Alan Moskin was born May 1926 in Englewood, New Jersey. He went through school there and was skipped from third to fifth grade. He was not crazy about that because he was an athlete. It meant he was one year younger than the other guys. When he turned 17, he started Syracuse University [Annotator's Note: in Syracuse, New York]. His father was a pharmacist and later became mayor. He always talks about the diversity of his youth; there were Jewish, Catholic, colored [Annotator's Note: an ethnic descriptor historically used in the United States] kids, Hispanics, Asian, and Indian. It was an unusual mix. He learned at an early age something that Maya Angelou [Annotator's Note: born Marguerite Annie Johnson; American poet and civil rights activist] said, "People are more alike than different." As he got older, he realized that other people did not share those thoughts about colored people. He does not remember anything prejudicial; they were young kids and played in the streets. People sat on the porch after dinner. Everybody knew everybody. Anybody got sick, you helped them out. Dinner time was a big time. Every father came home for dinner and the mothers cooked. They talked at the table about sports and politics. You ate at other kid's homes too. He thinks he was very fortunate there was such diversity there. It made his persona later. To his regret, he got older and saw a lot of anti-Semitism and anti-Black. It was very disheartening. He never encountered anything negative like that growing up. It was a nice place to be brought up. He went to Syracuse in 1943.

Alan Moskin's father's side is American through and through. His was mother was about two or three years old when she came to America from a town outside of Riga, Latvia, in the early 1900s. His mother's parents lived in Brooklyn [Annotator's Note: Brooklyn, New York] and his father's lived in Englewood [Annotator's Note: Englewood, New Jersey]. He used to visit his grandparents and cousins there for dinner. His mother had six or seven siblings. Moskin was the oldest cousin. As far as he knew, all of his mother's family came over. He was very young during the Great Depression. He was told his grandfather got hurt financially. Everybody was affected to a degree. He remembers his father talking about people jumping out of office buildings. He got 25 cents allowance a week then. He had a piggy bank and he learned how to save. It took him two and half years to hit ten dollars. Kids today are spoiled. To a certain extent, his parents talked about the news of events in Europe and the Pacific. This was prior to 7 December 1941 when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor [Annotator's Note: Pearl Harbor, Hawaii]. He was 15 and he knew when that happened because everybody knew. Patriotism after that was sky high. Prior to that, when Hitler [Annotator's Note: German dictator Adolf Hitler] started to come to power, they got wind of some things happening to the Jewish people. He was about ten or 12 then. He remembers Father Coughlin [Annotator's Note: Charles Edward Coughlin] on the radio. His father would get upset because Coughlin would say that the Jews killed Christ [Annotator's Note: Jesus Christ]. He saw his father was very upset. When you are a young boy, you do not get into that so much. When Pearl Harbor happened, he felt it. Europe was far away and there was a lot of isolationism. Hitler was taking over countries. It was scary but the Atlantic was a big ocean. The day after Pearl Harbor, they assembled at school and heard Roosevelt's [Annotator's Note: Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 32nd President of the United States] famous speech [Annotator's Note: Day of Infamy Speech; Roosevelt to a Joint Session of the United States Congress, 8 December 1941]. Moskin loved Roosevelt. He was very disappointed by him later on. Roosevelt's speech made a chill go through him. His father used to cry when the flag went by.

Alan Moskin went to Syracuse [Annotator's Note: in Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York] when he was 17 and got his draft notice at 18. The first word was "Greetings". He passed his physical and went into the Army. He was ready to go. Kids today ask him if he was nervous. [Annotator's Note: Moskin gives talks and lectures on World War 2 and the Holocaust to schools and groups.] Everybody was going. One kid had a perforated eardrum and was so upset that he could not go in. At a Q and A [Annotator's Note: question and answer session of a talk or lecture], a boy told Moskin that the kid should have been happy that he did not go and get killed. Moskin got so upset by that that he had to apologize to the boy. He tells the kids playing video games that combat is "hell". There is nothing heroic about being in combat and seeing dead bodies all over. He tells the kids not to take the flag for granted and to tell their families they love them. A lot of kids do not have it very good in the world and these kids take it for granted. He tells kids today to tell their parents not to buy them a new car and to put that money away for college. It is hard, college is expensive these days. He tells them that helping their parents out is not a bad thing. [Annotator's Note: Moskin laughs.]

