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Niles Army veteran recalls concentration camp horrors
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‘I couldn’t believe a human being could be so mean to another human being,’ said Fred Kubli.
By WILLIAM K. ALCORN
VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER
NILES — They smelled burning flesh miles before they entered the German concentration camp at Ebensee, Austria.
But what the members of the Army’s 139th Evacuation hospital witnessed when they entered the camp in May 1945 almost defied description, said Fred Kubli Jr., who was the unit’s clerk.
There were piles of bodies and living skeletons that it was hard to believe were still able to move, said Kubli, of Niles, then a 24-year-old technical sergeant from Wilkinsburg, Pa.
The prisoners were naked because of a lice infestation, and they were starving. They were dying at the rate of 200 a day, he said.
“We were stunned by what we saw. We didn’t know what to think. Sometimes we worked 24 hours straight, but we were young and could do it then,” said Kubli, who will be 90 on Sept. 15.
“It was a terrible thing. I couldn’t believe a human being could be so mean to another human being. It was mind-boggling, but we took it in stride,” he said.
The 139th, consisting of 40 doctors, 40 nurses, 276 enlisted men and a couple of chaplains and two Red Cross people, were at Ebensee for about two months. They were at the tail end of a trek across Europe training and preparing for the anticipated U.S. invasion of Japan, Kubli said.
When the 139th arrived at Ebensee, its supplies had not caught up with them, and some of the men hunted for deer to help feed Army personnel and the liberated concentration camp prisoners.
Kubli, who had learned German from his parents who came to the U.S. from Switzerland, once became an interpreter for his commanding officer when the mayor of Ebensee came to camp to complain about Americans drafting civilian women from the town to clean up the concentration camp.
Though Kubli said he does not believe the concentration camp experience affected his life after the war, neither did he talk about it for some 15 years.
“We just came home and went to work after the war. Maybe we kind of wanted to forget. No one asked us about it, and we didn’t talk about it,” he said.
It wasn’t until the early 1960s, after he had moved to Niles, when one of his grandsons asked him to talk to his school class about his war experiences, that the floodgates opened.
Kubli used his war experience as the basis for speeches he gave as a member of Toastmasters International, and for many talks at area schools and for Memorial Day, Fourth of July and Veterans Day ceremonies.
Kubli said his love of country and the flag began as a small boy when his father took him to Fourth of July parades.
“Every man took off his hat and saluted the flag. I think we’ve lost a little of that,” he said.
But Kubli hasn’t.
When “The Star-Spangled Banner” rings out or the American flag is raised, he straightens up and tears up.
“I’m all for the American Legion’s campaign to get a law passed disallowing the degrading of the flag,” he said.
Kubli is active in veterans groups and in the community. He is former commander and now adjutant of William McKinley American Legion Post 106 in Niles.
He is former chairman of the board of the Trumbull Metropolitan Housing Authority, vice president of the Friends of the McKinley Library, and past president and trustee of the Niles Historical Society. He also was involved in Boy Scouts of America and received its highest adult honor, the Silver Beaver Award, in 1978. He is a member of the Evangelism Committee at Living Lord Luthern Church in Howland.
But, perhaps what he is best known for is his longtime association with Air Force Reserve’s 910th Airlift Wing and the Base-Community Council at the Youngstown Air Reserve Station in Vienna.
Over the years, Kubli has been the council’s most active member, working with base officials on nearly a daily basis, wrote Master Sgt. Bryan Ripple, former staff member of the 910th Airlift Wing Public Affairs office, in a story about Kubli.
He also represents the council in the 910th’s Pilot for a Day program, which designates area youth who suffer from chronic or life-threatening illnesses, to be honorary Air Force pilots for a day.
Kubli, a metallurgist, said he got involved at the air base when his former boss at RMI wanted him to join the Air Force Association because the company had military contracts.
He began his civilian career at the Calorizing Co. in Wilkinsburg, where he worked his way up to plant manager. While there, he went to Carnegie Institute of Technology, where he earned a degree in management, and the University of Pittsburgh, from which he received a degree in metallurgy in 1944.
He was deferred twice from being drafted because he was working on a defense contract at Calorizing,
“It was so secret that Army trucks picked up castings, and nobody at the plant knew where they were heading,” he said.
While in Wilkinsburg, Kubli met and married his wife, LaVerne, on Nov. 25, 1943. Seven months later, he was drafted, and in February 1945, he found himself on a ship with the 139th heading for France.
In August 1945, they were loaded on another ship and headed for Japan. They made it to the Strait of Gibraltar when the U.S. dropped the atomic bomb on Japan, and the war ended. The ship turned around and headed to Boston.
He was discharged and when back to to work at Calorizing, he said.
He came to Niles to work at RMI Titanium (later Reactive Metals and RMI and now RTI), in 1960 as a staff metallurgist. He rose through the ranks and was manager of customer technical services and quality assurance when he retired in 1991.
The Kublis have four children, David F., Timothy, Diane Marrara and Michele Kubli; eight grandchildren, and three great-grandchildren.
His memories of the war years were refreshed last year when Richard McDonald of Illinois, the son of his commander with the 139th Hospital Evacuation, Dr. Hugh McDonald, visited him to find out more about the unit and his father.
McDonald learned about Kubli when he ran across a story about the Niles man in The Airstream, a publication of the 910th Airlift Wing.
McDonald, who visited Kubli again in May, is writing a book about his father and the 139th, and was looking for information.
“It turns out his father didn’t talk much about the war, either,” Kubli said.
alcorn@vindy.com