Laszlo (Leslie) Bartal: Musician at the Front
- Beverley Eddy
- 4 days ago
- 18 min read
Laszlo Bartal was perfectly suited to be assigned to intelligence training at Camp Ritchie, Maryland, since he was foreign-born, fluent in at least three languages, and fully attuned to the culture of the old Austro-Hungarian Empire. All this qualified him for service in military intelligence. He was also a classically-trained, professional pianist.
Often, professional musicians got favored assignments during their army service. This is strikingly evident when one considers the war biographies of three Camp Ritchie musicians who performed together at a concert at Wilson College, in Chambersburg, PA, on March 27, 1943: Laszlo Bartal (piano), William Warfield (voice), and Joseph Knitzer (violin). The Black baritone William Warfield had been assigned to the fourth class at Ritchie; as a trained opera singer he had knowledge of French, Italian, and German.
The commander of the camp, Charles Banfill, liked classical music; he was also well aware of the waste it would be to send a Black man, however well trained in languages and intelligence work, into service in a Jim Crow Army. He therefore pulled Warfield from his class and assigned him to oversee the camp’s theater and recreational facilities and to play and sing at Sunday services in the Camp Ritchie chapel.
Joseph Knitzer had a novel excuse for not getting sent into a war zone: he had a Guarneri violin with an estimated worth of $18,000 ($350,000 in today’s money), and his contract stated that he was required to have this instrument in his possession “at all time”—with no mention of possible duties at army camps or in areas of conflict.1 He was assigned to a Special Service Unit at Camp Shelby, then quickly sent on to Camp Ritchie, where it was reported that “his duties [were] more of a musician’s than a soldier’s,” “[directing] most of the camp entertainment” in addition to “frequently presenting concerts himself.”2 He was honorably discharged from the Army after a shortened period of service “for physical reasons.”3 Laszlo Bartal, however, participated in the regular coursework at Camp Ritchie and was destined to serve with the infantry as an Interrogator of Prisoners of War.
Unfortunately, information on Laszlo is rather scant.4 What we know is this: he was born in Budapest, Hungary, on April 23, 1910. He had a brother Jeno, who was ten years older than he, and a sister Rose, who was older by five years Their father, Samuel Schwarcz, was 40 at Laszlo’s birth; their mother, Regina (Pick) Schwarcz was 43. The three siblings seem all to have been born with the Schwarcz name, but had this Jewish name changed to Bartal during their childhood. It is likely that this name change was a protective measure, since, during the period of the White Terror (1919-1921), Jews were associated with the short-lived Hungarian Soviet Republic, a period of violent executions and arrests that became known as the Red Terror. The Communists remained in power for only four months, but this was followed by two years of ultra-national violence, during which tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews were injured or executed in retaliation for their presumed complicity in the failed communist regime. It was already a terrible epoch in Hungarian history, since, after Hungary’s loss in the First World War, the victorious nations had split up the old Austro-Hungarian empire and awarded large chunks of Hungarian land to Romania and Czechoslovakia.
None of this seems to have touched the lives of the Bartal siblings. Like his older brother Jeno, Laszlo studied at Budapest’s Royal Academy of Music (now called the Franz Liszt Academy). He took piano lessons from Ernst von Dohnányi, who, in addition to his work as the conductor of the Budapest Philharmonic orchestra. performed Beethoven’s complete piano works during the 1920-21 concert season. Dohnányi’s playing was heavily influenced by his studies with disciples of Franz Liszt, and he passed on Liszt’s approach to music-making to Laszlo and his other students. Laszlo also studied musicology, composition, and music pedagogy at the Royal Academy of Music with the renowned composer Zoltán Kodály.
Laszlo’s older brother Jeno had moved to the United States in 1928 under the sponsorship of his mother’s brother, Simon Pick. There Jeno had immediately gotten off to a quick career start by playing light concert pieces on his cello in New York hotels, either alone or with a small ensemble. Through these hotel connections he became an early radio performer, both as soloist and as conductor of his own musical ensemble. He was still trying to find his niche. Classical cello music was not a big attraction in and of itself, but he managed to reconstruct his small group of twelve musicians as NBC’s “Jeno Bartal and his Hotel New Yorker Hungarian Orchestra.” It was not long before the name was shortened to “Jeno Bartal’s Hungarian Orchestra,” and the exotic flair of czardas music became popular and led him, eventually, to even more success in New York society as a conductor of dance and party tunes.