Alan Moskin was drafted out of Syracuse [Annotator's Note: in Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York]. He went into the Army at Camp Blanding, Florida for infantry basic training in 1944. That training is learning how to "kill or be killed." The Southern boys grew up hunting and were good with guns. The first time he used the M1 rifle [Annotator's Note: .30 caliber M1 semi-automatic rifle, also known as the M1 Garand], it hit him in the jaw with a kick. It took him awhile to learn. He encountered anti-Semitism in Florida. He put up a picture of him and some colored boys [Annotator's Note: an ethnic descriptor historically used in the United States]. They all had their arms around each other after winning a ball game. One Southern boy called him "College Boy", which was his nickname, and asked him if that was him with his "arms around that nigger [Annotator's Note: a derogatory term for Black people] baboon". Moskin did not take kindly to it and started to fight him, but the Northern boys said not to. They said they have to fight with them [Annotator's Note: in combat later], they are ignorant, and to let it go. Every day on the assignment board his nicknames were written in red pen: "College Boy Nigger Lover", "Kike" and "Sheeny" [Annotator's Note: derogatory terms for Jewish people]. He finally challenged the guy and they fought. They left him alone after that. He emphasizes that this was only in basic training and not in combat. In his outfit, the 66th Infantry Regiment, 71st Infantry Division, there was none of that. Protecting each other was all they cared about. They were very close, a "band of brothers." Another [Annotator's Note: another negative experience Moskin had] was in the South in the 1940s. This was America and he was very upset by it. He remembers the "Whites Only" drinking fountains. He thought it was terrible. There were no black guys in his unit, that came later [Annotator's Note: Executive Order 9981, 26 July 1948; desegregating the United States Armed Forces] with Truman [Annotator's Note: Harry S. Truman, 33rd President of the United States]. There were the Tuskegee Airmen [Annotator's Note: African-American pilots of the 332nd Fighter Group and 477th Bombardment Group; name applies to all associated personnel] and he is friends with some of them now. It was rough in the South and he was not prepared for it. He talks about it because when he spoke at the Coast Guard Academy [Annotator's Note: United States Coast Guard Academy, New London, Connecticut] once, some Southern boys came up to him afterwards and asked him why he went into the Southern stuff when it had nothing to do with the Holocaust. He said it was because he was an American going to fight Nazis and there were Americans behaving like that. He was confused as to who is good, and who is bad. He has to talk about it, because it is the truth and it is important. Everything is not peaches and cream in this country all the time.

Alan Moskin did his Army basic training in Florida, went home on furlough [Annotator's Note: an authorized absence for a short period of time], and then shipped across the Atlantic Ocean in a Liberty Ship [Annotator's Note: a class of quickly produced cargo ship] convoy. Some of his buddies went over on the RMS Queen Elizabeth. The Liberty Ships were like rowboats. For 11 days, everybody was going from both ends [Annotator's Note: having diarrhea and vomiting]. The smell was awful. He was nauseous and retching. They told him they had to eat, even if he threw up. He had to eat standing up. They had SOS, what they called "shit-on-a-shingle", which was chipped beef on toast, and he happened to like it. He was ready to eat and the guy right next to him threw up and it splattered all over him. It is laughable now, but it was not then. They were begging to be on the front lines instead. They landed in Liverpool, England and then crossed the English Channel into France to a replacement camp. He was sent to join the 66th Infantry Regiment, 71st Infantry Division, 3rd Army led by General Patton [Annotator's Note: US Army Lieutenant General George S. Patton, Jr.]. They fought in the Rhineland Campaign and the Central European Campaign in France, Germany, and Austria. He remembers a lot of cities they fought Nazis in. They ended up in Austria near the end of the war. On 4 May 1945 they liberated the subcamp of Mauthausen called the Gunskirchen Lager [Annotator's Note: Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp, Austria].

