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Salute to a Liberator By Mordechai Schiller
Chances are that you've seen this picture of the three year-old saluting the elderly soldier. It's hard not to be touched by it. The story of that soldier — who he was and became — will move you even more. After reading this article, PLEASE use our "share" features at right. Your friends — real and of the Facebook variety — will thank you! (And if you enjoy the piece, PLEASE let the author know via the e-mail link at the bottom)
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It was a Norman Rockwell moment. At the Memorial Day Parade on Monday, May 30, 2011, in Stony Point, New York Times photographer Susan Stava caught three-year-old Thomas Cahill sitting next to a veteran in uniform. Fate and the photo have linked them forever. Even seated, a bugle in his lap, Sergeant Arnold Rist, of the 65th Armored Infantry Battalion, 20th Armored Division, seems to be standing at attention. Cahill, clutching a large flag in his little right hand, holds his left hand to his forehead — in what looks for all the world like a cherubic salute to the eighty-six-year-old veteran.
The iconic photo soon spread throughout cyberspace.
"I don't really think he was saluting me," says Rist. "I think he was just looking at the flag. I was just sitting there because I was tired. It was the third time I had sounded 'Taps' that day. And it was the thirteenth time over the weekend. I turned eighty-seven now. I'm not twentynine anymore."
Rist shrugs off his flash of fame much as he shrugs off glory for his role in helping to
liberate the Dachau concentration camp. "I was in on the liberation of Dachau with the 20th Armored Division. But if it hadn't been me, it would have been someone else," he insists.
Rist's division was one of three that took part in the liberation of Dachau. The others were the 42nd Rainbow Division and the 45th Infantry Division.
In the last thirteen years, Rist has played "Taps" over 1,300 times at veterans' funerals. He plays it on Memorial Day, Veterans' Day, Twin Towers Day, Flag Day, Pearl Harbor Day. "In fact," he says, "I just had two [ funerals] yesterday and two Monday. And for a while I was saying, 'They're going fast.' Then I realized, 'Oh, my! We're going fast … I'm one of 'em!'"
Rist was elected second president of the 20th Armored Division Association. He still serves as the organization's official bugler, playing "Taps" for fallen buddies. "It's the least I can do for my brothers. It's because of my brothers that I am able to be here today."
FROM THE ADIRONDACKS
TO DACHAU
Newcomb, population 481, is the kind of
town where "if you're driving through
and your car breaks down, you'd go to
the nearest house and they'd probably
call the town supervisor," says Rist. "He'd
send a mechanic who'd come down and
fix your car. And if you tried to pay him,
he'd probably kick you in the ankles.
And if he couldn't fix it and had to get
parts, you'd stay with the people whose
phone you used. And if you tried to pay
them, they'd kick you in the shins."
Community service was ingrained in
the Rist family. "When I was a youngster,
if a man in town had a problem, he'd
come and see my father. And if a woman
in the town had a problem, she'd come
and see my mother. Even though it was
a small town, when my father passed
away, there were ninety floral
wreaths."
His parents brought up
Rist and his
brothers that way — always helping
people. What was the secret of their
parenting? "Our mother and father
never demanded much from us. They
never told us, 'Do this' — we just copied
them."
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There were no Jews in Newcomb, and
Rist never met any Jewish people until he
was in the army. The first Jew he
discovered was a buddy in his squad who
once disappeared for what he called a
"religious day." But Rist would soon
become part of Jewish history.
On April 29, 1945, Sergeant Arnold
Rist, serving under the command of
General George Patton, stood in
formation in southern Germany, outside
the city of Dachau, home to the
prototype of Nazi concentration camps.
One of his friends was a tank captain.
Rist rode in a half-track, a vehicle with
tracks in back for power and wheels in
front to enable steering. ("The army
probably has a name that's about four
miles long, but we called it a half-track,"
he says.)
A two-star general later admitted to
Rist that they didn't know what was in
Dachau until they got there. From the
outside it looked like a military base,
with barracks, a stockade, and guard
towers. Before they reached the camp,
his division lost two tanks to the "88s" —
German flak guns (antiaircraft and
antitank artillery). As they stood in
column, they saw a man on the side of
the road. He was a Lutheran minister
who had escaped from the camp. He told
Rist's friend, the tank captain, what was
going on in the camp and gave him a list
of the most heinous SS guards.
"My friend later told me that when he
got to the camp, he put his tank through
the wire and wood fence, right into the
stockade," Rist says.
When they entered the camp, the
smell was horrendous. Bodies that the SS
didn't have time to cremate lay in piles
on the grass. Railroad tracks led into the
camp, and about forty boxcars were
lined up on them. The cars carried
human cargo. Most of the people were
already dead. The Nazis were trying to
hide everything as fast as they could
because the Allies had been getting
closer since D-Day. But they didn't finish
the clean-up.
