Karl Goldsmith in uniform

Karl Goldsmith

Karl Goldsmith was born in Eschwege, Germany in 1921 and immigrated to the US without his parents in 1939. After Pearl Harbor he was desperate to be inducted, and in 1941 wrote to the governor of New York to expedite his draft status so he could become the first "Enemy Alien" in the state of New York to be drafted into the United States Army. He graduated from Camp Ritchie and became an interrogator with John "Pops" Slade and was attached to several American and British units through the Normandy and Holland campaigns, the Battle of the Bulge and in the invasion of Germany.

Immediately following the war, he was responsible for the de-Nazification of his hometown in Germany where he served as Military Governor of Eschwege. A pragmatist, who believed in law and order, he immediately ordered all SS prisoners to clean up the desecrated Jewish cemetery where his grandparents were buried. He refused to make concessions or favor any of his old neighbors who in turn began calling him, "uncrowned king." Goldsmith recalls, "I was a presence... in that town, a very important presence. There is no one who rules as harshly and no one who crawls as low as the Germans in victory and defeat... What I said went in that town."