Eisenhower's Death Camps

Professor Brech tells us about the American treatment of German prisoners after the war. It is something I did not know about although I knew men who were there at the time. They said nothing about it. They were English which makes a difference. General Montgomery gave the No Fraternization command. That is the worst I that knew from that period. But there is a substantial body of literature on the subject. The references given at the bottom do exist and confirm the reality. The Daily Telegraph gives credence to Giles McDonogh as a respectable and competent historian - see How Three Million Germans Died After VE Day. He gives the Brits a better bill of decency than the rest.
PS Professor Brech really is out there, living near New York and confirmed his story when I spoke to him. It seems that he went to visit his grandmother in Germany who said that the American army was so good because there were so many Germans in it.
PPS The Wiki takes a position on James Bacque telling us that he was wrong on many issues but then the Wiki has its agenda.
PPPS See the bibliography under or: American Soldiers Hated Wehrmacht Men - http://historyimages.blogspot.ca/2012/01/american-soldiers-hated-and-brutalised.html with pictures included. See also Eisenhower's Holocaust - His Slaughter Of 1.7 Million Germans
PPPPS What Really Happened takes a position at http://www.whatreallyhappened.info/meadows.html. This is is the view that there were real difficulties in dealing with some 7 million prisoners when civilians were going hungry as well. The Wiki has more at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rheinwiesenlager or Rheinwiesenlager. I read it as propaganda, which ignored the genuine official malice.
PPPPPS See more and better details at Eisenhower and post-war German mass deaths ex Metapedia. The Metapedia is prone to tell the truth where the Wiki will not.
UPDATE: Eisenhower was a mass murderer - see the video, know the truth - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hbp61fOVFaE or go to Real History and the Allied Treatment of Prisoners of War or see
Eisenhower's Holocaust

From http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v10/v10p161_Brech.html

In 'Eisenhower’s Death Camps': A U.S. Prison Guard Remembers

Martin Brech
In October 1944, at age eighteen, I was drafted into the U.S. army. Largely because of the “Battle of the Bulge,” my training was cut short, my furlough was halved, and I was sent overseas immediately. Upon arrival in Le Havre, France, we were quickly loaded into box cars and shipped to the front. When we got there, I was suffering increasingly severe symptoms of mononucleosis, and was sent to a hospital in Belgium. Since mononucleosis was then known as the "kissing disease," I mailed a letter of thanks to my girlfriend.

By the time I left the hospital, the outfit I had trained with in Spartanburg, South Carolina, was deep inside Germany, so, despite my protests, I was placed in a “repo depot” (replacement depot). I lost interest in the units to which I was assigned, and don't recall all of them: non-combat units were ridiculed at that time. My separation qualification record states I was mostly with Company C, 14th Infantry Regiment, during my seventeen-month stay in Germany, but I remember being transferred to other outfits also.

In late March or early April 1945, I was sent to guard a POW camp near Andernach along the Rhine. I had four years of high school German, so I was able to talk to the prisoners, although this was forbidden. Gradually, however, I was used as an interpreter and asked to ferret out members of the S.S. (I found none.)

In Andernach about 50,000 prisoners of all ages were held in an open field surrounded by barbed wire. The women were kept in a separate enclosure that I did not see until later. The men I guarded had no shelter and no blankets. Many had no coats. They slept in the mud, wet and cold, with inadequate slit trenches for excrement. It was a cold, wet spring, and their misery from exposure alone was evident.

Even more shocking was to see the prisoners throwing grass and weeds into a tin can containing a thin soup. They told me they did this to help ease their hunger pains. Quickly they grew emaciated. Dysentery raged, and soon they were sleeping in their own excrement, too weak and crowded to reach the slit trenches. Many were begging for food, sickening and dying before our eyes. We had ample food and supplies, but did nothing to help them, including no medical assistance.

Outraged, I protested to my officers and was met with hostility or bland indifference. When pressed, they explained they were under strict orders from “higher up.” No officer would dare do this to 50,000 men if he felt that it was “out of line,” leaving him open to charges. Realizing my protests were useless, I asked a friend working in the kitchen if he could slip me some extra food for the prisoners. He too said they were under strict orders to severely ration the prisoners’ food, and that these orders came from “higher up.” But he said they had more food than they knew what to do with, and would sneak me some.

When I threw this food over the barbed wire to the prisoners, I was caught and threatened with imprisonment. I repeated the “offense,” and one officer angrily threatened to shoot me. I assumed this was a bluff until I encountered a captain on a hill above the Rhine shooting down at a group of German civilian women with his .45 caliber pistol. When I asked, “Why?,” he mumbled, “Target practice," and fired until his pistol was empty. I saw the women running for cover, but, at that distance, couldn't tell if any had been hit.

This is when I realized I was dealing with cold-blooded killers filled with moralistic hatred. They considered the Germans subhuman and worthy of extermination; another expression of the downward spiral of racism. Articles in the G.I. newspaper, Stars and Stripes, played up the German concentration camps, complete with photos of emaciated bodies. This amplified our self-righteous cruelty, and made it easier to imitate behavior we were supposed to oppose. Also, I think, soldiers not exposed to combat were trying to prove how tough they were by taking it out on the prisoners and civilians.

These prisoners, I found out, were mostly farmers and workingmen, as simple and ignorant as many of our own troops. As time went on, more of them lapsed into a zombie-like state of listlessness, while others tried to escape in a demented or suicidal fashion, running through open fields in broad daylight towards the Rhine to quench their thirst. They were mowed down.

Some prisoners were as eager for cigarettes as for food, saying they took the edge off their hunger. Accordingly, enterprising G.I. “Yankee traders” were acquiring hordes of watches and rings in exchange for handfuls of cigarettes or less. When I began throwing cartons of cigarettes to the prisoners to ruin this trade, I was threatened by rank-and-file G.I.s too.

The only bright spot in this gloomy picture came one night when. I was put on the “graveyard shift,” from two to four a.m. Actually, there was a graveyard on the uphill side of this enclosure, not many yards away. My superiors had forgotten to give me a flashlight and I hadn't bothered to ask for one, disgusted as I was with the whole situation by that time. It was a fairly bright night and I soon became aware of a prisoner crawling under the wires towards the graveyard. We were supposed to shoot escapees on sight, so I started to get up from the ground to warn him to get back. Suddenly I noticed another prisoner crawling from the graveyard back to the enclosure. They were risking their lives to get to the graveyard for something. I had to investigate.

