When 19-year-old Werner Kleeman arrived at Dachau concentration camp on November 20, 1938, he and other Jewish prisoners were left outside the gate and made to march in, where they were greeted by Nazis who promptly shaved their heads.
Two weeks ago, and nearly 71 years later, Kleeman, now 90, returned to Dachau for the first time. But, on this occasion, he was escorted to the gate by a friend and welcomed by the Dachau museum’s director, Gabriele Hammermann, who had cordially extended an invitation to Kleeman to visit and speak as a “memorial witness.”
“Oh, it was beautiful,” Kleeman recalled of his October 14 arrival at Dachau, in southern Germany.
“She hugged me,” he said, referring to Hammermann’s greeting. “She welcomed me because she was so proud that I came,” he said.
Of course, the terror of Kleeman’s earlier visit, the painful memories of those 30 days that were “Like hell on earth,” had surfaced.
Nevertheless, he explained, “I had calmed down. I wanted to look peaceful. I was not angry. I was not nervous. She came forward and we hugged one another and we were in tears.”
From that moment on, Kleeman’s three days in Dachau – which were preceded by two days in Bavaria, his former home, and succeeded by a week in Wurzburg, where he attended school – were a whirlwind of speaking engagements and media interviews. The trip was paid for by the German government.
On his prior visit to Dachau, Kleeman said he had “Nothing to eat, no clothes to wear, nothing to do but stand on the parade ground 12 to 16 hours a day in cold weather” and worry, as people were “dying all day long.”
This time, Kleeman took the microphone in Dachau’s reception halls and told a rapt audience, in perfect German, of his Dachau experience.
“It’s a great honor that I’m here today,” he began, to applause. “I was a different type of guest 70 years ago.”
As he looked over his speech in the kitchen of his Flushing apartment – far removed from Germany – Kleeman’s voice broke and his eyes watered. He recounted his memories of being rounded up on Kristallnacht, the “Night of Broken Glass,” and his unlikely release to the United States courtesy of a distant Midwestern relative. He spoke of his induction into the American Army, which sent him back to war-torn Europe, where he played a hand in Germany’s defeat, ultimately arresting the German officer who had thrown him into Dachau.
“Believe me,” Kleeman said, “my family is very proud that I went. They tell me I look younger and feel better since I came back.”
But, above all, Kleeman is proud of himself – proud that he didn’t hesitate when Dachau came calling for his side of the story.
“It is unbelievable in one man’s life what can happen to one man,” he said.