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While Jeno was making a name for himself in New York, Laszlo was trying to establish his own musical career both as soloist and as professional accompanist, appearing immediately following the conclusion of his studies in concerts in Budapest, Vienna, and Great Britain before going further afield and in the next decade performing “in concert in such cities as Calcutta, Bombay, Colombo, Singapore, and Penang.” 5
It was undoubtedly the worsening situation in Europe that motivated him to pick up and move to the United States. His sister Rose had already emigrated there in 1932 and found work as a beautician. Now, in 1937, Laszlo set sail from Le Havre on the S.S. Lafayette, listing his occupation as “Teacher.” Upon entering the country, he declared his intent to stay and become a naturalized citizen. It appears, too, that he hoped to secure a solid position as a piano teacher, to supplement the uncertain income from concert performances, and he established contacts with the music department at New York University and with the David Mannes Music School.
Laszlo’s brother Jeno was now a well-established conductor with his own dance orchestra in New York, and he introduced Laszlo to the American public through one of his concerts. As Radio Daily noted in its September 10th issue, “Laszlo Bartal, prominent Hungarian concert pianist, who just arrived in this country after a concert tour of Europe and Asia, will make his first guest appearance in this country tomorrow in the Georgia Room of the Hotel Piccadilly, as a gesture to his brother, Jeno Bartal, musical director of the hotel. Immediately after the dance session in the Georgian Room, Laszlo will give a “Concert Miniature” during which he will introduce the newest in Hungarian Music.”
Laszlo quickly established himself in New York City as an accomplished piano soloist and accompanist. In the spring of 1938 he served as assisting artist at a benefit concert for a student loan fund given by NYU’s Symphonic Orchestral Society; there he performed Beethoven’s Concerto Number 5—the “Emperor” concerto—under the direction of John Warren Erb. He also served as accompanist to the Russian composer/cellist Youry Bilstin, and was featured on the New York classical music station WQXR, the “radio station of The New York Times.”
In 1939 he became a faculty member at the Ralph Wolfe Conservatory of Music in New Rochelle, NY. This conservatory was affiliated with the David Mannes Music School, and by 1940 Laszlo was listed as a faculty member of the primary Mannes Music School in New York City, where he had the violinist/composer Samuel Gardner and the conductor and instrumentation instructor George Szell as colleagues. Laszlo gave frequent concerts as a faculty member at these institutions. By this time he was earning enough money that he could rent a house, and, when his uncle Simon Pick died in 1940, take in his Aunt Fanny and his sister Rose.