When I entered the gloom of this shrubby, tree-shaded cemetery, I felt completely vulnerable, but somehow curiosity kept me moving. Despite my caution, I tripped over the legs of someone in a prone position. Whipping my rifle around while stumbling and trying to regain composure of mind and body, I soon was relieved I hadn't reflexively fired. The figure sat up. Gradually, I could see the beautiful but terror-stricken face of a woman with a picnic basket nearby. German civilians were not allowed to feed, nor even come near the prisoners, so I quickly assured her I approved of what she was doing, not to be afraid, and that I would leave the graveyard to get out of the way.

I did so immediately and sat down, leaning against a tree at the edge of the cemetery to be inconspicuous and not frighten the prisoners. I imagined then, and still do now, what it would be like to meet a beautiful woman with a picnic basket under those conditions as a prisoner. I have never forgotten her face.

Eventually, more prisoners crawled back to the enclosure. I saw they were dragging food to their comrades, and could only admire their courage and devotion.

On May 8, V.E. Day [1945], I decided to celebrate with some prisoners I was guarding who were baking bread the other prisoners occasionally received. This group had all the bread they could eat, and shared the jovial mood generated by the end of the war. We all thought we were going home soon, a pathetic hope on their part. We were in what was to become the French zone [of occupation], where I soon would witness the brutality of the French soldiers when we transferred our prisoners to them for their slave labor camps.

On this day, however, we were happy.

As a gesture of friendliness, I emptied my rifle and stood it in the corner, even allowing them to play with it at their request. This thoroughly “broke the ice,” and soon we were singing songs we taught each other, or that I had learned in high school German class (“Du, du, liegst mir im Herzen”). Out of gratitude, they baked me a special small loaf of sweet bread, the only possible present they had left to offer. I stuffed it in my “Eisenhower jacket,” and snuck it back to my barracks, eating it when I had privacy. I have never tasted more delicious bread, nor felt a deeper sense of communion while eating it. I believe a cosmic sense of Christ (the Oneness of all Being) revealed its normally hidden presence to me on that occasion, influencing my later decision to major in philosophy and religion.

Shortly afterwards, some of our weak and sickly prisoners were marched off by French soldiers to their camp. We were riding on a truck behind this column. Temporarily, it slowed down and dropped back, perhaps because the driver was as shocked as I was. Whenever a German prisoner staggered or dropped back, he was hit on the head with a club and killed. The bodies were rolled to the side of the road to be picked up by another truck. For many, this quick death might have been preferable to slow starvation in our “killing fields.”

When I finally saw the German women held in a separate enclosure, I asked why we were holding them prisoner. I was told they were “camp followers,” selected as breeding stock for the S.S. to create a super-race. I spoke to some, and must say I never met a more spirited or attractive group of women. I certainly didn't think they deserved imprisonment.

More and more I was used as an interpreter, and was able to prevent some particularly unfortunate arrests. One somewhat amusing incident involved an old farmer who was being dragged away by several M.P.s. I was told he had a “fancy Nazi medal,” which they showed me. Fortunately, I had a chart identifying such medals. He'd been awarded it for having five children! Perhaps his wife was somewhat relieved to get him “off her back, ”but I didn't think one of our death camps was a fair punishment for his contribution to Germany. The M.P.s agreed and released him to continue his “dirty work.”

Famine began to spread among the German civilians also. It was a common sight to see German women up to their elbows in our garbage cans looking for something edible -- that is, if they weren't chased away.

When I interviewed mayors of small towns and villages, I was told that their supply of food had been taken away by “displaced persons” (foreigners who had worked in Germany), who packed the food on trucks and drove away. When I reported this, the response was a shrug. I never saw any Red Cross at the camp or helping civilians, although their coffee and doughnut stands were available everywhere else for us. In the meantime, the Germans had to rely on the sharing of hidden stores until the next harvest.

Hunger made German women more “available," but despite this, rape was prevalent and often accompanied by additional violence. In particular I remember an eighteen-year old woman who had the side of her faced smashed with a rifle butt, and was then raped by two G.I.s. Even the French complained that the rapes, looting and drunken destructiveness on the part of our troops was excessive. In Le Havre, we’d been given booklets warning us that the German soldiers had maintained a high standard of behavior with French civilians who were peaceful, and that we should do the same. In this we failed miserably.

“So what?” some would say. “The enemy's atrocities were worse than ours.” It is true that I experienced only the end of the war, when we were already the victors. The German opportunity for atrocities had faded, while ours was at hand. But two wrongs don't make a right. Rather than copying our enemy's crimes, we should aim once and for all to break the cycle of hatred and vengeance that has plagued and distorted human history. This is why I am speaking out now, 45 years after the crime. We can never prevent individual war crimes, but we can, if enough of us speak out, influence government policy. We can reject government propaganda that depicts our enemies as subhuman and encourages the kind of outrages I witnessed. We can protest the bombing of civilian targets, which still goes on today. And we can refuse ever to condone our government’s murder of unarmed and defeated prisoners of war.

I realize it’s difficult for the average citizen to admit witnessing a crime of this magnitude, especially if implicated himself. Even G.I.s sympathetic to the victims were afraid to complain and get into trouble, they told me. And the danger has not ceased. Since I spoke out a few weeks ago, I have received threatening calls and had my mailbox smashed. But its been worth it. Writing about these atrocities has been a catharsis of feelings suppressed too long, a liberation, that perhaps will remind other witnesses that “the truth will make us free, have no fear.” We may even learn a supreme lesson from all this: only love can conquer all.


Martin Brech lives in Mahopac, New York. When he wrote this memoir essay in 1990, he was an Adjunct Professor of Philosophy and Religion at Mercy College in Dobbs Ferry, New York. Brech holds a master’s degree in theology from Columbia University, and is a Unitarian-Universalist minister.

This essay was published in The Journal of Historical Review, Summer 1990 (Vol. 10, No. 2), pp. 161-166. (Revised, updated: Nov. 2008)

We may even learn a supreme lesson from all this: Hate is self-destructive; only love can conquer and evolve all as One.

