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Ira Weinstein
April 17, 1999
Palm Beach, Fla.
Aaron Elson: You grew up in Chicago?
Ira Weinstein: Yes.
Aaron Elson: Was there a Jewish community in Chicago?
Ira Weinstein: Oh, a tremendous Jewish community. My grandfather was the first Jewish undertaker in Chicago.
Aaron Elson: And where was your family from originally?
Ira Weinstein: My father and mother were born in America. My grandfather came from Russia.
Aaron Elson: Did you enlist or were you drafted?
Ira Weinstein: I enlisted. Since I was ten years old more or less, I was an aviation buff. I loved airplanes, so here, 70 years later, I’m still building model airplanes.
Aaron Elson: You had started studying the World War I aces?
Ira Weinstein: Yes. And when the war was imminent, and I was working, I enlisted. I filed an application to be an Aviation Cadet. In those days, you had to have either two years’ education to get an appointment as an Aviation Cadet, or you had to take an exam. I didn’t go to college. My father went broke during the Depression. As soon as I got out of high school I went to work.
I took the exam, and out of 600 guys mine was the fourth highest grade, so I got an appointment. Then the war started, and they were processing so many guys, I quit my job. I thought they were going to take me right away. They didn’t take me for six months, because they were waiting to process people. Then I got my appointment as a cadet, and went through all the usual basic training and the pre-flight.
Aaron Elson: Did you want to be a fighter pilot?
Ira Weinstein: Every guy wanted to be a pilot. I went to primary school and I was doing really good. I was way up in the class in the ground school, but every time I got in an airplane they had to readjust the airplane. First of all, you were supposed to be 5-foot-4 to go to pilot training. I’m only 5 feet tall. So one day I’m standing in a line naked, waiting to get a shot, and a flight surgeon comes by. He says, “Mister, how tall are you?”
I said, “I’m 5-foot-2.” I wasn’t 5-foot-2. I was 5 feet tall. Next day I was in the commandant’s office, and he says, “Look. You’re through in primary training.” But I had a real high number in the draft, so I could have gotten out, because I volunteered to go in. He said, “Do you want out? I can let you out. But if you want to stay in, I’ll see that you go wherever you want to go.”
I didn’t want to get out. He said, “I could send you right away to bombardier school.”
That’s fine. As long as I’m in an airplane, that’s it. So I went to bombardier school. I went to Ellington Field in Texas, and then I went to Childers, Texas, and then they picked a whole bunch of guys and sent us to navigation school. So I had a dual rating. Before I went overseas I was already a first lieutenant; before I was even assigned a crew. I know that sounds like nothing, but in the service, that was big-time stuff, to be a first lieutenant instead of a second lieutenant.
I was assigned a crew, and we went for training as a crew at Peterson Field in Colorado. I got married there, and then we went a bunch of other places to do this and that, and then finally we went overseas.
Aaron Elson: Did you marry somebody you met there or somebody from Chicago?
Ira Weinstein: This was a girlfriend that I had from Chicago. Even though the war was on, they were still treating us like cadets, it was unbelievable. The clothes we had, and the food we were getting, they treated us like kings. The invitations for our graduation, to get our commission, were on leather. Genuine leather invitations. Stamped! I sent one to my girlfriend. Next thing I know, she says, “I’ll come to the graduation.” She came. Next thing, we got married.
Anyhow, let me bring you up to the day [of the battle], and then later you can go back if you want.
Okay. The Kassel mission out of Tibenham was on September 27th, and you may not know it, but that was Yom Kippur. I was not supposed to fly that day. I don’t know why I went to the briefing, but I was on a lead crew. And I guess, I don’t remember, but I think maybe we had to go to every briefing, even though we weren’t going to fly that day.
I go to the briefing, and I see the mission, and I see we’re going to have fighter cover all the way. It wasn’t that far into Germany. And by that time we had pretty good fighter cover. My wife’s birthday was Christmas, and I had one more mission to fly, so I thought I’d try and go on this mission and I’d be home in time for Christmas.
I went to the colonel and I said, “Let me fly today. See if there’s an opening on a crew.”
And he said, “What are you, stupid? You don’t volunteer. It’s a Jewish holiday. You’ve got a three-day pass. Go to London. Have some fun.”
I said, “No, I want to go.”
And he really didn’t want me to go. He said, “You’re not supposed to do anything today.”
I finally talked him into it, and I was home for my wife’s birthday – a year later.
On the other hand, I’m here and I’m alive, so even though maybe God punished me for flying on Yom Kippur, he also saved me.
On the mission, I was assigned to a crew that I’d never flown with. I flew with the Donald crew. I didn’t know one person on it.
Early on the mission – once we turned off the initial point, I saw fighters. And everybody was on the radio, saying there were fighters and so forth, and in that ship that day we had a nose turret but it was not manned. So I got up in the nose turret, on the guns. I had never gone to gunnery school, but I’d flown enough missions, I knew what that was all about.
The battle was quick. I don’t know how many minutes they say the whole thing lasted, but it was minutes, not hours. I’m firing the guns, and the next thing I know, I feel somebody tumble me over backwards out of the turret, and it was the navigator, a guy by the name of Eric Smith. I thought “What’s going on?” And I turn around and he’s bailing out the nose hatch. He saved my life. That was the first I knew that our ship was in trouble, on fire, and we were going down. I didn’t know it. I was busy firing the guns. So I bailed out.
Now another interesting thing is – God’s will – I always wore a chest chute, and I never wore it on, because when I had to lean over the bomb sight, I couldn’t have that on me, so the chest chute was always by my side. That day, when I finally got permission to fly, I didn’t have a parachute because my parachute was being repacked. I went to the parachute room and they gave me a back pack. I had never worn a back pack except in the cadets. If it would have been a different mission, I wouldn’t be here today because I’d have never found that chest pack.
