Product Code Database
Charles "Charlie" Thau (born Chaim Thau; 7 July 1921 – 2 April 1995) was a Polish-born Jewish Holocaust survivor, partisan fighter, and **Red Army** officer who later became an American businessman. He is best known for appearing at the center of an **iconic photograph** capturing the April 25, 1945 meeting between U.S. and Soviet troops at the Elbe River near Torgau Germany.
Born in the shtetl of Zabłotów (now Zabolotiv, Ukraine), Thau grew up in an agrarian Jewish family and became proficient in multiple languages. When Germany invaded in 1941 and his hometown came under Nazi control, his immediate family was killed and he spent nearly two years hiding in the Carpathian forests. He later joined the Red Army as a translator, was commissioned a junior lieutenant with the 58th Guards Rifle Division; he participated in both the Elbe link-up and the Battle of Berlin, where he suffered combat injuries.
After World War II, Thau joined the clandestine **Bricha** movement in Austria, assisting Jewish survivors in relocating from displaced-persons camps to Palestine. He immigrated to the United States in 1951, settled in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and operated several **Phillips 66** service stations under his own name, becoming a respected local businessman.
Thau’s wartime experience, particularly his appearance in the Elbe meeting, has been commemorated in studies of **Elbe Day** and in U.S.–Russian diplomatic observances. He died in Milwaukee weeks before the 50th anniversary of the Elbe link-up in 1995.
During the interwar years, Zabłotów (now Zabolotiv) lay in southeastern Poland’s Stanisławów Voivodeship, a market town on the Prut River with about 4,000–5,000 inhabitants—roughly half Jewish, the rest divided among Poles and Ukrainians. Agriculture and small trade formed the basis of the local economy. Weekly market days, typically held on Tuesdays, drew peasants from nearby villages who sold grain, produce, and livestock to Jewish and Polish shopkeepers. This cycle connected surrounding agrarian families—like the Thaus—with the town’s Jewish merchants, craftsmen, and transport workers. Zabłotów’s Jewish community maintained several synagogues, a Talmud Torah, and a Hebrew primary school; its trades included leather, textile, and woodworking crafts, along with small-scale tobacco and grain commerce. Relations among Poles, Ukrainians, and Jews alternated between coexistence and tension, mirroring broader currents in eastern Galicia during the late Second Polish Republic. The YIVO Institute notes that Galician towns of this era were multilingual environments where Yiddish, Polish, Ukrainian, and German coexisted in daily life. Growing up amid that linguistic and occupational mix—on the edge of both rural fields and a bustling market square—shaped Thau’s early multilingualism and familiarity with trade, abilities that later aided him as a Red Army translator and post-war businessman.
In September 1939, Germany and the Soviet Union signed the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, partitioning Poland at the outset of the war. Zabłotów then came under Soviet administration.
During the Soviet occupation (1939–1941), local schools adopted Russian as a language of instruction, thereby expanding Thau’s linguistic knowledge to his already existing proficiency in Polish, German, Yiddish, and Hebrew.
Contemporaneous accounts note that while some residents initially viewed the Soviet presence as protective, integration of eastern Poland into the Soviet system followed.
Most of the remaining Jewish residents were deported to extermination camps. Thau’s father, mother, and two younger brothers — — did not survive.
According to the survivor account “The Destruction of Our Community,” besides Thau only five other Jewish residents of the town are known to have survived the war.
Contemporary reports in Der Spiegel and The Forward (2025) state that on at least one occasion Thau disguised himself as a Wehrmacht officer, using his fluency in German and a procured uniform to enter a nearby city to obtain food and medical treatment.
Subsequently, he was commissioned as a junior lieutenant and assumed command of an anti-tank battery armed with four 76 mm divisional gun M1942 (ZiS-3) pieces, attached to the 58th Guards Rifle Division of the 1st Ukrainian Front. This unit was among the first Red Army formations to encounter Western Allied forces, specifically the 69th Infantry Division (United States), at the Elbe River on 24 April 1945.
Thau was photographed during the encounter—positioned in the center behind the handshake, looking directly into the camera.
The image shows Thau in a standard Red Army field uniform (gymnastyorka Model 1943), indicating he was not a tanker (who conversely wore black padded jackets and leather helmets). He carries a pistol holster on his right hip, consistent with liaison or command roles.
Thau is also wearing Soviet military decorations. On his left chest, the Medal "For Courage" (Russia) is worn in the position of higher precedence, and outermost among the decorations. Adjacent to it is the Medal "For Battle Merit" of lower relative hierarchy, and typically awarded for combat effectiveness, leadership, or distinguished service. Both were established by decrees of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet on 17 October 1938.
Film from the camera that photographically captured the handshake was transmitted to the Associated Press. One of the photographs appeared on the front page of The New York Times on 25 April 1945.
Subsequent independent research and media coverage confirmed the corrected identifications of the soldiers depicted.
Thau arrived in New York on 7 September 1951 aboard the USS General M. B. Stewart, then traveled to Sheboygan and later settled in Milwaukee.
From the 1950s through the 1990s, Thau operated multiple service stations in Milwaukee. The earliest, listed as Thau’s 66 Service Station, was located at 433 South 6th Street in the early 1960s.
Later, he established Thau’s Garage at 4229 West Greenfield Avenue, and operated another Phillips 66 station on West Capitol Drive.