Martin Brech (Adjunct Professor, Philosophy & Religion, Mercy College; Ex-G.I., Finally Free)

Martin Brech, 187 Archer Road, Mahopac, NY 10541, Tel.: 914-628-630

 

Post-War Apology and Reconciliation
QUOTE
A retired officer in the US army has apologized to the German army for the mass deaths of German prisoners in US army camps after World War Two. Following extensive private investigations in the US and Germany, Merrit P. Drucker has sent an e-mail to Lt. Col. Max Klaar, head of the Verband der deutscher Soldaten (German Veterans’ Association), regretting the lethal conditions in the US camps where some 750,000 Germans died while they were denied available food and shelter.

Drucker has also formed a committee of six people, in Germany, the UK, Canada and the US to pursue further investigations and make amends by way of apologies to the families of the dead, and veterans’ institutions. Drucker’s first e-mail letter has been posted on the veterans’ website where there is also a questionnaire asking for details of prisoners’ internment.

The book Other Losses by James Bacque, which helped to set off the investigation, is being re-issued in an American edition in October. The launch will be held in Washington in the Marriott Hotel where Drucker plans to present a formal letter of apology to Klaar who is flying over for the occasion. Klaar will present in his turn a proposal for a peace treaty between the USA and Germany. It has 14 points. Two films about postwar Germany are included in the program.

Other Losses, a world-wide best-seller published in 13 countries, has been suppressed in the US for over 20 years. The new edition is being published by Talonbooks of Vancouver, whose editor, Karl Siegler, is the son of a former prisoner in a US army camp. When his father told him what had happened to him in the US camp, Siegler said, “I don’t believe you.” He changed his mind after reading Other Losses. Because of such sad events, Lt. Colonel Klaar has said that “Germany is a country of wounded souls.” Many Germans have already written to Major Drucker to thank him for taking a heavy weight of grief and guilt off their minds.

TIME AND PLACE Monday, October 31, 2011, at the Courtyard US Capitol Marriott Hotel, 1325 Northeast Street, Washington, DC 20002, (202) 898-4000. The meeting will be in the Congressional and Monument Rooms. Time TBA.

REQUESTS FOR INTERVIEWS Please contact Talonbooks: (604) 444-4889.

For further information, contact Kevin Williams (kevin@talonbooks.com) or James Bacque at (705) 549-8148 or Merrit P. Drucker at (202) 722-6716
UNQUOTE
So it really happened. But the author has not fingered the Jew, the criminal that set up the murder of 1.7 million Germans.

 

How Three Million Germans Died After VE Day
QUOTE
Nigel Jones reviews After the Reich: From the Liberation of Vienna to the Berlin Airlift by Giles MacDonogh
Giles MacDonogh is a bon viveur and a historian of wine and gastronomy, but in this book, pursuing his other consuming interest - German history - he serves a dish to turn the strongest of stomachs. It makes particularly uncomfortable reading for those who compare the disastrous occupation of Iraq unfavourably to the post-war settlement of Germany and Austria.

MacDonogh argues that the months that followed May 1945 brought no peace to the shattered skeleton of Hitler's Reich, but suffering even worse than the destruction wrought by the war. After the atrocities that the Nazis had visited on Europe, some degree of justified vengeance by their victims was inevitable, but the appalling bestialities that MacDonogh documents so soberly went far beyond that. The first 200 pages of his brave book are an almost unbearable chronicle of human suffering.

His best estimate is that some three million Germans died unnecessarily after the official end of hostilities. A million soldiers vanished before they could creep back to the holes that had been their homes. The majority of them died in Soviet captivity (of the 90,000 who surrendered at Stalingrad, only 5,000 eventually came home) but, shamingly, many thousands perished as prisoners of the Anglo-Americans. Herded into cages along the Rhine, with no shelter and very little food, they dropped like flies. Others, more fortunate, toiled as slave labour in a score of Allied countries, often for years. Incredibly, some Germans were still being held in Russia as late as 1979.

The two million German civilians who died were largely the old, women and children: victims of disease, cold, hunger, suicide - and mass murder.

Apart from the well-known repeated rape of virtually every girl and woman unlucky enough to be in the Soviet occupation zones, perhaps the most shocking outrage recorded by MacDonogh - for the first time in English - is the slaughter of a quarter of a million Sudeten Germans by their vengeful Czech compatriots. The survivors of this ethnic cleansing, naked and shivering, were pitched across the border, never to return to their homes. Similar scenes were seen across Poland, Silesia and East Prussia as age-old German communities were brutally expunged.

Given that what amounted to a lesser Holocaust was unfolding under their noses, it may be asked why the western Allies did not stop this venting of long-dammed-up rage on the (mainly) innocent. MacDonogh's answer is that it could all have been even worse. The US Treasury Secretary, Henry Morgenthau [ see the Morgenthau Plan ], favoured turning Germany into a gigantic farm, and there were genocidal Nazi-like schemes afoot to starve, sterilise or deport the population of what was left of the bombed-out cities.

The discovery of the Nazi death camps stoked Allied fury, with General George Patton asking an aide amid the horrors of Buchenwald: 'Do you still find it hard to hate them?' But the surviving inmates were soon replaced by German captives - Dachau, Buchenwald, Sachsenhausen and even Auschwitz stayed in business after the war, only now with the Germans behind the wire.

It was Realpolitik, not humanitarian concern, that caused a swift shift in western attitudes towards their former foes. Fear of Communism spreading into the heart of Europe, and the barbarities of the Russians - who kidnapped and killed hundreds of their perceived enemies from the western zones of Berlin and Vienna - belatedly made the West realise that they had beaten one totalitarian power only to be threatened by another.

Even that hardline Kraut-hater Patton was sacked for advocating a pre-emptive strike against Russia. Building up West Germany and saving Berlin from Soviet strangulation with the 1948 airlift became the first battles of the Cold War - even if that meant overlooking Nazi crimes and enlisting Nazi criminals in the 'economic miracle' of reconstruction.

Although MacDonogh roundly condemns all the occupying powers, the British emerge with some credit. Apart from one Air Marshal who looted art treasures; and an MI5 interrogator nicknamed 'Tin Eye' Stephens who ran a private torture chamber, British hands may have been grubby, but were not deeply blood-stained. British squaddies preferred to purchase their sex privately with a packet of fags or a pair of nylons, rather than in the Soviet style.

