For Jack Heiman, 90, of Northbrook, the mission to defeat the Nazis and Hitler was more personal. He was born in Germany and saw the Nazis "tighten the noose" on Jews, especially after Kristallnacht, the 1938 attack on Jewish homes, businesses and neighborhoods throughout Germany.
In 1939, the 18-year-old fled to England. His widowed mother joined him and in 1940, they came to Chicago where he was drafted into the Army in 1943, and requested to serve in an intelligence unit in Europe, where his ability to speak German would come into use.
"I wanted to get an American uniform with a rifle on my backpack, and march back into the village that I came from. I wanted those bastards to see that I survived," Heiman said.
However, the Army shipped him to Okinawa where he spent the war in the Pacific Theater.
The Greatest Generation. --DaCoot
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