A front- row seat at surrender.
Retired Edmonton doctor George Molnar translated the terms of surrender to German officers in Holland, May 5, 1945
Four years out of high school, George Molnar sat across a wooden table and stared into the eyes of one of Adolf Hitler’s most experienced generals. It was the afternoon of May 5, 1945, and a war that had spanned six years and had taken the lives of more than 50 million soldiers and civilians was about to end.
At 62, Johannes Blaskowitz was old enough to be a grandfather to the Canadian, a recent student in officer’s training. He had led an infantry unit in the First World War, commanded the forces that besieged Warsaw in 1939, and was commander-in-chief of Germany’s troops in the Netherlands.
But now, with help from a 22-year-old who learned to speak German from his mother, Blaskowitz was preparing to surrender. Two days later, the Second World War would be declared over. On the following day millions of people danced in streets around the world.
The youngest captain in the Canadian Army during the Second World War, Molnar is the last surviving participant from the day the Germans capitulated in Holland 70 years ago. As interpreter for Blaskowitz and other German officers, he was the man who presented the terms of surrender to them in a bare, shell-scarred hotel in Wageningen.
Dejected and defeated, the Germans nodded sullenly as Molnar, an intelligence officer, outlined their obligations one clause at a time.
“In effect, we gave the Germans their marching orders,” Molnar says, recalling the moment that ended five years of occupation and terror for Dutch citizens. “One can imagine that going home might have been a relief for them, but under the circumstances of acknowledging and accepting defeat, it was hard.
“For some of the highest-ranking officers, it was their second defeat since 1918. These were members of an army that was previously proud.”
A cane at his fingertips and a Dutch artist’s poster of the surrender at his side, Molnar sits on a loveseat in his home in Edmonton. A retired endocrinologist and former chair of the University of Alberta’s faculty of medicine, he is 92 now. Eyes bright and hair white, he talks quietly about the extraordinary and unusual place in history that he holds.
“I was kept busy that day and didn’t really have much opportunity to reflect on the importance at the time,” Molnar says, a half-dozen war medals pinned above his breast pocket. “But the distinction of having been among the persons representing Canada and the Allied forces made it exciting.
“It certainly was the experience of a lifetime.”
Born in Hungary, George Molnar learned to speak German, French, English and Italian from his mother, a Russian immigrant and Berlitz instructor who would address him in one language exclusively for a year at a time. After she and his father divorced, Molnar lived with his mother and stepfather, a career officer in the Hungarian military.
But with war in Europe imminent, Molnar immigrated to Canada in the late 1930s to join his father, a Hungarianborn pastor posted at the Reformed Presbyterian Church in Hamilton, Ont. When his father was called to preach in Calgary, Molnar followed, spending a year studying at Mount Royal University while also serving in the reserves with an armoured regiment, the South Alberta Light Horse.
Enlisting for active duty at age 19 in May 1942, Molnar progressed through basic training and learned to drive tanks in Dundurn, Sask. He was selected for officer training at Camp Borden in Ontario, after which he was shipped to Aldershot, England. It was there that his mastery of languages came to the attention of Canadian Army brass, prompting his transfer to the Intelligence Corps.
As an intelligence officer based at the First Canadian Division headquarters near Apeldoorn, Molnar had responsibilities that included interrogating prisoners of war. The impeccable German that he spoke made him ideal for the special assignment on May 5, 1945.
On the night before, Harry Wickwire Foster, the majorgeneral Molnar was serving under, requested that he report for duty the next day at 8 a.m. Even as they drove through enemy lines, Foster never revealed to Molnar the historic nature of the mission that day.
“All he said was that he was going to let me out near the location of a meeting,” Molnar recalls. “I wasn’t well informed about what was going to happen.”
Dropped off in Wageningen, a town destroyed by air raids and rebuilt several times, Molnar was directed to the Hotel de Wereld. Entering the lobby, he found it bare, with the exception of a table with seats on one side for Canadian staff and on the other side for German officers. The remainder of the room was crowded with chairs for photographers, war correspondents, movie cameramen, and other official onlookers.
At 11 a.m., the first in a series of meetings convened, with Molnar seated between Canadian General Charles Foulkes and Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands, son-in-law of Queen Wilhelmina and commander-inchief of the Dutch Interior Forces. Opposite them sat Paul Reichelt, a lieutenantgeneral highly decorated for bravery in both world wars who was then serving as chief of staff to Blaskowitz.
Foulkes began proceedings by dictating the general terms of surrender to Reichelt and other representatives, pausing to allow Molnar to translate. As the items were reviewed one by one, the Germans nodded approval.