MacDonogh has written a gruelling but important book. This unhappy story has long been cloaked in silence since telling it suited no one. Not the Allies, because it placed them near the moral nadir of the Nazis; nor the Germans, because they did not wish to be accused of whitewashing Hitler by highlighting what was, by any standard, a war crime. Giles MacDonogh has told a very inconvenient truth.
UNQUOTE
This reinforces Martin Brech's account of American atrocities.

 

For Further Reading:-
James Bacque ,Crimes and Mercies: The Fate of German Civilians Under Allied Occupation, 1944-1950, Toronto: Little, Brown and Co., 1997)

James Bacque, Other Losses: An investigation into the mass deaths of German prisoners at the hands of the French and Americans after World War II (Toronto: Stoddart, 1989)

Alfred-Maurice de Zayas, NEMESIS AT POTSDAM: The Anglo-Americans and the Expulsion of the Germans (Lincoln, Neb.: 1990)

Alfred-Maurice de Zayas, A Terrible Revenge, Second Edition, Fully Revised and Updated: The Ethnic Cleansing of the East European Germans, 1944-1950 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994)

John Dietrich, The Morgenthau Plan: Soviet Influence on American Postwar Policy (New York: Algora, 2002)

Ralph Franklin Keeling, Gruesome Harvest - The Allies Postwar War Against the German People (IHR, 1992). Originally published in Chicago in 1947.

Giles MacDonogh, After the Reich: The Brutal History of the Allied Occupation (New York: Basic Books, 2007)

John Sack, An Eye for an Eye: The Story of Jews Who Sought Revenge for the Holocaust (2000)

Mark Weber, New Book Details Mass Killings and Brutal Mistreatment of Germans at the End of World War Two (Summer 2007) ( http://www.ihr.org/other/afterthereich072007.html ) Mr Weber reviews Giles McDonogh's book.

 

 

From http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v10/v10p161_Brech.html

In 'Eisenhower’s Death Camps': A U.S. Prison Guard Remembers

 

Real History and the Allied Treatment of Prisoners of War  
A U.S. PRISON GUARD AT ONE OF "IKE'S DEATH CAMPS"
By Martin Brech
FORTY-FIVE years ago, I witnessed an atrocity: the deliberate starvation of German POWs by our own army. History, written by the victors, suppressed all news of this atrocity until James Bacque, a Canadian author, published his brilliant expose, OTHER LOSSES. This book is a best seller in Canada, a sensation in Europe, yet is virtually unavailable (censored?) in the U.S. Our major booksellers told me their distributors are not handling it. When I prevailed upon a small, independent bookstore to order direct from Canada, the publisher told them they would be the only store in New York State to carry the book. This in 'the land of the free'?"

Fortunately, Pat Buchanan called attention to OTHER LOSSES in his January 10, 1990 column. He wrote:

"Conclusion: the U.S. Army killed ten times as many Germans in POW camps as we did on battlefields from Normandy to V.E. day. (German POWs) had their rations cut below survival level until they were dying at rates up to 30% of exposure, starvation and neglect... Red Cross food trains were turned back and U.S. food shipments sat on the docks...One French officer said the U.S. camps reminded him of Dachau and Buchenwald...The book blames Eisenhower. 'The German is a beast,' Ike had written...But that was not how the Canadians and British felt, who treated their prisoners justly...It was not the view of General Mark Clark, nor of Patton...Ignoring the book is not enough."

Pat Buchanan's courageous column inspired me to help end the cover-up of the atrocity I had witnessed. I wrote letters to several newspapers which were, of necessity, short and incomplete. Now I would like to finally free more of my painful memories, hoping to be heard, so that this will help us to acknowledge our share in the "banality of evil", cleansing ourselves with the truth. Perhaps we as a nation may then put this behind us with some integrity and with some hope for redemption.

In October 1944, at age eighteen, I was drafted into the army while a student at the NYS College of Forestry. Largely due to the "Battle of the Bulge", my training was cut short, my furlough cut in half, and I was then immediately sent overseas. Upon arrival in Le Havre, France, we were quickly loaded into boxcars and shipped to the front. By the time we reached it, I had developed mononucleosis severely enough to be sent to a hospital in Belgium.

By the time I left the hospital, the unit I had trained with in Spartenburg, South Carolina was so deeply into Germany that I warn placed in a "repo depo" (a replacement depot) despite my protests. I then lost interest in which units I was assigned to because non-combat units were generally not respected. My separation qualification record states that I served mostly with the 14th Infantry Regiment, during which time I guarded prisoners of war and served as an interpreter. During my seventeen month stay in Germany, I was transferred to other outfits also.

In late March or early April 1945, I was assigned to help guard a POW camp near Andernach along the Rhine. I had four years of high school German, so I was able to talk to the prisoners, although this was forbidden.

Gradually, however, I was used as an interpreter and asked to ferret out the S.S. (I found none.)

In Andernach, between 50,000 and 65,000 prisoners, ranging in age from very young teens to very old men, were crowded together in an open field surrounded by barbed wire. The women were kept in a separate enclosure which I did not see until later. The men I guarded had no tents or other shelter, no blankets and many had no coats. Inadequate numbers of slit trenches were provided for excrement, and so the men lived and slept in the mud and increasing filth during a cold, wet spring. Their misery from exposure alone was evident.

It was even more shocking to see them eating grass, sometimes throwing it into a tin can containing a thin soup. They told me they did this hoping to ease their hunger pains. Soon their emaciation was evident. Dysentery raged and, too weak and crowded to reach the slit trenches, they were increasingly sleeping in excrement. I saw no sign of provision for water, so the thin soup was their food and water for the day. Some days there was bread, less than a slice each. Other days there was nothing.

The sight of so many men desperate for food and water, sickening and dying before our eyes, is indescribable. Even now, I can only think of it momentarily.

We had ample food and supplies that could have been shared more humanely, and we could have offered some medical assistance, but did nothing. Only the dead were quickly and efficiently taken care of: hauled away to mass graves.

