Walter Gerson, 85; Questioned Nazi POWs

Walter Gerson, 85, an Army interrogator of Nazi prisoners of war near the end of World War II and the founder of a Washington marketing research and polling firm, died Dec. 8 at his home in San Diego. He lived in the Washington area from 1945 until 1987, when he moved to San Diego.

Mr. Gerson was born in Frankfurt, Germany, where he stayed in a Jewish orphanage until being adopted at age 5. He came to the United States in 1927 and grew up in Scranton and Williamsport, Pa. After graduating from Penn State University in 1943, he enlisted in the Army.

Because he remained fluent in his first language, German, he was pleased when the Army sent him to the University of Pennsylvania to learn to be an interpreter. However, that changed when he was assigned to learn Hindustani. "I couldn't get a glass of water in India, but that was typical of the military," he told oral historians J. David Pincus and Stephen C. Wood in 2003.

After language school, Mr. Gerson was assigned to Camp Ritchie, Md., where he was trained to be an interrogator and then was attached to the 80th Infantry Division.

At a concentration camp near the town of Erfurt, Mr. Gerson interviewed surviving slave laborers from France, Poland, Lithuania and elsewhere and interpreted for the division's military government officer. He also interviewed civilians living in the town itself, who invariably professed to know nothing about what was happening in the camp.

Mr. Gerson was a Jewish chaplain, briefly, because no official chaplains were available. For a young man who had considered becoming a rabbi, the chaplaincy, he said in the oral history, "was one of the most satisfying experiences, one which I will probably remember longer than all others."

He recalled that during Passover 1944, the 8th Infantry Division had just crossed the Rhine, and "Rabbi" Gerson had to prepare for a Seder. Horseradish root, parsley and eggs were readily available in rural Germany; matzoh was not. Needing the matzoh that very night, he happened to mention his plight to the Catholic chaplain, a good friend.

"Ten minutes later, he pulls up in his jeep with a 10-pound box of kosher matzohs," Mr. Gerson recalled.

"I said, 'Where did you get these in the middle of Nazi Germany?' To which his response was, 'What do you think I've been using for Holy Communion?' "

For two years after the war, Mr. Gerson worked as a civilian at the Pentagon, investigating records that would tie German industry to the Nazi war effort.

He received a master's degree in business from American University in 1953 and founded Walter Gerson and Associates, a marketing research and polling firm that was in business until 1972. From 1974 to 1984, he was director of government relations for several national trade associations, including the National Association of Plumbing, Heating and Cooling Contractors, the National Electrical Manufacturers Association and the Institute of Industrial Launderers.

In 1987, when he was 65, he received his doctorate in speech communications from the University of Maryland and moved to San Diego, where the next year he became professor of marketing at San Diego State University. He continued to teach until a week before his death.

A Kensington resident from 1951 to 1988, he served as president of the PTAs at Kensington Elementary School, Kensington Junior High School and Einstein High School. He also was Santa Claus every Christmas at Howard University Hospital and organized Home Study, a volunteer group that provided tutoring in low-income minority communities.

His marriage to Elaine Gerson ended in divorce.

Survivors include his wife of 23 years, Joan Gerson of San Diego; two sons from his first marriage, Jon Gerson of Kensington and David Gerson of the District; and two grandsons.