“We’re All Jews Here”: How Master Sergeant Roddie Edmonds Defied the Nazis

This is Lee Habib, and this is Our American Stories. Over twenty thousand people worldwide have been awarded the prestigious honor of being Righteous Among Nations by Yad Vashem, that’s the official Holocaust Museum of Israel. And all of them risked their lives during the Holocaust to save Jews, despite not being Jewish themselves. But only seven Americans have been honored with this award. One of them is Master Sergeant Roddy Edmonds. Here to tell the story of his father is Christopher Edmonds, author of No Surrender. Let’s get into the story.

Take it away, Chris. Well, my daughters, Christian and Laurene, were attending Maryville College, and they’re going to be educators, which they are. I’m very proud of them. They were in a history class, and the professor gave the whole class, “Do a history project. Pick a family member who’s had some connection with history, and we want you to do a presentation. You can use a variety of different tools for that.” They chose Dad because he was a POW in World War Two, and so she came home very excited about it. She said, “Dad, the professor gave us permission. Said we were supposed to interview someone who’s living. But Dad passed away the year I was born, and we get to do that.” And I said, “Well, that’s exciting. I’m excited for you. So let’s, let’s get his journals.” He kept two journals as a POW in World War Two, journals that he kept tucked away that he never talked about, never brought them out, never showed them to anybody. When you’d say, “Dad, what happened over there?” “Son, I’d rather not say.” And then you’d press him on it. When I was in college, I was pressing him on it because I was reading the diaries, and I said, “I want to know.” And he goes, “It’s under some things just too difficult to talk about.” He said, “I’ll just tell you this. The Germans humiliated us.” And that’s all he would say. And he was a person who liked to talk.

And so she does the project. They put a video together, just use pictures off the internet, but the narration is words from his diary. And when I watched that, it was like God said, “You got to go find out.” I felt a sense of calling, just like I did when I was called to the ministry. It was a burden. It was a passion. And so one night I just typed in his rank and his name: Master Sergeant Roddy Edmonds. And the first link that appeared was a New York Times article, and Dad’s name was highlighted in that article. Tyler. The article was “Richard Nixon’s Search for a New York Home.” It’s an article written by the editor of The New York Times in two thousand eight, looking back to nineteen eighty, and the whole desire for the president, who had stepped down from the presidency at the time, was wanting to move to New York, try to rehabilitate his career, and no one wanted him as their neighbor. They all blackballed him and said, “No, he’s not moving in beside me.” Except for a gentleman by the name of Lester Tanner, who was a prominent New York attorney. He lived on a very prominent section of New York. His neighbors were Schlesinger and Rockefeller, and he reached out to the president. Long story short is, in that article, the editor pressed Lester on his life before he met the President, and Lester just said, “Well, I was in World War Two. I was a staff sergeant in 106th Infantry, and I was captured during the Battle of the Bulge.” So they talked about that, and he said Lester said, right in the middle of it, “This has been on my heart for years, but never really said anything to my family.” He said, “I just blurted out, ‘Had it not been for the bravery of my Master Sergeant Roddy Edmonds, who saved my life, I wouldn’t have met the president.’” I’m stunned. I’ve got to meet Lester. Now, what is Lester talking about? Dad never mentioned this. He never shared it with my mom, never shared it with us. It’s not in his diary in clear verse. There are cryptic notes in Dad’s diary—clues to what I’ve discovered. For instance, he’s got a little dash in his diary that says, “Dogs.” He’s also got a dash that says, “Jewish friends moved out.” That happened in the first POW camp he was in where they segregated the Jewish men, and ultimately, many of those men were sent to their death in a concentration camp where there were forced labor, really, really killed them. And then he’s also got a little dash mark that says, “Before the commander.” I now know what that… it’s a horrible experience, but I know what that means now.

I say Dad didn’t have a lot of things, but he had the right things. He was born in nineteen nineteen, just there in the hills of East Tennessee. He grew up in a community called South Knotsville. You know, he had tragedy from the very beginning of his life. His father, my grandfather T.C., was a professional paperhanger and a hard worker. My dad’s mom, Jenny, was a homemaker, but she died when he was three years old. And aged ten, the Depression hit. But yet he endured that like those in our Greatest Generation. They learned how to adapt and survive. And he was pretty simple about his faith. He said, “There is a God, He is good; therefore, I must be good as well.” In nineteen forty, September of nineteen forty, he heard a speech by President Roosevelt, who came to dedicate the Smoky Mountain National Park. I think it stirred his heart, and he left his high school sweetheart, and he joined the Army. He started training as a private, and within two, before two years had passed, he was a Master Sergeant. Now that’s incredible. At the time, he was the youngest Master Sergeant appointed in the U.S. Army. He was aged twenty-two. Obviously, he had great leadership skills. He cared about people, but he also demanded. You know, he was tough on them, but he was tough in a fair way and in a kind way. He also didn’t expect any of his soldiers to do anything he wouldn’t choose to. I mean, he would always march with them. If they had to sleep out in the mud, he’s sleeping with them. He taught them to love their rifles and to learn how to survive. But they were the youngest group of soldiers and the greenest group of soldiers. But yet they were also very, very bright. So, Henry Kissinger was a part of that group. Bob Dole was a part of that group.

