Time Code

Speaker

Narrative

00:00

Galazzi

This is an oral history interview conducted for the Witness to War: Serving a Nation project at Nauset Regional High School on Cape Cod, Massachusetts. For the sake of this interview, please state your full name and community in which you now reside.

00:14

Dr. Sokoloff

Um, my name is Martin Sokoloff.

00:18

Galazzi

And your, um, where you live?

00:20

Dr Sokoloff

I live at um… (Laughter) oh dear.

00:26

Galazzi

Just yeah, just say Yarmouth is fine. (Laughter, outside voice “Mayflower Place”)

Um so, could you please first tell us which, um, branch and rank you were in in the Army? Your branch of service?

00:41

Dr. Sokoloff

Oh, I was in the Army Signal Corp.

00:44

Galazzi

Okay, and how many years were you deployed?

00:46

Dr Sokoloff

I was, uh, in the Army for four years

00:51

Galazzi

Okay

00:52

Dr Sokoloff

And… and enjoyed every minute of it. (Outside laughter)

00:59

Galazzi

Um, so could you tell me a little bit about your service? For example, were you enlisted, did you, um, enlist or were you drafted?

01:06

Dr Sokoloff

I enlisted.

01:08

(Outside voice)

Tell her when. That was interesting. (Long pause)

01:12

Galazzi

When did you enlist?

01:14

(Outside voice)

The day after Pearl Harbor.

01:18

Galazzi

You enlisted after Pearl Harbor?

01:20

Dr Sokoloff

Yes, I enlisted in, uh, February of ‘43, and, uh, enjoyed every minute of it.

01:31

Galazzi

Why did you enlist?

01:33

Dr Sokoloff

Well, because I felt I would help our company, uh, country out.

01:39

Galazzi

And, um, what did your parents think about you enlisting?

01:43

Dr Sokoloff

Uh, I never asked them. (Laughter)

01:48

(Outside voice)

I was more involved at that point, we were already married then. (Laughter)

01:53

Galazzi

And um so,

01:54

(Outside voice)

I was not happy. (Laughter)

01:57

Galazzi

So were you, were you excited to join or were you a little bit scared?

02:02

Dr Sokoloff

Well I was in the reserve for a couple of years before I, uh, came into regular service, so, uh, I already had a, uh, pretty good idea what it was going to be like. (Clears throat)

02:19

Galazzi

And, um, so was it in the reserve that you decided to go into the Army Signal Corp or when you enlisted was that how you joined the Army Signal Corp?

02:27

Dr Sokoloff

Well I had been to an Army Signal Corp school before I went into active service, so there wasn’t too much question about what I’d be doing.

02:38

Galazzi

And what was it that you were doing?

02:40

Dr Sokoloff

Well it started out as radio repair, and then to radar repair, and then ultra-high frequency (pause) material.

02:50

Galazzi

And, um, how did, were you taught that in school that in the United States or, um, did you kind of learn it is as you go?

02:58

Dr Sokoloff

Oh no, I went to regular schools. Radio schools, radar schools, and so forth.

03:04

(Outside voice)

That was the army though, army schools.

03:07

Galazzi

Okay, and um, before you were deployed for Europe, what were you told about what was going on there?

03:13

Dr Sokoloff

Not very much, uh, the Army doesn’t tell the people what they are going to do very often.

03:23

Galazzi

So did you have, um, any knowledge of what you were going to be seeing or facing, um, when you were fighting?

03:33

Dr Sokoloff

Yeah, I was, I was in radio repair. It was a, there were, uh, essentially three schools, one was for, uh, repairing a usual radio or equipment. Another was for a radar school (clears throat) which was at that point hush, hush, hush, no, no talking about it. And the last one, waited till we got across the ocean to tell us what we were going to do.

04:16

Galazzi

And can you tell me what they told you? What did they tell you you were doing?

