Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

Eugene Feldman - July 15, 1991

Drafted into U.S. Army

You were drafted.

I was drafted about a year and a half after I been here. I wasn't a citizen. I didn't think they could, but they did. So--but in the service you had to learn fast because they don't talk any other language to you.

So where were you in the service?

Their ???, first of all we were in basic training in Texas. Fort Bliss, Texas. You know where Fort Bliss is?

Mm-hm.

Okay. After the training--I don't know that it has anything to do with it, but you had to--we were--I passed language uh, tests you know. Like a translator, whatever. If you know more than one language I guess they wanted you to go through with it and they keep you on the record as a translator. I remember me and another guy... So everybody went to Korea. I was during the Korean War. For my outfit, after the basic training, me and the other guy they sent back to Germany, to Europe. So what do you think I did? I, I was stationed in France, Bordeaux, near Bordeaux. But on my leave, I says, I gotta go back to Germany. I gotta go back to my camp. So I did go back to my camp, to Friemann. I came back to that--the Germans were there, back there already. All the, they had only one camp left in, in, from Germany. So I went down there. I'll never forget it. I went there, I think it was Yom Kippur, I wanted to go to shul. And I, I figured I have to know, somebody down there.


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