Facing the brief but furious German counteroffensive in Belgium. American engineers dring Bob, why a barricade can bit her winter weather. Snow has no beauty on a wall front for the men who must do the fighting.

It’s the largest and bloodiest battle of World War Two. I mean, Hitler hit them with everything they had. In Dad’s diary, he writes, “You know, rifles are no good against tanks and eighty-eight fire.” But they fought valiantly. They held them off, and they actually delayed the success of the Germans enough to where the Americans ultimately won that battle about thirty days later. But Dad was captured along with the rest of his men. They were marched several days without food and water, and Skip Friedman, one of my POW friends, he said, “If you didn’t march, you didn’t last.” He said, “We could hear shots in the back.” And so they were marched to a train station, put on trains taking deeper into Germany. Another four or five days on trains without food and water, standing room only, the same cattle cars that they were using to take Jewish people to their death. And the ultimate rite after a terrifying bombing, where they were marshaled over onto a sidecar in Limburg crane yard. And that morning the weather had cleared, and so the British came over to bomb that train yard, and the POWs were also mixed in with armament, German armament, and the British did a great job of blowing that place up, and they also killed quite a few American soldiers, as was all of that. And so they had to hear all those bombs falling toward them with no place to run, and that was probably one of the most frightening experiences that the men endured during their time. Every one of the POWs I’ve met with, they almost make a beeline to that moment and talk about the terror that they had. But yet, in that boxcar, Dad’s boxcar, I’ve met a POW who was there, Hank Friedman. He said, “We all were trying to kill each other to get out of that boxcar.” Said, “We all wanted to escape and get away from those bombs because we could hear everyone else coming right at us.” He said, “It was pandemonium. It was crazy, terrifying,” he said. “But then I hear the voice with a Southern drawl rise up above the clamor on the other side of the boxcar.” He said, “It’s your father.” He said, “It’s my sergeant.” He says, “Boys, if you’ve ever prayed to God, you need to pray. Pray, boys, pray our God will save us.” He said, “Our boxcar got quiet, and we began to pray.” He said, “I’d never really prayed that much before, so I grew up Jewish. As a Jewish kid,” he said, “you know, I knew God, but we all prayed,” he said. “And then your father voiced a prayer above the silence, and,” he said, “your father’s faith was the first seed of faith that I ever experienced as a Jewish kid.” He said, “Which God brought to fruition when I was eighty years old at Shadowbrook Baptist Church.” He said, “I came to my Messiah.” And he said, “Then that’s what won the day.”

More of this story here on Our American Stories. And we return to Our American Stories and with Chris Edmonds sharing the story of his father, Master Sergeant Roddy Edmonds, one of seven Americans to be awarded the prestigious honor of being considered Righteous Among Nations by Israel’s official Holocaust Museum. Let’s return to the story.

The second camp that Dad was transferred to, Dad is the highest-ranking soldier among them, and so he’s their leader. But that marched them in on January twenty-fifth and made them stand out in the cold all day long to intimidate them with the guard dogs. And they rifle; but several of them, just if they’re not standing up straight away, they’re just very cruel to them, but they wanted to intimidate them and let them know who was in charge. They march a young Russian soldier out in front of the Americans. They tell the young Russian he’s free to go. They open the gates. The Russian hesitates. Obviously, now, that’s this young Russian is god. He’s emaciated, he’s been starved to death, worked to death, but yet there’s the sense of freedom, and so he begins to start walking towards the gate. They goaded him some more, and he starts running towards the gate, and just as he gets to the gate, the commandant signals with his head, and they close the gates and they release the dogs, and the Americans are forced to watch that young Russian soldier being mauled to death. The Americans obviously don’t want to watch it, but the guards are smashing them with the rifles, forcing them to watch. And then the Commandant comes to my father, and he said, “If you or any of your men disobey us, this will happen to you.” And so that’s how their experiences Ziegenhane started. And they finally took them to barracks and got them settled into the barracks, and every morning they have to fall out for a headcount. They send orders to my father and then announce over the American loudspeakers that the following morning they want only the Jewish men to fall out—just the Jews. Anyone who disobeys this order will be shot. So they issue those orders, and Lester Tanner, who says, “I’m in your father’s barracks,” said, as immediately as he got those orders, he turned to all of us in our barracks, saying, “There are probably two hundred and fifty of us in that barracks.” There are five other American barracks. He turns to us and he says, “Men, we’re not doing that. Tomorrow morning, we all fall out.” “Send orders to the other barracks leaders.” “That’s what we’re going to do.” And then he calls a meeting with the barracks leaders, and he issues the orders again, and he says, “Men, we’ve got to stand together. We’ve got to have every man out there.” Even if, he said, “I know there are some men who, physically, it’s going to be hard for them to get out there because they’ve already been forty days into starvation at this point.” And so he gets commitment from all the barracks leaders, and they go back and they get commitment for all the men, which is absolutely amazing. You know, any one of those men could have said, “I’m not going out there.”