04:21

Dr Sokoloff

They told us we were going to be radar repairmen and that we were not to communicate what we did or anything about it, uh, with anybody else.

04:36

Galazzi

And what radars were you repairing? Were they like for serving people or just, um, like stations?

04:44

Dr Sokoloff

There were several kinds of radar at that point. Uh, one was gun laying in which, like aiming a gun, except you do it electronically. And uh, one was IFF, Identification Friend or Foe, in which you had to try to identify oncoming aircraft. (Clears throat) The last was called gun laying in which you, you learned how to aim and fire missiles.

05:22

Galazzi

And where were you doing that?

05:25

Dr Sokoloff

New Jersey, for Fort Monmouth, Camp Murphy, Florida, uh. (Outside noise) Davis, California, Stewart, California. Uh, I did lots of travelling.

05:47

Galazzi

Sounds like it! Um, so when you were in Europe, where were the places, the countries that you traveled to?

05:55

Dr Sokoloff

I’m sorry.

05:56

Galazzi

In Europe, where did you, what countries did you go to?

05:59

Dr Sokoloff

Oh my! I was in a company that was separate from our main outfit. We were a mobile team and we traveled all over. And Europe was our, our base and we were in England, France, Germany, Holland, Luxembourg. All of those countries. But sometimes for just a couple of hours and then we would shift back to our side again. (Clears throat)

06:39

Galazzi

And, um, what were you, were you doing anything beyond, um, radar repair in Europe, or was that your main focus?

06:48

Dr Sokoloff

Well, uh, we were also, uh (pause) in, uh, (clears throat) in the ultra-high frequency. That’s what turned into commercial radar today, uh, not commercial radar, commercial TV. That was the beginning of TV, except it was done through radio, rather than through television.

07:25

Galazzi

And, um, in your time off were you able to talk to any of the civilians in any of the towns you were staying in?

07:34

Dr Sokoloff

Well for one thing in Germany when the war was still on, or it was on in a different form, we were not allowed to talk to local inhabitants and, uh, there was very little communication between us and the countries we visited.

08:04

Galazzi

And so why, why weren’t you allowed to talk to them?

08:08

Dr Sokoloff

Well I guess they were afraid we were still gonna communicate with them too much and spill the beans.

08:21

Galazzi

Okay, and what, um, what were they afraid that you were going to talk to about? Just the way that the radars worked? Or um like what was happening? What?

08:33

Dr Sokoloff

The army has a policy of not telling people very much and that was one of the things we were suffering from that, uh, that we did not have enough communication with the people.

08:51

Galazzi

So it was hard not to be able to talk to, um, other people about what you were doing?

08:56

Dr Sokoloff

Not about what we were doing, that was strictly forbidden, but to be able to talk to other, other people from other countries. We would have enjoyed that more.

09:11

(Outside voice)

Mart, tell them about Buchenwald.

09:14

Dr Sokoloff

Yeah uh … would you be interested in our experience with Buchenwald?

09:19

Galazzi

Yeah, well first of all what is Buchenwald?

09:25

Dr Sokoloff

Buchenwald is a… (Pause)

09:28

(Outside voice)

Concentration camp, wasn’t it?

09:31

Dr Sokoloff

I’m sorry.

09:32

(Outside voice)

Wasn’t it a concentration camp?

09:34

10:26

Dr Sokoloff

A concentration camp, a fairly new one. My team, we were five of us, and we had to provide communication for the higher echelon officers through radio, and uh ultra high frequency communication. And we would provide (pause) the communication for people like General Bradley, on that level, and we would set up our station in about three about hours, run it while the higher ups had telephone calls to make, and then we would tear down the station and move to another one. And on this one day we were set up and we tore down early in the morning, and we travelled for about oh, two and half hours to three hours from the station where we had been, and we were heading to a new station. We had gotten within about fifteen minutes within that station, we were stopped by a group of MP’s - military police. And they said we had to turn back and we said why can’t we go ahead, and he said well you will be talking German if you did. (Laugh)

11:19

Galazzi

Wow.

