Subject: The Mirka Story
After our outfit CCB (Combat Command B) cleaned out the enemy in the Ruhr Valley we were ordered to the Hartz Mountain Area. We were then attached to the 83rd Infantry Division, to protect the Sixth Corps. The trip was about 170 miles and I was in the front of the Combat Command with the reconnaissance group. I was to set up a clearing station behind the front line troops to have a station where we could treat the wounded. After a days riding in sweaty combat fatiques full of grime and tired from the long trip, just as darkness came, I was welcomed by the departing infantrymen. They were the last remaining GIs. Since I had my helmet painted with the Geneva Red Cross it was always a welcome sign to the young soldiers. One of them told me he heard that there are two Jews being hidden here in town. The town was Braunlage. I was alone, my division had not yet arrived. The only other man from my outfit was a Major Labess who arrived with another reconnaissance group from out division. He was surprised to see me there at the front as usual. We were there long before our division arrived. He was so impressed that he put in for my bronze star.
After the long trip we were rather hungry, dusty and alone. My two command car drivers and I made sure we took over the best looking building in the area, one with a roof. It was quite adequate for treating the wounded, and because of the many rooms a good station for our company. It was a sanitarium with enough rooms so all our men could have their own private room. Then I began making an inquiry from the civilians in the area if anyone knew where Jews were hiding. This was the third week in April of 1945.
Braunlage was in the Hartz Mountain area where there were at least 30 sanitariums. The sanitarium we chose to take over had a dental clinic, swimming pool and a medical office. The building was occupied by 20 women. Some were nurses, some cleaning women, a masseuse and a cook, fortunately no Nazi soldiers. In all the other sanitariums the Nazi army filled them with supposedly wounded men. I will never forget standing in the road waiting for my division to arrive. I saw swarms of German army soldiers on a balcony on one of the sanitariums near the one I picked.
The next morning we received orders from Eisenhower's headquarters to set up four teams of doctors to go through all the sanitariums and remove all men that could walk and put into a prisoner of war camp. Those who were actually wounded we were to set up into only one sanitarium. Three teams of medical officers from companies A, B, and C were formed and one team the fourth, had one physician, Dr. Saul Blau and one dentist, me.
We had the men strip down to the waist, when Dr. Blau and I examined them, we had them hold up their arms. If the two lightning bars were tattooed under their arms then no matter what condition they were in we sent them to the prisoner of war camp. By that time we knew the evil that they were. Even that treatment was too good for them. We cleaned out all the SS men as well as the ones that were hiding from the war. At the end of the day I received a shock that has remained with me all these years after the war.
A young, blondish, Aryan looking girl of about 17 accosts me and says, "I heard you were looking for me, I am a Jew." The surprise was unbelievable. How did she find out in one day? Then again how can I believe her? She said her mother is also here so I told her to get her mother. I immediately contacted the CIC which had a Jewish officer. He would have to interrogate her mother to make sure that they were Jews. I later found out that he had asked her, "What does a Jew say three times a day?" When she answered with the SHEMA, the officer came out crying. "She is Jewish," he said and wiped his eyes. Well I immediately gave her whatever food supplies we officers get with some of the food my wife and my mother sent to me from the states and told them to come back the next day. I needed a dental assistant since I could now make use of the dental clinic while being stationed here for several days. I figured we would get a bit of a rest after the Ruhr Valley mop up and big trip up here. My assumption proved correct.
The next morning Mirka showed up, that was her name she said, we conversed in Yiddish. She knew several Slavic languages but no English. She handed me a key and said, "This is the key to a car hidden by a Nazi commander, take the car." She told me where the car was and it was a modern French manufactured car. As an officer in the American army we were allowed to live off the land during combat. However, the next day Division headquarters forwarded an order that disallowed driving non-army vehicles and headquarters took it from me. Anyway I questioned Mirka and she told me how the Nazis came to the family one night, took her brother and father away and she never saw them again. They were from Warsaw Poland originally she said. Mirka and her mother were spared and she told of experiences where they were lined up to be shot with a crowd of others and fell fast enough, played dead, waited until it was quiet then got up and escaped. I remember her telling me at one time they were lined up, told to undress before being shot, and the German officer in charge told her to run away because she couldn't be Jewish with her blond hair and blue eyes.