From February 1940 through January 1941, Laszlo served as piano accompanist to Viola Wasterlain, a rising star among the several women violinists trying to establish themselves as peers among the dominant male violinists of the day. She and Laszlo performed throughout New York, including a Town Hall concert and a candlelight concert series at the Waldorf Astoria. One highlight of their collaboration was their performance at a special concert
arranged by Eleanor Roosevelt at the White House. Both Viola and Laszlo, the newspapers reported, were “extremely interested in the huge White House piano which [was] gayly decorated and which, they report, is nine and one-half feet long.” Concert reviewers took special note of Laszlo’s artistry. “Quite definitely,” one of them noted, “he is an artist of high rank. Seldom is there heard an accompaniment where the tones of the piano seemed to blend so perfectly with those of the violin, and between violinist and accompanist there seemed to be complete and sympathetic understanding of the requirements for each number.” 6
Another reviewer noted: “It was in the Vieuxtemps concerto […] that the audience began to take a definitely decided interest in her piano accompanist, Laszlo Bartal. For here it became apparent that Miss Wasterlain had more than just a good accompanist; she had an uncommonly fine assisting artist. Mr. Bartal fully justified this opinion in the Richard Strauss sonata which followed, a composition which was [the] high point of the program for both.”7
Laszlo continued giving solo performances in faculty recitals, at high-end New York hotels, and on the radio. In April 1942 he was soloist at a benefit concert for the MacDowell Colony for musicians in Peterboro, New Hampshire; there he performed works by Scarlatti, Bach, Schumann, Chopin, and the Liszt transcription of Paganini’s “Caprice.” Later that same month he gave a faculty concert at the Ralph Wolfe Conservatory of Music, performing Moazart’s “Theme and Variations,” Bach’s “French Suite No. 6 in E major,” Chopin’s “Nocturne in E flat major,” Poulenc’s “Pastourelle” and “Toccata,” Liszt’s “Hungarian Rhapsody No. 12.” He concluded the concert with the Brahms “Trio for Piano, Clarinet and Cello,” where he was joined by Aaron Gorodner on clarinet and Martha Whittemore on cello. These two musicians were frequent collaborators with Laszlo, beginning in 1939 when they had performed together for a children’s Sunday afternoon concert at the Ralph Wolfe Conservatory, and they had continued to perform together after Laszlo left the conservatory for the David Mannes Music School.
Laszlo was also taking part in shorter concert tours with two different artists: as accompanist to violinist Samuel Gardner, and as partnering accompanist/piano soloist with the young operatic tenor William Horne. In the concerts with William Horne, Laszlo performed Chopin’s “Nocturne in B Flat” and Dohnanyi’s “Ruralia Hungarica” as solo works. He was so well received at a concert in Texas, that he played Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” as an encore.
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Laszlo gave his last recital at the Mannes Music School in January 1943. But then his rich music career was upended, and he was drafted into the US Army. Following basic training he was sent to Camp Ritchie for training in military intelligence. His classwork had not yet begun when he, Joseph Knitzer, and William Warfield performed at the Wilson College concert on March 27, 1943. It was rather unusual that he was even permitted to perform there. Soldiers
stationed at Camp Ritchie were, in general, forbidden to perform in paid public concerts, and one needed special permission to do so. This permission was usually given only when a soldier was asked to perform at the wedding of a close friend. William Warfield had a patron, however, who mounted frequent soirees for the camp musicians, and she may have used her clout to arrange the Wilson concert. Laszlo performed his old standards: two Scarlatti sonatas, Chopin’s “Ballade in A flat major,” Poulenc’s “Pastourelle,” Debussy’s “Feux d’Artifice,” and Dohanyi’s “Ruralia Hungarica.” It is not known whether he also served on stage as Warfield’s and Knitzer’s accompanist, but, given his concertizing background, it seems likely.
In spite of the prohibition against paid public concerts, Laszlo had many opportunities to perform on base. As William Warfield noted, the camp’s commander, Colonel Charles Banfill, was concerned with making Ritchie “as civilized and cultured as he could. […] He kept an eye out for special talent—for musicians to play in the chamber orchestra he had put together, or vocalists for the chaplain’s chorales—and when he could he would divert personnel from overseas assignment to his own cadre.”8 The Colonel often opened up classical recitals and concerts at the camp to the general public, and Laszlo became well known to the people of Hagerstown and Waynesboro through these camp programs.
Laszlo had good reason to be grateful for his assignment to Camp Ritchie. As another camp pianist, Henry Clay, reported back to his hometown newspaper: “Many musicians entering the armed forces lose their touch, the nimbleness of fingers so necessary to a good pianist … because they have to dig ditches and peel potatoes and [do] other routine army jobs.” Henry Clay, however, felt “fortunate in being stationed at a Maryland base where the men like music, and he entertains with concerts. And his officers, who also like music, let him practice.” 9 Some of the camp pianists were even given practice access to grand pianos off base.
In the meantime, Laszlo was enrolled in Camp Ritchie’s seventh class (April 15 to June 12, 1943), where he specialized in the interrogation of German prisoners of war (IPW). At the end of his coursework he received a Camp Ritchie “leap” in promotion from private to master sergeant.
