The day in 1942 Philip Drell was first drafted into the U.S Army, he had no thoughts of witnessing history. However his war experiences changed his direction in life. The resident from Skokie was a combat photographer during the course of World War II, and chronicled many of the period's most shocking pictures, encompassing the Normandy invasion to the emancipation of the concentration camp in Dachau.
His work has been be seen on the History Channel and in galleries and
he Later photographed many prominent figures, including Doris Day and Eleanor Roosevelt.
Mr. Drell was designate to a special Hollywood directors unit, headed up by people like as George Stevens - the director who subsequently made the movie "The Diary of Anne Frank",plus "Giant" - and with writers William Saroyan and Irwin Shaw.
"They had access without boundaries," commented Wendy Sarti, a Oakton Community College professor of history, who coordinated a 2004 event to exhibit Mr. Drell's work. "He was able to recollect every image - and spoke to me about the meaning of being a young 23-year-old man, and seeing such events"
A son of immigrants from Russia, Mr. Drell was raised on the North Side and in 1937, he graduated from Roosevelt High School, commented his wife, Winifred. They first met in 1950 at a part, where he tried to get her to meet a friend.
"I'm rather petite and this other man was on the short side, so he had the idea we'd form a good couple - but I did not care for shorter men," she said. On Feb. 15, 1953, the pair were married
Mr. Drell's love for photography was cultivated when he was a camp counselor still in his teens . When his creations caught the attention of an Army officer, subsequently he was transferred to the Special Motion Picture Coverage Unit, which swept through France and on into the center of Germany.
One of his most unforgettable incidents occurred in Paris, where Mr. Drell assisted with 600 German soldiers surrendering by speaking to the officer in charge in the single language they both could understand, Yiddish.
n a 1965 story by the Chicago Tribune, he related "They begged of me to advise them how they could surrender,". "They saw I that was American and they wished to surrender to Americans and not the French, as they were afraid would rip them to pieces."
On April 29, 1945, when the detachment arrived at the concentration camp in Dachau, Mr. Drell used his camera to document the holocaust chronicle of naked and skeletal bodies.
"The train cars were one of the initial things he saw when cars were opened, was the bodies falling out onto the ground," Sarti said. "He stated that he was just speechless as to express what he saw. A U.S. intelligence officer delivered a quote he never forgot, 'Dachau would stand out forever as history's most gruesome inhumanity symbols.'"
He was also a Bronze Star recipient. After the war ended, in addition the unit received a medal from Gen. Dwight Eisenhower, mentioning its "unusual resolve and zeal, many times disregarding personal welfare."
Mr. Drell never stopped shooting photography professionally and worked well into his 80s, He totally loved the whole thing about photography"
