Remembering D-Day: Springfield's Charles Stein Stormed Omaha Beach

Charles Stein had never been more scared in his life. On June 6, 1944, the 25-year-old was one of thousands of US Army soldiers who stormed Normandy's Omaha Beach. He did it with revenge in his heart (his parents were killed in the Holocaust), and he later interrogated captured Nazi soldiers on multiple fronts and even got captured himself before convincing his captors that the tide was turning against them and that they had better surrender.

Stein, now 93, lives at the Greenspring Retirement Community in Springfield. He was born to a Jewish family in Vienna, Austria, and studied to be a doctor at the University of Vienna until the Nazis invaded. He was forced to flee the country, and after time in Luxembourg, emigrated to the United States. He was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1943 and was selected for work in Army intelligence due to his German language skills. He became an interrogator, and served on the front lines in combat from Normandy to the Czech border and later in the Korean War. 

Stein worked as an Intelligence Analyst at the Department of Defense and then the State Department until his retirement in 1978. He met his wife, Barbara (who passed away in 2003), while on assignment in Japan in 1953. The couple lived in Vienna, Virginia, and raised three sons. 

Stein received two Bronze Stars, one in Europe and one in Korea. He is also the recipient of the Defense of Freedom Medal. He is now a volunteer with the National Holocaust Memorial Museum on Washington, D.C. 

• Do you have a connection to D-Day? Tell us about it in the comments section below! 

The Interview

Patch: Let's go back. Where were you born?  

Stein: Vienna, Austria. That's why my story is different than all the others you hear about D-Day.

Patch: Did your father serve in World War I? 

Stein: Yeah, my father (Eugene Stein, a printer) served in the Austrian army. He was on the Russian front for four years. 

Patch: Talk about how you fled Vienna. 

Stein: I was enrolled as a medical student at the University of Vienna, and on March 11, 1938, I walked to one of my lectures at the anatomy institute and I saw something strange in the auditorium. You would enter the auditorium up top and the professor would be down below - like a movie house. I came in and the top row was covered with people standing - all in Nazi uniforms. Storm troopers, with guns sticking out of their belts. 

We had no idea what happened, because that was four years after the Nazi party was outlawed. After I got home, I told my parents what I'd seen. The next day the extras came out, and they said that the German Army had crossed the Austrian border at midnight and was on its way to Vienna.

The Germans went crazy. They dragged us out on the streets and made us clean them with toothbrushes. And I was thrown out of the university on the day Hitler came - along with 2,500 other (Jewish) professors and students. Some of my former schoolmates in uniform started looking for me and I was forced into hiding. 

I made my way through Germany and to the Luxembourg border and got across the border… While I was there I got a letter from my mother saying she just ran into someone who knew a cousin of hers who lived in New York. So, I wrote to him - Louis Gotterschmidt. I called him Uncle Louis.    

Patch: Did you have any further correspondence with your parents? 

Stein: Not from 1939 when the war broke out. It was not until after the war that I found out that they had been deported to Lodz - a large ghetto in Poland. 

Patch: What happened to them? 

Stein: It was not until 1995 that I found out. I was working with the Holocaust Museum and was told of the discovery of all the records of Lodz in the basement of a Polish government office. I found out that my parents were among the first to be killed in 1942, right after the Germans made their decision on their final solution by killing off people by putting them in a special vehicle and pumping in poisonous gas. The rest of the family - uncles, aunts, cousins - all wound up at Auschwitz and were killed.  

Patch: Did you go to medical school in New York? 

Stein: No. I learned something about America. As it turned out, all medical schools in the country had a Jewish quota, a very minuscule quota… And I was told there was no chance I would be admitted… After I'd been here about 18-19 months I got this letter that said "Your friends and neighbors have selected you for the draft boards." 

Patch: What did you do for work? 

Stein: I was working in the shipping department of a textiles factory. 

Patch: And you got drafted in the Army. 

Stein: Yes, and I was stationed in South Carolina. I applied for officer candidate school, and by 1943 I was a 2nd Lieutenant in a field artillery unit. I was transferred to Fort Sill, Oklahoma, and I was there for about a week, when one day I was taking a class and a military policeman walked in, talked to the instructor and said, "Lt. Stein, come with us."

I was taken to an office in headquarters and there was a major sitting there. He asked me to raise my right hand, swore me to secrecy and handed me my orders. He said he had orders for me to go to the military intelligence training center in Fort Ritchie, Maryland. 

