Jewish Aviators in World War II: Personal Narratives of American Men and Women by Bruce H. Wolk

Author:Bruce H. Wolk
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
Published: 2016-03-10T00:00:00+00:00

Allen Sabol

Staff Sergeant Allen Sabol was assigned to the 8th Air Force, 492nd Bombardment Group, 856th Bombardment Squadron as a tail gunner on a B-24. On August 4, 1944, he was on his sixth mission heading for the submarine pens at Kiel, Germany. At that point in the war, German submarines were wreaking havoc on shipping in the Atlantic.

Sabol’s plane encountered flak almost from the start of the mission. The loss of Sabol’s aircraft and his act of saving the life of a fellow crewmember was described in Chapter 4. However, there would be no leading actor-type escape for Sabol himself. With a badly injured right hand and strong winds almost blowing him into the sea, he was immediately captured.

“There was the local police and whoever with guns and everything. They took us to a town named Leck.19 We were in solitary for a day or two. They hurried us out of the police station because the town folks found out about us and were going to hang us. They were getting a rope. The police got us out just in time.20 They put us on a truck and then we went on the train to the Dulag Luft.

“Almost all Air Force, enlisted and officers, went through what’s called a Dulag Luft, which was the interrogation center. You emptied your pockets. They cleaned you out. And they say, ‘If you don’t tell us everything, we won’t tell the Red Cross that we got you.’ Of course, you wanted your parents to know that you were safe.

“The Jewish boys were told, ‘Throw your dog tags away immediately,’ because on the dog tag it’s got an ‘H.’ I kept my dog tags. The [U.S.] government issued Jews a prayer book. I kept my prayer book, because I always used to do a little praying. I couldn’t read the Hebrew, but I could always pray in English, going over the target and coming back.

“I told the interrogator I’m Jewish—of course he sees my dog tags. He sees the prayer book. Oh man, it was scary. He’s jumping up and down, he went crazy. He was calling me a Jew bastard, a dirty Jew.

“I really wanted to get that little prayer book back after being stripped, but I couldn’t. The only thing I could get a hold of was a pair of my gunner wings. Fortunately, whatever happened, happened, I can’t tell you. I kept asking for years, did I do the right thing [by keeping my dog tags]? I would ask religious people, knowledgeable people, and they didn’t know what I was talking about.

“Until one day not too long ago, I found a passage—you know what the Chumash is?21 I found a little passage that says, ‘Don’t look for miracles. They do happen.’ That told me that I did the right thing. We were put on a train and sent to Stalag Luft IV, the camp in Poland.”

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