He was alerted of his immediate departure for Europe on October 16. There is no record of what he did during the four months between coursework and this alert. There are two possible scenarios: first, he may have been assigned to an IPW team, then sent on maneuvers to Tennessee, Louisiana, or Texas to further develop his soldierly skills—this was a common route for Ritchie Boys preparing for active duty abroad, or he may have been retained at Ritchie by Colonel Banfill to continue contributing as long as possible to the camp’s cultural programming. It is, in fact, even possible that the Colonel did his best to keep Laszlo in the States.
What we do know is this: he was sent to Britain in November for further intelligence training and for further battlefield exercises as part of IPW team 24, and that, prior to departure from the States, he officially changed his first name from Laszlo to Leslie.
Team 24 was attached to the First Army’s First Infantry Division. This assignment was a guarantee that it would be placed in the thick of the battles that lay ahead. The First Infantry Division, popularly known as the “Big Red One” for its shoulder patch, was already battle-worn. It had been the first American Division to land at Oran as part of Operation Torch, to participate first in active combat there and then throughout North Africa, and to be the first to land and engage in fierce fighting in Sicily (Operation Husky). In October 1943 it had returned to England to prepare for the invasion of Normandy.
Leslie’s six-man team participated in the invasion exercises that were part of that preparation. Over and over they practiced the skills that would be needed when they transferred from their transport ships to the landing craft that would take them to the beaches of Normandy; this involved the tricky descent from the side of the transport ship on rope cargo nets to reach the landing craft in uneven seas. The interrogation team was split in two to assure the survival of at least some of Leslie’s team.
Careful preparations were made for the invasion of Normandy (Operation Overlord). Minesweepers cleared ten paths through the channel for the Allied ships. Before the troops landed, American bombers were to clear the invasion area and naval artillery would fire shells over the heads of the landing Allies, with the intent of knocking out the major German defenses.
When D-Day came, on June 6, 1944, the team members joined the Division soldiers in landing craft which held 32 men each. They were arranged in order of the skills that would be required at the landing: the first to leave each craft were marksmen, the second wire-cutters, the third Browning Automatic Rifle teams, and so on. The final row of combat soldiers consisted of demolition teams, to blow up the German pillboxes and defense systems. Medics and interrogators brought up the rear.
The First and 29th Infantry Divisions were assigned to land on Omaha Beach and to create a hole in the German defense lines and an entryway into Normandy. What they did not know, until the doors of the landing craft were dropped, was that the American bombers had overshot their targets and that the Atlantic Wall was fully intact. The troops were also relying on the support of amphibious tanks that would be landing at the same time as the troops. Unfortunately, the waves were too high for the amphibious tanks to make that landing and the men were on their own. Many of the landing craft drifted to the east, putting them directly under German attack.
Almost immediately, then, the Americans were thrust into some of the fiercest fighting of the war. Their assault was stalled on the beach under heavy bullet and shell fire for an intolerable two hours before the Atlantic Wall could finally be breached, mines could be cleared, and work began on a coastal roadway. This was when Leslie’s team went to work, questioning captured Germans about their troop movements and locations. His team captain, Fred
Gercke, claimed that he questioned 120 prisoners before the day was over. In a letter to a colleague he described an atmosphere that Leslie doubtless also experienced when confronting the German POWs when he wrote: “They all talk freely. Have had to shut some of them up for talking too much. The officers I had (highest rank Captain), also talked fairly freely when engaged in conversation, but did not respond so well to direct questioning. All were very polite and cooperative, have had none of the so called ‘arrogant’ type.” As for his own method of questioning, Gercke recorded: “I adopt a fairly stern, matter of fact attitude in most of my interrogations and seem to be getting excellent results. Sometimes, if warranted, I fall into a more easy-going conversational tone of voice, which also has got me good results. Have had very few occasions to shout at any of our prisoners.”10 It was through the interrogations conducted by the team that the Americans learned about the presence of the 352nd German Infantry Division, a battle-hardened division that had been stationed at Omaha beach without the knowledge of the Allies. The struggle for control of the Normandy coast was just beginning.