At any rate, even though the general orders were that no fraternization was permitted, I made Mirka my dental assistant so I could give her whatever food and goodies she could trade with, like cans of food and stuff my wife sent that she and her mother could use. She told me that her mother was a nursemaid for three children in a household with two physicians and she was the housemaid and housekeeper. After several days we were told that the British were to take over our position in three days. Our division would be continuing west. Combat was still continuing. I said to Mirka, "You can stay and take over the clinic." I had taught her how to clean teeth and figured she would be safe with the British. She asked me if I had a photograph of myself to remember me by, because, she said, I was the first person that was ever kind to her and wanted to remember me. Since I carried a camera throughout the war and Dr. Saul Blau had photographed me with a Teller bomb, I had the negative so I gave her that picture.
We had a sad departure and we left her with some girl friends whom she had befriended shortly after our infantry cleared the town of the enemy. We continued on towards Nordheim and Halberstadt. On the way we came across American soldiers lying in the fields in dirty torn uniforms unable to answer questions. They were completely out of it. Our company commander said they must have escaped from a Nazi prisoner of war camp. It was fifty years later that I discovered these were soldiers captured during the Battle of the Bulge, put into concentration camps because they were Jewish, then forced into a death march as the allies advanced. They had marched 170 miles without food or water. They were very near death and not even aware who we were.
When the war ended we were stationed in Czechoslovakia. I had enough points to go home. However, Corps headquarters kept me from leaving with the excuse that they had a shortage of dentists, so the army kept me there. The 8th division was given orders to leave, I was transferred to the 84th infantry division. I was angry, went AOL to Eisenhower's headquarters in Nuremberg to ask for orders to go home because I had received a letter from my wife that my daughter needed an operation. I received orders to return to the States as soon as possible. It took two days to get back to my division in Regensberg to find that they had been looking for me because I had emergency orders to return to the States. It was provided by the efforts of the American Red Cross. My wife, Irene, did a good job. She presented the physician's report regarding my daughter's condition to the Red Cross.
When I returned home I got a position as dentist for the New York Department of Welfare in downtown Brooklyn. I also opened my office in Borough Park Brooklyn. Going to the clinic in Brooklyn meant taking the subway every morning and returning by subway every evening. I used to think a lot about Mirka and her mother. I often wondered how they were. I had written to Irene from Germany when I liberated them. She knew the whole history and told all our family and friends about that experience.
It was towards the end of 1946, while on the way home from the clinic, I was riding in an extremely packed subway train. I was standing, of course, because it is impossible to get a seat on a train in downtown Brooklyn during rush hour. Someone along side taps me on the shoulder. As I turn to see who was doing it, the young lady who tapped my shoulder says, "Pardon me are you Captain Metrick?" I took a quick look, it's MIRKA. And she is speaking English. How fate played such a marvelous reunion. I was speechless and astonished for the moment. I answered by shaking my head yes. She said she had been in this country for the last two weeks and was going to look for me. Mirka opens her purse and takes out the picture she had asked me for when our tank division left her in Germany. I immediately began questioning her about how she came to the States. Then I realized we had better meet at the house to talk of the events that brought her to this country. The next day we had Mrs. Lola Indich, Mirka's mother, and Mirka at our house so that Irene could meet them. This is the story she told.
When the British took over our position in Braunlage, Mirka told them she was the dentist for the Americans. She also said that the British soldiers spoke with such anti-Semitic expressions that she and her mother left them and went into the American sector. In the American sector Mirka joined UNRRA (United States Rehabilitation and Relief Organization). As a worker for UNRRA she was given a blue gray uniform that allowed her to mingle with the American Army officers. That also gave her entrance to their officer clubrooms. There she met an officer and in a conversation with him, she told him her full name, Mirka Indich. That surprised him because the name Indich was familiar to him. He told Mirka that there was a factory in Cleveland, his hometown, owned by a man named Indich. "That's my uncle," she exclaimed! In great haste she wrote to her uncle and asked him to vouch for her mother and herself to come to America. "We will not ask you for any other help," she wrote. "When we get to America we will be on our own." The uncle must have had political influence because he was able to get them to come with the first wave of refugees. The magic carpet it was called.
