Set of US Army issue dog tags and a key on a chain belonging to a German Jewish refugee and soldier

Berthold Meier (1911-1999) was born in Littfeld, Germany, to Toni (neé Heumann, 1880-?) and Seligmann Meier (1878-1920). Seligmann was born in Littfeld, and passed away when Berthold was 8 years old. Toni was born in Beuel, Germany. Berthold was 21 years old and working as a butcher when Hitler came to power in January 1933. Under Hitler’s leadership, conditions in Germany grew increasingly difficult for German Jews. Following the passage of the Nuremberg Laws in September 1935, Berthold was legally defined as a Jew and stripped of his German citizenship, which led to restrictions on his rights. In 1937, he acquired a Deutsches Reich Reisepass, German passport. He later had to get his passport stamped with a red “J” after the Reich Ministry of the Interior invalidated all German passports held by Jews on October 5, 1938. The stamp was the only way that the passport would be valid, and was part of a larger effort by the German government to require Jews to identify themselves and separate them from the rest of the German population. The increasing restrictions in the 1930s led many Jews to emigrate from Germany, and in April 1939, Berthold immigrated to the United States aboard the SS Manhattan. Berthold arrived in New York City on April 27, 1939, and started working as a meat cutter in the city. The US entered World War II soon after the December 7, 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. On March 30, 1943, Berthold was drafted into the U.S. Army. He officially entered the service on April 6, and was assigned to the Medical Department as a Private with the serial number 32877854. In the Army, Berthold continued working as a meat cutter. His main duties were to cut down whole carcasses into smaller parts, prepare meats for distribution, balance deliveries, and weigh and store the meat. His job was essential in making sure that the hospital sites where he worked had steady access to a sanitary food supply. Berthold’s first assignment was at the 275th Station Hospital at Fort Knox, Kentucky. During World War II, Fort Knox served as a training and testing site for both the Army and the Navy. The station hospital treated the men and women at the Fort for relatively minor diseases and injuries. As with the rest of the Fort, the goal at the hospital was to train the enlisted men working there for a few months before sending them overseas. While at Fort Knox, Berthold applied for US citizenship based on his military service. Two men he worked with at the hospital, Eugene Witkowski and Irving S. Goldstein, served as character witnesses. He became a naturalized citizen on November 10, 1943. Following the D-Day invasion along the French coastline on June 6, 1944, the US army needed more support for the injured soldiers being sent to hospitals in England. On July 26, Berthold was deployed to the European Theater of Operations. He arrived in England on August 7, and began his assignment at the 140th General Hospital in Dorsetshire. Due to his experience as a butcher before the war, Berthold moved up in rank from a Private to a Technician 5th Grade (Tec 5). Technicians were a new rank the army created during WWII to fill the increased need for technical skills in areas such as butchery. As a Tec 5, Berthold was equivalent in the command structure to a Corporal, but he was paid more because of his expertise in meat cutting. Following the surrender of Germany on May 7, 1945, the fighting in the European theater ended. Berthold was sent back to the United States on July 28, arriving on August 2. He received an honorable discharge on March 17, 1946. For his exemplary service during the war, Berthold was awarded a Good Conduct Medal, American Theater Ribbon, European African Middle Eastern Theater Ribbon, and World War II Victory Ribbon. Berthold was the only member of his family to survive the Holocaust. His mother, Toni, was killed after being deported to Poland’s Zamosc Ghetto in April 1942. After the war, Berthold returned to New York City, where he eventually met his wife, Lillian Strauss. Lillian, born Liesl Koenigheim, was a Holocaust survivor from Brakel, Germany. She immigrated to the US during the war and changed her name to Lillian Koenig. She settled in New York City, and married fellow Holocaust survivor Max Strauss on August 16, 1947. After the death of her first husband in the 1960s, Lillian met and married Berthold. They got married in New York in 1976, and lived in the city until Berthold’s death.

The key and dog tags were donated to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 2018 by Steven Weingarten, the nephew of Berthold Meier.

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, Gift of Steven Weingarten