The next assignment for the Big Red One was to secure Formigny and Caumont on the beachhead. Progress was torturously slow because of Normandy’s “bocage” terrain: this was a landscape of small pastures surrounded by dense, nearly impenetrable hedgerows that were bordered by sunken dirt roads. This terrain provided excellent defense for the German forces, and progress resulted in substantial casualties. Nevertheless, after five days of fighting, the men had penetrated 23 miles to Caumont—the furthest southern penetration of the beachhead. The forces halted now, so that friendly units could draw abreast and cover their dangerously exposed flank. These other units never did pull into line. The First Artillery Division— the “Fighting First”— then moved 12 and a half kilometers north to the undamaged town of Balleroy, arriving there—with tank support—on June 11th. There they waited until the final Allied breakthrough at Saint-Lo would enable them to break out of Normandy. While in Balleroy, Leslie continued his interrogation work.
In an interesting sidelight, the men stationed at Balleroy were confronted with an awkward situation: in a sweep-up of German prisoners in Cherbourg, eight German nurses had been taken captive. Since they were non-combatants, there was no reason to detain them, and so Leslie’s commanding officer accompanied Captain Quentin Roosevelt to the enemy lines
where, during a 30-minute cease fire, the nurses walked down the road to rejoin the German troops. This was the only reported case of nurses being captured by any of the fighting forces in Europe.
Balleroy had been spared the destruction that leveled many of its neighboring coastal towns.The town doctor described the town’s good fortune: “Two [Allied] bombs which shook the Germans out of their headquarters on the outskirts of town cost five civilian lives, and that was all our casualties except for one wounded by a shell which struck in town. It was a miracle we were spared.” 11 Because they could see the devastation that had occurred all around them, and hear the nearly constant artillery blasts that shook the buildings in town, the Bellaroy residents appreciated the American presence. And the men of the Big Red One were allowed some time for rest and recuperation as well. General Eisenhower came to Balleroy on July 2 to praise their work, and he joined General Omar Bradley in presenting decorations to those who had made the initial assault on Omaha Beach. “I know your record,” Eisenhower told them, “from the day you landed in Africa, then Sicily. I am beginning to think that the 1st Div. is a sort of Praetorian Guard…” 12
Because Balleroy had been spared destruction, its people were particularly welcoming to the American soldiers. They appeared not to have suffered terribly under the Germans, but they had committed their own small acts of rebellion, such as refusing to attend the free movies that the Germans offered them in the theater adjacent to the town hall. Now they gave Leslie the use of the piano that was housed there, and he sought and was given permission by his superiors to present a recital for the townspeople in late June. For the first time since the German occupation, the people of Belleroy crowded into the little theater to hear Leslie play.
And, a week later, the citizens of Belleroy presented their own concert for the American soldiers. An American officer said it was “a return concert for the recital Sgt. Leslie Bartal […] gave for the townfolk last week. They wanted to show their appreciation and they really made a thing of it.” It was an “odd assemblage of khaki-clad soldiers and villagers dressed in their Sabbath best” who crowded into the theater for the concert, a special benefit concert for war victims. Over 250 people, “more than a fourth of the town’s population,” crowded into the theater to sing “in honor of their friends and allies—soldiers of Britain and
America. They sang light songs of France, concert numbers and religious lyrics[,] and no group of entertainers ever had a more enthusiastic audience than the American troops in the front rows.” 13
Leslie delighted in having the opportunity to return to music during this lull in fighting. He was not only active in Division entertainments; he also wrote the musical arrangement to the “Song of the Fighting First,” a long, evolving “battle saga of the fightingest infantry division in the United States Army.” Its words and music had been composed by Lt. Col. Donald McB. Curtis, with the first and eighteenth verses penned by General Teddy Roosevelt, a long-serving member of the Division.
