By Bruce Doorly
During World War II Archie was part of three significant events as he saw combat and interrogated enemy soldiers at the Battle of the Bulge, was on hand for the liberation of the Dachau concentration camp, and was an observer at the Nuremberg Trials.
One week out of high school he was drafted into the army which he entered on June 6th 1944, which was D-Day. He had basic training for sixteen weeks at Camp Wheeler in Georgia. In December 1944 he was sent overseas.
Upon arriving in Europe his unit was quickly thrown into the fight as the Germans had been successful in a counteroffensive in Belgium that would come to be known as the Battle of the Bulge.
Since Archie spoke Yiddish, a language that is a combination of German and Hebrew, he was assigned the job of interrogator as he was able to communicate with the Germans who had been taken prisoner. To his surprise he found that many of these Germans were teenage boys as young as fifteen or old men in their fifties. They were humble and nothing like the arrogant German soldiers that were found in the German army at the beginning of the war. (Many of the elite German troops had been captured or killed in Russia a couple of years before).
It was a cold winter. He and many other men often slept under a Sherman tank as the heat given off by the tank was the best way for them to stay warm. As the Battle of the Bulge raged word came that the Germans had executed many American prisoners who had recently surrendered. Thus, the Americans were told to take no prisoners.
Being Jewish Archie was warned that should he be taken prisoner he was to quickly dispose of his dog tags as they had his religion printed on them and the Germans would likely execute him immediately.
A few weeks before the end of the war in Europe as his unit was marching towards Berlin, the capital of Germany, they learned that our Russians allies wanted to take the capital. The Americans granted this request as this would save countless American lives. So, Archie’s unit and other units were diverted south east.
Along the way the American discovered the Dachau Concentration Camp. The first American troops arrived at this camp on April 29th 1945 to images of unimagined horror. The camp held thousands of emaciated inmates that were on the verge of death and there were thousands of dead bodies. There were fifty railroad cars on train tracks within the camp that had heaps of dead bodies. The German guards were still present and they were being dealt with. Archie’s unit arrived a couple of days later. They had been briefed by other American troops as to what lay ahead, and when they were ten miles away, they could smell the camp. Yet when they arrived, they were still shocked at the sickening site.
Archie said “the images will haunt me till the day I die.”
(translated) "Work Will Set You Free"
Due to their condition, they needed medicine and a carefully planned diet to recover. Many prisoners died after the camp was liberated as they were too far gone to be saved.
Over the next week the Americans executed many of the guards. Archie was witness to this, but he did not take part in the executions. Later that year many additional guards at Dachau were put on trial, found guilty, and hanged.
When Archie was still in Germany after the war he was asked if he wanted to attend the trials of the top Nazis. These trials, which came to be known as the Nuremberg Trials, were held at the “Palace of Justice” in Nuremberg, Germany. They received worldwide attention.
Archie remembers like it was yesterday as he looked down from the balcony at the “faces of evil” - Hermann Goring, Rudolf Hess, Joachim von Ribbentrop, Alfred Jodl, Albert Speer, Karl Dönitz and others.
The John Basilone Parade Committee is honored to have Archie Fagan as Grand Marshal of the 2023 parade. The public is invited to come out to see him on parade day Sunday, September 24th in Downtown Raritan starting at 1 PM.