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HENRY PLITT November 16, 1992

Q: Could you please tell us your name and where and when you were born?

A: Henry G., G for George, Plitt. I was born in New York City in 1918 and that, of course, was late in the year that year, just two weeks after the Armistice for World War I.

Q: And where were you educated?

A: I started in New York City, and I went to grammar school there, and one year at DeWitt Clinton High School, after which my family sent me to a military academy in Stanton, Staunton, Virginia. It's spelled Staunton. It's pronounced Stanton and there I began my military career.

Q: And you stayed at the military academy through the end of high school?

A: Well, I graduated from Staunton in 1935 at which time I went to Syracuse University and there I went in the ROTC, so again we've got another three or four years, three years of military and I was eligible to become an officer by then with six years of military under my belt, but I wasn't old enough. In those days you had to be twenty-one to be...

Q: An officer...

A: A lieutenant. So that began my relationship with the army. Now I was in law school in St.

Lawrence University, Brooklyn, and at this time...it was getting close to 1940...it was in "38 and "39, and my family managed through an organization called HIAS to bring into this country some of my relatives who were in the German occupied areas and when I...when I heard their story, I just made up my mind that all this was...one man was responsible for all this and his name was Hitler and somehow or other I wanted to kill him. Now that sounds terrible in the light of today's world, but at that time when you heard those horror stories, you couldn't do anything but want to destroy this person who was responsible for it, so I switched my allegiance in the army to parachute troops because at that time parachute troops were trained to blow up bridges, blow up planes, drop behind the lines, assassinate, execute and all this kind of thing. But during our period of training, it was very strange but many, many people came into parachute troops and before the training was over, we suddenly had ourselves a a regiment of men and now the tactics were not going to be the same. The regiment, incidentally, grew into divisions, and by the time we jumped in Normandy there were three divisions that went in. There was the 101st, the 82nd and the British 36th Airborne, so you can see that the idea of jumping behind the lines and killing Hitler was a long way from potential fruition.

It just couldn't happen that way, so that's that's an answer to your question and when did I get in the army or how or why.

Q: Now we won't focus on this. I know you have a very interesting aspect of your military career in terms of the landing at Normandy. Could you briefly tell us a little bit about that...what...what exactly your role was?

A: Well, all...all I can tell you is that the only reason...it was a quirk of fate...the only reason that I ended up with the first group to jump in Normandy is the man that we had selected as our pathfinder, the day before during the period Eisenhower delayed for twenty-four hours, we had a chance to go up and see what he had done, and we were very dissatisfied with it and my colonel said to me on the way back, Plitt, 1 want you to go in. Take the pathfinder detachment in and I'll meet you on the ground and put a DSC on your neck. So

Q: Distinguished Service Cross?

A: Yes. So I didn't have any choice anyway, but the point is that that put me among...we had three airplane loads going in, the pathfinders, a total of eighteen people per plane for a total of fifty-four people. And now the actual flight itself over England was nothing but when we got to the English Channel, we went down on the deck and there were some very exciting moments when the ships at sea were flashing the V for victory sign to us right over...right over head and then when we got to Cherbourg we pulled up to five hundred feet. Imagine...up to five hundred feet and we went along the line, the road that we had all been briefed so carefully on and studied so long, running from Montberg to Valone...from Cherbourg to Montberg to Valone on down to St. Mere-Eglise and Carentan and so on. And when we got over our drop zone, boom...there it is. Now if you want to know what went through my mind, I was just as scared as any human being 01:02: could be. Here I was jumping into Festung (fortress) Europe, which was a Nazi dominated France, German soldiers, and I had an H on my dog tag. Now the H on my dog tag stood for Hebrew. At that time the army put your religion on your dog tags and they did it only so that if you need last rites or what have you, they know what you are and what you aren't, and they only had three categories. There was P for Protestant, C for Catholic and H for Hebrew or Jewish, and so there I was, all alone, in France, German- occupied, so the first thing I did (coughing)...excuse me...in an attempt to get mobile or as mobile as I could, was to scrap the throwaway things that were weighing me down, such as a gas mask and such as binoculars and such as extra rounds of ammunition, and suddenly I got so I could move around with a great degree of ease, and during this period I was able to pick up a hundred and one men. Strangely enough, we were the 101st Airborne. I picked up a hundred and one men and we attacked the gun position, which was the division mission. Now the reason we did that is that we were supposed to be on the ground for thirty minutes, and after that hearing our own planes come in, we would put the lights on. That's what we jumped for...the pathfinders...put the lights on and guide the rest of the units in. For a long time, it got to be very thin and tight and for a long time I thought maybe Eisenhower has canceled again, in which case we got to stay here for twenty-four more hours and sweat it out, or...and before the or really had a chance to take hold, we could hear the drone of airplanes coming over. For our whole, the first part of the mission, the pathfinder mission was worthless, because these were new pilots who had never flown in combat before and when the anti-aircraft started coming up at them,