So I bailed out with a back pack, and when I bailed out, the straps of the parachute caught on the bomb sight. By this time the plane was going down. It was in a flat spin with a lot of centrifugal force. I could hardly get out. I chinned myself back up into the airplane, undid the strap, and bailed out a second time.
By the time I bailed out, I figure I was at the most maybe at 2,500 feet. I popped my chute and I was on the ground. That was it. I never had time enough to enjoy what it was really like being in the parachute.
I landed up in the hills, where a bunch of kids were picnicking. I got rid of my chute and ran, and I was up in the hills, and I hid under some trees. My pilot – this guy Donald – must have bailed out the top hatch. When he bailed out, I’m presuming, he must have hit his feet on the rudders. I saw him come down in the valley, and I saw he couldn’t get up. And pretty soon some farmers came along and they pitchforked him to death. When night came, I went down and I got his dogtags, and they had stripped him of everything but his underpants. His shoes, everything but his underpants.
When I came back, I reported that to the War Crimes Commission, and they sent two guys down from Washington, D.C., to Chicago to interview me about it. And then maybe two or three years ago, I got a call – actually, Bill Dewey got the call – a guy was trying to find out if anybody knew anything about his brother-in-law. Dewey said, “Call Ira Weinstein. He knows all about it.” So the guy called me, and told me who he was, but I didn’t know who he was, so I asked him a bunch of questions, and I realized it was legitimate. Then I told him the whole story. I told him, “You may not even want to tell your sister about this,” because why should she [know her husband was pitchforked to death]? I don’t know what he did, but we corresponded a couple of times. I sent him copies of all the stuff from the War Crimes Commission That was a horrible incident.
Aaron Elson: What did you do with his dogtags?
Ira Weinstein: When I finally got to American hands a year later, I still had the dogtags. So I turned them in.
Aaron Elson: Where did you hide them?
Ira Weinstein: In my pocket most of the time. That night I hid under trees up in the forest. It was a pine forest. And the pine needles under the trees were inches thick, so I buried myself under those pine needles, and then during the day I wouldn’t move. I’d only move at night. I thought, ‘I’ll make my way to Switzerland.’ Well, I don’t swim, and every time I came to a body of water I couldn’t get across. I hid out for a couple of days, but by that time I realized that they were shooting and looking for guys. I realized I’m never going to get out of this.
I was scared, but I wasn’t hungry because at night I’d go down in the valley, I’d get some potatoes or whatever they’re growing, and that’s what I’d eat. I came to a little town, and I don’t know, [Walter Hassenpflug] thinks it was a town called Nesselrode [Nentershausen] or something, and there must have been 20 churches in that town. So I thought, “If I’m ever going to get a fair shake, it’ll be in a place where if they had so many churches.”
I walked down into the town, and I looked like Murder Incorporated, because our plane was on fire, I was covered with soot, and I hadn’t shaved for maybe a week. And I’m walking through the center of town and a kid about 17 years old sidles up alongside of me and he said, “You’re one of the American fliers they’re looking for, aren’t you?”
I said, “Yeah.” Then I said, “How come you speak such good English?”
“Oh,” he said, “I went to high school in Milwaukee.”
I said to him, “What’s going to happen to me?”
He said, “I’ll take you to the burgomeister.”
Sure enough, he took me to the burgomeister’s house, and the burgomeister’s wife gave me a bowl of potato soup. And I remember, that was the best thing I ever ate.
There was an SS battalion in that area, and the burgomeister said, “If I turn you over to them, you’re going to be dead. So if you behave yourself, and you don’t try and run away, I’ll call the Luftwaffe and they can come and get you. There you’ll be safe.” And about two hours later, two guys in beautiful Luftwaffe uniforms showed up with a car, and they took me to a little garrison. It was walled in, and they threw me in this room. I think there were maybe 20 other guys in it. George Collar was one of them. There were two badly wounded enlisted men, and I was the ranking officer.
I looked around – these two guys had had no medical attention, they’d been there two or three days already, and don’t ask me why I did this or how I did it, but I was always cocky. I got ahold of the guard, and I told him I want to see the commanding officer. So he took me in to see the commanding officer. And it would have been a joke if I wasn’t so scared, but that guy looked just like Erich Von Stroheim, remember him? First I saluted him, and I gave my name, my rank and my serial number, and I said, “Sir, according to the Geneva Convention, we have two very badly wounded men, they’re entitled to some medical care.”
He came out from behind his desk with a riding crop, and he hit me across the cheek. He split my cheek open, and he said, “I’ll tell you about the Geneva Convention. You’re bombing our schools and our churches and you’re killing our people and blah blah blah blah.” Then he told the guard to take me away. So I went back to the room, and about two hours later they came and took the two injured men away.
After you flew enough missions you thought you knew all the tricks, and one of them was that the electric shoes in the planes hardly ever worked properly. What I used to do is I’d put on two or three pairs of heavy woolen socks, and then I’d put my flying boots over them. That way my feet were pretty warm. When I bailed out, my flying boots came off, because they were loose. I was running around in the forest for a couple of days with no shoes. But I cut a piece out of my flying suit and I made a pair of moccasins. I used the electrical wires that were in the flying suit to tie them on. So now I’m in this little room they had us in. Pretty soon the guard comes, he says “Kommen Sie mit mir,” and he takes me back to the commandant’s office. My parents never spoke Yiddish, but my grandparents did when they didn’t want us to know what was going on. So I knew a little bit. But a little bit of knowledge is dangerous. This is what I think I hear the commandant say to the guard: “Take him out and schussen him.” That means “Take him out and shoot him.” What he said was “schissen,” or “Give him a pair of shoes.” But I didn’t hear shoes. I heard shoot. So this guy marches me out of the little barracks we were in into the compound, and about 50 yards ahead of me there’s a gate. I thought if this asshole’s gonna shoot me, he’s gonna shoot me in the back, because I’m gonna make a run for it when I get to that gate.
