Star of David badge with Jude given to a US liberator by an inmate

Jochen-Hans (later John) Hein was born on March 1, 1921, in Freiburg, Baden, Germany, to Jewish parents Siegfried and Ilse Mayer Hein. Ilse (August 6, 1904-March 23, 1996) was born in Zurich, Switzerland. His father Siegfried was born in 1889 in Freiburg, Germany. He was a physician with a successful practice. Jochen had a sister Ruth born in 1927, and a brother Ernst G., born in 1932. The family left Germany in 1936 due to the harsh anti-Jewish policies of the Nazi regime. As the alliance between Hitler and Mussolini strengthened, the family decided to leave Europe for the United States. In order to get visas, they had to pass physicals. The US consulate doctors said that Jochen and his sister had trachoma, an eye disease. Jochen’s father, a doctor, insisted this was a mistake, but the consulate official said they would not reverse their position. The family obtained visas for Cuba and Shanghai for which no exams were required, only hefty payments. Eventually, they were able to get US visas in Switzerland, Jochen’s mother’s native country. They sailed from Boulogne, France, aboard the SS New Amsterdam, arriving in New York on April 29, 1939. They were met at the pier by an aunt and uncle who had emigrated two years earlier. His father passed the state medical board exams a few months later and resumed the practice of medicine. Jochen, now John, entered the United States Army on August 13, 1943. Private Hein was a member of Company B, 27th Battalion, 5th Regiment, while training as an infantry replacement soldier. Hein became a naturalized citizen in October 1943. He was assigned as an interpreter to the First Infantry Division, Third Army, known as the Big Red One or the Fighting First. He entered combat on D-Day, June 6, 1944, during which the First led the assault on Omaha Beach during the Normandy landings. By that September, the Divisions had broken through into Germany and seized Aachen, the first German city to fall to the Allies. On May 7, 1945, Hein was with the First Infantry, when, with the 9th Armored Division, they liberated Zwodau slave labor camp, a subcamp of Flossenbürg concentration camp, that supplied slave labor to a nearby ammunition factory. It was in the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia (Svatava, Czech Republic), near the German border. The soldiers found nearly 1000 starving female inmates in the, which had recently been destroyed by the departed guards to hide evidence of its existence. The unit also liberated nearby Falkenau slave labor camp. The war ended the same day with the surrender of Germany. On V Day, May 8, the day after he visited the camp, John wrote a letter to his parents telling them about his experiences and the condition of the inmates: “Though now free, there was almost no joy in them; the emotion went beyond that, to something nearer pain, with all the suffering that lay behind them.” He also told them of a deeply moving encounter he had with some young Jewish inmates. One had approached and asked if he was Jewish. When he said yes, she showed him her belt buckle with a Mogen David which she had to keep hidden as she was passing as Polish. Three of her friends joined them, incredulous that there were Jews still alive in the world.” They told him there were only twelve Jewish women in the camp and they had arrived a few months earlier when Auschwitz concentration camp was evacuated. After the war, John retuned to the US. He married and had children. John, 90, passed away on May 17, 2011, in Scarsdale, New York.

The badge was donated to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 1988 by John Hein.

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, Gift of John Hein

Funding Note: The cataloging of this artifact has been supported by a grant from the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany.