It’s said that those who took up the battle standard during World War II were “the greatest generation” and I don’t deny this in the least.
In February, I had the honor to speak with a Kenmore citizen about his efforts during World War II some 71 years prior. It was a unique privilege to speak with Jack VanEaton about his life before, during and after World War II, but more so than many may realize.
I am a second generation descendant of two Holocaust survivors. Much of my Polish and German relatives of that age were in the ghetto’s and concentration camps of WWII. Photographs and names of my family members adorn the walls of the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., and I’ve had the horror and honor of hearing my family’s stories of what they went through in the war.
I grew up knowing not to ask Bubbie, Yiddish for grandmother, about the numbers tattoo’d into her arms. I grew up with names of Auschwitz, Bergen Belsen, and Sobibor etched into my memories, and knew the meaning of the word ‘genocide’ by the age of 8. I grew up knowing I should never forget, that it was too terrible to let happen again.
Both of my grandparents survived the worst of World War II.
According to my mother, Bubbie and her family boarded a train in Lodz ghetto headed for a death camp. For some reason, the train had to stop before they reached their destination, Bergen-Belsen, a camp where over 37,600 people were killed and the one made infamous for being the death camp where Anne Frank met her demise.
Luckily for me, Bubbie never made it to Bergen-Belsen. According to my mother, Bubbie escaped the train while it was stopped, running for her life and leaving family she couldn’t take with her behind on the trains. Bubbie didn’t get off scot free, though. After fleeing the train, SS officers caught up to her and she went Theresienstadt concentration camp, where some 33,000 people met their ends and another 90,000 people were transferred to other death camps across Nazi controlled lands.
My grandfather, Zadie, was not so lucky. When he was at Aushwitz, he and his wife were seperated. Before they even got off the unloading docks at the Aushwitz train station, a German SS officer had taken Zadie’s toddler daughter and dashed her skull against a light pole. No one in my family, to my knowledge, knows what happened to Zadie’s first wife, but given over 3 million Jews were killed in concentration camps during WWII, it’s pretty clear what had happened.
According to Jack, German troops knew how bad it was, too. You know it’s bad when someone goes back for an enemy pilot because he’s, seemingly, better than those others behind barbed wire.
The war impacted more than just my father’s side of the family. An uncle on my mother’s side who had fought with Allied forces in WWII could never quite meet my fathers eyes; being in a division that had liberated a camp, my uncle couldn’t forget what he had seen.
My relatives went through some of the worst that Nazi Germany had to offer. Without those who answered the call of battle 71 years ago, men like Jack Van Eaton and Uncle Burton, I likely would not have been born.
It was because of the sacrifice many of my family members made, whether as the oppressed or helping free those oppressed by the Nazi’s, that I joined the military at the age of 17, staying in the delayed entry program until I graduated high school.
For me, meeting Jack Van Eaton, hearing his war stories, and watching him knighted as a Chevalier in the French Legion of Honour reminded me why I joined the military. It wasn’t for me, it was for all the people who came before me – those who survived or gave the ultimate sacrifice.
However, it wasn’t just myself who was honored to have a connection to this amazing man.
Russell Korets, pastor of the City on a Hill Church and a descendent of Unkrainians who survived Nazi concentration camps, also spoke about the impact men like Van Eaton had on his life. Without the Allied forces coming to the rescue of Europe, Korets may not have been born. Korets bequeathed upon Van Eaton a statue of an eagle, wings spread wide, in honor of Van Eaton’s deeds during WWII and in thanks of what he and allied forces had done for the region and for the world.
“During WWII, I was on the other side, not me, but my family, I come from Ukraine,” Korets said. “Ukraine and Russian Soviet Union was under attack Nazism and Hitler were on the move. My own family, though not Jewish, were helping Jewish families. My grandma’s sister and her brother were both taken into concentration camps in Germany. If it wasn’t for men like Jack Van Eaton, I don’t know where I would be tonight, the whole area where I lived was under attack. It was because of the bravery of men and women like Jack Van Eaton, that areas like where I lived were set free.”
“And we’re so grateful. There’s about 100,000 Russian-Ukranians, many of them are Russian or Ukrainian Jewish. For all of them, we want to say thank you,” Korets said. “As Martin Luther King Jr. said, ‘Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere,’ and you took it to heart and our family, and many generations, will be grateful to you and your service.”
And it was for Van Eaton, too. He was honored and humbled to receive the title of Chevalier and the medal that comes with the dignity thereof, however he received it not for himself, but for the thousands of men who couldn’t make it back. Those men who rest on foreign soils to this day.
I felt an instant kinship in this, truly, gentle man. The kinship all military members feel for each other, regardless of age or time of service. I felt kinship to Jack and the men like him who fought for freedom during WWII.
Mostly, I felt a kinship to know that people from all across the nation would risk their lives for strangers overseas. All because they knew it was the right thing to do.
To Jack Van Eaton: Thank you for your service. Thank you for the honor of your company and the gift of hearing your war stories. Thank you for being part of the Kenmore and Bothell communities and continuing your service to the nation in many different ways.
Your story will be one I never forget, nor will I let others soon forget, either. You are a great inspiration to the community.