Alan Moskin was a scout. Scouts go in ahead of the outfit to make sure the outfit does not get ambushed. Two men are paired up. On one incident, his buddy was out in the open. Moskin got behind a disabled Panzer tank [Annotator's Note: panzer is the German term for armor or tank]. A guy came out to take a shot at his buddy, and Moskin shot him with his M1 [Annotator's Note: .30 caliber M1 semi-automatic rifle, also known as the M1 Garand]. They ran over to where he fell to the ground. He was handsome, blonde, blue-eyed, and young. Moskin found out later that he was part of the Hitler Youth [Annotator's Note: youth organization of the Nazi Party for young men]. They all looked alike. The Nazis were trying to get the pure Aryan [Annotator's Note: term used by the Nazis to describe a Germanic, pure, race of people]. The soldier was dead with his helmet nearby. Pasted inside was a picture of an elderly couple with, "We love you. Mom and Dad," written in German. He had done his job, but he had nightmares over the fact that he killed their son. He had that nightmare over and over again. He killed when he had to but it was "not his cup of tea" and left a mark on him every time. Walking back, his buddy said "war is a bitch." The kid was so young-looking, and it was upsetting to them. Moskin lost one of his best friends in combat. He does not like to talk it about much even though it was 70 years ago [Annotator's Note: at the time of this interview]. He was one of Moskin's best soldiers. They were very close, like brothers, but also very different. You do not know whether you are going to be here from one day to the next, so you talk about everything in a foxhole together. Moskin cradled him in his arms when he was wounded. He had to leave his best friend dying. That is something you do not get over ever. His lieutenant asked if he wanted to write the letter to the parents. Moskin wrote with crayon on toilet paper for three or four days. The lieutenant transcribed it and sent it. Moskin became close with the parents after the war. He says war is like "going to hell and back", and he is one of the lucky ones who made it back.

Alan Moskin says there is something called "guilt" [Annotator's Note: for killing in combat]. It is hard to put into words. You always feel like you want to be with your buddies. It is hard to talk to anyone about it. It is part of PTSD [Annotator's Note: post-traumatic stress disorder]. They never heard of that in World War 2. It was called shell shock or battle fatigue. It indicated you were crazy. He knows now it was PTSD. It is not normal [Annotator's Note: combat]. You are a young teenager and it messes you up. General Patton [Annotator's Note: US Army Lieutenant General George S. Patton, Jr.], who he saw a couple of times at the front, said the neurological stuff was "crap" and not an injury. His captain told him the old man [Annotator's Note: Patton] did not want to hear about nightmares or nerves. They were told to suck it up. They kept it all inside then. He saw a movie about Patton [Annotator's Note: "Patton"; 1970 film starring George Campbell Scott, American actor, director, and producer as Patton]. In it, Patton threatens to shoot a soldier who said he could not fight anymore. It is not normal killing and seeing body parts. He tells young people now, it is not a video; it is real. The war ended and he worked in the post office [Annotator's Note: United States Post Office]. He was a member of the Army of Occupation for a year after the war ended. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks him about other members of his outfit who might have had PTSD.] They did not talk about it but they could see it in each others faces. They did not say it verbally that they just lost somebody or ask if they were going to be next. They just did their job. They did not want to show thatthey were scared or weak. Everybody was scared. Moskin never saw a hero or an atheist in a foxhole. Guys pee in their pants and worse their first days on the line. It is nothing to be ashamed about. Anyone that tells him they were not scared, are either crazy, or a jackass, or both.