They settled in Brooklyn near her mother's relatives in a small apartment in the Bedford Stuyvesant district. Mirka and her mother immediately found work in a corset factory. Mirka told me she was not happy with the job because it was a tense place. Nobody spoke to each other at work, she just did not like it. "What are you going to do?" I asked when she told me she was going to quit. "I made a friend in UNRRA who said if I ever got to New York I should go to the United Nations to look for a job." This friend of hers in UNRRA knew someone at the United Nations and gave Mirka the name of the person to speak to. The next day I asked Mirka if she went to the United Nations and she said yes. They gave her a typing test and she passed. She had never used a typewriter before, she told me. "They gave me the job as a typist but I am not taking it because they only want to pay me twenty-five dollars a week. "That's not enough for me and my mother." In 1946 that was not a bad salary however. "I am going to go back and ask for a better position," she said. The next time I spoke to Mirka she said that they made her the interpreter for Gromyko since she could speak Russian fluently. Mirka now knew Polish, German, Russian, Yiddish as well as English. She got what she wanted at a better salary. She had guts. That's what kept her alive in Nazi Germany.
It was not long afterwards that she told us how she became friendly with one of the girls at the UN that had a cousin somewhere in South America. He comes to New York regularly to shop for his store in Caracas. Her friend said he is picking her up to take her back to Brooklyn so he can take another passenger. I will not need to take the train home. Mirka described his car to my wife and me. "It was such a big car with white wheels on the tires. If I met a man with that kind of car I said to myself I'd like to marry him," she said. The white wheels were the ersatz white plastic discs put over the tires because they were not manufacturing whitewall tires yet.
Two weeks later we get a call from Mirka's mother. She asked us to please come to her house she must talk to us. We could not figure out what had happened. When we came to her apartment she sat us down and said, "Please you must speak to Mirka." "What about?" Mirka told her mother that the man that took her home from the UN had fallen in love with her and wanted to marry her. "He wants to bring her with him to South America," she said. Mirka did not want to get married and leave her mother alone. Mrs. Indich said, "Please let Mirka know that my like is about over, hers is beginning she should get married. I have family here and will get by. She must get married and make a life for herself. You can talk it into her because she respects your advice."
Well we talked to Mirka and she gave us the same answers she gave her mother. However, about a month later I get a phone call. "Dr. Metrick I am going to get married and will be going to South America. I am going to write a book about my life and how you were the first person that was ever kind to me." I asked her where she was now and she said she is calling from the St. Martiz hotel in New York City. I wished her all the best and a hearty mazel tov. That was the last time I heard from her. Whenever Irene and I would travel to the south sea islands like Aruba, Caracas, and Curacao we would visit the synagogues and ask the people there if they knew a Mirka Indich. Nobody ever heard of her. She said she was going to write a book about her life so I figured eventually I would hear about her.
I retired from doing endodontics in 1983 and began other activities to keep me busy. One was becoming active in my synagogue, East Midwood Jewish Center, in Brooklyn, where I became the president in 1986. In 1988 one of my congregants, Mr. Lionel Klass, was one of the publishers of the Jewish Press. He lost his mother-in-law. She was Blossom Klass's mother. As president of the synagogue I made it a practice to visit the congregants sitting the seven days of Shiva. When I visited the Klass residence Lionel told me the heroic history of his mother-in-law, how she rescued Jews during the Hitler terror and sent them to Palestine. She had passed away in her 90's and he was duly proud of her. In the course of conversation I mentioned the story about Mirka Indich, since it was now part of holocaust history. He asked me if I had continued being in touch with her. I told him of the last conversation and how she left. He asked if I would like to get in touch with her again. "Of course", I said, "I certainly would like that but I do not know how to go about finding her. He said all I had to do was put an ad in the Jewish Press and that they had been having much success with contacting people through these ads. I told him since Irene and I were going to Florida the next day I would put an ad in the paper when I would return from the trip. Lionel said, "Don't worry I'll put the ad in the paper for you myself."