His service stations operated in Milwaukee neighborhoods during the mid-20th century, providing mechanical services and fuel typical of Phillips 66 outlets. often used his multilingual skills—Polish, Russian, Yiddish, German, and English—to assist newly arrived immigrants from Eastern Europe. His garages informally served as gathering places for Milwaukee’s post-war Jewish and Central European community, where he helped with translations and job connections.
Even as his business grew, Thau remained personally involved in daily operations and maintained close ties to his family and community.
During his first routine dental X-ray, a slug fragment from his Berlin wound was discovered still lodged in his cheek, and surgically removed in 1951 after 6 years.
Family photographs from the 1960s show Thau with his son’s socializing in a Milwaukee home during the period when he was operating and growing his multiple Phillips 66 service stations.
The images, preserved in the Thau Family Album, illustrate the personal side of a man whose early life had been defined by war and displacement.
He largely avoided publicly discussing his past until later in life, with his role at the Elbe River becoming more published since the joint U.S.–Russian commemorations in the 2010s.
Post–Cold War anniversaries featured joint statements by national leaders, such as the 2005 declaration by U.S. President George W. Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin reaffirming Elbe Day as a symbol of wartime cooperation. Further acknowledgments by leaders including President Bill Clinton, President Barack Obama, and Mikhail Gorbachev contributed to renewed public interest in the event and its participants. The Elbe Day image also inspired a bas-relief sculpture at the National World War II Memorial in Washington, D.C.
In recent years, commemorations in Germany have highlighted Thau’s role in the Elbe meeting. His youngest son, Colonel Jeffrey Thau, USAF (retired), has participated in several ceremonies at the Elbe near Torgau.
Charles Thau died on 2 April 1995, a few weeks before the 50th anniversary of Elbe Day.
Thau’s appearance in the iconic Elbe handshake photograph continues to serve as a visual symbol of the Allied partnership and the human connections forged in the final days of the Second World War.
Nazi invasion and persecution
In June 1941, Nazi Germany violated the Hitler–Stalin Pact and invaded the Soviet Union in Operation Barbarossa. German forces reached Zabłotów by December 1941. The Einsatzgruppen and local collaborators carried out mass killings of the town’s Jewish population. By the end of 1941, approximately 1,100 of Zabłotów’s estimated 2,700 Jews had been executed.
Hiding and partisan activity
Thau escaped into the nearby Carpathian forests on the Eastern Front (World War II), where he remained in hiding for approximately 19 months. He survived by foraging, as described for other partisans,, and by occasionally sheltering in barns. For most of this period, he used the terrain to prepare camouflaged foxholes and ( , землянка), concealed with foliage and earth to endure the winters and avoid detection. He later linked up with another Jewish survivor, a childhood friend, and formed a small partisan group near the Romanian border.
Introduction to Red Army service
In mid-1943, when Red Army combatants discovered Thau in the woods, they initially suspected him of being a Nazi collaborator—possibly a Wehrmacht deserter—because of his fluent German. After he demonstrated fluency in Russian as well, he was integrated into their ranks as a translator. His language skills made him valuable in interrogations and liaison duties between units of the 1st Ukrainian Front.
Elbe River link-up (April 1945)
On 24 April 1945, elements of the 58th Guards Rifle Division made contact with the 69th Infantry Division at the Elbe River near Torgau, Germany. The meeting symbolized the operational link-up between Eastern and Western Allied forces.
Battle of Berlin
After the Elbe link-up, the 69th Infantry Division was ordered to hold at the river, while the 58th Guards Rifle Division advanced toward Berlin and participated in street-to-street combat during the final weeks of the war. Thau sustained a machine-gun wound to his cheek—his second combat injury of the war. A bullet slug from that wound remained unknowingly lodged in his cheek for over six years before being surgically removed after discovery during a dental exam in Milwaukee in 1951.
Postwar activities
After the war, Thau returned briefly to Zabłotów. Upon learning that his immediate family had perished, he did not remain. He became involved in Bricha operations based in Austria and later immigrated to the United States where he raised a family and became a business owner.
Bricha operative
Thau relocated to Salzburg, Austria, where he worked as an automobile mechanic while participating in the underground Bricha network. The Bricha organization helped Holocaust survivors and other displaced refugees reach British-administered Palestine. From Camp Saalfelden near Salzburg, Thau and colleagues facilitated transport, clandestine border crossings, and document forgeries to move refugees across the Alps. Refugees later traveled by ferry to bypass British controls and enter Mandatory Palestine.
Immigration
Recalling what 69th Infantry soldiers told him at the Elbe Linkup regarding how great it was to live in America, Thau sought help from the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee at Camp Saalfelden to immigrate to America. They helped Thau secured a sponsor, given prospective immigrants to America required a sponsor. Attorney David Rabinowitz of Sheboygan, Wisconsin, was identified as a sponsor for Thau.
Business career
After resettling in Milwaukee, Chaim Thau adopted the name "Charles Thau" and resumed his trade as an auto mechanic, a skill he had practiced in post-war Salzburg. Not long thereafter he opened his own repair shop, which expanded into a series of Phillips 66–branded filling stations across the city.
Personal life
Thau worked long hours while raising a family. He married Ida (née Faich); they had three children: Martin, Jeffrey, and Esther.
Legacy and recognition
In 1955, Thau recounted his wartime experiences—including the Elbe link-up and his combat injuries—in an interview with the Milwaukee Journal. As the Cold War subsided, recognition of Elbe Day in which Thau appeared prominently, increased in those later decades, including official U.S.–Russian formal commemorations.
See also
Notes
Bibliography
External links
|
|