Alan Moskin says that Patton [Annotator's Note: US Army Lieutenant General George S. Patton, Jr.] used to love to march with the grunts [Annotator's Note: slang for enlisted soldiers] and not with the officers. He did it once with them. He was tough on the officers. Moskin's captain liked him and used to tell him that he just could not talk to the Rebs, his term for the Southern boys. He would say to Moskin that the Rebs never went past second grade and could not even spell their names. Moskin remember his captain telling him that Patton had told him he was Napoleon [Annotator's Note: Napoleon Bonaparte, French statesman, military ruler, and Emperor of France] and he had come back. Moskin said he thought Patton had a great sense of humor and the captain replied that he was not kidding that he thought he was Napoleon reincarnated. A few battles later, the captain told him that Patton had told him he was reincarnated from someone from the Roman Empire and he was worried that he was crazy. As a general though, they would follow him anywhere because he was Army all the way through. He pushed them to keep after the Germans, even when they were tired. He gave them motivation as general, but as a human thinking he was these old generals, it made Moskin a little nervous. Patton did not like Montgomery [Annotator's Note: British Field Marshal Sir Bernard Law Montgomery]. Moskin learned later that when Eisenhower [Annotator's Note: General of the Army Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower, Supreme Commander, Allied Expeditionary Force; 34th President of the United States] made it so the Russians [Annotator's Note: Soviet Army] would get Berlin [Annotator's Note: Berlin, Germany], Patton would say he was the one who wanted to get Hitler [Annotator's Note: German dictator Adolf Hitler]. Moskin heard a lot of things about him. Patton did not like to follow the rules. Generals are never supposed to come up to the front, but he wanted to be with the troops. He was a maverick. When he later was killed in a jeep accident [Annotator's Note: Patton died on 21 December 1945 as a result of injuries he had suffered in an accident 8 December 1945], there were rumors about how that happened because he had so many enemies.

Alan Moskin always says he is one of the lucky ones. He got emotional some time ago speaking and some of the guilt started coming up. He would question the existence of God. He is proud to be a Jew and his religion is in his heart, but he is not orthodox. A rabbi was sitting behind him. [Annotator's Note: The interview is paused to so the interviewee can get some water.] The rabbi told him there is a higher power who wanted him to survive because he is an excellent speaker. What he does by telling his stories is a mitzvah, a good deed. Moskin shrugged it off at first. He thinks about it now and maybe there is something there. He is older and getting more spiritual. He gets such nice letters from teachers and students thanking him. Maybe there is a reason why he is doing what he is doing. He experienced a lot in a short period of time. For 50 years, he did not speak a word of this. He had nightmares when the war ended. When he was on occupation duty [Annotator's Note: from 8 May 1945 to 1 March 1946], he could not sleep. He would get the sweats and chills. Others told him he was cursing in his sleep. He would get up at all times of the morning and walk the streets, afraid to sleep. He was 19 and wondering if he was going crazy. He took an imaginary key, locked up that part of his brain, and threw the key away. When it came up, he was a soldier in the 3rd Army and did his job. He would then change the subject. In 1995, a lady at the local Holocaust Museum in Spring Valley, New York [Annotator's Note: Holocaust Museum and Study Center], found out he participated in the liberation of a concentration camp. She called him and asked him to speak to schools. He got very nervous and he hung up the phone. She kept on and asked if he could just do it once. She told him about the Holocaust deniers saying it never happened. He first spoke June 1995. He was dead wrong, it was a catharsis. All of it welled up and he spoke over an hour. This was an adult group. Since that day he has been busy. He has spoken to 35,000 students in 12 different states at last count.

The first time Alan Moskin realized he was in combat and war, something hit the top of his head. There were mortar and artillery shells going off and he did not know where it was coming from. He forgets the towns now. He reached up to see what hit him and it was a blood-soaked arm. He knew it was a buddy by the tattoo on his wrist. He just kept moving forward. They were pushing the Nazis back and the Russians [Annotator's Note: Soviet Army] were coming from the east. They were trying to squeeze them between them. He lost buddies and does not want to talk about every detail, because it is not normal. It is bad. It was not like today where you see a lot of amputees. In World War 2, guys lost a limb, bled out, and died right on the field. The medics did the best they could. Everything is more advanced today. He sees some young wives next to their husbands with no arm or leg, he gives them credit, but wonders what kind of life they have. He belongs to a group that speaks to soldiers coming back from Iraq [Annotator's Note: Iraq War, 2003 to 2011] and Afghanistan [Annotator's Note: War in Afghanistan, Operation Enduring Freedom, 2001 to 2014, Operation Freedom's Sentinel, 2015 to present]. He tells their spouses they have to be patient. They are not the same after combat. It is very difficult. His generation was mostly younger. Today it is all volunteers. They are married and have children. He came back and went to college like most guys did. Very few were married. Some of the guys in Iraq and Afghanistan are on four tours. Four tours of combat have to mess you up. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks if he ever saw any materials that related how things would be coming back from war.] He does not remember anything like that. When he went back to Syracuse [Annotator's Note: Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York], he was not unique. Others like him were going to college on the G.I. Bill. It put him through college and law school.