The six-week holdup at Balleroy could not last. During this time period the other men of Operation Overlord had found themselves bogged down in a stalemate as Allied forces remained wedged within a 50 by 20 mile stretch of beachhead, with daily advances seldom exceeding a few yards. A new offensive was needed to create a path out of Normandy and the men of the Big Red One’s 18th Infantry Regiment were being asked to lead the way, with tank support from Combat Command B of the 3rd Armored Division. Their assignment was to take the town of Marigny, west of Saint-Lo, and help open a road out of Normandy into Brittany and, eventually, Paris. General Omar Bradley had conceived the plan, known as Operation Cobra, in which two days of extremely heavy bombardments by bombs and napalm would precede the infantry attack. Unfortunately, bad weather caused the bombers to inadvertently kill large numbers of American soldiers, as well as Germans. Ultimately, however, the operation was successful, and the battle-hardened 352nd German Infantry Division was rendered ineffective. The operation was over on July 27, and the Allies were now able to leave the hedgerows of Normandy and move on to Paris.
Leslie was attached to the First Division’s 18th Infantry Regiment. He found, as a rule, that the Germans he interrogated during Operation Cobra were not as demoralized and cooperative as those he’d spoken with on Omaha Beach; after all, these Germans had mounted a successful defense for several weeks and had regained a state of arrogant confidence. This vanished, as artillery spotters in Piper cub planes began to give precise direction to the bombers overhead, and the Germans were pummeled by bombs and artillery shells. Leslie questioned a German POW, a tough, combat-proven Nazi parachute
trooper, who told him: “We used to laugh at these little planes, but soon we stopped laughing and started digging. Every time they saw anything move, a shell was soon on its way.” 14
At the end of the operation, 4,246 Germans and 3,070 Americans lay dead. Leslie was one of them. On July 26 he had been struck by shrapnel close to the front lines and died one day short of Operation Cobra’s successful conquest of Marigny. All the dead were buried by the town until the Americans were moved to the new American cemetery in Colleville-sur-Mer.
In the States, little notice was taken of Leslie’s sacrifice. His death was reported only in the Hagerstown, Maryland, and in the Waynesboro, Pennsylvania newspapers, where he was remembered as “Laszlo.” The Hagerstown paper wrote: “Friends in Hagerstown have received word that Master Sergeant Laszlo Bartal, concert pianist of New York, was killed in action in France. He was a member of the First Army. M-Sgt. Bartal was stationed at a nearby military camp for sometime before going overseas last November. He […] had been in the United States about four years.”15
Beverley Driver Eddy
November 2025
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“He Could Fiddle While Berlin Burns,” Asbury Park Press [NJ[, 28 Mar. 1943, 9.
“Soldiers to Give Joint Concert for College,” The Wilson Billboard, Wilson College, 26 Mar. 1943.
“Violinist Out of Army,” The Plain Dealer [Cleveland OH], 31 Aug. 1943, 16.
I am grateful to Russell Andorka for his assistance in tracking down Laszlo’s biography.
“Viola Wasterlain Welcomed Home By Mayor Cain and Committee,” The Tacoma Times, 21 Jan. 1941, 14.
E. T. S., “Big Reception for Violinist,” The Tacoma Times, 23 Jan. 1941, 3.
Katharine Hunt, “Wasterlain Acclaimed,” The News Tribune [Tacoma, WA], Jan. 23, 1941, 3.
William Warfield, My Music & My Life. With Alton Miller. Champaign, IL: Sagamore Publishing, 1991, 63.
Jack Rutledge, “In Our Valley,” Brownsville Herald [TX}, 19 Dec. 1943, 4.
John C. McManus, The Dead and Those about to Die. NY: Dutton Caliber, 2019 [2014], 284.
Hal Boyle, “French Jam Theater In War Benefit After Spurning Nazi Films,” The Evening Star [Wash. D.C.], 3 July 1944, A-3.
“The First! The Story of the 1st Infantry Division: World War II G.I. Stories Booklet.” https://lonesentry.com/gi_stories_booklets/1stinfantry/
Hal Boyle, “French Jam Theater…”
Wes Gallagher, “Precision Attacks Slash German Counter-Drives,” Duluth News-Tribune, 27 July, 1944, 2.
“Pianist Reported Killed in Action,” The Morning Herald.
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