11:21

12:10

12:56

13:50

Dr Sokoloff

So, uh, they made us wait about ten or fifteen minutes before they allowed us into the camp that was there and, uh, we, uh, were riding along the edge of the concentration camp (swallow) and, uh, (pause) we were guarded by a group of men from, uh, different places in the country. I suspect they were gathered there together today. As uh, witnesses. So we were driving along the edge of the fence. And inside the fence were people who looked awful. They looked like they were going go to die any minute. They were begging for food and, uh, guards were taking the eating rations that we were fed and tossing packages over the fence. And as they did that, inmates of the concentration camp ran in groups to get the food and, uh, we just, uh, were terribly upset by this. Uh. I noticed that I was crying and a lot of the other guys that were crying also. It was just something you couldn’t tolerate on an even keel. Uh, after a while we were told to tear down our station and (pause) move to another location. And we never found out what happened to any of these men as individuals. (Clears throat) They looked awful. And I have never been able to resolve that for myself. Thththat they had to live that way, and die that way. (Pause) I think I have difficulty talking about it because of the power of the content.

14:32

Galazzi

Um I also heard that you met General Patton, can you tell me what that was like?

14:38

15:44

17:18

18:01

18:41

19:14

Dr. Sokoloff

*Laughs* I’ll never be able to forget that one. We went from station to station by truck, and everything piled in the back of the truck for us, for station, radio station. So we had lots of stuff and we were always out in the field someplace, we were never in a camp or station or anything like that. So uh we had been traveling around Europe setting up and tearing down the stations every few hours. That was when the third army was very active and that was Patton’s army. And uh, we were operating in a place right where the third army was located and we ran out of gasoline to operate are power equipment. So I went into the headquarters to get some gasoline and when I got into the our truck got into third army area we were trying to find out where the gasoline was and I was walking down the street and all of a sudden there was a group of officers coming down the street in the other direction. And uh one of them had 2 stars on his shoulder and guess who that was… Anyway he looked at me and at this point we had been out in the field for about a week no water to wash on, no necessities of life and he looked at me and said “Are you a GI or” uh I forget the name of the people that were released from prison. They were just civilians who were grabbed by the people around them. Anyways he asked if I were one of those or a GI and I said “ A GI sir” So he said “Get to the blank-blank office and sign up, tell them is sent you” Which I did, and when our company commander came around, because we would see him once a month for 2 minutes each, he said “I have instructions to court order you for being out of uniform”. I was not wearing a steel helmet. So the country commander said he instructed me to court martial how do you think I could do that? So I said “How about redistricting me to the company area?” which was all of Europe and reporting that as my court martial results, so he did, that was the last I heard of it. While he was court martialing me, he was wearing a pair of pants and a hat, that was my company commander. Not, not Patton.

19:39

Galazzi

Who was your company commander?

19:41

Dr. Sokoloff

Oh, at this point I don’t remember his name.

19:46

Galazzi

It’s okay. What was your happiest memory of the war?

19:55

Dr. Sokoloff

Happy memory?

19:56

Galazzi

Yeah. Were there any?

19:58

Galazzi

Do you have any fond memories during the war? Any memories that you look back on fondly or no?

20:11

Dr. Sokoloff

Well, uh there was my promotion. I was in charge of a radio station. And uh we were in the Army and operating a radio station and uh one morning I got a call from headquarters telling me I got a promotion. Corporal to Sergeant, which was very nice, and just then our power failed so we had no power to operate our stations. We were off the air and then we finally got hold of someone to fix the equipment. In the meantime the other officers were waiting for a telephone line to be able to talk. And we were in between the generals and the radio stations. The guy, my boss, on the other side of the line and said “Good Afternoon Private Sokoloff” We finally got it working and they restored my Sergeant. And that was the end of that.