they broke from formation. They dropped troops in the Channel. They dropped them all the way north to Cherbourg and all the way south to Carentan, and so that part of the mission just wasn't.

Q: But you still were one of the first ones to...

A: Well, yeah. I was in the first fifty-four.

Q: I want to move now to your role in a very important historical moment that you had and that's in the capture of...in the apprehension and the capture of two major figures in Nazi...the Nazi rule of Germany and in the destruction of the Jews, and I understand the first one you captured was Robert Ley.

A: Right.

Q: Could you tell us about that?

A: Yeah, it's a very interesting story. We had an arrangement with the Burgermeisters of the various cities, that if they had any known what would later become termed as war criminals, in their area, they were to notify us. If they intended to hold their job as Burgermeister, they better do it. And so we got a call one night. I don't know who was on the board...got a call from a Burgermeister telling us about this man that was living in a certain building. We went to the building and we entered the place that he was supposed to occupy and he did. He was in bed and the minute we came in the door, he reached for a pill on his night table, and one of my boys knocked it out of his hand, and then he said he didn't know why we were bothering him. He was a professor, a teacher. His name was Disselbruger (ph) and he...what can I tell you...he claimed to have...he never was a Nazi, knew nothing about Nazism and so on. Now I have to take you back for a moment. When VE Day came around, which was May the 8th, my particular unit of the 101st Airborne was in an area occupied by 13,000 SS troops. Now there we were, two thousand, now in charge of.,,these people had surrendered, so we took blocks where they put their weapons, and blocks where they did this, but in order to control these 13,000 people, we had to get MP's...that's military police...from their own units. We...we...we just didn't have the manpower to do this, so we did that, and in my headquarters was a full colonel Nazi. At that time I was only a cap...I was a major. In our headquarters there was a full colonel Nazi, and when I walked in with Disselbruger, he clicked his heels, popped to attention and said Heil. Now how in the hell can a school teacher have a full colonel do this, so I called division headquarters and I said I'm sending this guy up to you. And I did, and he turned out to be Robert Ley, the Minister of Labor, the guy who sent people to the camps and what have you. That's the Robert Ley story.

Q: That's a fascinating story. So his subordinate gave him away?

A: Well, yeah, you could call a full colonel his 01:04: subordinate, but once you knew that he was senior to a full colonel, you knew you had something. But I didn't know who he was.

Q: Now you also had a very important role in the apprehension and the capture of Julius Streicher, who was the leading propagandist, anti-Semitic propagandist for the Nazi movement...

A: Well, that that was a more solitary role because I got him by myself.

Q: Could you tell us about how that came about?

A: We also got a tip that there was a a high ranking Nazi living in the town of Widering (ph) in Austria and his name we didn't know. I thought it was Heinrich Himmler from the description, but I didn't have a jeep of my own and I didn't have an interpreter of my own at the time, so I borrowed another guy's jeep and his driver and the three of us went up the hill to this house, chalet, chateau, whatever you want to call it, and I entered, my 45 in hand, and I went upstairs. There was a man sitting on a chair with an easel to his right painting the opposite Alp, and I asked him his name and he told me Joseph Seeler (ph), and I said where's your identification papers, and he reached right in back and he pulled out an identification paper made out to the name of Joseph Seeler. Now it didn't hit me quite that fast that this was Julius Streicher, and I began asking him things about Himmler, because I thought I had the wrong guy, and he said he knew nothing about politics. He was a painter. He knew nothing about anything that had to do with what I was interested in and then I don't know why I said, and what about Julius Streicher, and he said: "Ja, der bin Ich." Now I got that only from the J S on his work papers.