Maybe 25 yards from the gate was another little room. He took me in there and got me a pair of shoes. That’s how close I came to being killed that time, let alone getting out of the airplane or in the battle.
Then they took the guys from that barrack – George and I especially – who were in good shape, around to all the airplanes, getting the guns off of them and burying the bodies. And one of the ships I came across was my own ship. I knew it was mine because I knew the insignia on it, but I didn’t know any of the kids who were in the plane. I knew the pilot got killed. I didn’t know where the navigator was but I knew he had bailed out, and there was another guy – I forget who he was – on the ship. The other five guys were all burned to a crisp in the ship. And I had to take them out and bury them, right there. When I got back [to the States] I said to my wife, “You know, those parents must wonder what happened. All they get is a KIA notice, nothing else, no explanation from the government. I think I’m going to go visit all those parents.”
I got the addresses and the names, and I went and visited all those parents. I didn’t tell them the gory details, but I told them that their kids were in a battle and it was terrible and they were probably shot during the battle, and that I buried their bodies and this is where it is, and so forth.
Now we go back to this little hut, and they’re going to march us to the railroad station to go to the interrogation center. And these are stories that George told me that I didn’t even remember.
They put two guys in a stretcher, and George and I were going to carry them to the railroad station. I remembered that, but I didn’t remember this part until George told it to me, then it came back to me, like when you see an old movie on television. It was real hot, and these goddamn guys have got their guns in our backs. “Raus! Schnell! Schnell!” They wanted us to walk faster. How can we walk faster? Finally, they let us sit down, and George says we sat down on the curb of the street and a lady came out and gave us a drink. When George told me that, I said, “No German lady ever gave me a drink of water, forget it, you don’t know what you’re talking about.” The more I thought about it, all of a sudden it all started to come back to me. Then when we got to the railroad station, I don’t know if George told you this story, they lined everybody up in the railroad station and they made us all stand at attention, and some SS guys took control then, and they were calling out the roll. When they came to my name, Weinstein, they made me step up in front of the group, and George says he was sure they were going to shoot me right then and there. Then they put everybody else at rest, and they left me standing at attention. I think it was about two hours till that train came, I stood at attention, and finally we got on the train.
Aaron Elson: He told me something like that, but he said somebody said “Jude.”
Ira Weinstein: Yeah, “Judish.”
Aaron Elson: And he said he thought, “They’re gonna shoot old Weinstein.”
Ira Weinstein: Oh yeah, sure. He told me that. And then it came back to me. You know, you’re so young, I think you’re too stupid to know what’s going on. You’re not afraid like you should be. As you look back in retrospect, how did I get the chutzpah to go to the commandant and tell him about those two men who needed medical attention? But I thought I was a hero in those days; nothing bothered me, I was crazy.
Anyhow, we finally get to the interrogation center, and I have to tell you a great story, I’m writing this story up for the 8th Air Force Bulletin now.
Before I left, I had a cousin who was older than I was, who was already flying his own plane, and he was my hero. Before I left, his father and mother invited me to dinner, and he gave me a watch. It was a Longines-Weims watch, which was the watch that all the commercial and other aviators wore. And he said, “Here’s a watch. I want you to take this, it’s a great watch for you, and you bring it back safe.” That’s the watch I wore on all my missions. So when we got to the interrogation center – I’m jumping ahead a little bit; well, I’ll tell you the watch story first. No, I can’t. They threw us all in cells, and first they’d run the temperature way up, then they’d turn it off, but I was only there two days as I remember, maybe overnight or two nights. And then they brought me in to a guy to interrogate me. We had seen a movie that showed just what to expect when you were going to be interrogated, and it would be laughable because it was just like that if you weren’t so scared. They told us, you just give your name, rank and serial number. Don’t try and outsmart them or get in a conversation with them.
I stood my ground. Finally, he brings in a guy, and he says to me, “Lieutenant, you don’t have to tell me anything. I know all about you. Your mother is Lillian Seligman. She lives in Rochester, New York, with your sister. She lives at 47 Rutledge Drive. You were born and raised in Chicago. You worked for Goldblatt’s.” They had a dossier on me that was better than the Americans had; knew everything about me. “You were with the 445th Bomb Group. Your mission was to Kassel. You were the 702nd Squadron. Your squadron command was Lieutenant Colonel Jones.” So I didn’t have to answer anything, I just kept giving them my name. “Now, all you have to tell us is, where were you flying that mission and what was your target?” I’d say, “Name, Ira P. Weinstein, first lieutenant, 0694482.” So finally he got pissed off. Then he says to me, “You are not an American. You’re a German. Your name is Weinstein. You were my neighbor in Frankfurt. You’re a shpy.” If you’re a shpy, you’re gonna get shot. I didn’t give. Finally, he calls in a guy, a guy comes in, about six feet tall, in a black body suit with a rubber hose. Then the interrogator’s asking me questions and this guy’s slapping that hose. But we saw that in the movie. I was plenty scared, believe me, I wasn’t gonna laugh like I can now. And he finally says to me, “Well, if you don’t want to tell us what we want to know I’m going to have to turn you over to this guy.” I stuck with it, and finally he says to the guy, “Take him out of here,” and I went back to my room.
The next day I was out of there. However, when I went back to my room – oh, and then they sent in a German officer in a flying suit with a lot of ribbons, he came in and he said, “Cigarette, Lieutenant?”
I said, “No, I don’t smoke.”
So he sits down on the couch. He says, “You know, you’re a flying officer. I’m a flying officer. I’d just like to talk to you about what it was like. Can we discuss it?”
I said, “No.”
“Well, you know, we’re compatriots.”
“Sorry.”
