Draft:Chaim Thau

• Comment: Please review MOS:PROSE and WP:NOTESSAY, along with WP:NPOV. Things like "click here," "hence," "but not the last," "to paraphrase," just as examples, are not appropriate encyclopedic language. MWFwiki (talk) 21:39, 5 June 2025 (UTC)

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Charles "Chaim" Thau
Born	(1921-07-07)July 7, 1921 Zabolotiv, Poland (now Ukraine)
Died	April 2, 1995(1995-04-02) (aged 73) Milwaukee, Wisconsin, United States
Branch	Red Army
Rank	Lieutenant
Unit	58th Guards Rifle Division
Known for	- Holocaust Survivor and Jewish Partisan (WW2 onset) - 1st Red Army Unit to meet U.S. forces at the Elbe River - Underground refugee smuggling Bricha (post WW2) - Israel Independence War solider
Battles / wars	World War II Battle of Berlin
Spouse(s)	Ida Thau (née Faich)
Children	3 (Martin Thau, Esther (nee Thau) Klienburg, and Col. Jeffrey Thau, USAF, Ret.)
Other work	Post Immigration to United States - Auto mechanic - Business Owner of Multiple Auto Repair Centers in Milwaukee

Lead Section

Charles "Chaim" Thau (born 1921, Zabolotiv, then Poland) was a Jewish survivor of the Nazi occupation during World War II. He spent approximately 19 months hiding in the Carpathian forests near Zabolotiv, engaging in partisan resistance. After he was encountered by Soviet combatants, Thau served with the Red Army as a translator and later as a lieutenant commanding an anti‑tank battery with the 58th Guards Rifle Division, 1st Ukrainian Front. In April 1945, he was among the first Soviet soldiers to meet U.S. forces at the Elbe River, an event captured in an iconic photograph showing him center, facing camera.

Lt Charles Thau meeting American Soldiers (Center Facing Photographer)

Early Life and Languages

Thau was raised in the shtetl of Zabolotiv, eastern Poland, in an agrarian Jewish family. He had two younger brothers and his mother taught Yiddish, German, and Polish from their home.

A week before the German invasion of Poland on 1 September 1939, Hitler signed the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact—a non-aggression agreement between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, also known as the Hitler–Stalin Pact. The pact outlined spheres of influence in the event of hostilities with Poland. On 17 September, Stalin ratified the agreement and ordered Soviet forces into eastern Poland.

Thau's home was in the Soviet side of the partition from 1939-1941

As a result, Germany and the Soviet Union established a new border—the demarcation line, shown on the accompanying map—across former Polish territory and began implementing their joint plan to divide and occupy the country. From 1939 to 1941, Thau's home fell within the Soviet-controlled portion of the partition. During the Soviet occupation, local schools adopted Russian as the language of instruction—providing Thau newly learned fluency in Russian, which augmented his existing Polish, Hebrew, Yiddish, and German linguistic skills.

Residents talking with a Red Army soldier, 1939, Attribution:Wikimedia Commons PD-Belarus-US

Like many other Poles where the Thau family lived, they thought the Soviets would protect their community from Nazi persecution, as reports of atrocities in western Poland had already reached them.

Early reactions were short lived when it became evident that the Soviet authorities were making concerted efforts to integrate eastern Poland into the Soviet Union.

The Holocaust and Survival

Following the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, the Nazi's arrived in the area of Zabolotiv by December 1941. Here the killing squads (Einsatzgruppen) and local collaborators began killing Jews in Zabolotiv. By the end of December 1941, about 1,100 of the town's original 2,700 Jewish residents had been taken to the outskirts of the town and murdered. Most of the remaining Jewish inhabitants of Zabolotiv were deported to death camps—-leaving only five survivors, including Thau.

Jews being transported in German-occupied Poland, reflecting the Zabolotiv environment from 1941–1942. (Attribution:Bundesarchiv,Bild 101I-380-0069-33/Lifta/CC-BY-SA 3.0)

Thau survived by escaping and fleeing to the Carpathian forests, where he hid for 19 months, and survived by scavenging potato fields, and eating berries. Thau initially took refuge secretly in any farmer's barn, constantly at risk of barking dogs or agitated livestock alerting the farmer to his presence. He also utilized terrain dugouts as makeshift shelters. During those 19 months, Thau joined up with another survivor, a childhood Jewish friend also in hiding, and together they formed a small partisan group near the Romanian border.

Chaim Thau conducted partisan activity in southern tip near Romania border

During rare periods while hiding in the woods, Thau was able to seek out and obtain dental care and provisions by posing as a German officer—facilitated by his German-language skills and a procured Nazi uniform.

Service with Soviet Forces

In mid-1943, Russian combatants discovered Thau hiding in the woods with his childhood friend, now a partisan team with others. The Russian combatants almost shot Thau as they initially believed he was a German collaborator or a deserting German officer, given his fluency in German, Polish and Russian, and assumed he was attempting to blend in with the civilian population following the Wehrmacht's continued retreat since Stalingrad. They unofficially conscripted Thau due to his language skills, and immediately blended him into the Soviet ranks, initially as a translator.