The railroad cars were called "Forty
and Eight"; they could hold forty men or
eight horses. But these cars were stuffed
with 100 to 120 people. They would ride
for three or four days, without food or
sanitary facilities. And they all had to
stand up because there was no room to
sit or lie down. Most of them died along
the way.
Those still alive when they reached
the camp were greeted by a metal gate
that proclaimed "Arbeit Macht Frei, Work
Will Make You Free."
"That was a diabolical scheme," says
Rist. "The only way they were ever going
to get free was if they could work sixteen
hours a day on minimal food, repairing
roads or working in the ammunition
factories under hard-labor conditions …
and somehow survive long enough to be
rescued."
There was a reporter traveling with
one of the divisions, a New York Herald
Tribune war correspondent named
Marguerite Higgins. A published news
photo showed her unlocking a camp
door — so she "liberated the camp."
Since that report, Rist is skeptical of
anything he reads in the news. "I've
written things for newspapers," he says.
"And then it gets changed. So if
newspapers can do that, they can
certainly change interviews."
DOING WHAT HAS TO BE DONE
"I was fortunate. I've been fortunate
my whole life, with my family and with
my work. I never took a job I didn't like.
I've been in education my whole life —
public and private."
Sergeant Rist retired from active duty
after the war, but he never left the
"service." He has dedicated himself to
serving people all his life, both
personally and professionally.
Characteristically, he shrugs it all off.
"I just do what I think is important.
That's the main thing. Many people do
community service in many different
ways. When I see something I think
should be done, I just do it. And when
that's done, I do something else."
Rist graduated SUNY at Cortland in
1947 with a bachelor's degree in physical
education. He later earned two M.A.s from Syracuse University and a
doctorate from New York University. He
taught in college and in high school, and
he founded his own educational
program — Rockland Educational
Services, Inc., which offers PSAT
preparation programs for grades eight
through twelve. He has placed a special
focus on helping underprivileged and
minority students.
AFTER A FORTY-YEAR SILENCE
"When I first started sounding
'Taps,' I'd sit down and the tears would
be coming right down my cheeks," he
recalls. "I didn't realize it, but it would
trigger something that happened during
the war. So then I just blocked my mind
out and tried to hit those twenty-four
notes perfectly. I didn't speak about the
war until 1985 — forty years later."
The effect was deeper than he
realized. "I used to shoot the machine
guns. And later, at night, I'd have
nightmares," he says. "My wife would
have to go in to my five-year-old little
boy and explain to him what Pa was
going through. I didn't know that until
he was fifty. Then he told me."
After his forty-year silence, Rist saw
there was something that had to be
done, so he did it. He launched a one-man program of lectures on the
Holocaust. He speaks twenty-five times a
year to high-school and college students
at the State University in Cortland, New
York.
The more he teaches and the more
questions he is asked, the more research
he does to improve the program. When
asked if he would speak for a yeshivah in
Monsey, New York, near his present
home in Nanuet, Rist hesitated. "I don't
know if I'd want to speak for a Jewish
group… I feel inadequate. What would I
tell them? They know more than I do!"
Rist tells about his meeting with a
survivor of a thousand-mile death
march. At the opening of the Holocaust
Museum in Washington in 1993, the
20th Armored Division Association
arranged to have its reunion at the
same time so they could participate in
the ceremony. That is where he met
Nesse Godin, whose brother was in
Dachau when it was liberated.
Nesse Godin was born in Shavel
(Siauliai), Lithuania. She was twelve
years old when the knock came on the
door in the middle of the night and the
SS troops pulled her family out to the
town square, along with other families.
"The day before," Godin told Rist,
"the SS had rounded up a thousand
Jewish young men and had them dig a
big trench. At daylight, they lined them
up at the edge of the trench and mowed
them down with machine-gun fire, and
they fell into the ditch."
Her family was taken to a
concentration camp. Her mother
disappeared, then her father and her
brother. "Four years later, when she was
sixteen, she went on a forced death
march. Twelve hundred people started
on the march. They walked a thousand
miles. By the time they were liberated by
the Russians, there were only two
hundred of them left. Anyone who fell
or couldn't walk was just shot at the side
of the road."
The Russians took them into houses,
where they could clean up. Rist says,
"[Godin] walked into the bathroom past
a mirror and she jumped. She thought
there was a monster behind her — but it
was her! She had scabies and all sorts of
physical problems. She hadn't seen
herself in two years. She was down to
sixty-nine pounds."