My outrage reached the point that I protested to my officers, but I was met with hostility or bland indifference. When pressed, they explained they were under strict orders from "higher up". No officer would dare to systematically do this to over 50,000 prisoners if he felt he was violating general policy and subject to court martial. The term "war criminal" was just beginning to come into fashion.

Realizing my protests were useless, I asked a friend working in the kitchen if he could slip me some extra food for the prisoners. He too repeated that they were under strict orders to severely ration the prisoners' food, and that these orders came from "higher up". But he said they had more food than they knew what to do with and would sneak me some.

When I threw this food over the barbed wires to the prisoners I was caught and threatened with imprisonment. I repeated the "offense", and one officer threatened to shoot me. I naturally assumed this was a bluff, but I began to have some doubts after I encountered a captain on a hill above the Rhine shooting down at a group of German civilian women with his .45 caliber pistol. When I asked, "Why?" he mumbled, "Target practice," and fired until his pistol was empty. I saw the women running for cover, but, at that distance, couldn't tell if any had been hit.

This is when I more fully realized I was dealing with some cold-blooded killers filled with moralistic hatred. They considered the Germans sub-human and worthy of extermination; another expression of the downward spiral of racism. Articles in the G.I. newspaper, Stars & Stripes, played up the Nazi concentration camps, complete with photographs of emaciated bodies; this amplified our self-righteous cruelty and made it easier to imitate behavior we were supposed to oppose. Also, I think, soldiers not exposed to combat were trying to prove how tough they were by taking it out on the prisoners and civilians. At least, many combat soldiers told me later they would not have tolerated this, for they combined hatred with respect for a courageous enemy.

The prisoners I spoke to were mostly simple farmers and workingmen, as ignorant, albeit nationalistic, as many of our own troops. I heard many versions of "my country, right or wrong, my country," which we still hear in our own country today.

As time went on, many of them lapsed into a Zombie-like state of listlessness. Others, maddened by thirst, tried to escape in a desperate or suicidal fashion, running through open fields in broad daylight towards the Rhine to quench their thirst. They were mowed down.

Some prisoners were extremely eager for cigarettes, saying they took the edge off their hunger. Accordingly, some enterprising G.I. "Yankee traders" were acquiring hordes of wrist watches and rings in exchange for handfuls of cigarettes or less. When I began throwing cartons of cigar-ettes to the prisoners to ruin this trade, I found myself threatened by rank-and-file G.I.s also. At least this taught me an indelible lesson: how wrong majorities and authorities can be.

A bright spot in this gloomy picture came, oddly enough, one night when I was put on the "graveyard shift", from two to four A.M. Actually, there was a graveyard on the uphill side of this enclosure, not many yards away. My superiors had forgotten to give me a flashlight and I hadn't bothered to ask, being disgusted with the whole situation by that time. It was a fairly bright night and I soon became aware of a prisoner crawling under the wires to the graveyard. We were supposed to shoot escapees on sight, so I started to get up to warn him to get back. Suddenly I noticed another prisoner crawling from the graveyard back to the enclosure. They were risking their lives to get to the graveyard for something; I had to investigate.

When I entered the gloom of this shrubby, tree-shaded cemetery, I never felt more vulnerable, but somehow curiosity kept me going. Despite my caution, I tripped over the legs of someone in a prone position. Whipping my rifle around while stumbling and trying to regain composure of mind and body, I soon was relieved I hadn't reflexively fired. The figure sat up, moving erratically. Gradually I could see the beautiful but terror-stricken face of a woman with a picnic basket nearby. German civilians were not allowed to feed, nor even come near, the prisoners, so I quickly assured her I approved of what she was doing, not to be afraid, and that I would leave the graveyard to get out of the way, telling no one.

I left the graveyard as quickly as possible and sat down, leaning against a tree at the edge CF the cemetary to be inconspicuous and not frighten the prisoners. I imagined then, and often since, what it would be like to be a prisoner under those conditions and meet a beautiful woman with a picnic basket. I never saw her again, but I have never forgotten her face.

While I watched, more prisoners crawled to and from the enclosure. I saw they were dragging food back to their comrades and could only admire their courage and devotion. As I walked back to my quarters at the end of my shift, a nightingale and I were singing -- both felt a touch of spring.

(I originally did not intend to reveal the following incident, for it moves into a realm termed "mystical". However, for me, it was an extremely significant experience, changing my life, providing a light no darkness can extinguish. It must be told, hoping it will foster understanding.)

On May 8, V.E. day, I decided to celebrate with some prisoners I was guarding who were baking bread, meager amounts of which the other prisoners occasionally received. This group had all the bread they could eat, and shared the jovial mood generated by the end of the war. We all thought we would be going home soon, a pathetic hope on their part. We were in what was to become the French zone, and I later witnessed the brutality of the French soldiers when we transferred our prisoners to them for their slave labor camps (see below).

However, on this day we were happy.

After chatting with them about the potentials of peace for the rest of our lives, I decided to risk a gesture of trust that objectively would seem foolish. I emptied my rifle and stood it in the corner. They tested me further by asking to play with it, and I agreed. Intuitively I felt I could rely on their sense of honor not to attack me, for they knew they too were being tested. This thoroughly 'broke the ice', and soon we were singing songs we taught each other or I had learned in high school German ("Du, du, liegst mir im Herzen"). Out of gratitude, they secretly baked a small sweet bread and insisted I take it, explaining it was the only possible gift they had left to offer. Expressing my gratitude with a lump in my throat, I put it in my tight "Eisenhower jacket" so I could sneak it back to my barracks. I later found an opportunity to eat it outside.

Never had bread tasted more delicious, nor conveyed to me a deeper sense of communion while eating it. A wonderful feeling pervaded me, gently opening me to an intimation of the Oneness of all Being. Through those prisoners I sensed the ~cosmic presence of what has been called the Christ, Buddha-nature, or, perhaps most aptly, the Ineffable: cosmically present, but hidden and apparently separate, until revealed in the wholeness of the giving of the self. Even within the horror humans had created, I was taught a path to redemption may open by taking a first, tentative step in the direction of love, understanding and forgiveness. This above all the prisoners taught me: not only are we all potentially humane humans, there is divinity within us waiting for us to dissolve the defensive shield of ego. I was pleased to discover later the words of Matthew 25:34-46, expressing the potential within prisoners and all who are at our mercy.