Well, the next day, it’s bright and early, it’s dawn, and all the Americans are standing out there together as one, and the commandant comes out. But then it’s not the commandant who comes over to my father. It’s a major, a Major Zigmann. Now, Major Ziegmann had been in the first camp they were in and had taken Jews away from that camp. He’s from high command in Berlin. He’s two people away from Hitler. He’s the eyes and ears of Hitler in the POW camps. And he’s there for one reason, one reason only. He’s there to get the Jewish men. And when he steps out of the headquarters and sees all of the Americans, he is furious, having been disobeyed, and so he storms over to my father. He gets up into his face, and he said, “Were my orders not clear? Did you not understand?” My dad said, “Major, all that’s required by the Geneva Convention is name, rank, and serial,” and the major interrupts him and says, “Listen, Sergeant, you don’t understand. My orders were just for the Jews—only the Jews. You can’t all be Jews.” And my father said, “We are all Jews here.” The Major turned blood red and became vicious and furious. He pulled his gun. He pressed it hard into my dad’s forehead, and he screamed, “Sergeant, one last chance! You will order the Jewish men to step forward, or I will shoot you right now!” Said, “Your dad was so brave.” He said, “I had no idea what he was going to do or what he was going to say,” but he said, “I just, I couldn’t believe it.” He said, “The time froze. We didn’t know what was going to…” He said, “We were all scared to death. We didn’t know what was going to happen, but we all stayed together.” He said, “Your father was unwavering.” That made us brave, and we all stood together. He said, “And finally your father spoke,” and he said, “And your father spoke truth.” He said, “Major, you can shoot me, but you’ll have to kill all of us because we know who you are, and you’ll stand for war crimes when we win this war, and you will pay.” Lester said, “I couldn’t believe your father, how strong he wasn’t… how, I mean, he spoke the truth.” And he said, “The Major turned white, immediately turned white, and his arm began to shake.” He said, “I don’t think anyone had ever stood up to him.” He said, “I really believe the truth sank into that old major’s heart and his soul now,” almost as immediately as he’d pulled the gun. He pulled the gun to his side, stuck it in his holster, and he swung around and marched back to his headquarters. And he said, “And we never saw Major Ziegmann again.”

I don’t know if Dad had ever met a Jewish person until he’d gotten into the service. But to Dad, people were people. People were God’s creation, and everyone was made equally in the sight of God, and everybody mattered. And so it didn’t matter what your faith was or what your beliefs were, what background you came from. There were boys from every nook and cranny of this country who were serving. And Dad was real. He was the real… he was a real, sincere Christian. I kind of… I think of Paul Stern. Paul said, “For a person who had no reason to do what they did to stand up for us.” He said to me, “That’s a real Christian, a real Christian that puts their life on the line for others, and they don’t have to.” So I go back from that meeting in New York City and hearing the story for the first time from Lester because Lester, at the end of our conversation, said, “I think your father’s deserving of the Medal of Honor.” “What do you think?” I said, “I think so too.” So I went back to talk to my congressman. I met with Jimmy Duncan, my congressman, and then we met with Senatordraten Xander Sinator Quirker, and we all began a conservative effort to try to pursue the Medal of Honor. We spent a year and a half putting together all the information and all the testimonies and everything—affidavits that you have to have to pursue that medal because it’s, you know, it’s the greatest, highest military award. And in the meantime, a friend of Lester’s was taking all that information to help in that process, but he was also sending it over to Yad Vashem, asking them to consider that as righteous, and he wanted to surprise me, and he did. They looked at that information for over a year, confirmed that it was true. They announced in twenty fifteen when I was in Israel, and then in twenty sixteen had a ceremony at the Israeli Embassy for the first time ever. Leaders from around the world were there. It was incredible. I don’t know if there’s a higher honor than to be named righteous. And Lester, at the end of his talk there that day, said this: “Roddy… Could no more have turned two hundred of his men over to Nazi persecution than he could stop breathing.”

He just couldn’t do it. A righteous man.

And a terrific job on the production, editing, and storytelling by our own Monty Montgomery. And especially, thanks to Chris Edmonds, author of No Surrender. And what a story you just heard. “We’re all Jews here,” he said. “What a leader, what a thing to do, and it just was instinctive.” The story of Master Sergeant Roddy Edmonds, here on Our American Stories.