Green Valley man tells tales of Nuremberg

As a young teen growing up in the small town of Lake City, Mich., Jack Young could not imagine that he would be witness to one of the great historical events of WWII.

In 1945, with WWII still raging, Young, at age 17, a senior in high school, and with his parents deceased, enlisted in the (then) U.S. Army Air Corps. He was told he would not be accepted until he turned 18, so, after graduation in June of 1945, he was sworn in at Fort Dearborn. After basic training, and ready to be shipped out to Germany, the war was over.

As Young says, “I am an observer of WWII. I am no hero, I was not in combat, and when I got to Europe, I wasn’t shooting at anybody and nobody was shooting at me!”

After arriving in Europe, and, while in southern Germany, his unit had a chance to go to Dachau concentration camp. The horrors of what he saw, the smell, the shower rooms, the gas ovens, overwhelmed him. In his words, “It wasn’t until at least five years later that I could talk about it without crying.”

His unit was then driven to La Havre, France, and loaded into freight cars termed 40+8, meaning 40 soldiers or 8 horses could be transported in one of the box cars. The recruits were herded in until they were shoulder to shoulder.

His next stop was an Air Force Base at Kassel, not far from Munich. His unit’s assignment was to destroy all leftover war materials, much of it electronic and communications equipment. 750 P47s were compacted. “I cannot describe how much brand-new equipment we had to destroy,” said Young.

Nearing the end of this assignment, he was chosen with two other airmen to attend the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg. Unlike Kassel, Munich, and many other German cities which were bombed to the ground, Nuremberg was miraculously spared except for damage around the railroad station. So it was chosen by the committee to hold the trials there at the Nuremberg Palace of Justice.

As history tells us, the Nuremberg Trials were set up by the four principal Allied countries of the United States, England, France, and Russia.

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt had asked the War Department to devise a plan to bring the prominent war criminals of the Nazi Party to justice.

On the assigned morning, Young, a “buck” sergeant, who was then the highest ranking non-com at his base, a lieutenant and a private were picked up at their base by car and brought to the court building. Young has no clue as to why these three American airmen were chosen, but they followed their orders and entered the great hall.

Paradoxically, relates Young, in the foyer was a large statue of Moses holding the Ten Commandments. “Hard to believe,” said Young.

There was heavy security in the building. Three hundred feet away, German prisoners were housed. U.S. Infantrymen from the 1st Division, in their white helmets and white gloves stood guard around the periphery of the courtroom. There was the fear that the Nazis might try to free the defendants or kill the prosecutors.

The three Americans were then seated in the balcony, first row in the middle of the radio-press area. Each chair had buttons in the armrest, so one could follow the trial in English, French, German or Russian.

Young relates how he was seated about 50 feet from Hermann Goering, Hitler’s chosen successor, and was able to scrutinize him. He described Goering as aloof, frozen-faced, stoic.

On this day, Hans Fritzsche was on trial, and the last of the 21 Nazis to be interrogated. He had been head of the official radio/news agency propaganda. Fritzsche eventually was acquitted.

At the end of the Nazi regime, Adolph Hitler committed suicide with his bride, Eva Braun; Hermann Goering ingested poison the night before his scheduled hanging; Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS. took cyanide; Martin Boermann, Hitler’s private secretary who helped organize the Holocaust, was never captured and was sentenced to death in absentia. Hitler’s deputy, Rudolph Hess, was sentenced to life in the Spandau Prison and died there. The Nuremberg Trials started in October 1945 and concluded in October 1946.

As for Sgt. Jack Young, he was discharged and re-entered Michigan State University where he completed his studies and earned a degree in Social Studies.

He worked at Dow Chemical until his retirement. Jack and his wife, Marilyn raised three children. They retired to Green Valley about eight years ago.

Jack has served as president of the Michigan Club, and is a member of The Forum and the 260 Club.

His comments on today’s world: “We thought WWII would be the end of wars. We’ve been in a series of wars since then, a great disappointment.”