Chris Gibbons: The box in the attic
The dishes arrived from Bavaria at the Girard Avenue home in Philadelphia of Mr. and Mrs. Harry Kilisky in mid-June 1945. They were from the Kiliskys’ son, Corporal Edward Kilisky, whose U.S. Army battalion had just passed through the Alpine villages of southeastern Germany, near the border with Austria.
Truth be told, many of the American soldiers were openly looting. It was sanctioned by their commanding officers, so packages of “war booty” from various European locations were arriving daily in the U.S. These particular porcelain dishes were among the finest you could find in Europe, outlined with intricate 24 karat gold symbols and handmade by the renowned Nymphenburg Porcelain Manufactory in Germany. Although the Kiliskys were certainly intrigued by these elaborate souvenirs, their primary concerns were still for their son. The war in Europe had ended about a month prior to that day, but they still couldn’t rest easily until Ed was home. They often wondered about their son’s whereabouts, and what he may have been through in those final days of the war.
As it turned out, it was for the best that they didn’t know.
Ed Kilisky’s 3rd Field Artillery Observation Battalion arrived in the German town of Dachau sometime in late April 1945, just a little over a week before Germany officially surrendered to end the war in Europe. There were rumors of a concentration camp near the town, and during his oral history interview with Gratz College in 1987, Ed recalled the day those rumors were confirmed:
“Some of our fellows came running down the road saying, ‘Drop whatever you’re doing and go up the road. You won’t believe what they have there.’ And when we got there, this was Dachau concentration camp. And there were boxcars there with people who were dead, others who were dying… in the boxcars that were on the railroad siding there were hundreds and hundreds of dead bodies…there were other spots where you had dead bodies laying on the railroad tracks. They had piles of bodies and also piles of various types of clothing and shoes and things like that.”
Ed also remembered the horrific physical condition of the emaciated survivors: “They really weren’t people. They were skeletons, with skin on them.”
Although Ed’s battalion didn’t stay long at Dachau, he never forgot what he saw there. The battalion was only at the camp for a few hours before being ordered to move out to Munich. Several weeks later, at a Displaced Persons camp in Salzburg, Austria, Ed met a Polish survivor of the infamous Auschwitz Concentration Camp. Her name was Rose Lerer and sadly most of her family was killed at Auschwitz. Ed and Rose fell in love and were married on November 15, 1945. They eventually settled in the Philadelphia area and raised two children, Geraldine and Stephen. Ed died in 2004, and Rose passed away in 2012.
As for the dishes, they were never used, and to this day they remain in boxes in the home of the Kiliskys’ daughter, Geraldine. To some, this may seem like such a waste. After all, why take the finest dishes in Europe if you are never going to use them? Surely, they would have had better use if they had simply been left in their Bavarian home.
But there was a very good reason why the Kiliskys would never think of using these dishes. You see, they had a deep disgust for the man who used to own them, and just the thought of how outraged he would be to know that his precious gold-lined dishes sat in cardboard boxes gathering dust in the attic of a Jewish home brought the Kiliskys a sense of poetic justice. And when Ed’s battalion moved out from Munich to seize Berchtesgaden, this man’s infamous lair in the Bavarian alps, Ed’s thoughts likely turned to what he had witnessed at Dachau just a few days before – the boxcars filled with the dead and the dying, the emaciated survivors, the piles of discarded clothing and shoes. Yet here, at Berchtesgaden, with its elaborate furniture, priceless works of art, ornate drapery, and those precious porcelain dishes, was the home of a man who clearly placed great importance upon material things.
Ed Kilisky took the fine dishes from the home of Adolf Hitler, items that the Fuhrer held in higher regard than the millions of human lives that he destroyed, and Ed stored them in cardboard boxes in the attic of his home. There they would sit, unused, and over the years, in the rooms below, the Kilisky family would celebrate the traditional Jewish holidays of Hanukkah, Purim, and Passover. The family would solemnly remember all those who died in the Holocaust and thank God that soldiers like Ed Kilisky put a stop to it.
And as the box in the attic gathered dust, and the Jewish family in the home below gathered in peace, somewhere in Hell a vile little man who set the world aflame screamed in rage.
Perhaps there truly is a God after all.
Chris Gibbons is a Philadelphia writer. His book, “Soldiers, Space, and Stories of Life,” a compilation of 78 of his essays, is available at Amazon.
