The five Sullivan Brothers from Waterloo died when their ship was torpedoed in World War II. They are (from left) Joseph, Francis, Albert, Madison and George./AP photo

Waterloo family lost 5 sons in WWII

On Memorial Day, Iowans remember the sacrifice of the Sullivan family of Waterloo.

During World War II, five brothers – Albert, Francis, George, Joseph and Madison Sullivan – died when the ship on which they were serving was torpedoed.

The five brothers, two of whom previously served in the Navy, enlisted in the Navy together on Jan. 3, 1942, less than a month after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. They insisted that they serve together on the same ship. It was Navy policy to separate family members, but  the Sullivans persisted in their request and the Navy relented.

They served aboard the USS Juneau, a light cruiser.

On Nov. 13, 1942, during the Battle of Guadalcanal, the Juneau was struck by a Japanese torpedo and sank. Four brothers died.  George, the eldest, made it to a raft and survived for five days.

They were awarded Purple Hearts.

The Sullivan brothers became national heroes, and their deaths served as a rallying cry for a nation at war.

Listen to a musical tribute from Caroline’s Spine. [youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zi8wMWInVFs]

Albert’s granddaughter reflects on the Sullivan brothers here. [youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bU7xuCPG5P0]

Legacy and tributes

• In response to their deaths, the U.S. War Department developed the Sole Survivor Policy
• The Navy named two destroyers in honor of the Sullivans.
• In 1944, the Sullivan brothers’ story was made into a movie called “The Sullivans.” It later was renamed “The Fighting Sullivans” and still is shown on some local TV stations around Memorial Day.
• The legacy of the Sullivan brothers continues to inspire popular entertainment, including the story line of “Saving Private Ryan.”
• Waterloo created Sullivan Park at the site of their childhood home and renamed the downtown civic center the Five Sullivan Brothers Convention Center.
• The Sullivan Brothers Iowa Veterans Museum opened in Waterloo in November 2008.
• A U.S. Department of Defense Dependents School in Japan is named in their honor.
• In 1952, trees were planted at the U.S. Capitol in honor of the Sullivan brothers. Hear about them in a Webcast from Iowa Sen. Charles Grassley. [youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPgwJLJt-p0]

C.R. man cared for Dachau survivors

By Dave Rasdal
The Gazette

Ed Winter, 93, of Cedar Rapids recalls helping Holocaust survivors after World War II while a photograph of his late wife, Evelyn, taken about that time, appears over his shoulder/ Photo by Dave Rasdal, The Gazette

CEDAR RAPIDS — As World War II fighting ceased in Europe but raged on in the Pacific Theater, Capt. Edward Winter approached the first and most notorious concentration camp in Germany.
“When I reported to work there, we stopped at Dachau. We walked in and there was one rack …”

Ed, 93, pauses. In his Cedar Rapids apartment, the former Cedar Rapids building inspection official sits beside a portrait of his late wife, Evelyn, taken some time before that day in 1945. They had three children at the time, had lost twins, would have three more. Life, he knows, is so precious.

“When we got there,” Ed starts again, “there were these hayracks with the emaciated bodies. Nothing but skin and bones.”

They were dead, victims of the Holocaust. More than an estimated 30,000 prisoners stood in the camp’s yard, staring through the fence.

“You had to feel sorry for them. Here we were. … As we would drive by, the most able-bodied, they were so crammed in they had to take turns sleeping or lying down.”

Those able-bodied prisoners would become Ed’s responsibility — almost 1,000 of them. The first priority was to ease overcrowding, to move people out of the camp to provide room for the weak, beaten, barely alive survivors to receive medical attention.

“There’s a good possibility,” Ed says, “that we saw machinery where they would stretch out their captives and do experiments on them.”

Dachau, established in 1933 as the first concentration camp, became notorious for experiments conducted on live prisoners, often until they died.

Recent Holocaust remembrance days have reminded us of the millions of lives it claimed, of the millions and millions more people it affected. Among them are folks like Ed, soldiers in the war, husbands and fathers at home, now long retired.

For Ed, born in 1915 on a farm near Scales Mound, Ill., not far from Galena, the experience was one he could never imagine. One that called into play memories of earlier curves life had thrown at him.
Ed spent 20 years on the farm helping his family scratch out a living on hilly ground. Bullies once stole his stocking cap after school. His father died when Ed was 13 or 14 after catching pneumonia on a rainy day as a pallbearer at a friend’s funeral.