So he left. Then they took all our clothes, and they gave us a shower and a delousing. I was marching up the hall to the shower, a group was coming out of the showers, and there was a guy there from New Zealand. He says to me, “Hey, Yank. If you’ve got anything you don’t want them to take, get rid of it now because they’re confiscating everything.”
I still had this watch on. I took the watch off – it was on an expansion band – and I threw it to him. I said, “Here, you keep the watch.”
“Okay.”
Two days later I’m in a boxcar in Frankfurt, in the marshaling yards, and the RAF comes to bomb the marshaling yards. It’s night, and the Germans lock us in the cars and they go to the air raid shelters. On the next track is another set of boxcars with POWs. There’s the New Zealand guy. He sees me. He says, “Hey, Yank, you want your watch back?”
I said, “Yeah.”
So he threw the watch through the slats – and I caught it. And I kept that watch all during the time that I was a POW and I brought it back. That story is in Roger Freeman’s book. But now I’m going to elaborate it on it and write it up for the 8th Air Force [newsletter], The Watch that Went to War.
Aaron Elson: You wound up at Stalag Luft 1?
Ira Weinstein: Yes. Once I got on that train in Frankfurt and I knew I was on the way to the POW camp, we sort of felt that we were out of it to a point. I don’t know if anybody told you this story: The little town of Barth where they emptied us out of the train, maybe it was five kilometers from the camp. And we were all marching there and some kid about 12 years old pitchforked me in the ass. So I have two Purple Hearts. One, I had been wounded prior to that, and I’ve got one that’s on my ass. And we finally come up over a hill, and we hear a terrible sound. “Ohhhhh, Water! Wa-a-ater!” We thought, what the hell are we getting into?
What used to happen is, as soon as we’d hear the train in the camp pull into town, we knew it was more POWs. Every guy would run out of the barracks, line up along the fence where they had to come in and start wailing. So you’d come in and think, “What are we getting into?” That was a way of greeting the new POWs.
Then I walk in the gate, and there’s my brother-in-law. Actually it was my brother-in-law’s brother, standing there. He’d been shot down six weeks before me. He said, “What are you doing here?”
I said, “I came to tell my sister you’re all right.”
And then he wound up in the same barracks I did.
I don’t know if anybody told you about the fact that all the Jews were segregated in the camp at some point. And when they moved all the Jews into a separate compound, they didn’t take me out of my room. They just missed me. So I went to Zemke, who was the CO at that time, and I told him, “Listen, they didn’t move me. I’m Jewish.”
He said, “Shut up. Go back to your room. You don’t know how lucky you are.”
So I never was with all the rest of those guys all that time. But across the fence I used to talk to them. By coincidence, there was a guy by the name of Don Epstein who was a good friend of mine in Chicago, who became my brother-in-law’s co-pilot. What a small world it is. So we’d be talking all the time.
Aaron Elson: What details can you remember about visiting the families of the crew members who were killed?
Ira Weinstein: Well, first of all I had to find out where they lived, and I got all that information through the War Department. And I got on the train or a plane, wherever I could; they were all over the country. I called them first and told them who I was and I was on the same mission as your son, and if you would like, I’d like to come and visit you and talk to you. Of course they were delighted. And it was terrible. For me it was difficult. You’ve got to remember, I was 24 years old. I wasn’t an adult yet.
Aaron Elson: Did they show you pictures?
Ira Weinstein: Sure. Lots of tears. What can I say? And the other thing is, am I going to tell them their kid was burned to a crisp when I buried him? So, it was a horrible experience. I still think about those interviews. Every now and then I wake up at night. It was not something you forget.
Aaron Elson: Were there wives, or were these parents?
Ira Weinstein: They were all parents. I was an old man in those days, 24. Most of these kids were 18, 19 years old. I remember when we’d go on a mission, we’d come off the mission, they used to meet us right at the airplane, before we went into briefing or interrogation, with a shot of whiskey. I had five kids on my crew who never drank. I used to drink their whiskey. By the time I got to briefing, they never knew what I was telling them about.
Aaron Elson: Before the Kassel mission, did you have any close scrapes?
Ira Weinstein: Oh, sure. The day we went to Berlin – first of all, nobody wanted to go to Berlin. I think it was 13 hours of flying. And it’s well-fortified, not only with fighters but flak. The day they told us, we went in the briefing room and they pulled the cover off the map and you saw that red string go up to Berlin, that wasn’t a very good moment. I flew that mission with my regular crew. I think that was my seventh or eighth mission. By that time I had enough under my belt to know what was going on. I’d seen enough airplanes shot down or cracked up.
I don’t know if we lost any planes that day or not. I think we lost one or two, but the flak was unbelievable. You could have let the wheels down on the flak and just taxied over it. The sky was absolutely black, and you could hear that stuff – when the flak used to hit the side of the airplane, it was like a wet broom hitting it. And then you’d hear “bing! Bing!” It’s all the little pieces, it was a sound you don’t forget. There were parachutes coming out of the airplanes like popcorn. Planes blowing up in the air and going down, it was incredible. That was a tough mission. I had a couple other tough missions.