Later Thau rose to the rank of lieutenant, commanded an anti‑tank battery, and was assigned to the 58th Guards Rifle Division of the 1st Ukrainian Front--this was the first Red Army unit that encountered the Western Allies, specifically the 69th Infantry Division (United States), at the Elbe River on 24 April 1945.

Elbe River Handshake Link-Up (April 1945)

On 24 April 1945, Thau's unit encountered the U.S. 69th Infantry Division at the Elbe River near Torgau. This meeting symbolized the link-up of Eastern and Western Allied forces. Thau's involvement during this event was captured in the iconic photograph where he is positioned in the center of the photograph facing the camera, functioning as one of the impromptu translators during the event.

Lt Charles Thau meeting Americans (Center Facing Photographer)

In this first of two actual re-enacted photos taken at the time, Thau is shown staring directly into the camera. The film was immediately sent to the Associated Press, and the iconic first snapshot appeared on the front page of The New York Times on 25 April 1945.

Battle of Berlin

After the Elbe River link-up, the 58th Guards Rifle Division (including Lt. Chaim Thau) moved on to Berlin, where they participated in the intense street fighting of 1945, battling block by block. Thau was wounded in the jaw by machine-gun fire.This marked the second time during World War II that he was injured in combat. Unknowingly, he carried a slug fragment from that Berlin wound in his face for more than five years after the war. The bullet fragment remained lodged in his jaw until it was removed in Milwaukee in 1951 after Thau's immigration to the United States.

Post WW2 (Smuggling Refugees to Israeli Statehood)

After the war, Thau returned to Zabolotiv and verified his parents and brothers had been killed by the German Security Police. Thau then relocated to Salzburg as a displaced person, working openly as an automobile mechanic. However, while in Salzburg between 1945 to the Spring of 1948, the 24 year old Thau also secretly belonged to an organization known as the Bricha.

Salzburg Bricha Unit, Thau is top row, 3rd from right

Thau, far right of those standing on auto circa 1946, PD-Austria, PD-US-no notice

The goal of the Bricha was to covertly transport Jews from Central and Eastern Europe to Palestine. As an underground movement, the Bricha was loosely organized with local leadership emerged from the partisan survivors of the war and continued until the establishment of the State of Israel in May 1948. Thau appears in a commemorative photograph tied to Sh'erit ha-Pletah ("the surviving remnant"), the survivor-led group linked to Bricha's logistics and advocacy.

Main Routes Used by Ha Bricha

From Salzburg, Thau would then help refugees travel by truck, car, or hike across the Alps, and eventually by ferry to bypass the British-controlled territory of pre-state Israel. Many displaced persons could not return to their homes from before the war. For many of the survivors, like the Thau family, Europe had become a Jewish cemetery without borders, and they needed to start life elsewhere.

Coming to America

Following these wartime experiences, which included fighting in the 1948 Israeli War of Independence, Thau sought out immigration to the United States. The process Thau followed required the assistance from the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee at Camp Saalgelden near Salzburg,with travel funds donated randomly to Thau, provided to the Jewish Refugee Agency by a sponsoring lawyer in Sheboygan, Wisconsin—David Rabinowitz.

USS General MB Stewart

Thau arrived in New York on September 7, 1951 aboard the USS General M. B. Stewart, staying in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, and later settling in Milwaukee Wisconsin. He adopted the name Charles Thau, became an auto mechanic, and later owned multiple automotive garages in Milwaukee. It was there during a routine dental x-ray that the Berlin machine gun slug, lodged in his jaw since 1945, was finally removed. Thau married Ida (nee Faich) and had three children, Martin, Jeffrey and Esther.

Public Recognition

In 1955, Thau recounted his wartime experiences—including the Elbe River Handshake Bridge Linkup between the Russians and American soldiers from 1945, and the jaw injury—in an interview with the Milwaukee Journal. He rarely spoke of his past until later in life, even before his role in the Elbe River Handshake Linkup photo was formally recognized in joint U.S.–Russian commemorations around 2010. His youngest son, Jeffrey Thau, Colonel USAF (retired), attended numerous commemorative ceremonies honoring his father's role at the Elbe Bridge Link-up in Torgau Germany, the first time in WWII when "East meets West.".

Charles Thau passed away peacefully in 1995.

Legacy

Thau's story has been covered in:

• Der Spiegel (2025): a German news magazine
• The Milwaukee Journal (1955, 2015)
• The Dayton Daily News (2015)
• The Freie Presse (2015), a daily German newspaper in Saxony
• German Public Radio Broadcast (2025) (WDR - Westdeutscher Rundfunk) in Cologne Germany
• The Forward (2025)- an historic Jewish American news outlet

Recognized by Scholars: His resilience during such a tumultuous journey, from Holocaust survivor and partisan to Soviet soldier, Jewish refugee smuggler and American immigrant highlights the complex experiences of Jewish survivors of World War II.

External links

• Chaim Thau at Find a Grave