Hans R. Herzberg

Hans R. Herzberg
Personal details
Born	3 June 1918 Germany
Died	29 March 2017
Nativity	Germany
Religion	Jewish
Awards	Bronze Star Medal
Military service
Allegiance	United States
Branch	United States Army
ASN	32703961
Rank	Colonel
Rank at Ritchie	Private First Class
Camp Ritchie	Class 18 (13 April – 10 June 1944)
Section	5A
Teams	IPW 109, IPW 177

Awards and honors

Bronze Star Medal

Teammates

Team — IPW 109

Team — IPW 177

These are other soldiers listed on the same team roster. People moved between teams; overlapping service dates are not always documented.

Research notes on this page are compiled from the source file and later edits. They may be unverified, incomplete, or incorrect, and should not be treated as established fact. Please correct the article or add sources on the talk page. For class-roster terms, see About the data.

Sources & confidence: Treat Research notes as leads, not settled fact. Prefer NARA, the class roster, newspapers, Find a Grave, or published histories for contested claims. Mark unsourced claims with {{Needs source}}, or explain disagreements on talk. Baseline import notes: About the data.

Hans R. Herzberg (1919–2017) was a United States Army Private First Class who trained at Camp Ritchie, Maryland, in Class 18.

Biography

Hans Herzberg, born in 1919, describes growing up in Hannover, Germany; his father, who was a general physician; his younger brother; being the only Jew in the class throughout most of my school years; his non-Jewish friends, who began disassociating with his family after 1933; Jewish life in Hanover; having his bar mitzvah in the conservative synagogue in 1932; how life for Jews changed dramatically around 1935-1936; not being allowed to attend school; his father losing his medical practice; the strength his mother displayed at this time; attending school in Berlin, Germany in 1938; taking a job in Dortmund, Germany in a bell factory welding steel bells; being arrested by the Gestapo in November 1938 and transported by train to Sachsenhausen; life in the camp, including the forced labor, maltreatment, forced singing, and rations; being released after five weeks; going to Berlin and then Hanover; his father’s imprisonment; his brother being sent on a children’s transport to the Netherlands; and having to get rid of all their property.

In January 1944, Herzberg attended As Pfc, selected for ASTP training at the University of Pennsylvania. He in late March, 1,000 ASTP replacements from New England colleges joined the division.

He selected quotes from “History of a Combat Regiment 1939-1945”, edited by Max Gissen and published in Salzburg, Austria in 1945. His own story is also extraordinary! Former Ritchie Boy Hank Herzberg of Chicago learned what had happened to his boyhood friend from Hanover, Germany, by reading my post called The German Jew Who Bombed Berlin .

[Note that the recording ends prematurely.]. Hans worked as electric arc welder.

(Note: Hank passed away on March 29, 2017 at the age of 97.

Gallery

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Technical record

Field	Imported value
Approx Age at Death	98
Class_ASN	32703961
Class_Name	HERZBERG, Hans R.
match_method	asn_exact_name_exact
row_source	both

Timeline

• Born 19 May 1919 in Germany.
• 8 September 1944 — MIS-HQ 4 October 1944 26th Inf 1 April 1945 26th Inf 1 June 1945 26th Inf.
• 18 December 1944 — ? Assigned to 104th Infantry Regiment (Saar).
• 1 April 1945 — Received Combat Infantryman Badge.
• Selected quotes from “History of a Combat Regiment 1939-1945”, edited by Max Gissen and published in Salzburg, Austria in 1945.
• September 1943 — Assigned to 380th MPE Co (Military Police).
• April 1945 — Hospitalized “not returned to team at end of April”.
• 104th Infantry Regiment, 26th Infantry Division.
• Bronze Star Medal.

Sources

• Ritchie Boy Interrogated German Prisoners - Elinor Florence (elinorflorence.com)
• Collections Search - United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (collections.ushmm.org)
• Camp Ritchie Museum, Inc. (The Ritchie History Museum), Classes 1–31 roster data
• Dan Gross research spreadsheets, including original Excel timeline/roster work, combined with other research and records
• NARA World War II Army enlistment records (where a NARA ASN is present)
• 1940 U.S. Census (where a census match is present)
• Dan Gross, Timeline of Hans R. Herzberg for Camp Ritchie (private research document; 1 source documents reviewed)
• Dan Gross, Timeline of Herzberg, Hans R. for Camp Ritchie (private research files; selected non-private narrative findings; 1 source files: HANS HERZBERG.doc)