You know, every mission was terrible. You’re either a damn fool or a damn liar if you weren’t scared, but you went. It was easier to go on the mission than it was to say, “I won’t fly anymore. I’m a coward.” And that’s what most guys did. And I was shot once before. One of the jobs of the bombardier when I was just a bombardier was to take the bomb strike pictures. So I dropped my bombs, and I turned around to get the camera, and as I turned around away from the bomb sight, away from the glass window, an 88-millimeter shell came up through there and took the whole front of that glass window off. But I had my back to that because I was trying to get the camera, so the back of my head was covered with little shards of Plexiglas. I didn’t know I’d been hit, but I put my hand back there and my hand came away full of blood. I thought my head was blown off. For years, literally years later, every now and then I’d be scratching the back of my head and a little piece of Lucite would come to the surface. That day, when we came back to the field, we had a badly wounded airplane, and we sent off the red flares so we could come in first. When we landed, I crawled back up – when we landed the bombardier didn’t stay in the nose, you had to come back into the airplane. But that day, as soon as the plane was taxiing, I crawled back up in there and I got out of the airplane through that big opening in the airplane. The colonel said, “I thought for sure you were dead, Weinstein.” So every mission was a trauma. I had a lot of easy ones; when we were getting ready for D-Day we had some missions around the coast that were like maybe four or five hours total. No flak. No fighters. We had a few gravy trains. I thought the one to Kassel was gonna be a gravy train, and it would have been, if we didn’t swerve off from where we were supposed to be. I knew we did that. I was a navigator. The minute I saw them turn away, because we weren’t leading the 8th Air Force that day. I was flying as a schnook. I really didn’t have an official place on the airplane, because they were dropping that day on the plane ahead of them. When their bombs used to go out, you used to toggle the bombs. So I had no official duty on the plane that day. Not as a navigator. But by training, I always looked for the initial point. I see the rest of the Air Force is going this way and we’re going this way. It was a navigation screwup. And the guy who was leading us in, our group commander that day, everybody called in and said, “We’re making the wrong turn.”
“Stick with it,” he said. Pretty costly mistake.
Aaron Elson: Did your plane have a name?
Ira Weinstein: Remember, that was not my plane. And I almost never flew in the same plane, so I don’t remember if it had a name or not. And my memory is not like George’s. If I had a memory like that, I’d remember what was painted on the side of that airplane. But I took all the guns out of that plane when the Germans had us out there. Do you know how heavy it is to carry a 50-caliber machine gun? They must weigh 40, 50 pounds. I’m a little guy. And I had to carry two of them, one on each shoulder, down from that hill where the plane went down.
You do funny things when you’re young. It’s different, when you look back at it at this age, I couldn’t lift one of those guns now. No, I don’t know what the name of the airplane was, and I didn’t know the names of any of the guys until I came back. I’ve talked to the navigator, the guy that saved my life. He’s a very influential architect in St. Louis. Not too interested in doing anything about it. When we had our reunion in St. Louis, I called him and I said, “Eric, you’ve got to come to the reunion.”
“Well, my wife and I are busy.” I think they’re big-time socialites in St. Louis. He and his wife did come and have a drink with me and we talked, and I thanked him, but they didn’t stay for the banquet. They didn’t want anything to do with it. I took him to lunch. That was it. I called him and I said, “Listen, I want to take you to dinner.” He wouldn’t let me take him to dinner. I said, “I’ll take you to lunch.” He said, “Okay.” So he picked me up and we went to a nice restaurant. And every now and then I call him. Usually I call him on Sept. 27th. And he’s still around.
My original crew finished all their missions and went home. I flew with that crew my first 11 or 15 missions. That was the crew that I trained with in the States. I’m in touch with them, the ones that are still alive. And the crew that I flew with on the Kassel mission, there were only three of us alive. One guy I’ve never been able to find. His name was also Smith. So there was Eric Smith, the other Smith, myself, and Donald that got out of the airplane. So six guys were actually left in the plane when it went down. But we’ve never been able to locate the other Smith, and Donald of course was dead.
Aaron Elson: When you came home, how did you get into the advertising business?
Ira Weinstein: When I was in high school, I went to an all boys’ school with 5,000 students, like a college. A technical school. In that school we used to print a daily newspaper. We were the only school in the United States that did this. We made the engravings, we set the type, we printed the sheet, we edited the sheet, all in school. And I was the editor of the paper eventually. So I had the smell of ink in my blood. My father had gone broke during the Depression, and when I got out of school I had a year’s scholarship to Northwestern University, because I was the editor of this paper and I was on the wrestling team. So I went there for one semester, but I didn’t have the clothes to wear. I had to take streetcars and elevated trains and buses to get to school, an hour and a half a day to get there, and then come home. And I wasn’t dressed properly. I had hand-me-down clothes. I didn’t belong there. And there weren’t very many Jews at Northwestern in those days. They had a quota in those days. I told my father I want to get a job. My father at that time was selling liquor for [a distillery that was owned by Seagram’s]. He was selling a lot of liquor to a big department store chain in Chicago, and he was very friendly not only with the liquor buyer but with the guy that was the advertising director. My father told him about me, and he said, “Tell him to come over and see me, I’ll get him a job in the advertising department.” That’s how I got that job. I was just a runner, like an office boy, and inside of a year I had a division all of my own. I was 17 years old, I had a $600,000 budget under my wing, and I worked there until I saw that we were going to be in the war, and I got an appointment as an Aviation Cadet and I quit my job. But then they didn’t call me. In the meantime, my father had died – he had a coronary before I even enlisted – and my mother and my sister went to live in Rochester, New York, where my other sister lived. I moved in with the family of my best friend at that time. He had enlisted with me. He had two years of college already; he went to Chicago University.
Now I didn’t know what to do, so I signed on at the University of Chicago and I took some courses while I was waiting. Then eventually I got the call and then I went.
That’s how I got into advertising. But when I got out there was no way I was going to go back into retail advertising. So I went looking for a job.
You have to know, I came out of the service, and being a POW, I had no clothes. I came back to Chicago in the same clothes I’d been wearing for a year.
There was a tailor – I’ve got to tell you two stories. There was a tailor in Chicago, I think it was something-something Price, that made the best uniforms. So I went there, and I had a year’s back pay coming. I had a lot of money in my pocket, about $6,000. I went to the tailor and I had a set of beautiful pants made. So I was really cocky, running around in this uniform, and I had a couple of rows of ribbons, I thought I won the war all by myself. I went to look for a job, in uniform.
