Frank Towers

Frank Winchester Towers (born June 13, 1917 in Boston , † July 4, 2016 in Gainesville ) was an American officer. He became known as one of the liberators of the transport from Farsleben and was active as a contemporary witness in commemorating and commemorating the Holocaust .

Life

Towers was born to Everett and Jane Towers, née Winchester. When he was 10 years old he moved with his family to St. Johnsbury , Vermont and later worked as an insurance appraiser. In 1940 he joined the Vermont National Guard . During his military training he met the Florida native Mary Olive Thomas, whom he married on March 1, 1943 in Macon , Georgia .

Towers then belonged to the 30th US Infantry Division during World War II . On July 12, 1944, he and his unit landed on Omaha Beach in Normandy . With his unit he liberated Saint-Jean-de-Daye , was involved in the Allied Operation Cobra and was then deployed at Mortain , where a German counterattack was fended off. On 24./25. In July 1944, he survived a devastating, misdirected attack by the United States Army Air Forces in which more than 100 US soldiers were killed or wounded. He later took part in battles in Belgium , the Netherlands and Germany . Shortly before the war, on 13 April 1945 he was with his unit, the Regiment 743 of the 30th Infantry Division, north of Magdeburg , where he met the village Farsleben surprisingly on a train with about 2,500 Jewish prisoners, including 700 children, between Farsleben and the neighboring Zielitz had stopped. The train had left Celle on April 7th and was supposed to bring Jewish prisoners from the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp , on which the Allied forces were advancing, to the Theresienstadt concentration camp . The SS guards are said to have been ordered to destroy the train and drown the prisoners in the Elbe if the destination could not be reached . When the tanks of the 743 regiment approached, which had received information about the train, the prisoners ran up to the first tanks and shouted that they were Jews. The poor health of the prisoners was shocking for the US soldiers; around 20 people had already died on the train. Towers was a lieutenant and liaison officer for the division. Towers organized the logistics of rescuing the liberated and procured ambulances, jeeps and trucks. The liberated were evacuated from the combat area to Hillersleben . Towers was subsequently involved in the liberation of a forced labor camp near Magdeburg.

After the war, Towers stayed with his successor in Germany. He worked for the US armed forces in Frankfurt am Main . Three of his children were born there. He was discharged from the Army as a captain and settled with his family in Florida in the 1950s, where his fourth child was born in Gainesville. His career was as an office manager at the University of Florida until he retired in 1979.

As he grew older, he became involved in remembrance work and reported his experiences to students, educators, and community groups in the United States. He also visited Europe and was one of the founders of the organization Les Fleurs de la Mémoire, which looks after US soldiers' graves in France and Belgium. For example, he was in Germany on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the liberation and on April 18, 2005 he signed the Golden Book of the city of Magdeburg . In 2011 he was invited to Israel , where he met 55 of the 700 children on the train again. He later managed to contact several hundred of the survivors of the train. For the 70th anniversary, the participants met again in 2015. Towers was the last living of the liberators.

He was married and the father of three daughters and one son.

Awards

He received several awards for his military service, such as the Purple Heart and the Bronze Star with Oak Leaves . The Dutch Queen Beatrix awarded him the Order of Orange-Nassau and the French President made him a member of the Legion of Honor .

Web links

Individual evidence

personal data
SURNAME	Towers, Frank
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Towers, Frank Winchester
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	American officer
DATE OF BIRTH	June 13, 1917
PLACE OF BIRTH	Boston
DATE OF DEATH	4th july 2016
Place of death	Gainesville (Florida)

[1] Ofer Aderet, US Soldier Frank Towers, Who Rescued 2,500 Jews at End of WWII, Dies at 99 of July 24, 2016 at www.haaretz.com

[2] Sebastian Mantei, The Liberated Death Train from Bergen-Belsen on Deutschlandradio Kultur from May 6, 2016 on memoiresdeguerre.com