22:06

Galazzi

What was a hard part? Like what was a difficulty for you in the military?

22:16

Dr. Sokoloff

I’m not quite sure I understand.

22:18

Galazzi

Um, what was a, um, a difficult moment in the war?

22:27

Dr. Sokoloff

Difficult moment?

22:28

Galazzi

Yes.

22:29

Dr. Sokoloff

I would say Buchenwald. That was the worst moment of my life.

22:40

Galazzi

And, when you hear the word "war" what comes to your mind?

22:51

Dr. Sokoloff

I don’t know, I see the big figures and it turns to my concept of war. It's two things. One is relationship with a whole bunch of guys and the other is, uh, going on my own and doing things I wouldn't of ordinarily done.

23:26

Galazzi

And um so looking back is there anything you would of done differently?

23:33

Dr. Sokoloff

Yeah I wish I hadn’t joined the army.

23:37

Galazzi

Really?

23:39

Dr. Sokoloff

No sorry. Seriously, I can’t say I enjoyed to be there, but I did understand why I had to be there.

23:54

Galazzi

Um so when you left how were you changed when you came back from the war? Did you notice anything different about yourself when you came back from Europe?

24:10

Dr. Sokoloff

Yes I think I was more mature when I came back from the war. I understood more about what life was all about and death is all about, and essentially that was the difference, I was able to take things from that whole background rather than take things from another and another.

24:41

Galazzi

Uh even though it was difficult to be in the war do you think it's part of who you are?

24:48

Dr. Sokoloff

Oh I don’t think so, I know so. Oh I uh believe for the way that people relate to me that I became much more mature.

25:06

Galazzi

So could you please tell me what it was like coming back to America after Europe?

25:13

Dr. Sokoloff

Well it was one shock uh… after being in military discipline for four years being free and seeing other people free to be able to say and do what they want without violating the law. Um, yeah I couldn't understand how come these people were all free without someone telling them what to do

26:13

Galazzi

Did it make you be grateful to be an American? Or feel like make you feel like you gave more people freedom in Europe?

26:34

Dr. Sokoloff

Well, um, who do you refer to as other people?

26:38

Galazzi

The people like in Germany, like in the concentration camp.

26:45

Dr. Cook-off

We didn't have any positive feelings towards, uh, the, uh, not only Germans but the people who were there.

27:16

Galazzi

How did you feel about Hitler?

27:19

Dr. Sokoloff

I’m sorry

27:20

Galazzi?

How did you feel about Hitler?

27:21

Dr. Sokoloff

You asked me that before….

27:22

Galazzi

Yeah… I… the video.

27:27

Dr. Sokoloff

Well I hated the guy and I can’t imagine saying anything stronger.

27:28

Galazzi

Looking back is there anything that you wish you would’ve done differently?

27:47

Dr. Sokoloff

Yeah I uh… was awarded a deal where my team was awarded sixteen turkeys for Thanksgiving for five men and you can see the odds in that. And I’m sorry that I ate so many turkeys and I’ve never been able to stand turkey since!

28:38

Galazzi

Um, if I told you that I was going to enlist what would you have to say to me?

28:48

Dr. Sokoloff

As a human being or a psychologist?

28:52

Galazzi

Anything.

28:59

Dr. Sokoloff

What I wouldn’t do? Is the question about what I wouldn’t do?

29:03

Galazzi

What would you tell me if I was going to enlist?

29:08

Dr. Sokoloff

Oh. Be careful, don’t go where there are explosions, be respectful of your superiors, but don’t grovel and, uh, try to have some fun while you’re at it.

29:43

Galazzi

Thank you. And is there anything else you would like to share with us? Is there anything you would like to tell us before the interview ends?

29:56

Dr. Sokoloff

Yeah. When you get the chance to have fun without hurting anyone, uh, do it.

30:13

Galazzi

Okay. Thank you.