T/5 David Thalmay
(1920 - 1997)
Profile
T/5 David Thalmay was born in Copenhagen in 1920 by Jewish immigrant parents. In 1942, he enlisted in the US Army and was assigned to Army Air Corps signals unit in Kunming, China. His brother, Jacob, was active in the Danish resistance movement, but died following arrest in in Mathausen in March 1945.
David Thalmay was born as David Suslovitz on 5 April 1920 in Copenhagen, to jeweler Lipa Suslovitz and Chana Suslovitz (née Bornstein). [1] Thalmay was born into a jewish family. His father was born in Russia and his mother in Warsaw, Poland. The parents had immigrated and settled in Copenhagen in late 1906.
Emigrating to Palestine
Thalmay’s father Lipo Suslowitz supported the zionist cause and in the early 1920s, the family emigrated to the newly established Mandatory Palestine. [2] Most of the family retuned to Denmark in 1931 due to the armed insurgency in the area. It is not clear if Thalmay remained with his father in Palestine or retuned to Copenhagen with his family.[3]
In any case, on 23 June 1939 Thalmay was engaged as a ship’s boy onboard the Danish merchant vessel SS Gertrud in Tel Aviv. Gertrud arrived in New York about a month later, on 25 July, where Thalmay was discharged from the ship. He held a Palestinian citizenship.[4]
He worked as an auto mechanic in New York before the United States entered the war.[5]
Army Air Force Service
Thalmay enlisted as a private (32600392) in the U.S. Army in Newark, New Jersey, on 17 December 1942.[6]
He was naturalized as a United States citizen on 30 August 1944 in Kunming, China. By then, he was promoted to T/5 Corporal and served in the 993rd Signals Operations Company. [7] This was one of two similar units which were activated in mid-1943 in preparation for the retake of Burma.[8]
The is at present no further information available on the nature of his military service. Thalmay was discharged on 26 September 1945.[9]
Brother died in Theresienstadt
While Thalmay served in the Army Air Force, his brother became an active member of the resistance movement in Denmark. Jacob Thalmay had returned to Denmark in 1931 and settled as a watchmaker. He was married in 1934 and became the father of a son, Bent Thalmay, a year later. He was naturalised as a Danish citizen in June 1942.[10]
In 1943, as it became evident that the Germans would not spare the Danish jews, he arranged for the evacuation of his wife and son to neutral Sweden. He remained in Denmark to continue his resistance work. He was arrested on 15 November 1943 and deported to Sachsenhausen on 20 January 1944. A Norwegian fellow prisoner convinced him into worked in the watchmaker workshop of one of the specialist commands at the camp. The chances of survival was better given the less physical nature of the work. However, Jacob Thalmay was trained as an optician, not a watchmaker, and for some time the two managed by the Norwegian doing Thalmay’s as well as his own repairs. However, eventually the Germans found out and, in August 1944, he was transferred to Auschwitz. He participated in the death march to Mauthausen (Melk) concentration camp in Austria, where he died of exhaustion on 9 March 1945.[11]
In 2021, a memorial cobblestone—a so-called stumble stone—was laid commemorating Jacob Thalmay outside his former appartment at Carl Plougs Vej 7 in Frederiksberg, Copenhagen.[12]
After the war
David Thalmay married Thelma Diane Samson on 29 October 1945, shortly after he had returned to civil life. [13] They settled in New Jersey, where he resumed his work as an auto mechanic. [14] They later moved to California, where he died on 17 September 1997.[15]
Endnotes
[1] DNA: 1921 Census of Denmark.
[2] Comment by Mark Thalmay to online newspaper article, Da Vorherre kom til de progressive, Information, 12 April 2008, https://www.information.dk/kultur/2008/04/vorherre-kom-progressive#comment-28369 (accessed on 14 April 2024).
[3] David Thalmay’s brother Jacob is known to have returned to Denmark in 1931, and Jacob and the other two brothers Alexander and Aron can be traced in the Copenhagen directory (Kraks Vejviser) throughout the period. Neither David, nor his parents seem to have lived in Copenhagen in this period. On the other hand, the changed his surname to Thalmay as did the rest of the family as they returned to Denmark.
[4] The Palestinian citizenship was created by the Palestinian Citizenship Order 1925 in Mandatory Palestine, which came into force on 1 August 1925 and remained into effect until 14 March 1948, cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_Citizenship_Order_1925.
[5] Ancestry: U.S., World War II Draft Cards Young Men, 1940-1947.
[6] Ancestry: U.S., World War II Army Enlistment Records, 1938-1946.
[7] "New Jersey Naturalization Records, 1796-1991", , FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:QPR6-3KSP : Sat Mar 09 04:43:19 UTC 2024), Entry for David Thalmay, 1944.
[8] Thompson and Harris (1991). The Signal Corps: The Outcome, p. 178.
[9] Ancestry: U.S., Department of Veterans Affairs BIRLS Death File, 1850-2010.
[10] Forslag til lov om indfødsrets meddelelse (som vedtaget i Landstinget ved 3. behandling den 25. juni 1942), Rigsdagstidende 1941-42, Tillæg C, spalte 2033-4.
[11] Jacob Thalmay, Room of Names. The Deceased of the Mauthausen Concentration Camp, https://raumdernamen.mauthausen-memorial.org/index.php?id=4&p=25195&L=1 (accessed on 14 April 2024).
[12] Jacob Thalmay, Snublesten, https://snublesten.dk/snublesten/jacob-thalmay/ (accessed on 14 April 2034).
[13] Ancestry: Virginia, U.S., Marriage Records, 1936-2014.
[14] Ancestry: 1950 United States Federal Census.
[15] Ancestry: U.S., Social Security Death Index, 1935-2014.