ASFCorporal Sidney TalmudSignal Corps
Left Army Service Forces Shoulder Patch
Cpl Sidney
          Talmud
38th Signal Construction Battalion


Passover in Goebbels’ Castle by Corporal Sidney Talmud
 
In the middle of March, 1945, I was approached by Lt. Shubow, our Jewish chaplain.

He planned to conduct Passover services, and since I was the only Jewish cook in the battalion, would I supervise the food arrangements.


The next two weeks were hectic.

We had been moving through Germany and finally stopped at München Gladbach (60 miles/97 kilometers northeast of Noorbeek, the Netherlands).

I solicited all canned goods from our Jewish soldiers and they responded generously.

Since army kitchens worked primarily with frozen, canned, and dehydrated foods, I passed the word to our scroungers that I needed fresh potatoes. I soon had a truckload.


Erev Pesach (Eve of Passover) came and our chaplain directed our convoy several miles to an imposing building called “Schloss Reydt.” This was Goebbels’ castle.

Directly off the veranda, where I set up two gasoline camp-stoves, was a gigantic banquet room that would easily accommodate the 300 GIs I would feed.

On one wall was a picture of Hitler and one of my buddies had scrawled “Kaput” across it.

For the next two or three hours I was too busy to deal with emotions. They came later.

While I was frying latkes a fellow came by and inquired what I was doing. I offered him some pancakes while I explained our presence. Evidently the latkes agreed with him. He kept eating them and asking me lots of questions and that night his story flew across the Atlantic cable, and my parents were interviewed by Time and the papers, and WEVD, and they planted trees for me in Israel, and my mother, rest her soul, discovered that I had lied to her. I wasn’t having a great time in Paris after all. However, as mothers will, she forgave me.


When all the latkes were fried and eaten, I joined my comrades in the Passover songs.

We had seen the atrocities and now we were savoring some small measure of vengeance and victory.


The Associated Press story that Talmud references above was picked up by many newspapers in both Yiddish and English. It quoted Chaplain Joseph Shubow: “This is indeed retribution. When this little monkey Goebbels decreed the burning of the synagogues seven years ago he little imagined that we would one day eat potato pancakes in his own home.”

Talmud summed up his feelings this way: “…there wasn’t a seder [since] I recall when I didn’t for an ephemeral moment envision Hitler’s portrait with ‘Kaput’ scrawled across it and a tray of sizzling latkes just removed from the hot oil.

And when the youngest completes his Four Questions and the company responds ‘Avadim Hayenu,’ (we were slaves) I still get the sense of having been there.”


The service is mentioned in the 38th's unofficial history: The Summing Up: A short history of Company A, 38th Signal Light Construction Battalion and 38th Signal Construction Battalion (PDF page 21)
A Purim celebration was held at Schloss Reydt three weeks earlier with other units: Purim and Passover in Goebbels’ Castle by Michael Rugel, March 19, 2019

Click on image for larger format
Jewish Services at Schloss
              Reydt
Chaplain Poliakoff assisted by Pfc. Armolda [Arnold] Reich and Cpl. Martin Willen
This photo has been identified as the March 8, 1945 Purim service or another Jewish service from March 3rd or March 18, 1945

This is an edit of the original article Purim and Passover in Goebbels’ Castle by Michael Rugel

Used by permission. Copyright The National Museum of American Jewish Military History. All rights reserved.

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