In all, I was in the service about three and a half, four years, and I never had a day’s leave that was an accounted-for day. If I transfer from one place to another I might get ten days en route, but I never had a leave assigned to me as a leave. So I had 60 days of leave coming to me. Then they gave every POW 60 days of leave. And then they used to send all the POWs to Florida or somewhere for R-and-R. My wife and I had a telegram to come to Florida for two weeks to stay at the Saxony Hotel no less. You know what that was like in those days? For two weeks. So we’re all packed, we’re ready to leave the next day, I get a telegram: “Your trip to Florida has been canceled because we’re returning the hotels to civilian use, and in lieu thereof you have 60 days’ leave with pay.” So now I had 180 days’ leave with pay, including flying pay, and the reason I would get flying pay is I would go out to some airfield every month and I’d beg some guy to take me along on a ride, and sign me in, and I’d have four hours of flight time so I could get paid for it. So I’m making about $600 a month; that was a lot of money in those days.
Now I was going around looking for a job. I’d go look for a job and I’d tell them where I worked already – agencies, I wanted to be in an advertising agency – and I’d tell them I wanted to get a job, and I got turned down everywhere. First of all, I worked for a company called Goldblatt’s. They were a very schlocky department store; they were the forerunners of the discount business. Very, very successful, but if you worked there, you were like nothing. But they paid high prices for their help, and I learned a lot. So I was going to move to Rochester where my sister and brother-in-law were, and both my brother-in-law and I were ice cream freaks, we still are. I was there one day visiting them, and we decided we’re going to open up an ice cream store and make better ice cream, like Haagen-Dazs ice cream, a better quality ice cream. So I came back to Chicago because the company that made all that equipment was in Chicago, it’s called Mills Supply Company or something, and I really didn’t have my heart in it. I didn’t want to leave Chicago. I was born and raised in Chicago, I had all my friends there, but this is what I was going to do. And I was on the street one day and I bumped into an older guy who had worked at Goldblatt’s, and he wanted to hear all about my experiences.
So I’m telling him my stories and he says, “You know what? I have a friend. You ought to go see him. He’s got a little one-man agency. Maybe he can use you.” Sure enough, I went to see this guy, and he didn’t want to hear about anything, he only wanted me to tell him my war stories. He took me to lunch, and when we came back I told him, “I need a job.”
He said, “I really don’t need any help, but I have an extra office here, and I have a secretary. Why don’t you [take the extra office]?”
I’m still in uniform, you have to understand. I came back to the States in June I believe it was. I had till December. And you couldn’t go out of uniform; the war was still on. So I decided that’s what I would do. Then I would walk to the top of the furniture mart and walk my way down. I’d go in every showroom, “Hi, my name is Ira Weinstein. I’ll be out of the service in a few days. If you need any advertising, call me. Here’s my card.” And I started doing some business, while I was still in uniform. When I got out of uniform, I got very aggressive, and I was good at it. I worked all day hustling business, and then I’d be downtown all night doing the work; I was all by myself. And I had an arrangement with this guy to pay him a percentage of whatever I billed. So that worked out really good and that’s how I started that business. It worked out well for me. Once again, mazel, you had to be lucky.
Aaron Elson: Did you have any children?
Ira Weinstein: Yes. I have two daughters and two grandsons. One daughter’s not married. She’s in Milan right now. She’s a very, very, very successful interior designer. I’ve got all the magazines she’s been in, she’s being written up all the time. She’s famous. And she’s in Milan at the Italian Furniture Show. And my other daughter and my son-in-law own and run my business, and I have nothing to do with it. They don’t ask me and I don’t offer. But you know, it’s a different business now, it’s all on the web sites and electronics. I own the building that we’re in, so we have 6,800 square feet there, because we had a big photo studio; we had a six-man art department. We had six or seven copywriters. It’s all done on the computer now. So half the building is empty, because it’s all changed. And I’m not as good at it as they are anyhow; they’re really computer savvy.
I have a good family. My daughters both live near me. My wife died four years ago, but my kids are very supportive of me. They’re terrific. So, that’s the life I’ve led. It’s been a good one.
You know, there have been plenty of stories written about the POW camps. You want to write about the mission, and I think I gave you all the mission stuff I can think of. I have a lot of stories about the POW camp, wonderful, wonderful stories. And those I have on tape. I could tell you one little thing that had something to do with the mission. Our little nissen hut that we slept in was maybe a half a mile or a mile away from the mess hall. But to get there you had to have a bicycle. So everybody had a bicycle. Most of the bikes were 26-inch bikes. I can’t ride a 26-inch, it’s too big for me; I’d have to ride it practically standing up. So I went to the local bicycle shop. The British were terrific to the Americans. I went in there, I introduced myself, and I told him, “Listen, I need a 24-inch bike.” And said to me, “Lieutenant, the war is on. I only get three or four bikes a month. I fix bikes, but where am I gonna get a 24-inch bicycle?”
I said, “Listen, that’s what I need. I’ll give you the money now, and you order in a 24-inch bike. Whenever it comes, I’ll take it.” So I paid him for the bike, I forget how much it was. It was the day before I got shot down. He called me and said, “I have your bike, Lieutenant.” I never got the bike. And I never got anything back that was in my footlocker. I’ll tell you what I did. I wasn’t supposed to do it. We used to shoot the bomb strike, that was part of our job. I would always shoot one roll of film for Uncle Sam, and I’d shoot one roll for Ira Weinstein. I had a roll of film for every mission I was on in my footlocker. Of course that was confiscated. But I never got back anything else that was in my footlocker. Nothing.
Aaron Elson: What kind of things did you lose?
