In München-Gladbach, Corporal Sidney Talmud of the 38th Canal Construction Battalion decided to celebrate the Ninth Army's assault crossing of the Rhine and the Passover season. On the porch of Propaganda Minister Paul Joseph Goebbels' onetime home, he set up a camp stove and made potato pancakes for passersby.
In Cologne, a hundred-odd ragged, weary Jews squatted on the floor of the gutted Roonstrasse Synagogue, burned by the Nazis in 1938, and solemnly gave thanks for their deliverance from bondage. Two U.S. Army chaplains conducted the services. German civilians gaped at them in...