Feb. 16--German-born U.S. Army World War II veteran Werner Ellmann was deeply struck by the horrors he witnessed while among the U.S. troops liberating Mauthausen, the notorious Nazi concentration camp in Austria.
"I remember as a kid waking up in the middle of the night and hearing my dad's screams," said his son Lance. "I didn't understand the pain he was in."
Ellmann, who for years struggled to come to grips with his experiences, told his story over and over to anyone who would listen --schoolchildren, church groups, civic organization, historians and film documentarians.
He also dedicated his life to doing good. He marched in the civil rights movement, founded Habitat for Humanity in McHenry County, co-founded an anti-bullying nonprofit group known as Principled Minds, and served as vice chairman of the McHenry County Human Relations Council.
"Those war experiences set the tone for the rest of his life," said Patrick Murfin, who worked with Ellmann on many social justice projects, including Principled Minds. "When he returned, he was a changed man. He stood against discrimination and bigotry, and along the way inspired so many others."
Ellmann, 91, who also worked as an investigator and translator for the Nuremberg war trials, helping to find Nazi criminals who tried blending back into the civilian population, died Jan. 24, at Northwestern Medicine Delnor Hospital in Geneva, of complications related to a recent fall. Formerly of McHenry and Naperville, he moved to Geneva two years ago.
"Werner was a wonderful guy, with legions of friends," Murfin said. "The last time I saw him he was still in his vigorous 80s. I remember how he'd sometimes have a melancholy expression on his face, but then suddenly break out into an almost impish grin."
Born in Bodenwoehr, Germany, Ellmann immigrated to Chicago as a 5-year-old with his family in 1929. During a 1938 trip to visit with his two older brothers still in Germany, he was appalled by the Nazis and became a convinced anti-fascist, Murfin said.
Drafted into the U.S. Army in 1942, Ellmann was assigned to serve in the Pacific, but made numerous appeals to fight the Nazis instead, saying his perfect German language skills would make him an asset in the European theater. The Army eventually agreed.
"He just wouldn't take no for an answer," his son said. "He kept talking with anyone in authority in order to get sent to Europe."
On May 5, 1945, a platoon of 11 men from the 11th Armored Division -- Ellmann in a Jeep as a forward scout -- arrived at the Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria. As he rolled up to a stone arch gate he was startled to see "walking skeletons" coming toward him. Inside the camp, the men found stacks of skeletal bodies and survivors barely alive.
"We had seen killing," Ellmann recalled in a 2008 interview for the Concentration Camp Liberators Oral History Project conducted by the Florida Studies Center at University of South Florida. "For Christ's sake, that was nothing new to us, but that was too hard to handle. I mean, we just started crying and throwing up. I don't know. It was horrible."
According to first-person accounts documented in the interview, the soldiers couldn't even provide food or water to the liberated until a doctor gave the OK, out of fear of shocking the systems of the severely malnourished and dehydrated victims.
"Half the people in there had died -- that's 10,000 out of 20,000 -- before we could get in there and start saving lives," Ellmann said in the interview.
At war's end, he was assigned as part of the occupation force and worked as an investigator and translator during the war trials.
"Most crimes that were being charged there had to do with acts they committed against Americans, or as SS or Gestapo and that sort of thing," Ellmann said in the 2008 interview. "I would either go out in uniform or in civvies, maybe go to a tavern and sit there and gab, you know, and find out what I could find out. I picked up a number of people."
Ellmann returned to Chicago in May 1946, and in his own words, "spent one whole year drunk" trying to forget what he had experienced. He attended Roosevelt University, and then spent a year off living in an attic apartment in Los Angeles with a fellow veteran before returning to Chicago.
He was married in 1950 and began getting help at the University of Chicago, where psychologist Carl Rogers had begun to develop a therapy to help veterans and others who had suffered trauma. Through the therapy, Ellmann came to grips with shame and anger at being German, as well as what he did and saw in the war.
"He wanted to find out why he felt so messed up," Murfin said.
Ellmann held several sales jobs before landing a position with the McGraw-Hill trade magazine division selling subscriptions. He soon worked his way up to advertising sales, eventually becoming the publisher of trade magazines, before retiring in the mid-1990s.
He became active in the civil rights and anti-war causes, frequently speaking to crowds at rallies as a veteran against the war in Vietnam. About the same time he began his visits to school classrooms to tell his Holocaust stories and teach tolerance and acceptance of those who are different.
After 9/11, Ellmann became active in the McHenry County Peace Group attending vigils and speaking at rallies in Woodstock, Crystal Lake and Harvard, as well as at educational programs co-sponsored with the McHenry County College Student Peace Network. He also volunteered for the McHenry Parole Division, the Peace and Justice Committee of Woodstock and served on the Pioneer Center Foundation Board.
"He wanted to help those who don't get the fair shakes in life," Lance Ellmann said.
In addition to his wife, Elizabeth, and his son, Ellmann is survived by two other sons, David and Matthew; a daughter, Anne Marie Schafer; a brother, Norbert "Bill" six grandchildren; and a great-grandson.
A celebration of his life is set for 1 to 4 p.m. April 9 at the Batavia Park District East Side Center in Shannon Hall, 14 N. Van Buren St., Batavia.
Joan Giangrasse Kates is a freelance reporter.
