Greatest Generation Hero

Without heroic men like Fred Rosenstrauch, there would have been no baby boom generation. A long fascination with the men and women who fought WWII, took me to Shell Point Retirement Community today to meet a remarkable couple who exemplify what made the Greatest Generation great.

As a teenager in Nazi Germany, Fred watched as his peers disappeared, knowing that as Jews, they were not going into the military. He and his dad worked in a box ammunition factory while hoping to find a way out of the inevitable end for their family. Thanks to a friendly teacher who was a top Nazi in the town, Fred and his father were met at the train as they arrived home one night, and given passage out of the country. They had no time to think it over or what it meant to leave other family members behind. Thankfully, Fred’s mother and her parents escaped a year later, and they all eventually settled in St. Louis.

When America entered the war, young Fred tried to enlist in all of the branches of the service, but he was not yet a citizen. Finally after much pleading, the Army accepted him into the infantry, and along with a few others in his basic training, was made an American citizen in a courthouse in San Luis Obispo.

As a member of the Second Infantry Division, Fred fought in 5 major battles including the D-Day invasion of Normandy and the Battle of the Bulge in which he was wounded. All the time, Fred was working on losing his German accent of which there is not a trace today.

I ask him about the movie Saving Private Ryan which so vividly depicts the invasion of Normandy from the sea. He tells me that it was so realistic that it was very difficult to watch even after all these years, and that he would not watch it again.

Fred’s lively speech and expressive face turn to deep sadness also, when I ask him about one of his Division’s assignments – to liberate the concentration camp at Dachau. Realizing how close his family had come to this fate was so shocking to this young man that he can barely talk of it today.

Fred assumed that he would soon be going home to his sweetheart Lore, but he was called up to go to the Allied HQ and assigned to Officer Training School. With his knowledge of Germany, and the German language, he was trained as an interpreter and interrogator. Soon, he found himself in Nuremberg interrogating Nazis and interpreting during the trials. It would seem that this young man’s life had come full circle.

Fred and Lore have a light moment when they tell me that his intense interrogation training served him well throughout life. He has no trouble knowing the signs in a person’s face and demeanor when they are not telling the truth. This, they tell me came in handy in raising their two children.

Within four months of Fred’s return to the states, he and Lore were married. She had faithfully written him and waited and worried like most young women of the time. I asked her about what life with rationing was like, and she smiles and says it wasn’t so bad except for the lack of nylon stockings. She mentions that just about everywhere you went, women were knitting socks and helmet liners for the soldiers from a pattern put out by the Army.

There is not a bit of bitterness in Fred’s still handsome, expressive face when he tells me that he was fired from his first job at a sheet metal company when the owner learned he was Jewish. It says it was a blessing because he was then hired for a much better job in the experimental division of McDonnell aircraft. Later he started his own heating business which is now operated by his son in St. Louis. He and Lore smile when they recall that the business really picked up when air conditioning came into vogue.

After years as snowbirds, Fred and Lore made Florida their permanent home a few years ago, and now reside in a beautiful condo overlooking the Caloosahatchee in Shell Point Retirement Community. They laugh as they remember buying their first home for $7,500 with the help of low interest and a down payment through the GI Bill.

As I leave their home, I stop to look at pictures on their walls, and notice one of Fred in full uniform for a recent veterans parade. He smiles proudly and says, “It still fits.”

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