Ira Weinstein: Oh, binoculars. I had money. I had all my uniforms. Stuff that we used to collect in those days. A piece of the lucite that was from the day I got hit. My shaving stuff. I had the best uniforms, because when I went to get my uniforms made in Texas, they sent a guy there, I think we got a $600 allowance when we graduated. A lot of guys bought a crappy uniform. I bought the best stuff there was. I never got anything back. Not a tie. Not a handkerchief. No coats, no jackets. I had a friend – actually, this kid was my office boy on my first job, and he enlisted the same time I did. I went overseas, and he was a supply officer at another air depot. So I went down to visit him one day, and I see he’s wearing an A-2 jacket with a gorgeous mouton fur collar. I said, “Hey, where did you get that jacket?”
“Oh, that’s the new issue.”
I said, “I’ve got to have a jacket like that.” He had a friend who was a supply officer, and he said, “Come on, I’ll get you a jacket.” I went down there and sure enough I got a jacket. And the way you’d go visit on these other air bases is you’d wait till somebody wanted to take a plane up for something, and they’d drop it off at the airfield. So I got a flight back to the base, and I get out of the airplane, and the commanding officer’s standing there. He says, “Weinstein, where’d you get that jacket? That’s not GI issue.”
I said, “Colonel. That’s the new A-2 jackets.”
He says, “Where’d you get it?”
I told him. He got right in the airplane I got off of and took off. He went to get himself a jacket. That jacket I never got back. I never got anything.
Aaron Elson: Did you have a good luck charm or anything that you carried on the missions?
Ira Weinstein: No, not really.
Aaron Elson: Were you superstitious at all?
Ira Weinstein: I don’t think, no. Yeah, we all were. There were certain little things you would do before you got in the airplane, how you got in the airplane. Always where I set my parachute down, yeah. We all did things like that. And when I was in Colorado Springs where I got married, my wife and I were once up in the Garden of the Gods hiking around, and I found a horseshoe, a real little rusted horseshoe, and I put that in a frame with her pictures, and somehow or other that frame and horseshoe, I guess I didn’t take it overseas, that was returned to me. I still have that. I don’t remember being superstitious. But we did do certain things, there’s no doubt about it.
Aaron Elson: What would you do to personalize the nissen hut?
Ira Weinstein: Nothing. Most guys had up pinup pictures. I had this horseshoe with my wife’s pictures on it.
Aaron Elson: You had that in the hut?
Ira Weinstein: I think I must have. I cannot tell you honestly. If I did, why did I get that back when I didn’t get anything else back? I must have just had some pictures. Listen, first of all, you had this much room. You had a bed and a footlocker, period. I’ll tell you a nice story that you’ll get a kick out of. When they used to cook mutton in that mess hall, you could smell it. And I hated that smell. I didn’t mind GI food, I liked those green scrambled eggs, I liked everything about it, but I couldn’t stand the mutton. One of my jobs was to take the bomb strike pictures down to headquarters, so I had a jeep with a driver to take me down to headquarters with the bomb strike pictures and to bring me back. The mess hall sergeant used to love rabbit, and England was being overrun with rabbits, so I would be going on to headquarters, I used to sit on the bumper of the jeep and I’d shoot rabbits. I’d bring him back a dozen rabbits. When I’d bring him the rabbits, he used to give me a can – you know the shape of the Spam can, it’s like sort of a diamond shape – he’d give me a can of steak. That’s the way they used to pack them. Prime steak.
Aaron Elson: Cooked?
Ira Weinstein: No, raw. You’d take it out of the can, that’s what they used to cook the meat. And we had those little potbelly stoves, I’d get that stoked up so the top of it was really white hot, and I’d cut this meat up and I’d make myself steaks on top of the stove. In exchange for the rabbits.
Aaron Elson: When you were at Tibenham, did you have any contact with Jimmy Stewart?
Ira Weinstein: I forgot to tell you, early in the game Jimmy Stewart flew as a command pilot in our airplane. We were the lead plane that day. That was before I was on a pathfinder crew. And we were all pretty excited about it, and a little nervous. I had flown other missions where we had a command pilot on board, and they just sat between the pilot and the co-pilot on a little box; they didn’t fly the airplane. They were there as observers, or to get the flight time and another medal. So Stewart was up there. Other guys would be on the intercom, “Lieutenant, is everything all right down there? Have you got your bomb sight set? Do you know where we’re at?” This would drive me crazy. Stewart never said a word. Before we got on the initial point, he called down and said, “Lieutenant, are you all set? Everything all right down there?”
“Everything’s fine, Colonel.” [Jimmy Stewart was a captain at the time, but later became a colonel.]
“Go get ’em.”
That’s all. As soon as we said “Bombs away,” he came on the intercom and said, “Good show, boys. Let’s go home.” That was all he ever said. He was so calm, compared to these other guys. He was a real gentleman. He was a real soldier, and they brought him to headquarters I don’t think just because he was Jimmy Stewart. I don’t know how many missions he completed. I’m sure somewhere there’s a record of it. But he started with the 445th. I didn’t. I came as a replacement crew. I think we got there in January or February.
Aaron Elson: He left in March, to go to the 453rd Bomb Group.
Ira Weinstein: I thought he went right to headquarters. Maybe.
There was also a fellow by the name of Donald Klopfer, from Random House. He was the S-2, and he had a big library of books. He and one other officer had a whole nissen hut to themselves; he was a major. I was always over there borrowing books, so he and I became good friends. And he had a great apartment in London. Sometimes when I went to London I’d go tell him, “Major, I’m going to London tomorrow for three days.”
“Here’s the key to my apartment. If I’m not going to be there you might as well use it.”
But I don’t remember a lot. It drives me nuts. George, he’s got a memory. He told me what I was wearing that day. And I told him, “I don’t think you remember, George, because I don’t think that’s what I was wearing.” But he’s unbelievable.
Aaron Elson: Is there anything else about Jimmy Stewart that you can remember?
