Charles Thau

Born Chaim Thau on 7 July 1921 in the shtetl of Zabłotów (present-day Zabolotiv, Ukraine) in eastern Poland, he grew up in an agrarian Jewish family. His father, Mordechai, was a merchant peddler operating from the family farm, while his mother, Esther, taught Yiddish, German, and Polish from their home, which also functioned as a small classroom. He had two younger brothers.^[2]

Zabłotów was a market town with roughly equal Jewish and Christian populations.^[3] Archival tax records place the Thau family among the more highly assessed households.^[4] In this multilingual environment, he became proficient in several languages.^[5][a]

In September 1939, Germany and the Soviet Union signed the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact,^[8] leading to the partition of Poland at the outset of World War II. Zabłotów came under Soviet administration.^{[3][6][9][10]} Russian was subsequently mandated as the language of instruction in local schools.^[11] With unexpected Russian soldiers then stationed in Zabłotów, and Thau's interaction with the soldiers, Thau learned Russian which added to his existing knowledge of Polish, German, Yiddish, and Hebrew.^[5][12]

Contemporary accounts indicate that some residents initially welcomed the Soviets and perceived their presence as protective, but soon the region was incorporated into the Soviet system.^{[13][14][15][16]}

This environment of cultural diversity and relative stability would be abruptly shattered with the German invasion in 1941.

In June 1941, Nazi Germany violated the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact by invading the Soviet Union in Operation Barbarossa.^[8] German and Hungarian forces occupied Zabłotów in early July 1941.^{[3][17][18][19] [b]}

Persecution of the Jewish population intensified thereafter. In the latter half of 1941, German security forces and local collaborators helped carry out mass shootings as part of Einsatzgruppen operations.^[3][17] By the end of the year, approximately 1,100 of the town’s roughly 2,700 Jewish residents had been killed.^[3][20]

Most of the remaining Jewish residents were subsequently deported to extermination camps.^[3][17][20] Thau's parents and two younger brothers—Mordechai, Esther, Barrish, and Hershel—did not survive.^[20][21][22]

With the destruction of his community underway, Thau’s flight into the forests marked the beginning of a prolonged struggle for survival.^[23][24] His experience was uncommon, as relatively few Jews were able to escape into the forests or join partisan formations. ^[20][21]

In the forests, the ability to survive involved foraging, acquiring food from nearby farms, and using concealed dugouts (Zemlyanka) to endure winter conditions and avoid detection.^{[23][24][25][26]}

Thau later linked up with a childhood friend, another Jewish survivor, and the two operated together near the Romanian border.^[24]

According to Der Spiegel (2025) and The Forward (2025), Thau at times disguised himself as a Wehrmacht officer, using his fluency in German and procured uniforms to enter nearby towns in order to obtain food and medical care.^[23][24] Similar use of disguise has been documented among other partisan groups in comparable conditions. ^[27][28]

After more than a year in hiding, Thau was discovered by Soviet combatants operating in the region. He was initially suspected of being a Nazi collaborator or Wehrmacht deserter, reflecting broader Red Army suspicion of civilians emerging from occupied territories.^[29] Thau's fluency in German contributed to this suspicion.^[30] After demonstrating proficiency in Russian, he was integrated into their ranks on 10 July 1942 as a translator.^[31] His language skills were used for military interrogations and liaison duties.^[32][33]

During the Red Army's westward advance in 1944 and 1945, archival records identify Thau as a Guards sergeant rifleman in the 56th Guards Rifle Regiment of the 58th Guards Rifle Division.^[31][34][c] On 15 January 1945, he was wounded during offensive operations in Poland near a position identified in Soviet records as "Height 55.2."^[35][d]

According to the regimental award citation, after another machine-gun crew was disabled, Thau took over their mounted heavy weapon and laid defensive counterfire on advancing German infantry, helping advance Soviet forces. He was awarded the Medal "For Courage" by regimental order dated 20 January 1945.^[34]

As casualties among junior officers mounted, experienced enlisted soldiers were promoted.^[36][37] In this context, Thau was field-commissioned as a lieutenant and assumed command of an anti-tank battery equipped with 76 mm divisional guns within the 58th Guards Rifle Division.^[38]

In April 1945, his division reached the Elbe River and took part in the Allied–Soviet link-up at Torgau before advancing toward Berlin.^[39] He was later wounded during street fighting in the Battle of Berlin. A bullet fragment remained lodged in his cheek until it was discovered and removed by a dentist in Milwaukee in 1951.^[2][40]

By April 1945, Allied operational plans called for US forces advancing eastward to halt along the Elbe–Mulde line in preparation for contact with advancing Soviet formations, culminating in the link-up known today as commemorated as Elbe Day.^[41][42] The meeting between elements of the 58th Guards Rifle Division and the US 69th Infantry Division was one of several contacts establishing the Allied–Soviet link-up in central Germany.