When the meeting was concluded they retreated to their headquarters to brief Blaskowitz. They returned to Wageningen with him several hours later to participate in the official act of surrender.
A career soldier who had joined the military as a youth, Blaskowitz sat directly across from Molnar. He occasionally asked questions, but Foulkes had made it clear that terms of the armistice were not open to debate.
“I was massively outranked, but there was no question he was on the losing side,” Molnar says.
With Molnar interpreting, Blaskowitz and his entourage were told that German soldiers were to be instructed to lay down their arms, after which they would be directed to march out of Holland at an agreed-to date. Officers would be allowed to retain their weapons to maintain discipline, but all other military equipment and war records had to be surrendered. Members of the Dutch SS were to be imprisoned immediately, and anyone connected with operating concentration camps was to be arrested.
Line by line, Foulkes read out the surrender terms in English, pausing for Molnar to interpret.
Seated beside him and chain-smoking at a time when the rest of the general population was subject to tobacco rationing, Prince Bernhard could barely contain his excitement. The German-born prince had dined once with Hitler but later called him a tyrant publicly, and flew 1,000 hours in a Spitfire with the RAF Dutch squadron.
Addressing the young Canadian during a break, Prince Bernhard congratulated him and asked how he had learned to speak German so well. At the time, the prince’s wife, Princess Juliana, and their children were living in exile in Ottawa. “He was friendly and courteous to me,” Molnar says. “He told me to consider the significance of the moment.”
Surrender documents were signed by Blaskowitz the following morning, bringing an end to the war in Holland. In five years of occupation, more than 200,000 Dutch citizens had died, the greatest percapita loss of any country in western Europe. More than 48,000 Canadian officers and enlisted men perished trying to protect them.
Shortly after interpreting at the surrender, Molnar received an invitation to visit the German headquarters in Holland and dine in the officers’ mess. While enjoying a light meal with the brass, he shared his affection for Karl May, a popular German author who wrote novels set in the American west.
“As we talked, we found that we had read some of the same books,” Molnar says. “It was a common interest between us.”
Not long after that, when he was back working at Canadian Division headquarters, Molnar received a package that contained a gift from a German colonel. An accompanying note explained, using terminology that Karl May would have appreciated, that he was turning his shooting iron over to Molnar as a token of his respect.
The Czech-made semiautomatic Boehmische Waffenfabrik pistol has since been donated to the Canadian War Museum.
Discharged from the military in 1945, Molnar returned to Canada and enrolled in the pre-med program at the University of Alberta. While attending classes there, he met his wife, Gwen, an education student and former Navy quartermaster.
Married on Christmas Eve, 1947, they remain together more than 67 years later.
“The attraction was mutual,” Molnar says, eyes twinkling. “Pretty much nature took its course.”
After receiving his medical degree in 1951, Molnar went on to become an instructor and renowned diabetes researcher at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. His success there caught the eye of university officials in Edmonton, who recruited him back to become the University of Alberta’s fifth chairman of medicine in 1975 — a post he held 11 years. He officially retired from the university in 1992 after helping found its diabetes and research training centre, but then worked at the facility until 2003.
It wasn’t until many any years later that Molnar told his spouse about the role he played in the liberation of Holland.
“It was important to him, but he lives in the present and not in the past,” Gwen says.
With a bit of coaxing, Molnar will relive those moments and, as the last survivor, tell a story that only he alone can tell. Sitting on the loveseat, he reminisces about the day he sat across the table from one of Hitler’s most brilliant generals.
Despite ruling troops with an iron hand, Blaskowitz allowed airdrops of food and medicine for Dutch citizens, and wrote memorandums in which he detailed atrocities committed by the SS in Poland.
Charged with war crimes during the Nuremberg Trials, Blaskowitz killed himself in 1948 by breaking away from guards and leaping off a balcony. After the war, he was reported to have remarked that he was misunderstood.
“He was an old soldier,” Molnar says. “He was courteous and professional with me, in keeping with the moment.”
After interpreting at the surrender, Molnar was charged with the responsibility of monitoring the progress of the Germans in carrying out their obligations. Under his watch, 117,000 German troops departed Holland before the required deadline.
Three years ago, the Molnars’ daughter, Jane, travelled to Wageningen and was toasted by the locals. A room has been set up inside the Hotel de Wereld devoted to the treaty that was signed there on May 5, 1945. George Molnar’s army uniform is on display, too. Organizers requested it, and he gladly provided it to them.
“I will be 93 on July 30,” he says from his comfortable chair at home in Edmonton. “Having been pretty young for all those things, I managed to live a good, long life.” martyklinkenberg@edmontonjournal.com Twitter: @martykej