover was his favorite holiday because “the stuff my mother cooked was just out of this world,” Gans recalled in his 2004 oral history.
We can picture the daily lives of the Gans brothers because of a photo album with captions in the collection of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. With affection and humor, it documents a full day in 1931. His older brother, Karl, is described as “the bookworm.”
Theo, the youngest, Gans characterized as “spoiled like hell because he was so good looking, and so I had to … help everybody. Those were the personalities, and they somewhat remained that way all our lives too.” Their father, Moritz, was their “greatest friend,” Gans said.
Torn Apart
Hitler’s rise to power ended this idyllic family life. Before Manfred Gans went to England, Karl had left Germany for Palestine, then controlled by the British. Shortly after Kristallnacht, a Nazi-orchestrated night of violence in November 1938 targeting Greater Germany’s Jewish population, Moritz and Else sent Theo to a boarding school in England. They escaped in August 1939 to the Netherlands, which Germany invaded in May 1940.
After World War II began in September 1939, Britain began interning some Germans as enemy aliens — including Manfred Gans in the summer of 1940. While interned, Gans volunteered to serve in the British Army as soon as the government allowed it. At first, he could only serve in the Pioneer Corps, a labor unit initially barred from using weapons. He kept trying to prove himself, applying for other assignments.
In 1943, intelligence officers interviewed Gans and selected him and other German-speaking Jewish refugees to train for an elite special forces unit known as X Troop. Speaking German without an accent was one of the main qualifications. “We changed our names, changed our identities,” said Gans, who adopted the name Fred Gray. “Within two hours, we all had a false history … And that was the beginning of being in the commandos.”
D-Day
On D-Day, June 6, 1944, Gans, though trained as a paratrooper, embarked in an infantry landing boat in the dark of night. At dawn, “we could start to see the massive bombardment of the coast and the shooting back of the German guns,” he remembered.
“Our boat approached the coast, and of course as I said, we now were under direct fire. As soon as I could, I run down the gangway, and I got down, was on the beach, and lo and behold, I saw about 25 German soldiers who had been taken prisoner by the engineers unit that had preceded us.”
“Where’s the pass through the minefields?” he asked the prisoners in German.
“They pointed it out to me. And so I gathered as many people as I could, and I’d … gotten off the beach, and gotten into Lion-sur-Mer,” where fighting continued. As Gans and his unit advanced, they infiltrated German positions, convincing them to surrender, interrogated prisoners, and gathered intelligence.
At War’s End
After Germany surrendered nearly a year later, the army granted Gans, by then an officer, compassionate leave and provided a jeep and driver so he could search for his parents. He had lost touch with them for about four years but received word through family that they might be at Theresienstadt, a newly liberated ghetto and transit camp that the Nazis had used to deport Jews to killing centers.
In the three days it took to reach Theresienstadt, in what is now the Czech Republic, Gans and his driver traveled in a jeep with faulty brakes. Running out of gas was an ongoing concern. They encountered armed German soldiers in an area that hadn’t yet surrendered. And they faced the threat of contracting typhus after arriving at the camp. “It was just incredible what risks we took,” he said.
Just after returning from Theresienstadt, Gans journaled about the reunion. His account is among his papers in the Museum’s collection. This excerpt starts on the third day of his journey, the day he got to see his parents.
At last Theresienstadt. Civilians show the way to the Ghetto. I always thought I would die of excitement at this moment but I am pretty cool now, only that queer feeling in the pit of the stomach which I get before a parachute jump. …
There are people — Jews — in the thousands everywhere. They look undernourished, overworked, but fairly well dressed. Western Europe’s Jews, every face seems to be familiar. They are all ages, but every eye reflects senility and tiredness. What a grim sight!! …
Stop in front of the Registration Office. There is one girl still working. I demand my parents address. … She gets terribly excited. “They are really still here, are you lucky?” … I am getting slightly excited. Damn it I have jumped out of aeroplanes, I am not going to let this get me down! …
The next minutes are indescribable. I suddenly find myself in their arms. They are both crying wildly, it nearly sounds like the crying of despair. I look at father and in spite of having prepared myself for a lot I have to bite my teeth together not to show my shock. He is hardly recognisable! Completely starved and wrecked. My first regular thoughts after a few minutes are “What a grim show.” The next our old Commando watch word “Don’t panic!” I lead them to the balcony and force them to sit down. They still can’t utter a word for crying. Some of their friends, fine people, come to calm them down. Now at last I manage a smile. People rapidly collect in the yard beneath the balcony. They all shout “Congratulations” and “Mazel-tow” to my parents. Now they are cheering. That rectifies my parents. Father is completely calmed down now — one look into his eyes convinces me that his spirit is completely unbroken. He still is the realistic idealist he always has been. During the next few hours I have all reasons to admire him. Mother looks aged but tanned and fit. There is still a lot of youth about her. …
Amongst talk about their past, our relatives, the world at large, we all feel very happy now.
Gans had to return to his unit and could not take his parents out of the camp. Soviet forces were restricting access to and from the camp for health reasons. The trip also would have been too dangerous for his parents. He left them cigarettes and a huge box of rations, which they could use or trade. He also eventually helped arrange for them and others to return to the Netherlands, where his parents lived before eventually moving to Israel in the 1950s.
After the war, Gans served at a camp where German prisoners were being held for war crimes trials. Once discharged from the military, he went back to school and became a chemical engineer. He married Anita Lamm, also a Holocaust survivor, and immigrated to the United States in 1950. They had two children, Daniel and Aviva, who donated their parents’ collection to the Museum. Gans died in 2010.