Q: JS?

A: Joseph Seeler was Julius Streicher. "Ja, der bin Ich", which when translated into English reads yes, that's who I am. Now we had no further interrogation. In the car, in the jeep on the way, he and I were in the back. I had my gun riding his ribs so nothing was going to happen there. He wasn't going to jump out or commit suicide or anything, and I said to him...this is the only interrogation he got from me...I said to him: "Sind Sie der Streicher der war gegendie Juden?", which when translated means, are you the Streicher who was against the Jews. And he very calmly said: "Ja, der bin Ich", which meant yes, that's who Iam, but he might just as well have said so what. I mean he was arrogant to the very end, so much so that when we got to Berchtesgarten...oh, I'm sorry...I stopped at my regimental headquarters to notify them I was bringing him in and Bertchesgarten was about forty miles away from us. When I got to Bertchesgarten, as he was getting out of the jeep, I booted him a little bit so that accelerate his departure, and the place was loaded with reporters and this, that and the other, and one reporter came up to me and he said, you know, you just killed the greatest story of the war. I said how. He said can you imagine if a guy named Kohn or Goldberg or Levy had captured this arch-anti-Semite, what a great story it would be. I said why. He said because a Jew would be doing this, and I told him I'm Jewish, and that's when the microphones came into my face and the

cameras started clicking away and things started to happen that changed the rest of my life.

Q: Did you have any chance to interrogate him further or after that...

A: No. They took him. I took him to division headquarters. They took him on up to Munich where the army interrogation team was. When I say army that's a division of like a regiment or battalion army, and that's where those people were.

Q: How did you feel capturing Ley and even and capturing Streicher?

A: Well, with Ley I just felt it was a part of my job and because there was no direct relationship between Ley and Streicher and between Ley and and what was going on in Europe and Germany at the time, but with Streicher there was a very direct relationship.

With Ley I didn't even go to division with him. I sent him up with a couple of my men because I didn't...we didn't know then that it was Ley either, you know, but I sent him up with a couple of my men and with Streicher there was a very personal feeling about the whole thing. I can tell you myself not killing him from time to time when I had the opportunity, but I had two other people in the jeep and war or not war you just don't kill people who surrendered, so that's the story of Julius Streicher.

Q: That's an important story. You also had participated I guess earlier than this in the entry into Dachau.

A: Oh yes. That was...

Q: Could you tell us about that?

A: Well, that's...that's a moment that will will live forever. The most outstanding moment of this whole thing, and I'll never forget the word was as we got in there and it was a horrible sight...everything was, huts they lived in, the furnaces that they were burned in, and which incidentally were 01:06: _crematoriums and as we got there, moving up into this area, one of the men I was with said look at those crematoriums, and another officer standing next to him said no, it's crematoria. That's the plural for crematoriums. I'll never forget that because that whole moment was just unbelievable. These people were sitting on stoops and porches and on the ground. Their bodies were totally emaciated. Their legs were swollen. It was...it was an unbelievable time and the very same date that we went through stands there today because I've been back and it's just...it's a moment that is very difficult to describe.

Q: Do you remember the exact day on which you entered?

A: No, I don't. 1 remember May 8th, you know. I've got those dates, but I can't give you the exact day, but I can tell you that about two weeks before...maybe ten days before the 8th of May, I saw people walking on the road wearing what we later found out was the uniform of the inmates of the the concentration camp, but I had never seen that before...a pajama looking thing with a blue and a grey. And I said what the hell is this. They got another army here we don't know about. They were walking along the road, and this is in the Alps, but as you got into areas like Munich and what have you, you were getting into the areas of these camps and how and why they were out I can't tell you, but they were

out there and not with a guard, because the guard would have been a German. We would have shot him. We would have had a fire fight.

