Getting to meet a WWII Veteran

So I'm now into the month of January and our last meeting we got to hear from  WWII veteran, Captian Jack Nemerov who was in Normandy.  Here are a couple of clips I found online which he spoke about at our meeting:

4. Captain Jack Nemerov (1)


U.S. Army

Jack Nemerov landed on Omaha Beach on June 6, 1944…D-Day

“Now each one of us going in had a heavy pack on our back because we had to carry an extra three-day supply of ammunition in our pack and an extra three-day supply of food—K rations. And we were all wearing our winter combat clothes because it was cold and wet and our winter combat clothes were wool, primarily. So when we hit the water our clothes would soak up another 8, 9, 10, 12 pounds of water. With our heavy packs and our armaments, conceivably each one of us weighed over 200 pounds in dead weight. In the first 15 minutes, we had 5000 casualties. Now, this is not shown; most of those casualties drown. They weren’t hit, they just drown.”
 
Video clip of storming the beach


At the age of 91, Jack Nemerov is still an imposing guy. Originally from Minnesota, he went into the U.S. army a private and came out a captain, he says. In between going in and coming out, he was part of the initial assault force on Omaha Beach on June 6, 1944. He also helped liberate the Dachau concentration camp.
"I survived World War II," he says, shaking his head. "How I got through, I don't know."


Video clip regarding the concentration camp

He was apart of the unit that posted the sign that reads, "500 poor unknown souls buried here".





Save the World Once; Still Saving It.
As a man in his 20s, Jack Nemerov was among the soldiers who stormed Omaha Beach on D-Day in June, 1944. Just about a year later he was among those who liberated the concentration camp at Dachau.
Like so many other veterans of his day, he returned home after the war, settled down, got into business and raised a family. And after many productive, happy decades, he decided 17 years ago to retire in Arizona.
It was going well, too.
Then, in 1997, when Nemerov was 81 years old, comfortable, settled and secure, something unexpected and life-changing occurred to him.
“I was really, really bored,” he said. “I just couldn't see myself sitting around all day playing bridge. I needed to get out in the world.”
And so that is what he did.
He wanted to work somehow with school kids, and having lived through tumultous times, Nemerov contacted the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Alabama, to find out about its “teaching tolerance” program.
“If you were to go into a place like Dachau, as I did in 1945, you'd see how important the notion of tolerance is,” he said, “and what the lack of it can do to people.”
He approached a few local school districts about the program and found that they were interested. Then, one day, Nemerov was asked if he knew anyone who had been in World War II and would speak to students about it.
“I know someone,” he said. “Me.”
And so Nemerov began visiting classrooms (and clubs, and business gatherings, and more).
“You wonder in the beginning how you will speak about the terrible things you have witnessed?” Nemerov told me. “I run into that situation all the time with people from my generation. We were civilians in uniform. My parents came from Russia, and like a lot of guys, I felt that I had to to the best I could to protect what they came here for. And we did. But how do you talk about aiming a gun at another human being and pulling the trigger? How do you talk about what you saw and did? It's very difficult. That's why so many of the stories from World War II have never been told.”
One of the teachers who has invited Nemerov to his classroom is Chris O'Brien of Mountain Ridge High School in Glendale. He brought Nemerov to his history class.
“Jack Nemerov and people like him should be elevated above the rest as true American Heroes not just because of their past contributions, but because of their ongoing positive impacts on the youth of today and the future of our country,” O'Brien told me.
When Nemerov speaks to kids and then answers their questions, he doesn't play up the notion of his being a part of what has been called “The Greatest Generation.”
“What I try to do is to draw a parallel between our generation and the current generation,” he said. “I try to tell them how alike we are. What makes America a special place is that there is one good generation after another.”
At a ceremony in Phoenix on Friday, Nemerov and 19 others will be inducted into the Arizona Veterans Hall of Fame, an honor afforded over the years to fewer than 200 of Arizona 600,000 estimated veterans.
“That's a nice thing,” he said. “And I'm honored. But what I do with kids, with people, it keeps me alive. It's better than medicine.”
Nemerov entered the army as a private and left a captain. He also saw war as a parent, having watched a son go off to Vietnam.
But when we call people like Nemerov members of “the greatest generation,” it isn't because they set out as young people to save the world. It's because they've never stopped trying.

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