Thau appears in the reproduced photograph of the Allied–Soviet link-up, positioned at the center behind the handshake, looking directly into the camera. ^{[33][43][1][e]} In the image, Thau is depicted wearing a standard Red Army field uniform (gymnastyorka Model 1943) with a sidearm carried in a belt holster.^[44] He is also shown wearing Soviet military decorations, including the Medal "For Courage" and the Medal "For Battle Merit".^[34] High-resolution reproductions show wound stripes (ranenie stripes) on his right chest, indicating injuries sustained prior to late April 1945.^[f][g]

Film from the camera was transmitted to the Associated Press, and one of the two photographs appeared on the front page of The New York Times on 25 April 1945.^[45] Later research on the event led to the correction of a long-standing misidentification of one of the American soldiers in the photograph.^[23][46]

After World War II, Thau returned to Zabłotów to search for his relatives. Finding no survivors among his immediate or extended family, he departed the region and relocated to Salzburg, Austria within the American occupation zone.^[47] There, he worked as an automobile mechanic while becoming an active operative in the clandestine Bricha network—an underground effort that facilitated the transit of Jewish Holocaust survivors out of post-war Europe. ^[48][49][50]

Bricha operative

Operating from the Salzburg region, including the displaced-persons camp at Saalfelden, Thau was involved in logistical operations supporting the movement of Jewish refugees across postwar Europe despite British immigration restrictions.^[48][51] He helped coordinate routes and facilitate border crossings as part of the broader Bricha network.^[52]

Bricha operations in Austria were closely connected to the displaced-persons camp system established by Allied authorities, which concentrated large numbers of Jewish survivors in the American occupation zone.^[53][54] Camps in the Salzburg region, including Camp Saalfelden, functioned as staging centers where refugee groups were assembled, transportation arranged, and documentation prepared for movement across Alpine transit corridors into Italy and onward to Mediterranean ports.^[55][56][57]

A contemporary photo collage from the late 1940s identifies Thau within the dedicated Bricha unit at Camp Saalfelden.^[52][48]

After years shaped by war and displacement, Thau established a stable civilian life resettling in Milwaukee. Thau adopted the name Charles Thau and resumed work as an auto mechanic, a trade he had practiced in postwar Salzburg.^[2]

From the early 1950s to the 1990s, he owned and operated multiple service stations, including several Phillips 66–branded locations in Milwaukee.^[60][61][h]

Independent records from the early 1960s list his business at 433 South 6th Street.^[62] He later operated additional locations on West Greenfield Avenue and on Capital Drive. ^[63]

Thau used his multilingual abilities in Polish, Russian, Yiddish, German, and English to assist newly arrived immigrants from Europe. His garages served as gathering places for Milwaukee's postwar Jewish and European community, where he helped with translations, employment referrals, and introductions.^[40][64] As Thau's multiple Phillips 66 service stations grew across Milwaukee over several decades, he became an established local businessman. During this period Thau remained personally involved in daily operations and maintained close ties with his family and community. ^[64]

Thau married Ida (née Faich), and they had three children: Martin, Jeffrey, and Esther.^[40]

In 1951, during a routine dental X-ray in Milwaukee, a bullet fragment from his wartime injury in Berlin was discovered still lodged in his jaw and was surgically removed.^[65]

Photographs from the 1960s and 1970s document his family life during the period he operated his businesses in Milwaukee.^[46] Charles Thau died on 2 April 1995, several weeks before the 50th anniversary of Elbe Day.^[61]

Although he lived much of his later life outside the public eye, Thau’s notoriety is his image embedded in the visual Allied–Soviet linkup photo from World War 2.

Elbe photograph and later identification

For years one of the American soldiers in the photograph was misidentified in both commemorations and Torgau historiography as Delbert Philpott, including during the in-person official 2005, 60th-anniversary, state-level observances held in Moscow and attended by US and Russian Presidents Bush and Putin.^[73][74][75]

In 2008, the 69th Infantry Division Association and Torgau officials corrected the soldier's identity to Technician Fifth Grade Bernard E. Kirschenbaum.^[76] The correction was only prompted after an alerting testimony from a USAF veteran family member with detailed knowledge of the linkup regimental positions and documentary evidence, including the Colonel Adams's report and a 1995 entry in the Torgau city visitors’ log.^[77]

Kirschenbaum himself had verbally challenged the misidentification directly with Philpott when they both met each other, face-to-face, during a 1995 anniversary visit to Torgau. Kirschenbaum also recorded in the city visitors' log that he was "the American in the middle on the bridge shaking hands with the Russian soldiers."

Neither the 1995 verbal challenge nor the log entry was recognized, taken seriously, or acted upon until 2008, allowing the misidentification to persist for another 13 years.^[23] Subsequent historical accounts have since documented both the earlier misidentification and its correction.^{[78][79][80][81]}

This correction added a further dimension to the photograph. Specifically, as Olivia Haynie wrote in The Forward (April 2025), the image preserves not only a moment of Allied cooperation with soldiers Thau, and now Kirschenbaum recognized, but the photo also preserves one of Jewish survival on each side of the bridge, whom the Nazi regime had sought to destroy.^[46]

The photograph in which Thau appears remains one of the most widely reproduced visual records of the Allied–Soviet link-up, securing his place in the documented history of the final days of World War II.

• Jewish resistance in German-occupied Europe
• Jewish partisans