American Valor Quarterly Issue 1 - Winter 2007 | Page 13

German army were retreating further into Eastern Germany.
We drove through various abandoned towns without
challenge, saw how the Nazis and Wehrmacht lived, and
how they treated the slaves they held in their camps.
I walked with a small group from our gun crew into one of
these slave camps. The slaves there were Russian girls—
for a better word, they were “sex slaves.” These girls had
no place to go. No sight of pity ever hit me so hard as when
I entered through that door. The
place was neat, and the room was
kept pretty clean. It was not the
crude furniture and beds, because
one saw that all over Europe.
No, what made us boiling mad was
the condition of the women, girls,
and babies. Babies, babies all over
the place. Their mothers’ faces
were weary and lifeless. They fed
their babies with what little they
had left of themselves.

Army. Instead, we saw a strange sight—people in striped
clothing walking toward us, who must have been coming
out of German jails or camps. I came across a Russian girl
on the road, and she spoke to me in Russian. I replied,
“Nepadimsiesh,” but it became clear that though the
released slave laborers were now free, they had nowhere to
go. I asked if she spoke German. She told me she came
from Kiev—where my father had come from. She said she
could barely wait to get back to Russia, but she didn’t know
if her parents were alive or dead.
She worked hard during the day
and “entertained” German soldiers
at night. She had been in Germany
for two years.
I was emotionally upset with the
story of the Russian girl who found
herself in such a deplorable
situation. “To the victors go the
spoils.” I was angered with the
German soldiers and officers. They
had no respect for morals or other
human beings. But, my second
thought was that not all Germans
were like this—not all were evil. I
was proud that as the American
army pounded its way through
Europe, they were disciplined and
had respect for the local
populations, be they friend or
enemy.

A Polish girl, about 16, told me the
same story I had been hearing since
we battled our way across the
Rhine. The girls worked hard
during the day with not much food, Exuberant prisoners of the Dachau concentration camp
and at night, they provided sexual
celebrate upon their liberation by American forces in
April of 1945.
favors for the German soldiers.
The Polish girl said, “Look what a
German soldier gave me!” Was the baby just born? No; it
Dachau Concentration Camp - Morning Hours
was born five days before, and no bigger than a kitten. Ten
April 29, 1945
babies had died in the past week.
I was glad to get out of that sad and gloomy maternity ward.
The Germans had conquered parts of Russia and brought
back the booty—Russian girls. There was nothing we could
have done to help these poor abused girls, victimized by
their Nazi conquerors. Genghis Khan, in the 12th century,
overran Northern Africa, Persia, and Eastern Europe, and
the Mongol men would rape women and be rewarded with
swift riding horses. The Nazis, with their goal of a superior
civilization, had reverted to centuries of the past, with the
prize of women slaves.

By daylight, our artillery battalion moved on, joining the
42nd “Rainbow” Division in the battle for Munich. As soon
as our Battery “B” of the 283rd Field Artillery—100 men
and howitzers—arrived in a park in the city of Munich,
German artillery bombarded us with shrapnel raining down
from the sky. Our men dove under our trucks to avoid being
hit.

I tried to dig a trench at the edge of a wooded area, until a
German artillery shell exploded 20 feet from where I was
located, and the concussion knocked me to the ground. A
A Russian Girl Wandering on the Road
dense black cloud enveloped me. My sergeant called out,
“Zaslow, are you alright?” I got up from my trench, dusted
On April 17, 1945, we had covered most of Western off my combat uniform, and said, “Yeah Sarge, I’m ok.”
Germany, and expected to soon meet with the Russian
American Valor Quarterly - Winter, 2007/08 - 13