Shortly after this experience I was plunged into even greater horror. Some of our weak and sickly prisoners were being marched off by French soldiers to their camp. The truck we were on first passed another truck picking up bodies along the side of the road, and then came up behind a slowly moving column of men. Temporarily we slowed down and remained behind, perhaps because the driver was as shocked as I was. The French soldiers were apparently incensed at the poor condition of our prisoners, not only for labor but for marching to another camp. Whenever a prisoner staggered or dropped back, the French clubbed him to death and then dragged him to the side of the road. For many, this quick death might have been preferable to their prolonged suffering. Even gas would have been more merciful than our murder by neglect in our slow 'killing fields'.

When I saw the German women held in a separate enclosure, I asked why we were keeping them. I was told they were "camp followers", selected as breeding stock for the S.S. to create a super-race. We provided them with tents but they were extremely hungry. I spoke to some and must say they were still spirited and attractive. However, I believe I was objective enough when I told all concerned that I didn't think they deserved our treatment.

As an interpreter, I was able to prevent some particularly unfortunate arrests. One somewhat amusing incident occurred during a pre-dawn raid we conducted on a town to discover Nazis or arms. An old farmer was being dragged away by some soldiers. I was told he had a "fancy Nazi medal", which they showed to me. Fortunately, I had a chart identifying such medals. He had been awarded it for having five or more children! Perhaps his wife was somewhat relieved to get him "off her back", but I didn't think one of our 'death camps' was a fair punishment for his contribution to Germany. The soldiers agreed and released him to continue his "dirty work".

Famine was spreading amongst German civilians also. It was a common sight to see German women up to their elbows in our garbage cans looking for something edible -- that is, when they weren't chased away.

When I interviewed mayors of small towns and villages, I was told their supply of food had been taken away by "displaced persons" (foreigners who had worked in Germany), who packed the food on trucks and drove away. When I reported this, the response was a shrug or an expression of helplessness.

Although the Red Cross coffee and doughnut stands were available everywhere for us, I never saw any Red Cross in the prison camps or helping the civilians. While my girlfriend had all the "contraband" doughnuts she could eat, most Germans had to share their meager hidden stores and wait until the next harvest.

This hunger undoubtedly made many German women more "available", but, despite this, rape was incredibly prevalent and often accompanied by additional violence. I particularly remember a charming eighteen year old girl who had several unsuccessful suitors and was "just friends" with me, who had the side of her face smashed with a rifle butt and was then raped by two G.I.s. The casual shooting of German civilians also continued, usually by drunken soldiers who would tell of this as something amusing. All too many G.I.s gave the impression they were 1ike animals released from cages, free to do what they liked because they were dealing with yet a lower species of animal, a reverse racism, inflamed by our propaganda. However, even the French complained to me that our rape and drunken destructive behavior in their country was excessive. When we had arrived in Le Havre, we had been given booklets instructing us that the Germans had maintained a high standard of behavior with French civilians who were peaceful, and that we should do the same. In this we failed miserably.

So what? we might still say. The enemies' atrocities were worse than ours. Certainly my experiences were only of the last phases of the war, when we were already clearly the victors. The Nazi opportunity for atrocities had faded and ours was unleashed. But we might have learned the simple lesson that two wrongs do not make a right. Perhaps we might even have broken the cycle of vengeful retaliation and unbridled hatred, fed by racism, that has plagued human history and blighted human potential all to long. Instead, we committed our own atrocities and now are clinging to a cover-up. That is why I am speaking out now, forty-five years after the crime. We can never prevent individual war crimes, but we can, if enough of us speak out, influence government policy. We can reject government propaganda that depicts our enemies as subhuman and encourages the kinds of outrages I witnessed. We can protest the bombing of civilian targets, which still goes on today. (I will never forget the sickly sweet smell of rotting human flesh rising from the shattered remains of the cities and towns I entered.) And we can refuse ever to condone our government' s murder of unarmed and defeated prisoners of war.

I realized it's difficult to admit witnessing a crime of this magnitude, especially if implicated oneself. Even G.I .s sympathetic to the victims told me they were afraid to oppose so massive a policy that would surely seek to cover its tracks. I never heard this directly from an officer, but it was the belief of the rank-and-file G.I.s I spoke to that we were not to "talk" because, first, no one would believe us, and second, we would surely get into trouble. They all insisted it was better not to talk, and slowly I too realized it would be futile and dangerous. That is, until now, thanks to James Bacque and Pat Buchanan. This is not to say the danger has passed. Since I "spoke out" recently, my mailbox has been smashed and I have received threatening phone calls. But I believe it is worth the risk. Writing about these atrocities has been a catharsis of feelings suppressed too long, a liberation, and perhaps will remind other witnesses and citizens -that "the truth shall make us free, have no fear." And, in any case, "the truth shall out".

We may even learn a supreme lesson from all this: Hate is self-destructive; only love can conquer and evolve all as One.

Martin Brech (Adjunct Professor, Philosophy & Religion, Mercy College; Ex-G.I., Finally Free)

Martin Brech, 187 Archer Road, Mahopac, NY 10541, Tel.: 914-628-630

 

Eisenhower's Holocaust
His
Slaughter Of 1.7 Million Germans

Author Unknown
22 June 2008
War Crimes - USA tells us that Eisenhower got promoted because he met the right people, such as Roosevelt. Freda Utley took a strong line on American atrocities in her book, The High Cost of Vengeance.
 

See also Eisenhower's Death Camps or the Campaign For A Harsh Peace
From http://www.rense.com/general46/germ.htm

"God, I hate the Germans..." (Dwight David Eisenhower in a letter to his wife in September, 1944)

First, I want you to picture something in your mind. You are a German soldier who survived through the battles of World II. You were not really politically involved, and your parents were also indifferent to politics, but suddenly your education was interrupted and you were drafted into the German army and told where to fight. Now, in the Spring of 1945, you see that your country has been demolished by the Allies, your cities lie in ruins, and half of your family has been killed or is missing. Now, your unit is being surrounded, and it is finally time to surrender. The fact is, there is no other choice.
 