Earning $1 a day on the farm just wasn’t for Ed. So, after receiving an engineering degree from Iowa State University in 1939 and learning to handle horse-drawn Army artillery, Ed explored open fields for oil with Magnolia Petroleum Co. in Ohio and Oklahoma.

Once, coming upon a “hot” barbed wire, Ed had to determine for himself the electrification of the fence.

“Instead of using my common sense,” he says. “I reached back with one finger and pretty soon my whole hand was gripping the fence and I couldn’t let go.”

More shocks would follow — the deaths of the young twins, the start of the war, the deaths of friends as Ed fought the war in France. On V-E Day, May 8, 1945, Ed celebrated the end of the war but not the end of his duties.

“When you’re in the service and they say you’re going there, you go there,” Ed says.

At Dachau, with just three soldiers under his command, Ed began the task of feeding 1,000 political prisoners — 350 Russians, 300 Italians, 150 Czechs, 150 Yugoslavs and a handful of Balkan residents.
“Italians,” Ed says, holding his fingers in a circle the size of a quarter, “were going around with sores like this on each of the joints on their backbones. The Germans hated the Italians.”

In fact, the various groups didn’t care for each other, staying to themselves in the six-story building outside Dachau where they were housed.

Fortunately, Ed secured cereal and grain from the French Red Cross, distributing it to the various groups.

“It’s a puzzle to me,” Ed says, “how we did get along.”

But, after a month or so, a lieutenant approached Ed.

“Captain Winter, I’m to replace you. Go home.”

2009 Gazette Communications

By Dave Rasdal
The Gazette

TIPTON — Seventy years ago today, John Kaltenbach met four European refugees at the YMCA in Philadelphia, “The City of Brotherly Love,” to bring them safely to Iowa.

Some of the faces and all of the names of the 186 European refugees who came to the Scattergood hostel near West Branch during World War II are included in a display about the hostel at the Cedar County Historical Society museum north of Tipton. Photo by Dave Rasdal.

It was 1939. The writing was on the wall. Adolf Hitler would invade Poland on Sept. 1. The Holocaust would follow.
So, Friends like John, members of the Religious Society of Friends, or Quakers, did their part for peace. They established hostels in the United States, including one at the old Scattergood Friends School near West Branch that had closed, because of the Great Depression, in 1931.

Now, thanks to a comprehensive display that includes the framework of a 1930s-era house, you can relive this short but poignant chapter in Iowa history. Conceived by the TRACES World War II Museum in St. Paul, Minn., which is now closed, the exhibit is on permanent display at the Cedar County Historical Society museum north of Tipton.

“When I heard about it,” says museum coordinator Sandy Harmel, “I said I’ll find the room.”

So, walk into this museum, which opened around 2006, and turn right to experience the sentiment of peace and good old Iowa hospitality in time of war.

While the TRACES museum compiled the display, you can’t miss the enlarged copy of a postcard Sandy bought for $5 on eBay. The postcard depicts the old two-story hostel in black and white on the front and a scrawled message from the school on the back.

Sandy Harmel, Cedar County Historical Society museum coordinator, helped bring a Scattergood hostel display to Cedar County last fall. Behind her is a full-size replica of a 1930s house that serves as the framework for the hostel’s display. Photo by Dave Rasdal.

“When I turned it over and saw that,” she says, “I about fainted.”

You have to imagine the refugees — they would number 186, with 85 percent of them Jewish — felt the same joy at
seeing this haven.

The first refugees, brought by John in an old station wagon driven from Philadelphia, arrived April 15, 1939. By the time the hostel closed four years later, refugees from nine countries would call it home for an average of four months.

As you peruse the exhibit, you learn about the history of Jews and Quakers. You learn the early history of the Scattergood school. (It reopened after the war and is in a newer building now.) And you learn about the people.

Ernest Solmitz came that May after the Gestapo beat his father, a Jewish editor, to death.

Sigmund Seligmann was reunited with his family at the hostel after living away from them for 1 1/2 years because of persecution. They changed their last name to Seaman because they came by the sea.

Leo Jolles, a Viennese Catholic, became the only one booted from the hostel because he picked a fight with Emil Deutsch and made anti-Semitic comments while they dug a septic tank ditch.

The refugees learned to drive cars (but often ended up in the ditch), worked with volunteer staff to run the hostel and learned to speak English.

By early 1943, the hostel closed for lack of new residents. By then, it was too late. The Holocaust had claimed millions of lives. Millions more were relegated to concentration camps.

© Gazette Communications 2009