Q: Had you been prepared by the army or anything you had read or information for what you would see in the camps?

A: No way. Had no idea. I knew of the horror things that had happened through the cousins of mine that came back from there in 1940 and "39, but they didn't describe concentration camps. They didn't know anything about that. What they could describe was how a store window would be broken, a person would be taken off the street, if you were a doctor you couldn't practice, if you were a teacher you couldn't teach, if you wrote a book it wouldn't be published...those things I knew, but I didn't know anything about these camps.

Q: The soldiers you were with and since you were an officer, the American soldiers you were with, did did they understand? Did you have...did you feel that you understood in a different way because you were a Jew? Was there something you could translate...?

A: No. I think this thing was so horrible that it really didn't matter what you were, what your religious background was, this thing was so horrendous that no matter who you were or what you were, it was going to plague you. You see, one of the reasons for the Holocaust Museum and one of the reasons for the expression that the Jews in Israel use frequently now is "Never Again," and I have to tell you that anyone of my troops that went into Dachau with us would not become a parent of a skinhead or a neo-Nazi or any one of those things, because what they say could never be duplicated in history and hopefully never will be, it was so horrible.

Q: Turning to your return to the United States, were you able to translate, tell people when you came back, what you had seen so that they could understand? Did they believe you?

A: We didn't...we didn't dwell on that at all. When I came back, obviously I didn't have a civilian job. I was still in the service, until January of "46, but the B'nai B'rith and the Anti-Defamation League had me going out to lunches and dinners to talk and it was a very propitious subject at that time. The war had just ended and we focused on the Julius Streicher story and never on the other facets that we're talking about today, so...and we also talked about Normandy, but we just never got into the concentration camp, the Dachaus of the world or any of that. It it didn't come up so I didn't paint that picture as I have just tried to do for you. It was...the picture was horrible.

Q: Something that you will always remember.

A: And everybody else that saw it will too.

Q: How did it shape or change...did it change your life? Did it affect your life and your subsequent career?

01:08:

A: Yeah, but let's don't go that far ahead yet if you don't mind. The reason I say that is when you use the word change, it changed my life dramatically right then because I wanted to capture as many of these bastards as I possibly could. Now, how to go about it.

When May 8th came around, my commanding officer, a full colonel, my commanding officer told me I couldn't use any of our men to go out on patrol and the reason, he said, was the war's over now and I can't write a letter to somebody's mother and father tell them their son was killed on the 10th, the 11th, the 12th of May. I just can't do it. The war's over for us here. If they get killed, it would have to be in a traffic accident, so he said but I don't object to your continuing to do your scouting and patrolling if you will, but you're going to have to do it with the SS troops that we have under our command, so there I was, driving through the Alps, narrow little roads, in a Volkswagen instead of an American jeep, with...I'm in the front right seat and I got a German driver, SS, and in those days, to make it even more precarious and the hipe and what have you, the rumor among the SS was they're all going to be executed for being in the SS so they really had very little stake at just turning the wheel a little bit and off the Alps we went, but during these tours, during these trips with the SS, I managed to get the president of Vienna...his name was Delbruger (ph). I got...I found Jules Olberg (ph), who was the butcher of Paris, roaming around in a 20th Armored stockade in an enlisted man's coat and suit so that he would never be caught up in all this.

Q: How did you find him? How did you...?

A: Well, you you began to get things from Burgermeisters mostly and tips that you were getting from other Germans who were fearful of being...we we we went into a bogey (ph) wheel factory and we found people in there that were hiding. It was...you had to take a finiculaire to get up there. We we just spent days and days and days looking for these people. I didn't leave there until after September and this is May 8 we're talking about, so that lasted ...that lasted quite a while.

Q: Did the army object at all?

A: No. They didn't object, and they were delighted when I would bring these people in, but he wouldn't... my own commanding officer wouldn't let me use American troops.

Q: So you left...you left Europe in September. You returned to the United States?