Godin reunited with her brother after
the war was over and then emigrated to
America. Since 1993 she has been
working with the Holocaust Museum in
Washington. Rist renewed his
acquaintance with her this past summer
when 120 liberators were invited to a
program at the museum.
FIGHTING FOR JUSTICE
As president of the 20th Armored
Division Association — and as an old
soldier who does whatever has to be
done — Rist spent four years and wrote
reams of letters campaigning for the
20th. Finally, the plaque was approved
and flown to Dachau. Mysteriously,
when he called three days later, they
said it had not been received.
"After several phone calls it was
'found' in customs in Cologne,
Germany," Rist says. "It had been
labeled a statue, and statues are
routinely set aside for in-depth
inspection to assure that they contain
no contraband. The plaque was released
four days later."
Not all the heroes of Dachau were so
fortunate. Rist recalls a letter he received
from a woman years ago in which she
told him about how her husband, a
doctor, was dispatched to the camp to
help restore the newly liberated
prisoners to health. "Fifteen years later,
the experience preyed on his mind so
much, he committed suicide."
Others snapped earlier. The shock of
the inhumanity was too much. The
liberating soldiers couldn't believe what
they saw. Rist says, "One of the boys
picked up a submachine gun and he
mowed down twenty-seven German
soldiers who had surrendered. Word got
around, and General Patton came down
to straighten things out." Even before
the age of instant media and political
correctness, gunning down unarmed
prisoners was not acceptable.
"I heard Patton asked for all the
papers. Then he asked, 'Who's got a
match?' They gave him a match, and he
set the papers on fire. And he said, 'It
never happened.'"
War changes people, and Rist is no
exception. His experiences turned him
into a staunch fighter against injustice.
"You don't let even the smallest injustice
go by without speaking up against it or
doing something about it," Rist says. "If
somebody had taken Hitler out early on,
before he started that diabolical trip of
his, it would have saved over fifty
million lives."
What about the modern "Hitler" —
Iran's Mahmoud Ahmedinejad?
"I've come to realize you really don't
know what's going on," Rist muses. "I'm
hoping that Israel has a plan. And I
hope Israel is not left by itself. They're
just surrounded by people against them.
To me it's inconceivable that the United
States wouldn't have some plan to
eventually be able to stop him even if it
requires more war. Because this guy is,
well … I have to watch my language
when I'm talking to the students."
Rist is also troubled by the lack of
patriotism he observes today, but he
understands where it comes from.
"Today we have professional armed
forces, but we don't have anywhere near
the eighteen million men in the armed
forces like we had back in World War II.
Back then, everybody who was
physically fit was in. We were all fighting
for the same goals. And the women were
building the ships and the airplanes, the
tanks and the armor."
As always, Rist doesn't simply
bemoan what's wrong — he does
something about it. He now plans to
write to every school superintendent in
Rockland County and suggest that
history teachers give extra credit or
make it a requirement to have students
go out and interview veterans on
Memorial Day, Veterans' Day, or Pearl
Harbor Day.
Federal law now mandates the
rendering of military funeral honors for
any eligible veteran if it is requested by
the family. When a veteran is buried, at
least two members of the armed forces
will be at the funeral for a ceremony that
includes the folding and presenting of
the American flag to the next of kin, and
the sounding of "Taps," which is played
by a bugler if one is available.
Today, there are so few buglers left
that the Department of Defense often
cannot provide one. In Rockland County,
Rist goes together with the Korean Honor
Guard to sound "Taps." He only knew
seven of the veterans for whom he has
blown it, but "many people come over to
me and thank me. I know it means a lot
to family and friends."
But the art is dying. "Now they have
a[n electronic] bugle," Rist sighs. "You
just press a button in there and a little
motor plays 'Taps.'" How the mighty
have fallen!
THE DENIERS
He has not yet run into any outright
opposition or Holocaust denial, but he
did get a pamphlet written by deniers
about twenty years ago. "Many times I
thought I'd better find [it], and tear it up
and burn it. Because when I die, if it's
found in the house, it might make
people think I was a denier!"
He dismisses Holocaust denial as "just
a lot of baloney." He has some choice
words for Holocaust deniers like
Ahmedinejad, but he chose not to share
them. His memories of the carnage at
Dachau are etched vividly in his
memory. It was "so horrible you just
can't describe it. Even though I saw it
myself, I don't have the words to describe
it adequately. Tragedy isn't even a strong
enough word."
What would he say if confronted by
Holocaust deniers?
"I'd tell them I wish they had been
there with me at Dachau. Then they
would have thrown up too."
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JWR contributor Mordechai Schiller is a wordsmith and marketing consultant. He wrote this article for America's only daily Jewish newspaper, HaModia.
© 2011, Mordechai Schiller
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