Gans, Werner Joachim (31457356): Difference between revisions

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'''Werner Joachim Gans''' (1923–18 December 2012) was a Mannheim-born U.S. Army Ritchie Boy who trained at [[Camp Ritchie]] as a German-language interrogator and document translator, then stayed on to instruct recruits. He later translated captured papers in Washington and spent most of the war interrogating German prisoners on an island facility in Boston Harbor. After the war he worked in business in Greater Boston and played cello with the Newton Symphony Orchestra and the Boston Civic Symphony.

Werner Joachim Gans was born in 1923 in Mannheim, Germany, into a comfortable household; his father, Moritz, ran S. Ganss Oil and Fat Manufacture. Werner started violin at six and cello at ten. Antisemitism made schooling harder at home, and at thirteen he was sent alone to Milan to study music. He returned when the family secured a transit visa to Cuba—his father, after paying a fine to recover a confiscated passport, sold insecticide there with one Spanish sales pitch—and they left Germany in October 1938, just before Kristallnacht. An aunt was later lost. Werner reached Boston in February 1939 at fifteen on a music-conservatory scholarship; his parents joined him more than two years later.

When the war began he was classed as an enemy alien by the Massachusetts draft board—“as if I wanted Hitler to win,” he later joked—and it took about eighteen months before he was cleared to serve. A hoped-for debut as a cellist with the Boston Pops was cut short when he was drafted. Inducted at Fort Devens, he went briefly to Camp Grant, Illinois, for medical-corps training before the Army sent him to [[Camp Ritchie]] as a native German speaker. There he trained in interrogation, document translation, and intelligence analysis, then stayed several months instructing new arrivals.

From Ritchie he spent three or four months in Washington, D.C., living in a hotel and working largely alone translating captured German naval and army documents. He remembered “APO 1142” and appears on [[P.O. Box 1142]] rosters, but he was unsure whether he ever worked physically at Fort Hunt. Most of the rest of the war he spent on Long Island in Boston Harbor, living on the island and interrogating German prisoners brought by boat—enlisted men and officers, with some scientists mixed in—using psychological pressure rather than force: the threat of Soviet captivity, fear for families in bombed cities, and at times his own identity as a German Jew. “Our job was to find out everything we could about the Nazi installations,” he told the ''Boston Globe'', “where they had been and where the troops were headed.”

After Germany’s surrender he lacked the points for discharge and toured with a Victory Bond musical unit around Boston. He was discharged on 14 May 1946 at Fort Devens. In 1947 he met Florence Kalis at the International Institute in Boston; she guessed that his middle initial “J” stood for Joachim, and they married in 1948. He set music aside as a full-time career, worked in business (including at the New England Mobile Book Fair), and kept playing—Newton Symphony Orchestra and twenty-two years as a cellist with the Boston Civic Symphony, where he also served on the board. He lived in Newton for more than sixty years and died of kidney disease on 18 December 2012 at Wingate at Needham, at 89.

* 1923 — Born in Mannheim, Germany (middle name Joachim).

* Age 13 — Sent alone to Milan to study cello; family fled via Cuba (October 1938); arrived Boston February 1939 on a conservatory scholarship.

* 1939–c. 1941 — Classed as enemy alien; parents joined later.

* Induction — Fort Devens; brief Camp Grant medical training; Camp Ritchie MIS training and instructor duty.

* Late 1943 – early 1944 — Washington document translation; APO 1142 / possible administrative link to P.O. Box 1142.

* Remainder of war — Long Island, Boston Harbor: interrogating German POWs.

* After VE Day — Victory Bond musical unit; discharged 14 May 1946 at Fort Devens.

* 1948 — Married Florence Kalis; later business career; Newton / Boston Civic Symphony cello.

* 18 December 2012 — Died at Wingate at Needham (kidney disease), age 89; longtime Newton resident.