Not much during combat stands out for Alan Moskin. Once in a while near the end, he would get R&R [Annotator's Note: rest and recuperation]. He was not a big drinker, so he did not go to the bars often with the other guys. Some of the guys at the bar would get a little nasty with some of the German civilians who had not been in combat. The guys would make fun of them and it was upsetting to Moskin. He does not want to go into detail. Part of it is knowing that your buddies got killed and taking it out on any German. Sometimes they would have to call in the military police to calm them down. He remembers going into a German house where he was offered food. He spoke a little German. He eventually married a German. They gave him some food. Generally, when they got into contact with the German civilians, they would not know what was going on, particularly the concentration camps. They would not mention Hitler [Annotator's Note: German dictator Adolf Hitler]. A lot of the towns were completely bombed out. He was 18 and still just following orders. He tries to think later what he should have done. He just wanted to survive and get home. He would write his parents the best he could. He was not allowed to say where he was. His father knew he was with the 3rd Army and they were everywhere. His aunt was living with his parents and she told him she would have nervous breakdowns when she heard the doorbell thinking it would be a telegram about him. The bombed out cities all looked alike to him. Only when he got a furlough [Annotator's Note: an authorized absence for a short period of time] and went to Switzerland, did he see what it looked like. When he went to a town in the rear to have a meal or a beer, they were not bombed out. He went to Lugano [Annotator's Note: Lugano, Italy] on the Italian Riviera and stayed in a hotel after the war ended. Every day in combat is the same. You hope you survive. You are losing friends.

On 4 May 1945, near the end of the war, Alan Moskin and his outfit [Annotator's Note: 66th Infantry Regiment, 71st Infantry Division] liberated a concentration camp. Before that they were taking a lot of prisoners, mostly Hitler Youth [Annotator's Note: a youth organization of the Nazi Party for young men]. There were two elements of the Nazis that they found. There were the Waffen-SS [Annotator's Note: Schutzstaffel; German paramilitary organization] and the Hitler Youth, who were the real Nazis. Full of hate. The German Wehrmacht [Annotator's Note: German Armed Forces] was just regular soldiers like he was. The real Nazis were the Waffen-SS officers. They had one group of prisoners and one big, blond kid from the Hitler Youth was shackled. He looked Moskin right in the eye and started screaming, "Schweinhund! Americanker Schweinhund!" and spit in his face. Moskin saw him mad, mean, and hateful. Moskin had lost some buddies in combat just before. It [Annotator's Note: the term "schweinhund"] means "pig dog" in German. Moskin put his M1 [Annotator's Note: .30 caliber M1 semi-automatic rifle, also known as the M1 Garand] right on the guy's temple and started to squeeze the trigger. An officer yelled not to do it or he would court martial him. He put the rifle down, kicked him, and cursed him in English. That officer saved him. He would likely have spent the rest of his life in prison for that. Moskin wondered where that hate came from. He tells kids today to think about where that comes from. On 4 May 1945, he and his outfit came across a Royal Air Force prisoner of war camp [Annotator's Note: near Lambach, Austria]. They were in pretty good shape but thin. They heard from them that there were rumors of a camp for Jews down the way. The day was damp, and it was in a forested area where they walked. There was the most over-powering, nauseating stench. It permeated through his body. They came across a compound that turned out to be Gunskirchen Lager, a subcamp of the Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp [Annotator's Note; Gunskirchen, Austria]. They had very little resistance as the Nazis had run. The camp was the most horrific sight he had seen, including in combat. There were skeletal bodies. His lieutenant kept calling them "poor souls" affectionately. The ones alive were so emaciated they could not have weighed 75 pounds. They were walking towards them and they looked like zombies. He could not distinguish genitalia or age. They had sores and very little hair. They were chanting prayers and wearing striped, filthy rags. They were not prepared for this. The lieutenant knew Moskin was Jewish and he asked him if he could speak to them. Moskin was frustrated because he could not speak Hebrew. Somehow, he was able to say in German that he was also a Jew. He saw some smiles and heard "thank you." They were very emotional. An elderly man kneeled and started to kiss Moskin's boots and was crying and thanking him. Moskin's boots were covered in mud and feces. He had never had anyone do that and he could not take it. He lifted him up and the smell was so powerful he wanted to get away. He saw the man had open, festering sores all down the back of his neck. They all had lice that were crawling all over. The man held him and Moskin felt his tears. He started to cry. There was a lot of crying going on.