The next afternoon we left for Florida by air. That evening we went out for dinner and returned back to our Florida condominium about 8:30 p.m. I saw my answer phone blinking, the message alert was beeping. To my amazement the message was from my former nurse, Shirley, who said that someone called and asked for Captain Metrick. She did not want to give them my phone number but took down theirs. It was a Florida telephone number.
I called immediately since it was early enough and was completely astounded when Mirka's voice came on. When I told her who I was she became very excited and said I must come down to see her the next day. She lived in Bal Harbor. Her mother was with her and she bubbled over with joy. I could feel it on the telephone. The next noon we took the trip down to Bal Harbor. It is about 30 miles south of our condominium. We entered a beautiful condominium complex, situated on the east side of Collins avenue. Security called and directed us to the second floor. We arrived on that floor, got out of the elevator, as we approached her condominium, there standing in the hall coming forward to greet us was an elegant lady, Mrs. Lola Indich. She looked exactly the way we last saw her but radiated with a new happier look. We embraced warmly. Miriam, Mirka's name was now Miriam, we were told, was out on the beach with her grandchildren but Herman, her husband was home to greet us. She told us Miriam would return shortly. I asked Mrs. Indich about Miriam and how come they called my dental office. She said that one of her relatives saw an ad in the Jewish press and called her relative in Cleveland, a Rabbi and asked if he knew where Miriam was. He called Curacao, where they had their business and Curacao related the message to the Taubers, Miriam's marriage name, and then Mrs. Indich told me an astonishing story.
Miriam did not know who Captain Metrick was when she got the telephone call from Curacao. Mirka had blocked out everything that had happened to her. She did not want to remember the horror she went through during the Hitler years and tough time afterwards. Mrs. Indich said that she went into her bedroom where she kept a stack of personal pictures, took out the picture that I had given Mirka in Germany. Miriam took one look at the picture and everything came back to her. "Oh, our liberator," she shrieked and immediately called to find out my phone number in New York. That is how she obtained my office number. Now she could not wait to see Irene and me.
When we were taken into their spacious condominium by Mrs. Lola Indich, she introduced us to Miriam's husband. He greeted us very warmly. He told us Miriam is walking on the beach with her grandchildren and will be back shortly. He took us around the apartment and showed us the recognition plaques and pictures for his philanthropic activity for the State of Israel. Then he told us of his good fortune and happy marriage to Miriam and how he brought Miriam's mother with them to Curacao. He told us as tears entered his eyes, how lucky he was to have brought Mrs. Indich with Miriam to Curacao. How clever and helpful she was in their business. How they made his happiness complete.
It was strange to see this husky man speaking with tears in his eves about his happiness. Shortly thereafter Miriam came back with two of her grandchildren. Her happy greeting and embracing brought back memories of long ago. Her lively way of expressing herself, her fetching smile, her flashing eyes, her vivacious nature was still there even as a mature grandmother. She reminded me how she was when last I saw her. It was gratifying to see her happy and healthy and financially sound and together with her mother. That alone made me feel that my volunteering for army service was well rewarded. Then her daughter and her son-in-law came with their children. They were told we were coming and they wanted to know the story of how Miriam and her mother were liberated. They were never told of how their mother and grandmother had suffered through the Nazi holocaust. They did not want the children to know what unbelievable torture they had gone through in the Nazi holocaust.
Now the family knows. Miriam and her husband Herman Tauber are now the most philanthropic couple in the Aventura area. They have built an addition to the Turnbury Jewish Community Center in memory of Lola who passed away exactly fifty years after I had liberated her in Germany.
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