War gems serving as reminder History show to tell Maine veteran’s story

BANGOR – There was a time when all Samuel Nyer wanted to do was forget – to leave the pain of war and of losing comrades behind him.

Even the prospects of one day retrieving 40 Nazi-looted diamonds he and another scout had found and hidden couldn’t overcome the overwhelming weariness that the war had left him with. As he lay partially paralyzed in a field hospital in late February 1945, death seemed like it might be a welcome relief.

A Jewish infantryman and scout, Nyer had been on the front lines and often ahead of the front lines, infiltrating enemy territory to gain information, then leading the attack on Nazi outposts in Alsace Lorraine, during the Battle of the Bulge.

Fighting was fierce and as bitter as the subzero temperatures. Shells exploded around him, taking out first one and then another member of his platoon. The extreme cold meant if medics couldn’t get to you within 20 minutes, it didn’t matter if you survived the shelling. Of the 40 men in his platoon in the 63rd Infantry Division called the Blood and Fire Division, Nyer thinks he is one of only two or three who survived the war.

“My memories have been about the war ever since I left it,” said the 75-year-old. “It never ended.”

These days, Nyer wants his story of intrigue and survival told, a memorial to his generation that fought the war and a reminder for future generations.

“They should feel that liberty doesn’t come cheaply, it comes with blood and fire,” Nyer said from his Essex Street home Sunday afternoon.

The History Channel is making sure that his story is told.

In Bangor on Sunday and Monday, a crew from the History Channel is shooting footage for a television documentary of historic proportions for the cable channel. Like the story it tells, the two-hour documentary is a departure from the expected, with the crew using cinematography cameras as well as having a budget of $1 million, about five times the normal budget for such specials, said the documentary’s director and co-producer Phil Tuckett.

When it’s released in the Fall of 2002, “Blood from a Stone” will detail the exploits that garnered Nyer numerous medals and commendations, including three purple hearts, several bronze and silver stars as well as presidential commendations and medals from the French government.

But it is also about Yaron Svoray, an Israeli veteran and freelance investigative journalist who had been lecturing on international terrorism when he met Nyer, who told him his amazing tale about the hidden diamonds. Svoray searched for 14 years off and on while working on other projects, which included his infiltrating the resurgent Nazi movement in modern Germany.

What began as a great adventure, complete with buried treasure, turned into a lesson in humanity.

Nyer and Thomas Delion, a American Indian, had discovered the diamonds during a scouting mission and split them, with each man taking 20 of them. But fighting and scouting required quick reactions and Nyer found that the rough, grape-sized diamonds were cutting him every time he dropped to the ground, so the two buried the diamonds a foot from a foxhole they found themselves in on Feb. 24, 1945.

They vowed that whoever survived the war could come back and claim the diamonds. Two hours later Nazi artillery shells from the German occupied French town of Sarreguemines exploded nearby, propelling shrapnel that penetrated Nyer’s back and “tapped” his spine. Nyer said he was partially paralyzed for a day. In a field hospital he contracted hepatitis from a blood transfusion and spent nearly 18 months in a hospital.

Delion was killed 16 days before the war ended and Nyer never knew whether Delion had retrieved the diamonds. Nyer never went to search for them, preferring to concentrate instead on developing his businesses that include pharmacies, medical supply companies, real estate, and fire equipment supply firms.

Svoray said there were emotional reasons for Nyer not searching for the diamonds. They had once belonged to Jews who had lost them, along with their lives, to the Nazis.

Svoray says that the part he plays in the story is marginal to the overall story of what Nyer – and others – had given in the war. But he acknowledged that the diamonds likely will be what attracts people to the story.

“The diamonds are the reason you are watching, but the diamonds are not important,” he said toward the end of Sunday’s filming. “The value is the cost that many, many, many people gave up their lives in horrible ways, because these diamonds were taken from them.”

Svoray told reporters inside Nyer’s home that he found the diamonds recently, but declined to be more specific about when. Also left to be revealed by the documentary are where the diamonds were found and what Svoray did with them.

Both Svoray and producer Tuckett stressed, however, that something needed to be done with the gems to break the cycle of horror and death that had been associated with them.

“Eventually it became very clear that the stones were for no one, they had to go and do the right thing,” Svoray said.

For producer Tuckett, the documentary will serve both as a reminder of what people have sacrificed and as a message for everyday life.

“It has a great message for anyone who has a decision to make in life about whether to do the right thing or do the wrong thing,” Tuckett said. “The movie is about doing the right thing.”