A Soldier’s Country

By Ed Lowe

Ten years ago, I wrote about a man who was born in Poland in 1922, came with his family to New York when he was 8, grew up in Brooklyn, attended the City College of New York and in 1942 enlisted and served as a gunner on B-29 bomber missions over Japan. In 1946, he stood among departing recruits as officers offered instant U.S. citizenship
to any non-citizen troops before they were discharged.

Having no inkling that he might not be a citizen, he declined the offer, returned home, went to Brooklyn Polytechnic University on the GI Bill, married on Flag Day, June 14, 1947, settled in the Rockaways, raised three children and voted in every election for a halfcentury. In 1994, for the first time in his life, he applied for a passport to travel out of the country. He learned that he was not a citizen; that he would have to apply for a green card, meet the bureaucratic requirements for citizenship, and then wait.

Unsure of how long either the process, or he, might last, he wrote plaintive letters to then-U.S. Rep. Dan Frisa and to then-U.S. Sen. Al D’Amato.

Nothing happened. After two years, he and his wife wrote to me, a newspaper columnist. I liked the story.

Journalistic ethics required that I offer Frisa and D’Amato an opportunity to explain a two-year nonresponse. Frisa’s staff searched records and said they had forwarded the letter to the Congressional Liaison office of the then-Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), which asked for a copy of the man’s green card. (Oh, well.) D’Amato’s staff said D’Amato didn’t remember the letter but that someone would get back to me. It was 10 a.m., on a Thursday. I had a 5 p.m. deadline for the next day’s newspaper.

D’Amato called me at 4:30, from his car, inviting me to join him in attending the man’s private swearing-in ceremony the following morning at the New York office of the then-director of the then-INS. Suddenly, the story was about Al D’Amato saving the day.

I’d been robbed.

Let’s see if I can get robbed again.

Billy Melander and his fellow World War II veterans have been working since the 1950s to obtain posthumous citizenship for the late U.S. Army Pfc. Michel Ernst, a Warsaw-born, Jewish escapee from Nazism whose family fled, first, to Belgium, then France, then Canada, and, finally to New York. By late adolescence, Ernst yearned to become a U.S. citizen and, to that end, enlisted in the Army and became a member of the 115th Regiment of the 29th Division,
Melander’s outfit.

Melander, 81, of North Babylon, lost track of “Frenchy” Ernst after D-Day, but after being wounded twice in June, Melander was given light duty and pulled evening guard duty with Ernst, with whom he became close over the next six months.

Melander and his comrades learned Ernst’s story. They admired his fervent ambition for citizenship. They promised they would do what they could to help.

On Dec. 17, 1944 (the gravesite says Dec. 11, but Melander, who was there, insists it is wrong), Ernst had been crushed to death by a crumbling wall dislodged accidentally by a tank retreating from the sudden German attack that had begun the Battle of the Bulge.

“Our captain knew about [Ernst’s citizenship] request,” Melander said, “but the Battle of the Bulge happened, and the captain had other business. Michel’s body spent a month in a barn in Holland, then in a temporary gravesite under a mattress cover, then in a coffin. He wound up in the Margraten Cemetery [Holland/Netherlands American Military Cemetery].”

After the war, Melander and friends wrote letters in Ernst’s behalf. “Over the years,” Melander said, “I’ve written to [former U.S. Reps. James] Grover, [Tom] Downey, [Rick] Lazio and D’Amato,” Melander said. “The only response I got was that such a request had to come from a member of the immediate family. Well, they’d left his mother behind in Europe, and I think the family, here, eventually went back to Poland. I tried for years to find them.

“I developed contacts in Holland and in Germany. People later adopted Michel’s gravesite and performed a Jewish service, ‘Kaddish,’ with a rabbi from Alsdorf, Germany, and 30 schoolchildren. I have photos of that.

“Four months ago, I got a call from a young man named Joel David, from Park Slope, in Brooklyn. He had been searching the Internet for information about his granduncle. He’d found a website by Joost Claassens, one of my contacts in Holland. Claassens gave him my name, and David called and came out and visited. He had Michel’s discharge papers and many old photos. So, now, we had a living relative, just like they’d always demanded. So, he sent
letters. Still, no response.

“Two of the other fellows in the company worked on this until the late ’50s,” Melander said. “They passed, and passed the torch to me. I’m one of the youngest. A few are in their 90s. There’s only a small bunch of us left. We lost two a month ago. We’re getting down to very few. Who’s gonna carry on for Michel after we’re gone?”

Staff members from U.S. Sen. Chuck Schumer’s office promised last week to look into the matter and respond. Nina Blackwell, of U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton’s New York press office, said that Clinton aides had contacted the Department of the Army, which replied that such cases now were referred to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. “We
contacted them, as well,” Blackwell said, “but haven’t yet heard anything more conclusive. We’re working on it. These guys have been waiting long enough.”