It has been a long, cold winter. The German army rations have not been all that good, but you managed to survive. Spring came late that year, with weeks of cold rainy weather in demolished Europe. Your boots are tattered, your uniform is falling apart, and the stress of surrender and the confusion that lies ahead for you has your guts being torn out. Now, it is over, you must surrender or be shot. This is war and the real world.
 
You are taken as a German Prisoner of War into American hands. The Americans had 200 such Prisoner of War camps scattered across Germany. You are marched to a compound surrounded with barbed wire fences as far as the eye can see. Thousands upon thousands of your fellow German soldiers are already in this make-shift corral. You see no evidence of a latrine and after three hours of marching through the mud of the spring rain, the comfort of a latrine is upper-most in your mind. You are driven through the heavily guarded gate and find yourself free to move about, and you begin the futile search for the latrine. Finally, you ask for directions, and are informed that no such luxury exists.
 
No more time. You find a place and squat. First you were exhausted, then hungry, then fearful, and now; dirty. Hundreds more German prisoners are behind you, pushing you on, jamming you together and every one of them searching for the latrine as soon as they could do so. Now, late in the day, there is no space to even squat, much less sit down to rest your weary legs. None of the prisoners, you quickly learn, have had any food that day, in fact there was no food while in the American hands that any surviving prisoner can testify to. No one has eaten any food for weeks, and they are slowly starving and dying. But, they can't do this to us! There are the Geneva Convention rules for the treatment of Prisoners of War. There must be some mistake! Hope continues through the night, with no shelter from the cold, biting rain.
 
Your uniform is sopping wet, and formerly brave soldiers are weeping all around you, as buddy after buddy dies from the lack of food, water, sleep and shelter from the weather. After weeks of this, your own hope bleeds off into despair, and finally you actually begin to envy those who, having surrendered first manhood and then dignity, now also surrender life itself. More hopeless weeks go by. Finally, the last thing you remember is falling, unable to get up, and lying face down in the mud mixed with the excrement of those who have gone before.
 
Your body will be picked up long after it is cold, and taken to a special tent where your clothing is stripped off. So that you will be quickly forgotten, and never again identified, your dog-tag is snipped in half and your body along with those of your fellow soldiers are covered with chemicals for rapid decomposition and buried. You were not one of the exceptions, for more than one million seven hundred thousand German Prisoners of War died from a deliberate policy of extermination by starvation, exposure, and disease, under direct orders of the General Dwight David Eisenhower.
 
One month before the end of World War 11, General Eisenhower issued special orders concerning the treatment of German Prisoners and specific in the language of those orders was this statement,
 
"Prison enclosures are to provide no shelter or other comforts."
 
Eisenhower biographer Stephen Ambrose, who was given access to the Eisenhower personal letters, states that he proposed to exterminate the entire German General Staff, thousands of people, after the war.
 
Eisenhower, in his personal letters, did not merely hate the Nazi Regime, and the few who imposed its will down from the top, but that HE HATED THE GERMAN PEOPLE AS A RACE. It was his personal intent to destroy as many of them as he could, and one way was to wipe out as many prisoners of war as possible.
 
Of course, that was illegal under International law, so he issued an order on March 10, 1945 and verified by his initials on a cable of that date, that German Prisoners of War be predesignated as "Disarmed Enemy Forces" called in these reports as DEF. He ordered that these Germans did not fall under the Geneva Rules, and were not to be fed or given any water or medical attention. The Swiss Red Cross was not to inspect the camps, for under the DEF classification, they had no such authority or jurisdiction.
 
Months after the war was officially over, Eisenhower's special German DEF camps were still in operation forcing the men into confinement, but denying that they were prisoners. As soon as the war was over, General George Patton simply turned his prisoners loose to fend for themselves and find their way home as best they could. Eisenhower was furious, and issued a specific order to Patton, to turn these men over to the DEF camps. Knowing Patton as we do from history, we know that these orders were largely ignored, and it may well be that Patton's untimely and curious death may have been a result of what he knew about these wretched Eisenhower DEF camps.
The book, OTHER LOSSES [ Other Losses: An investigation into the mass deaths of German prisoners at the hands of the French and Americans after World War II by James Bacque ], found its way into the hands of a Canadian news reporter, Peter Worthington, of the OTTAWA SUN. He did his own research through contacts he had in Canada, and reported in his column on September 12,1989 the following, in part:
 
"...it is hard to escape the conclusion that Dwight Eisenhower was a war criminal of epic proportions. His (DEF) policy killed more Germans in peace than were killed in the European Theatre."
 
"For years we have blamed the 1.7 million missing German POW's on the Russians. Until now, no one dug too deeply ... Witnesses and survivors have been interviewed by the author; one Allied officer compared the American camps to Buchenwald."
 
It is known, that the Allies had sufficient stockpiles of food and medicine to care for these German soldiers. This was deliberately and intentionally denied them. Many men died of gangrene from frostbite due to deliberate exposure. Local German people who offered these men food, were denied. General Patton's Third Army was the only command in the European Theatre to release significant numbers of Germans.
 
Others, such as Omar Bradley and General J.C.H. Lee, Commander of Com Z, tried, and ordered the release of prisoners within a week of the war's end. However, a SHAEF Order, signed by Eisenhower, countermanded them on May 15th.
 
Does that make you angry? What will it take to get the average apathetic American involved in saving his country from such traitors at the top? Thirty years ago, amid the high popularity of Eisenhower, a book was written setting out the political and moral philosophy; of Dwight David Eisenhower called, THE POLITICIAN, by Robert Welch. This year is the 107th Anniversary of Eisenhower's birth in Denison, Texas on October 14, 1890, the son of Jacob David Eisenhower and his wife Ida. Everyone is all excited about the celebration of this landmark in the history of "this American patriot." Senator Robert Dole, in honour of the Commander of the American Death Camps, proposed that Washington's Dulles Airport be renamed the Eisenhower Airport!
 
The UNITED STATES MINT in Philadelphia, PA is actually issuing a special Eisenhower Centennial Silver Dollar for only $25 each. They will only mint 4 million of these collector's items, and veteran's magazines are promoting these coins under the slogan, "Remember the Man...Remember the Times..." Pardon me if I regurgitate!
 