[Annotator's Note: Alan Moskin took part in the liberation of Gunskirchen Lager, a subcamp of the Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp in Gunskirchen, Austria on 4 May 1945.] They went into the barracks and there were two layers of bunks. People were dead; people were on top of each other. Everywhere they went was the foulest stench of the dead and the dying. It is like trying to describe the indescribable. It left a mark on his heart and soul. He kept saying over and over again that he could not understand how one group of people could do this to another group of people. These were civilians, not soldiers. He wonders how the civilized world let this happen. [Annotator's Note: Moskin starts slapping his leg.] He learned later it did not happen overnight. These camps were going up in the 1930s and 1940s. He got annoyed with the president [Annotator's Note: Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 32nd President of the United States] because they "damn well knew those camps were there." They did not allow a ship with some of the survivors to land. [Annotator’s Note: Moskin is referring to the German ocean liner MS St. Louis which was carrying more than 900 Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi persecution. The ship was denied entry by Cuba, the United States, and Canada and was forced to return to Europe.] Moskin went to the camp [Annotator's Note: Gunskirchen] years later. It is not the same. They have the barbed wire but not the smell or the bodies. He met a lady whose father was in the camp. He went up to Toronto, Canada to see him and some others. She told him that by liberating her father, he liberated his children and descendants. There is a saying that when you liberate one, you liberate the world. He takes solace in that. The survivors had nothing on but rags and they had lost their families. His captain and he would try to help them find their relatives in other camps. The Germans kept very good records. They went to Bergen-Belsen [Annotator's Note: Bergen-Belsen concentration camp near Bergen, Germany], Auschwitz [Annotator's Note: Auschwitz concentration and extermination camp complex in German occupied Oświe̜cim (Oswiecim), Poland], and Dachau [Annotator's Note: Dachau concentration camp complex near Dachau, Germany]. Most of the information was that they were dead. [Annotator's Note: Moskin starts to get emotional.] People were breaking down and crying at his feet. You do not get over something like that.

When Alan Moskin was on occupation duty [Annotator's Note: in Europe from 8 May 1945 to 1 March 1946] the Nuremberg War Crimes trial started. Moskin wanted to become a lawyer and he wanted to see Robert Jackson [Annotator's Note: Robert Houghwout Jackson, American attorney and judge], the American prosecutor. Every time he had a pass, he would go to the trials. A couple of things were mind-boggling. Dr. Mengele [Annotator's Note: SS-Hauptsturmführer, or Captain, Josef Mengele, known as the Angel of Death; SS officer and physician] and the other doctors would divide the men and the boys for the labor camps. They told the women to strip in front of everybody and then they would be gassed. He saw the scratches on the walls where they had tried to get out. This went on until the day of liberation. They were operating on people on a table with a stopwatch. They would cut people open without anesthesia to see how long it would take to die. There was testimony about what they did to twins. It was sheer butchery. He saw Goring [Annotator's Note: German Reichsmarschall Hermann Wilhelm Göring; a German political and military leader] and Hess [Annotator's Note: Rudolf Walter Richard Hess; German politician and Deputy Fuhrer from 1933 to 1941] sitting there and wanted to "go whack them." They all said they either did not know about it [Annotator's Note: the Holocaust] or they were just following orders. Moskin thought Eisenhower [Annotator's Note: General of the Army Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower, Supreme Commander, Allied Expeditionary Force; 34th President of the United States] was a great general but as a president, he did not think he was a mental heavyweight like Lincoln [Annotator's Note: Abraham Lincoln, 16th President of the United States]. Moskin heard through his captain, that Ike said that if they did not know what they were fighting for, "when they liberated those camps, they damn sure did." They were fighting pure evil. He [Annotator's Note: Eisenhower] would not let them take the bodies to be buried. He made them bring the local civilians, German guards, and German prisoners do it. He said to take pictures because someday people will not believe it happened. Moskin did not pay attention to that then. There are deniers today. They say Jews made it up. That is one of the reasons Moskin talks about it. He learned through Sara [Annotator's Note: Sara J. Bloomfield], the director of the Holocaust Museum [Annotator's Note: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, D.C.] in Washington that there were close to 30,000 camps including the satellite camps and the subcamps all over Europe. He tells young people today that it was not just Jews. They were the most, but there close to five million non-Jews. The Righteous Gentiles [Annotator's Note: the "Righteous Among the Nations" or "Righteous Gentiles" are non-Jews who risked their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust] do not get enough credit in Moskin's opinion.