Ira Weinstein: No, I didn’t have anything to do with him. I know everybody, without fail, said he was a great guy. No airs. He was a soldier, like the rest of us. I don’t remember any more about him. And then in later years, once he got sick, I guess he came to a few of the first reunions. See, I never went to any, I wasn’t interested. By the time I went, he was already not well. But he’d always send a telegram wishing us all well; his secretary would send it. He had a lady that took care of all of his affairs.
I never liked Babe Ruth, I didn’t like Jack Dempsey, I was never a Boy Scout, but we had a guy in our prison camp by the name of Colonel Spicer who if I ever had a hero it was him. Him and my cousin that gave me the watch. You know, they brought Max Schmeling to our camp. I have a whole story I wrote about it. The Germans brought him there, I don’t know for what purpose, to flaunt him to us. He rode in on a big touring convertible and he got up in the back of the car and he gave his little speech, and the guys went up to him and asked for his autograph, it was terrible. Guys treated him like he was a hero. Spicer, who was the commanding officer in our compound – when the Germans went to count us, they had a big platform that the German officer would stand on while the peons were counting us – he got up on that platform and gave a fiery speech about fraternizing with the enemy, and at the end he said: “I want every man in this compound to get back in the barracks. This guy’s a traitor. He’s a Nazi.” And they put him in solitary, with orders to shoot him but they didn’t shoot him. And he stayed in solitary until the end of the war, it was like five months. So what we used to do – every now and then some guy would do something knowing he’d get thrown in the hoosegow for a couple of days, and then they’d bring him cigarettes and extra food, talk to him. He was my hero. What a guy he was. His sister lives in Winnetka, which is right near where I live, and when this big story about me in the paper came out she called me up and said, “Did you know my brother, Colonel Spicer?”
I said, “Not only did I know him, Ma’am, but he is my hero. I never had a hero in my life, but Colonel Spicer’s my hero.” And I told her all about it.
I’m on the speaker’s bureau down here. In Florida they’re terrible. You can’t go to the school direct, you have to go to the local superintendent to get approval from him, so not many guys will do it. It’s a rigamarole. One day another guy and I got a call, they’d like us to come and talk to them. He was in Bataan. Very nice guy. How he’s alive, I’ll never know. I don’t know how any of those survivors from Bataan can be alive. I mean, we didn’t have it rough compared to what they had. We never had any physical abuse. So we went to this school with our letter of introduction. They’re very formal with it down here, you’ve got to have the letter. And we got one from the VA. In Chicago, I go to a school, the teacher says “Come on in.” I didn’t have to ask anybody. Anyhow, we went to this school and the superintendent asks us to come to his office first. So we went in there, and he says to us, “Now, you gentlemen understand, you’re not to say anything wrong about the Germans or Germany or about the Japanese.” He said, “You have to not say anything that would be misunderstood.”
I said, “Sir, all we’re going to do is talk about the way it was.”
“Well,” he said, “if you’re going to talk about being a prisoner and it’s got something in there that your treatment was bad or something that they did, that would be unacceptable.”
I said, “Really? Come on, Harry, let’s go,” and we walked out. And never gave the speech.
During the Vietnam War I don’t have to tell you I was a hawk. People would start, “I’ll send my son to Canada,” and they’d say, “It’s not a real war.”
I’d say, “It is a real war. It’s not being fought like a real war but it’s being fought by your government. Your government that keeps you safe and alive wants him to go there.”
Well, you don’t know the arguments I got into, and I wasn’t very popular. We’d go to a dinner party, before we’d leave the house, and you have no idea what I was like about it in those days. First of all, I wanted them to drop the atom bomb. My wife would say to me, “Please, Ira, not tonight, don’t get into it.” And now I get into it with guys about our illustrious draft-dodging president.
I’m proud of what I did. In my other interview that guy asks me if I ever had any guilt feelings about what I did. I said, “No, I never thought about it. I knew what was going on there, and as a matter of fact if I could get my airplane back with a bunch of bombs on it, I’d go drop some over again.” The Germans, given a chance they’ll start it all over again.
Aaron Elson: Did you go to Korea?
Ira Weinstein: No. They came for me for Korea. I had already had two kids, I had a house, I had a wife, I had a nice little business going, and I was flying out of O’Hare Field with the reserves there. My best friend, whose house I lived in till I got out of the service, he was a navigator in the South Pacific. He also was in the same outfit. And we were having fun; we’d go out there on a weekend, we’d fly to Dubuque, Iowa, fly to Colorado Springs. He was a partner already in a big law firm, the third biggest one in Chicago, and the head partner in that law firm was the head of the Fifth Army Air Force in Chicago, so he was our commanding officer. One day I’m in the office, the receptionist comes in, and she says, “Mr. Weinstein, there’s a guy out there in uniform who wants to see you.” So I thought it was one of my buddies; I had a lot of friends who stayed in the service, who used to come through Chicago and stay with us or we’d go out to dinner. So I thought it’s one of my buddies. This guy comes in, shows some identification, and he says: “Lieutenant, get your affairs in order. You’re going to Korea.”
I’m a bombardier. What do they want me for in Korea? So he says, “You’ve got probably six to eight weeks to get ready. I’m just here to warn you about it.” He no sooner left than the phone rings. It was my buddy. I said, “Yeah, he was here to see me too.”
I said, “What the hell are we gonna do?”
He said, “I’m waiting to get in to see the old man now. I’ll call you back.” He called me back in about 15 minutes. He said, “You know what? You resigned two weeks ago. The old man signed the papers. You’ve got to get over here and sign them yourself.” Otherwise I’d have been in Korea.
In our Illinois historical group, we have four guys who flew in all three wars. Flew in bombers, came back, went on fighters, and then went to jets. Flew in all three wars. That’s something. You know, my ladyfriend now, she says, “You should have stayed in the Army. You loved it.”