A: No. I didn't come back until later than that. In September I left the Berchtesgarten area where we were picking these people up and then I went up to Wiesbaden where Eisenhower's headquarters were and I mentioned earlier that I went to law school and I became the law member of a general court which is like...the court itself is like a jury and the law member is the one who advises them on the law, and then I stayed there until the end of the year and then I came back to the United States.

Q: When you returned to the United States, did you tell people about what you had seen?

Did you talk at all about...I know you tended to emphasize Streicher and your

involvement with the capture of Streicher, but did your family ask you about the camps?

Did you talk about that at all?

A: Oh, I'm sure I did but I can't recall specific instances at the moment.

Q: Now to go back to my earlier question. How did this whole event affect you? How did you feel coming back to the United States after the war?

A: Well, you have to...you have to realize that there's a camaraderie and a fraternalism in the service that doesn't exist anywhere that I know of in civilian life, particularly troops who have been engaged in combat together and who have survived, and there was a resentment but a friendly resentment from all of my friends because as we arrived in Boston, there was a headline in the paper...17,000 troops returning. Included among them is Henry Plitt, the man who captured Julius Streicher. And so out of 17,000, they named one name and the guys started to get pretty irked with that and when I got off the boat in Boston, I was interviewed by the press and they asked what my post-war plans were, and I said I would like to take a contingent down to South America and find Hitler because I'm sure he's alive down there, and I figured this was going to turn into another job. At that point I didn't know what the future held for me, but of course it was pooh-poohed and it never happened, but it was another headline in Boston, so we treated it very lightly.

We treated it very lightly. It was kind of a fun thing except I left out a whole segment here. I came back to the United States on what was known as the hero's tour. Those were people who were highly decorated and what have you, and their mission was to sell war bonds. Now in those days we didn't finance a war from taxes or from other countries. We financed the war from our own people 1:10: putting up the money to fight the war, and so I spent time here and my assignment was the Paramount Theater circuit and I met the president of the company and the vice president and all those people. They were very lovely people, and one of them said to me if you come back in one piece, call us. Now my speeches for the ADL and the B'nai B'rith and what have you, had gotten kind of tired and I called Paramount and they said you're going to be the first executive trainee that we put to work post-war, and if you read Leonard Goldenson...he was the former chairman of the board of ABC...if you read his book called "Beating the Odds," he tells the story of how I came to Paramount. Now that was in 1946. In 1973 I bought half of that theater chain and in 1978 I bought the rest of it. And that's what Streicher had to do for me.

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Q: You made a big leap from entering working for Paramount to buying out their chain. Can you fill us in briefly a little on some of the highlights of that that interim period? Here you were a young war hero...

A: Well, what what actually happened (cough) is that I was supposed to be a trainee and I was supposed to learn all there was to know about theater operation, construction, projection, sound, etc. with the idea in mind that I would go back to Europe and I would begin to put together deals for Paramount to become as important in Europe as they were here in the United States. What actually happened is during the period of my training, I ingratiated myself...not intentionally...I didn't suck up to this guy, but I ingratiated myself with a man by the name of E. B. Richards in New Orleans who was the big bad wolf of our industry. He was hated. He was feared. He was everything. And I didn't know how important he was and the first night that I met him, I was living in...they call it...not the barracks but a dormitory where he ran this school for managers...and I was living in the dormitory and I got back in and I was looking around. I saw a light somewhere and I went toward the light and it was a kitchen and in the kitchen was a refrigerator and I opened the door and I took a couple of pieces of fruit out to eat and I heard a voice inside saying, who is that. And he sent a man who was with him out and the man asked me to come in and I walked in and he said, oh you're the pencil-pusher from New York that they sent down here, aren't you. And I said if you consider six years of active service in the army and parachute troops qualifying me as a pencil-pusher, I'll have it your way, yeah. Now I never realized nobody ever crossed this man. I mean he was powerful. There are some great stories about him and I'm going to digress for a minute and give you two of them. Number one, when a theater manager would put signs up and where...you call them 8 x 10 photographs...and they were too low, he would go into that theater and he would get down on his stomach in the lobby and look at the sign and get back up and say to the manager, gee that's great. I hope all the rest of your audience is willing to do this.

