Letters of love and hate from Normandy to North Dakota (2024)

GRAND FORKS — The face of the man in the black-and-white picture looks out from behind the glass of the trophy case. His eyes crinkle from a seemingly mischievous smile that might have led to his nickname “Imp.”

But Larry Schlasinger was more than a North Dakota kid with an impish grin, as evidenced by the array of military medals, trophies and plaques surrounding his portrait in the trophy case at the University of North Dakota’s O’Kelly Hall.

Nonetheless, students dart past the case with barely a fleeting glance. Perhaps it’s how Schlasinger rushed to class when he was a student here 81 years ago.

Contributed/University of North Dakota

But those who have taken the time to pause at the trophy case and delve into Schlasinger’s life get a peek at a remarkable North Dakotan and son of Jewish immigrants who fought the Nazis, lost his life, but left a legacy for new generations on following your heart and standing up to hate.

It’s been 80 years since Schlasinger died, not long after the D-Day invasion. However, his words still live, thanks in part to a niece who was just 2 years old when he died. In 2002, Regina Anavy published the letters Larry and his family exchanged all those years ago. In 2020, a third edition of "Larry's Letters: The Personal Correspondence of Larry Schlasinger" was published with additional content.

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“Larry’s Letters” details Larry’s time overseas as a WWII Army soldier, while others hint at the tension his Jewish parents felt in their small, heavily German town in south-central North Dakota.

Anavy and her sister discovered the family letters shortly after their mother, Larry’s sister, Florence Schlasinger Sigal, died in 1999.

“I was surprised and amazed because I didn’t know they were hiding in that piano bench. It was like finding buried treasure,” she said.

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After opening the numerous boxes, Anavy put everything else aside to read through the hundreds of letters the family sent to each other, starting when Larry was just 9 years old.

“I settled in for what turned out to be eight hours of solid reading. I wept as I read, for I discovered what I had lost in not knowing my uncle,” she said.

Anavy decided the letters were worth compiling into a book to preserve the story of the Schlasinger family and help people learn about this part of Jewish history.

“I also realized it was a universal story about a family sending a child off to war,” she said.

The story of the Schlasinger family in North Dakota starts with hope.

Noah and Sarah Schlasinger emigrated from Russia in 1906 to escape the anti-semitic violence of the Russian Empire’s pogroms of the early 20th century.

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At first, the young couple homesteaded near Ashley, North Dakota, where they raised flax and wheat. To combat the loneliness of prairie life, they spent time with family members who had also emigrated to the heart of North Dakota’s “German-Russian Triangle.”

Sarah gave birth to three daughters: Marcella, Florence and Ethel. By 1916, they moved to Streeter, North Dakota, to open a drugstore. Their family was complete with the birth of their sons Kenny and Larry.

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Larry was the smart baby of the family. After graduating as valedictorian of Streeter High in 1939, he planned to study journalism at UND. Even though some of his older siblings had also studied journalism and others became published writers, they encouraged him to “major in something more substantial.”

Ethel, herself a writer, encouraged her baby brother to get a job in science since it paid as high as $6,400 a year.

“You know that a newspaperman has about as much chance of stepping into a $2,000 a year job when he gets out of school as I have of being crowned queen of the blubber festival in Alaska,” she wrote.

Much of the letters in Larry’s college days are like this — quips from the hysterically funny Ethel to motherly advice from oldest sisters Marcella and Florence, who insisted he eat enough and wear his coat. The entire family started and ended each letter with humorous salutations, calling each other names like Imp, Cookie, Spike, Flatfoot Floogie and Fearless Fosdick.

The family definitely had personality.

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According to the letters, Larry took the advice about eating and wearing a coat but not about journalism. He became an editor of the student newspaper. He wrote for the yearbook, WDAY radio and the Grand Forks Herald while excelling academically and winning numerous college journalism honors.

But the frivolity of those early college years faded after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor in December of 1941. Larry accelerated his studies to graduate early and help with the war effort just like his older brother, Ken.

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In a letter to Florence, he wrote that he tried to get into the Marine Corps Reserves but missed the minimum height requirement by less than an inch.

“Another life ambition shattered! Oh well, the army is still pretty good. Gotta dash! Loads of love, Ivan the Awful.”

Larry enlisted after graduating from UND in January 1943. He was sent to Ft. Benning, Georgia, for basic training and then to a classified special training school in Maryland. He couldn’t go into detail about what he was doing, but once wrote home that it was good “to stop feeling useless.”

In April of 1944, Larry was sent to England and then to France as a military intelligence interpreter, where he would be involved in advance preparations for the Allied invasion at Normandy.

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He wrote home to his parents that he was enjoying the scenery and more in England.

“I’ve actually gotten to like English beer, which is quite different from ours.”

Sometimes his mother and father responded with their own thoughts on the war, including a disdain for isolationist North Dakota Senator Gerald Nye and Nazi sympathizers in their town.

“No news in Streeter. Our Nazis don’t feel so good about the war news,’ Sarah wrote in 1944.

Noah added, “The local Nazis are getting ready to defeat F.D.R in the next election. We have to thank the good Americans who are still on our side.”

In his response of June 5, 1944, Larry gave no hint about the excitement to come.

‘Dearest Folks, As usual, there is very little here to write about…”

Twenty-four hours later, the D-Day invasion began.

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Less than a month later, on June 25, Larry was wounded during the battle to capture Cherbourg in northern France.

In a letter to his parents from July 9, 1944, he wrote that he had joined the Order of the Purple Heart.

“I didn’t exactly apply for membership, but anyway, here I am,” he wrote.

According to reports, he was making a satisfactory recovery when an undetectable blood clot somewhere in his body broke loose and lodged in his lungs — a fatal pulmonary embolism. He was just 21 years old.

The family was devastated.

Anavy said she recalls seeing a letter between Noah and Florence following Larry’s death in which Noah stated that he was ready to go out and shoot some of the German people in Streeter.

“They’ve killed my baby boy,” he wrote.

But Ethel wrote a letter urging her father not to avenge Larry’s death through violence.

“This is exactly what Larry was fighting against. The way we can punish the Nazis best is by killing not them personally, but their ideas.”

Noah didn’t shoot any Nazi sympathizers in North Dakota. Instead, he and Sarah closed their store in Streeter and moved to Minneapolis, where he devoted his time to volunteering at the VA Hospital and tending to wounded soldiers.

Perhaps, as the years rolled by, Noah and Sarah got comfort from a letter Larry once sent them explaining why he had enlisted in the U.S. Army.

In it, he writes that he felt he owed a debt to the United States for giving his immigrant parents a safe place to raise their family away from the violence and anti-Semitism of Russia, which in turn led to his comfortable and rich life in North Dakota.

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Larry said he saw his army service as a way to repay his debt to America for giving his parents freedom.

“I know that even if that payment includes my life, it could not be enough for what our country has given you — let alone what it has given me,” he wrote. “It is knowing that you understand these things that will give me the courage I will need, and that gives me one more reason to love you and be proud to be your son.”

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Anavy said the letters — so precious to her mother and the rest of the family and the only part of Larry they still had — have been donated to the University of North Dakota Libraries for safekeeping.

The family also established the Larry Schlasinger Memorial Scholarship for outstanding journalism students at UND. Students can also study in the Schlasinger Library/Reading Room on campus.

Or, if they’re not in too big a hurry, they can stop by O’Kelly Hall and pay their respects to the smiling soldier in the trophy case.