Holocaust Victim, World War II Veteran Speaks At Alverno College

A Holocaust victim who went back to Europe to fight the Nazis during World War II spoke at an annual Holocaust Remembrance Service at Alverno College in Milwaukee on Wednesday.

Walter Reed was raised in Bavaria in the 1930s. As the Nazis gained more power, Reed says he and other Jews lived under constant duress and often heard they were inferior.

“That don’t mean that I believed it,” said Reed. “But it was always this shadow over you, that you were not normal, that you were not equal.”

When Reed was 14, Nazis arrested all the Jewish men and older boys in his village.

“I was arrested with my dad on Kristallnacht – the night of broken glass in November 1938,” said Reed. “And soon after that, my parents apparently, without my remembering anything about it, decided to save my life and to send me away.”

The Nazis later killed Reed’s parents and brothers. But Reed says with luck, determination and the help of others – including a group of Jewish women in Belgium – he eventually made it to the United States. He was drafted into the American army at age 19, and arrived in Normandy shortly after D-DAY, and eventually used his ability to speak German to interrogate German prisoners.

Reed says getting revenge for the treatment of Jews was not on his mind.

“What I really thought about and acted upon was ‘These guys are out to kill my buddies, and we got to get them first,’” said Reed. “The thing that was never in my mind, as far as I can remember is, ‘Oh, now we’re getting even.’”

Reed says now, he reflects on all wars and human atrocities.

A few years after World War II, Reed began a long career in public relations. He’s a speaker and author, living near Chicago.