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Sol Goldstein’s story begins in a humble Jewish home in Baltimore during the height of the Great Depression in 1923. He and his brother spent their youth fighting anti-Semitic bullies, in and out of school. The fighting spirit he picked up spurred his enlistment into the U.S. Army during World War II and has motivated him throughout his life.
His grandson had prepared for him a chair to sit in as he recounted the larger-than-life story, but Sol stood the entire time with a calm, stark fortitude; his age, clearly only a number.
In the gathering of the storm of the war in Western Europe, Sol was sent to the United Kingdom to train with the Higgins Boat landing craft in preparation for the Allied invasion of Nazi-occupied Europe: Operation Overlord.
On June 6, 1944, the largest invasion force ever assembled prepared for D-Day.
“There were so many ships in the English Channel that you could walk from England to France and never get your feet wet,” said Sol. “The sound of planes in the air was deafening.
It took us the better part of three or four hours to get anywhere near the edge of the beach,” he said, shaking his head deliberately. “We received tremendous fire from fortifications on the beach.
His voice cracked. “I lost 40 percent of my platoon.”
Once the beaches of Normandy had been secured, Sol and his men continued into France, fighting alongside the British toward Holland and eventually into Belgium.
Grueling months came and went, and Sol found himself in the Hürtgen Forest during the Battle of the Bulge. There he suffered a leg injury from German air-burst artillery shells which turned trees into an explosion of deadly shrapnel.
The only lasting, visible reminders of Sol’s injuries were the small Purple Heart lapel pin he wore on the breast of his jacket and the cane he defiantly left at his seat.
When the German lines broke after the Battle of the Bulge, Sol continued the fight into Germany.
He and his men were a day ahead of the main force on a reconnaissance mission when they began to smell the odor of death. They investigated the smell and it led them to what they thought may have been a prisoner of war camp.
They rammed their vehicle through part of the barbed-wire fence surrounding the camp and eliminated the vicious guard dogs left behind by the Nazis. Then they realized what they had stumbled upon was not a POW camp, but a travesty.
It was the Buchenwald concentration camp. Corpses were strewn about; piled in places.
The surviving prisoners, shambled toward them like zombies, Sol said. The prisoners surrounded Sol and his men. An emaciated young man asked them in German, “Are you American soldiers?”
“Yes we’re American soldiers, and I’m a Jew,” Sol said.
The young man grasped Sol’s hands over his carbine and said in Yiddish, “What took you so long to get here?”
Sol looked down and closed his eyes.
“I swore in that camp, that if ever, if ever, a person was in trouble and needed help, I’d be there,” Sol said.
As Nazi Germany surrendered and the war in Europe came to a close, Sol spent six months in Paris helping rebuild the damaged City of Light before returning home.
After the war, Sol participated in many successful business ventures, ultimately becoming an insurance salesman. In fact, he sold over $1 million of insurance for 47 years.
But, he never forgot the promise he made at Buchenwald.
Sol worked with African Americans in the United States in the fight for civil rights. He spent time in the Soviet Union extraditing the heavily persecuted Jewish people there. He worked in Ethiopia to grant safe passage for many Beta Israel (Children of Israel) to Israel. He even worked alongside future Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon during the 1982 Lebanon War.
Sol is assured his legacy will continue through his descendants and the men and women who serve in the armed forces today.
“Every generation we are called on to defend liberty,” said Sol’s grandson, Capt. Jonathan Goldstein, 305th Air Mobility Wing executive officer and C-17 instructor pilot. “That’s what our job is.”
Sol continues the fight by telling his story and forwarding his message of freedom and liberty for all people.
Jonathan’s face was illuminated with pride as he spoke of his grandfather. And, like his grandfather, he wouldn’t sit down.
“My grandfather’s generation understood that freedom and liberty are worth fighting for,” said Jonathan. “They were the greatest generation.”
| Date Taken: | 08.01.2016 |
| Date Posted: | 12.07.2016 14:40 |
| Story ID: | 216727 |
| Location: | JOINT BASE MDL, US |
| Web Views: | 16 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, Greatest generation visits MDL, by A1C Zachary Martyn, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
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