Charles Thau

Charles "Charlie" Thau was a Polish-born Red Army officer, known for his appearance in the Elbe Day photograph, taken during a staged re-enactment of the 25 April 1945 meeting between Soviet troops and soldiers of the U.S. 69th Infantry Division at the Elbe River near Torgau, Germany.
Born in Zabłotów, Thau survived the German invasion of 1941 by hiding in the Carpathian forests. He subsequently joined the Red Army as a translator and served as a lieutenant with the 58th Guards Rifle Division. He was present at the Elbe link-up and the Battle of Berlin, where he was wounded in combat.
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.
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. For years, the American soldier standing beside Thau in the famous photo was misidentified, a historical error that was officially corrected in 2008 to identify T/Sgt. Bernard Kirschenbaum. Thau died in Milwaukee weeks before the 50th anniversary of the Elbe link-up in 1995.

Early life and education

Thau was born in the shtetl of Zabłotów in eastern Poland in 1921 and was raised in an agrarian Jewish family. His father, Mordechai, worked as a peddler based at the family farm, and his mother, Esther, taught Yiddish, German, and Polish from their home, which also served as a small classroom. Thau had two younger brothers. Growing up in Zabłotów, a market town in Eastern Poland with roughly equal Jewish and Christian populations, he became fluent in several languages.
In September 1939, Germany and the Soviet Union signed the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, which led to the partition of Poland at the outset of World War II. Zabłotów then came under Soviet administration.
During the Soviet occupation, local schools adopted Russian as a language of instruction, expanding Thau’s linguistic knowledge beyond his existing proficiency in Polish, German, Yiddish, and Hebrew.
Contemporaneous accounts note that while some residents initially viewed the Soviet presence as protective, full integration of eastern Poland into the Soviet system soon followed.

Nazi invasion and persecution

In June 1941, Nazi Germany violated the Molotov–Ribbentrop 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.
Most of the remaining Jewish residents were deported to extermination camps. Thau’s father, mother, and two younger brothers — Mordechai, Esther, Barrish, and Hershel — 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.

Hiding and partisan activity

Thau escaped into the nearby Carpathian forests on the Eastern Front, where he hid for about 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
dugouts, concealed to endure winter conditions and avoid detection. He later linked up with another Jewish survivor, a childhood friend, and formed a small partisan group for survival and resistance near the Romanian border.
Contemporary reports in Der Spiegel and The Forward 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.

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.
Subsequently, he was commissioned as a lieutenant and assumed command of an anti-tank battery armed with four 76 mm divisional gun M1942 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, at the Elbe River on 24 April 1945.

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.
Thau appears in the staged re-enactment of the encounter, positioned in the center behind the handshake and looking directly into the camera.
The image shows Thau wearing a standard Red Army field uniform with a sidearm in a belt holster.
Thau is also wearing Soviet military decorations. On his left chest, the Medal "For Courage" is worn in higher precedence among the decorations visible. Adjacent to it is the Medal "For Battle Merit" 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.

Misidentification of American soldier

Beginning in the early 1990s, the tall American soldier on the far left of the photograph was officially identified as Delbert Philpott, a misidentification that persisted through high-profile diplomatic commemorations. In September 2008, following a earlier investigation initiated by the Thau family, officials from the 69th Infantry Division Association and Torgau historian Dr. Uwe Niedersen reviewed, revaluated the findings and corrected the historical record. The soldier was positively identified as T/Sgt. Bernard E. Kirschenbaum, resolving the history of one of the war's most recognizable images.
Subsequent independent research and media coverage corrected identifications of the soldiers depicted. This correction resolved a decades-long misidentification associated with one of World War II’s most recognizable images.

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 fought in street-to-street combat during the final weeks of the war. Thau sustained a machine-gun wound to his jaw—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 its discovery during a dental examination 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 his colleagues facilitated transport, clandestine border crossings, and the preparation of forged documents to move refugees across the Alps. Refugees then traveled by ferry to bypass British controls and enter Mandatory Palestine.

Immigration

Recalling what soldiers of the 69th Infantry Division had told him at the Elbe link-up about life in America, Thau sought help from the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee at Camp Saalfelden to immigrate to the United States. They assisted him in securing a sponsor, as prospective immigrants were required to have one. Attorney David Rabinowitz of Sheboygan, Wisconsin, was identified as his sponsor.
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.

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.
From the early 1950s through the 1990s, Thau operated multiple service stations which expanded into a series of Phillips 66–branded filling stations across the city.
By 1955, Thau was already established as a gas station operator in Milwaukee. Independent records from the early 1960s list his business, Thau’s 66 Service Station, at 433 South 6th Street.
He later established Thau’s Garage at 4229 West Greenfield Avenue and operated another Phillips 66 station on West Capitol Drive.
His service stations became neighborhood fixtures, providing mechanical work and fuel typical of Phillips 66 outlets. Thau 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, employment referrals, and introductions.
Even as his business grew, Thau remained personally involved in daily operations and maintained close ties with his family and community.