That was one of his stories. The other one which is even more important is that Paramount at one time wanted to put cash registers into the concession booths, areas, and E. B. Richards resented this. He wasn't going to have any part of it. So Leonard Goldensen who was then heading the theater division, but he really wasn't over E. B.

because E. B. was a partner and Leonard was an employee but even though he was a head of a division, E. B. took a train and he went from New Orleans to New York and he got there and he walked into the New York Paramount and he bought a Hershey bar, which in those days was five cents, and he gave the girl a $20 bill, and when she turned around to ring up his sale, he swooped everything off the counter into his hat, took his change and he went upstairs. Now the Paramount Theater was in the Paramount Building where our offices were. He went upstairs to Leonard's office and after they exchanged pleasantries, he said to Leonard, say Lennie, you running a sale downstairs. And Goldensen said no, why Rich, what are you talking about. He says look what I bought for a nickel and he threw the whole damn thing on his...so this is the kind of man 01:12: this was. If you remember the hucksters with Clark Gable and the big fat guy who said straw in the wind, opened the window and threw his hat out...that was E. B. Richards type. Any way, he became my mentor for a while and Goldensen...in 1950 the Federal Government split the studios and the theaters and Goldensen at that time on behalf of Paramount was out all over the country buying up these chains, and he bought Richard's chain but it was to take...this was in May...but it was to take effect the 3rd of January and after he got back home, he began scratching his head and saying gees, what will I have by the 3rd of January. He could move everything out. He'll have a circuit of his own, so he called Richards and he said I would like to send a representative down there between now and

the 3rd. Rich said OK. You've got one man in the company I'll take. He's a northerner but we don't have any disregard for him. It was Henry Plitt. So off I go to New Orleans. I had a very hectic period of time between the time I got there in July and the following January 3rd because I was walking on two sides of a track. I had to...my responsibility was to Paramount but at the same time I was ostensibly an employee of Paramount Richards, so it was a pretty tough thing and when I got to Pensacola, Leonard came down on a trip and I said you know, Leonard, I don't have an office. If I wore a hat, I wouldn't have a place to hang it. What is my future here. He said you're the heir apparent, and that was enough for me. Three years later I took over.

Q: Now a major portion of your life in addition, of course, to your professional career and your impact in the entertainment industry, has been charitable work.

A: Yes.

Q: What got you...how did you get involved in...particularly in your...has it any relationship to your experiences during the war? Does it...?

A: Initially no. Subsequently yes. My my real initial involvement in charity work was in 1949 I was then kind of general manager of the Richards, ex-Richards circuit, now Paramount, and Leonard Goldensen again who had a cerebral palsy daughter asked that we in our theaters cooperate in fund raising and I got a trailer to run on my screen, but I couldn't find anybody to make the collections so...because it was Mother's Day that Sunday...so instead of continuing to seek people who said no, I can't go because it's Mother's Day, I called a meeting with an ad for the cerebral palsy parents in Orleans Parish, and they came to the meeting and because they couldn't leave their kids alone at home, the kids were with them, and I saw these kids and I have to tell you that it wasn't Dachau by any matter or means, but it was a heavy sympathy factor to see these kids that just didn't have appropriate treatment, didn't have appropriate diagnostic work, if the diagnosis was right they didn't have the disciplines to do it because it could have been dental, it could have been orthopedic, it could have been any number of things, and they just didn't have the doctors for it and not only that, they couldn't diagnosis it, so I kind of fell in love with that, and in short order I took over the organization and then I became the president of the Cerebral Palsy Association of New Orleans, subsequently Cerebral Palsy Association of Louisiana, then Regional Vice President of the national organization covering the South, and during all this, I would travel to different cities and I would meet with interested people and parents and I would get them going. Later on, I go to New York and there I really don't do very much of anything, but subsequently to that I go to Chicago and there I get back into cerebral palsy and I become the chairman of that organization for three years, which takes us now 01:14: to 1967 at which time I go to Israel and the Six Day War.

Q: Did you go to Israel before the Six Day War?