Alan Moskin thought we [Annotator's Note: the United States] had gotten rid of all of it [Annotator's Note: the hatred and evil in the world]. So many of his buddies are lying six feet under. Today we have ISIS [Annotator's Note: Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, also called Daesh, terrorist group] beheading people and showing it in the name of the Quran [Annotator's Note: also, Koran, Qur’an; central religious text of Islam]. There is no religion to him that condones murdering people in the name of God. He wonders when it will end. He was speaking to a group and said we need to get rid of this hate. He said we have to hug each other. The school where he was speaking was very diverse and a little Black girl stood up and told him, "hold it." She started clapping her hands and singing about hugging and not hating. He did not know she was a rapper. They all got in line to give him a hug. This went on for two hours. It caught on with the kids. They have to change all this stuff. He tells them he wants them to be upstanders and not bystanders. Inaction and indifference are the same as consent. You cannot be a bystander. When Moskin was a kid, some of the priests would say that the "Jews killed Christ" [Annotator's Note: Jesus Christ; central figure in Christianity]. A kid does not know. The color of skin or religion does not make any difference. He gets letters, mostly from girls. He tells the boys he was an athlete and they can hug him too. He laughs and says he is not going to say how upset he gets when these kids cannot write letters anymore. They use the letter "u" instead of writing "you." It is a whole new thing.

Alan Moskin had difficulty sleeping during his occupation duty [Annotator's Note: in Europe from 8 May 1945 to 1 March 1946]. He decided to lock away his emotions for 50 years. He was discharged on the point system in the summer of 1946. He went back to Syracuse [Annotator's Note: Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York] in September. He finished in 1948 and went to New York University Law School [Annotator's Note: NYU School of Law, New York, New York] until 1951. He practiced law in New Jersey for 20 years. The G.I. Bill covered college and most of law school he thinks. Moskin valued life so much more when he started to get back into the normal world. In combat, you never know if you are going to live from day to day and it gives you a different perspective. It was an adjustment to get back to normal. He did not talk about combat. His mother was a smoker and would get up during the night to smoke. She told him that he would be standing in the kitchen and staring into the refrigerator. It scared her a little. He does not remember it, he must have been sleep walking. She just watched him. Moskin believes there should be institutions like the museum [Annotator's Note: The National WWII Museum in New Orleans, Louisiana]. He saw it a few years ago. It is more difficult to travel for him now. He has seen a lot of museums though. There is going to come a time when the World War II people are gone. Their children and grandchildren can go to New Orleans and see it. It has to go on and be supported. He is a member of the museum and wishes he could do more. He was a victim of Madoff [Annotator's Note: Bernard Lawrence Madoff; American, convicted fraudster] so his funds are limited but he sends money periodically. He gets the newsletter. He saw that Tom Hanks [Annotator's Note: Thomas Jeffrey Hanks, American actor, filmmaker] or Gary Sinise [Annotator's Note: Gary Alan Sinise, American actor, director, musician, producer, philanthropist] were there and they do a wonderful job trying to keep the memory of World War 2 alive. Gary Sinise is all over. It is something that young people should remember. If we had not beaten Hitler [Annotator's Note: German dictator Adolf Hitler], what would have happened. He is proud of what he accomplished. History will show they did a great job in stopping those maniacs from they were wanting to do and did do to so many people.