Robert Stanger Contributing writer

Since I was in my early teen years during World War II, the war left me with some strong memories, not the least of which was the photos my brother-in-law, Walter J. Good, sent home from Europe some 70 years ago.

“Goodie, “as we called him, ran a canopied Esso gas station on in Erie at West 26th Street and Melrose before being drafted. He was a native of Buffalo who migrated southwest along the lake to work in Erie, where he met my half-sister, Marie. They had one child, a daughter, Sylvia, and they lived in a ground floor flat across the street from the gas station. (Marie would whistle across to summon him at mealtime.)

Although he was of English extraction, “Goodie” looked like someone who could have passed for a Seneca Indian or a member of one of the other Iroquois tribes of upstate New York with his rather bronze skin, dark hair and eyes, slim build and a rather prominent nose.

“Goodie” had also worked as a long-haul truck driver for Fruehauf, a skill the Army made use of when he was drafted and sent to Europe. He used to claim after the war that he was known as a driver who could be counted on to wend his way successfully through the maze of roads in war-torn Germany and successfully deliver his truck’s contents.

Walter Good was thus among the first American G.I.s to arrive at one of the concentration camps. (It was either Buchenwald or Dachau.) The pictures he sent home to Marie of the piles of naked, stark white, emaciated corpses stacked like logs have remained ingrained in my memory throughout my life.

“Goodie” also sent me Nazi booty that included a German army rifle (a 9 mm Mauser), a form-fitting German officer’s shirt of very fine material, and a Nazi armband.

The visions of the concentration camp victims prompted me to tune in on April 14, 2015, to WNEO (which serves the Akron/Youngstown area) to a documentary listed as “Allied troops enter Nazi camps.”

Of all programs on the Holocaust, and there certainly have been a good many throughout the years, this “Frontline” program was certainly one of the most horrific, if not the most, and others who viewed it may well agree with me on this. The program, which was narrated by British actor Trevor Howard, seemed to contain mostly British film footage, although there was some Russian, with the latter, however, missing any audio. The non-U.S. origins of the film used may well account for the strong impression the documentary made on me.

Much of what was presented seemed new, such as scenes of pastoral beauty along the roads as troops neared a concentration camp, even as the air was fouled, the narrator said, with the stench from the camp.

I thought the material taken inside the camps went beyond anything I had seen in previous documentaries, such as the views of plump SS soldiers being forced to haul the emaciated Nazi victims to the multiple mass graves which bore signs reading “Approx.” to indicate the number of bodies contained therein … ranging down from 5,000.

One part of the narration really took me back, however. Well into the program Howard, the narrator, said that “of the 6 million victims of the Holocaust, 3 million were Jews.” I had always heard that 6 million Jews had died in the Holocaust, and thought at first that since the 6 million figures were given in a TV documentary bearing the “Frontline” imprimatur, that it was correct as a total final toll, with the 3 million non-Jews being made up of the other prime Nazi victims … the Roma (Gypsies), Communists and other political dissidents, criminals, homosexuals and impaired individuals.

However, one can easily learn via a quick search on the Internet that the true Holocaust toll figure is 11 million, of which over one-half, 5.7 million, were Jews. The Jewish toll figures are even broken down by nation, with 142,000 from Germany, 3 million from Poland, 890 from Norway, 52 from Denmark, and 22 from Finland, for example.

So how did a Frontline documentary understate the Holocaust toll by some 5 million? I seriously doubt that it was just careless error, but rather just use of figures available at the time the documentary was made. Research since has obviously advanced the final toll figure to the 11 million which seems widely accepted today.

However, I do think that WNEO should have previewed the Frontline program and issued a disclaimer at the time the program was aired. I certainly don’t think that the program should not have been aired because of its age, since it was excellent, and I do applaud WNEO for having to schedule it.

As for “Goodie,” he returned to Erie after the war only to find Marie (then only 35) in the final stages of breast cancer. He said he thought she looked like one of the wounded war victims he had seen in Europe due to her cancer surgery. Efforts by her older brother, Frank, to save her through a strict diet which he supervised and prepared, were futile.

“Goodie” went back to driving a truck, this time at the wheel of a cement mixer for an Erie buildings material supply company. He remarried, this time to Eva, a woman of Finnish extraction who had migrated up the lake from Ashtabula to work in Erie for the same firm as “Goodie” did, and they had a daughter, Geraldine, who survives.

I was working for the U.S. Forest Service as a surveyors’ assistant in the El Dorado National Forest in California in the summer of 1952 when my mother wrote me that “Goodie” had died of a sudden heart attack on a previous evening in the living room of the modest rented home in southwest Erie he shared with Eva and Geraldine.

It was theorized by some in the family that the strain of his truck driving ordeal in Germany during the war had contributed to his early death at 44. I do not doubt that his war service could have been a factor in his early demise, just as such service has doubtlessly figured in the deaths of countless others who were not actually wounded physically.

“Goodie” was quite proud of his Army service, and a bronze plaque reading “Tech/Sgt. U.S. Army” appears on his gravestone which lies next to that of Marie at Erie’s Lakeside Cemetery.

Robert Stanger has lived seasonally for over 40 years along the Allegheny River and has the stories to tell about it.