Patch: Because you spoke German. 

Stein: Exactly. All of us who spoke the enemy languages, German, some French and Italian, were put in Fort Ritchie, and we were trained for about 10 weeks in prisoner of war interrogation. They taught us what to go for and look for… 

By Dec. 1943, I was assigned to IPW - Interrogation of Prisoners of War - team number five in England… And I don't know why I was one of them, but shortly after I got there I was assigned to some British intelligence outfit in London called MI-6… And we learned all kinds of things about the Germans from the British who parachuted behind the lines. 

Patch: Where were you on D-Day? 

Stein: I was assigned to the 29th Infantry Division, made of of the Virginia and Maryland National Guard, and we landed on Omaha Beach. I was with about 30 or 40 soldiers on an LST (Landing Ship Tank) and we got stuck in rows and rows of ships. By the time we got there there was no way to land any more. Ships were sunk and the Germans had fired artillery in there. 

Patch: What time did you land? 

Stein: It was about noon. We had been in the water about four hours. The Germans were in bunkers shooting machine guns and artillery. I looked at the beach and the first thing I saw was dead bodies all over. The first group that came in must have been mowed down completely.

I was scared like hell, believe me. I had never been so scared in my life. Have you seen "Saving Private Ryan"? I relived D-Day when I saw that picture. After about 20 minutes in the theatre I wanted to leave. It was the first time in all these years that it all got to me. 

Everyone was scared, and all I wanted to do was kill Germans. To my mind it was payback time, absolutely payback time. I read the newspapers and reports and I knew that my parents were gone… 

It was several days before we got up onto the high ground, and got into all those bunkers. I interrogated a couple of Germans, and I was strictly front line. 

Patch: What was it like interrogating German soldiers? 

Stein: I had no problem with it. I felt like a policeman getting information out of a killer. I squeezed them for everything they had. 

Patch: What did you learn? 

Stein: I learned some interesting things about the Germans. Officers were a little harder to break than enlisted men, who talked. Pretty soon we found out that all the Germans carried a paybook in their pocket to get paid each month, and it had all kinds of information about them. So, it would be the first thing I would ask for. If one of them said he didn't have one, I would say, "In that case, you're a spy and you're going to be shot right now." And all of a sudden they would produce it…  

I remember they brought in this German lieutenant and I asked him something and he wouldn't talk. After a couple minutes, with the battle still going on, I told him to take off his jacket and I asked the same questions, and he only gave me his name, rank and serial number. I told him to take off his boots. Still nothing. By the third time I asked him a question, he said nothing, and I told him to take off his pants. Then he started talking. Why I did that - I don't know. We were taught to think fast to get the information out of them. This particular one gave me some targets, and sure enough, the next day we hit them. 

Patch: Can you talk about when you were captured?  

Stein: I was on the Elbe River and by that time I was a captain. We were on one side of the river and the Russians were on the other and there was a no-man's land. My regimental commander asked me to arrange a meeting with the Russians so we wouldn't end up shooting at each other.

So, my driver and I crossed the river and we drove into this little village and before we knew it we were looking at two German soldiers holding rifles. They didn't say anything and I didn't say anything. They pointed at this grocery store and they led us in to this tiny little country store with a small apartment. We walked in and there were three German officers in there. I could read all their insignias and knew they were from three completely different branches of the service. 

They looked at me and one of them said, "What are we going to do with them?" So, in my perfect German, I interrupted and said, "Gentlemen, if you don't know what to do with me, maybe I can help you." 

They jumped. They said: "Oh, you speak German? What is your rank?" I told them I was a captain, and they saluted me. I told them: "Look out there. Everyone is moving to our side. The war is almost over in a few days and you can go home. What are you doing here?"

They said that there were about 140 of them and that they there to defend the town from the Russians. I said, "You're going to try to fight the Russians? Do you have any trucks (they had three)? Load them up and come with me."

…So, we got back and I deposited the prisoners with the MPs, and I got back to headquarters and the Colonel asked if I made the arrangements with the Russians. I said, "I'm sorry, sir. I couldn't make it. I was on my way but I got captured in-between and brought back all these Germans." 

By that point he broke up and said, "I know all about it. You did a good job, but you're going back tomorrow." 

Patch: It's a fascinating story. Do you ever regret not becoming a doctor?

Stein: Yes. I think that has always been on my mind. I wanted to be a doctor. Now it's a little too late, but that would have been nice.