A: No. For the last day...the last day. But the tanks were on the ground and the shoes were where the Arabs ran off and left them running so fast, and it was...it was quite a picture. It

was a thoroughly, thoroughly...I don't know...I just fell in love with Israel, absolutely fell in love with it. I met with Motte Gur?__ who was the general in charge of the air force at the time...you know Motte? I noticed you nodded. My wife said to Motte, congratulations on your work for the Six Day War. And he said to her, we were home for lunch the first day, and, you know, they're, they're not very reluctant to demonstrate their bravado but with it all, then the next year I went back to lecture to parachute troops, and I thought, you know, these guys are going to look up at the platform and see this old goat talking to them and they're young and they're full of vim and vigor and they don't...they're not interested in what this guy...unbelievable. They had never jumped in combat. They were jumpers, but they had never been employed as parachute troops, and when I came in telling them stories about our combat jumps and the formation of our air planes and how we had to do different things, they wasn't...there wasn't anybody in the audience that wasn't electrified. Now that's another reason, and the next thing you know I go to Hetzoa?

Air Force Base and I meet the commanding officer and I ask him what he needs, and he needs a game room, a play room. Well, what to do. I came back to the United States and raised the money, and that began it all. Then I became very involved in Bar Ilan University. Actually I became the president of the West Coast Friends of Bar Ilan and the next step in my Israeli occupation was Sha'arei Tsedek Hospital in Jerusalem, and there we have the Sedge(??) and Henry Plitt Heart Surgery, and the reason for that is that Dr.

Matloff (ph) who did heart surgery on me was interested in moving his heart surgeon program to Israel. Prior to his doing that, there was an eighteen month wait between diagnosis and treatment...and and and care in surgery. Now you have to realize that before they do heart surgery, they do an angiogram. There was a three month wait to get an angiogram done, and then after the three month wait, you're on a list. Hopefully you'll be taken between twelve and eighteen months from then. If you're still alive, they'll treat you in eighteen months. If you're not, of course, it's academic. So we wanted to move the same system that they have here at Cedar Sinai which does a great deal of heart work, over to Israel and we started it based upon his jumping on my bones, we started a thing called Heart to Heart from Los Angeles to Jerusalem, and today that is functioning at the Sha'arei Tsedek Hospital, and we're all thrilled with it.

Q: Before we close, I'd like to go back just for a moment to your capture of Streicher and are there any details...between the time you identified who Streicher was and you got him in the jeep, or even in the jeep...did he say anything? Did he put up any resistance of any form?

A: No. He didn't put up any resistance, but there is a story attached to it. First of all, I was so excited at what I had that I have to tell you, I I didn't follow any rules. His wife gave him a raincoat. I didn't examine the raincoat. I didn't know that there was no weapon in it. His wife took his slippers off, which he had been using out on the porch, and substituted shoes for them and that's no big deal, but the fact that I let him get that coat and not even feel it to see if there's anything in it was a real blunder, but after I dropped him at Berchtesgarten with the recognition of all the mistakes I'd made because we usually search a place where you have taken somebody, from which you have taken somebody, so I went back to Weidring that night and his wife gave me a letter which is here 01:16: in the Holocaust Museum...the original is in the Museum...which indicates that this is the

first night they've been separated since their marriage. They had been married about forty days. She was his nurse I think, and he had left...forgotten to take his glasses with him, and in the letter she enclosed his glasses which she asked me to give to him and she started being extremely tearful, almost to the point of wailing, and I said you just don't understand the American way of life. If your husband is the good man that you describe him as being, he'll back home to you, but if he is what we think he is, you'll never see him again. That's all I have to say about that. That's all that happened.

Q: Before we close, is there something you'd like to add? Is there something you'd like to say?

A: I think there are two things I would like to say, one of which I may have said earlier but I think it's important to repeat it. One man, one woman, one person can make a big difference in in anything, and the words that are used so frequently in Israel today that should be a watch word for all of us, Jew and gentile alike, are the words "Never Again."

Q: Thank you very much, Mr. Plitt.

A: Thank you.

END OF INTERVIEW

Conclusion of Interview.