There will be some veterans who will not be buying these coins. Two will be Col. James Mason and Col. Charles Beasley who were in the U.S. Army Medical Corps who published a paper on the Eisenhower Death Camps in 1950. They stated in part:
 
"Huddled close together for warmth, behind the barbed wire was a most awesome sight; nearly 100,000 haggard, apathetic, dirty, gaunt, blank-staring men clad in dirty gray uniforms, and standing ankle deep in mud ... water was a major problem, yet only 200 yards away the River Rhine was running bank-full."
 
Another Veteran, who will not be buying any of the Eisenhower Silver Dollars is Martin Brech of Mahopac, New York, a semi-retired professor of philosophy at Mercy College in Dobbs Ferry, NY. In 1945, Brech was an 18 year old Private First Class in Company C of the 14th Infantry, assigned as a guard and interpreter at the Eisenhower Death Camp at Andernach, along the Rhine River. See Eisenhower's Death Camps. He stated for SPOTLIGHT, February 12, 1990:
 
"My protests (regarding treatment of the German DEF'S) were met with hostility or indifference, and when I threw our ample rations to them over the barbed wire. I was threatened, making it clear that it was our deliberate policy not to adequately feed them."
 
"When they caught me throwing C- Rations over the fence, they threatened me with imprisonment. One Captain told me that he would shoot me if he saw me again tossing food to the Germans ... Some of the men were really only boys 13 years of age...Some of the prisoners were old men drafted by Hitler in his last ditch stand ... I understand that average weight of the prisoners at Andernach was 90 pounds...I have received threats ... Nevertheless, this...has liberated me, for I may now be heard when I relate the horrible atrocity I witnessed as a prison guard for one of 'Ike's death camps' along the Rhine." (Betty Lou Smith Hanson)
 
Note: Remember the photo of Ike's West Point yearbook picture when he was dubbed "IKE, THE TERRIBLE SWEDISH JEW"? By the way, he was next, or nearly so, to the last in his class. This article was first printed in 1990, but we thought it was meaningful to reprint it now.
 
Note: During Cadet Eisenhower's time at West Point Academy, Eisenhower was summoned to the office of the headmaster and was asked some pointed questions. At the time, it was routine procedure to test a cadet's blood to insure White racial integrity.
 
Apparently, there was a question of Eisenhower's racial lineage and this was brought to Eisenhower's attention by the headmaster. When asked if he was part Oriental, Eisenhower replied in the negative. After some discussion, Eisenhower admitted having Jewish background. The headmaster then reportedly said, "That's where you get your Oriental blood?" Although he was allowed to remain at the academy, word got around since this was a time in history when non-Whites were not allowed into the academy. Note - The issue of Eisenhower's little-known Jewish background in academically essential in understanding his psychopathic hatred of German men, women and children.
 
Later, in Eisenhower's West Point Military Academy graduating class yearbook, published in 1915, Eisenhower is identified as a "terrible Swedish Jew."
 
Wherever Eisenhower went during his military career, Eisenhower's Jewish background and secondary manifesting behaviour was a concern to his fellow officers. During World War II when Col. Eisenhower was working for Gen. Douglas MacArthur in the South Pacific, MacArthur protested to his superiors in Washington (DC) that Eisenhower was incompetent and that he did not want Eisenhower on his staff.
 
In 1943, Washington not only transferred Col. Eisenhower to Europe but promoted him over more than 30 more experienced senior officers to five star general and placed him in charge of all the US forces in Europe.
 
Thus it comes as no surprise that General George Patton, a real Aryan warrior, hated Eisenhower.
 
[Ed: Patton was keen to fight the Soviets, and reportedly kept some German units ready to move against the Soviets...unsurprisingly he was killed; after the war, in a 'car crash,' just like Lawrence of Arabia was conveniently bumped off, in a similar manner, for his 'pro-fascist' views].
 
 
Comment
From George
12-28-3
Finally, the truth about Ike. He was a Zionist!, a racist! and a slaughterer of innocents! He was always these things. And all anyone remembers is his famous quote "to beware of the military/industrial complex." Like this knowledge means he was a great prescient prophet, when he was really a part of the NWO and helped set the US up for all that followed. The tooling jobs and industry started to leave the US in the early '50's, when Ike got into power. It was Japan they were building. Notice the difference between the destruction of Japan and the quick build-up of the Philippines and Japan and the Pacific the US took over, after the war of hegemony to steal the wealth of the Pacific Rim and present day Afghanistan, Iraq etc., now that the Zionists rule the 'world'. The Zionist essence is evil, destructive and self-destructive. Ike was a tool of the Zionist evil essence.
 
 
 
German POW's Diary Reveals More Of Ike's Holocaust
12-29-3
Note - The following diary extract has been provided by the nephew of the author under the conditions we honour his request for anonymity. -ed
 
A transcript of my Uncle's words...from my Mother's diary:
 
"Suddenly an American Jeep moved towards us and several American Soldiers surrounded us. There was no officer in charge, and the first thing the 'Amis' did - they liberated us, I mean, from our few valuables, mainly rings and watches........ We were now prisoners of war- no doubt about it!
 
The first night we were herded into a barn, where we met about 100 men who shared the same fate. To make my story short, we were finally transported to Fuerstenfeldbruck near Munich. Here we, who were gathered around Hermann, interrupted him and gasped in dismay.
 
Fuerstenfeldbruck had become known to us as one of the most cruel POW camps in the American zone.
 
Then my brother continued:
 
Again we were searched and had to surrender everything, even our field utensils, except a spoon. Here, in freezing temperature, 20,000 of us were squeezed together on the naked ground, without blanket or cover, exposed day and night to the winter weather.
 
For six days we received neither food nor water! We used our spoons to catch drops of rain.
 
We were surrounded by heavy tanks. During the night bright searchlights blinded us, so that sleep was impossible. We napped from time to time, standing up and leaning against each other. It was keeping us warmer that sitting on the frozen ground.
 
Many of us were near collapse. One of our comrades went mad, he jumped around wildly, wailing and whimpering. he was shot at once. His body was lying on the ground, and we were not allowed to come near him. He was not he only one. Each suspicious movement caused the guards to shoot into the crowd, and a few were always hit.
 
German civilians, mainly women of the surrounding villages, tried to approach the camp to bring food and water for us prisoners. they were chased away.
 
Our German officers could finally succeed to submit an official protest, particularly because of the deprivation of water. As a response, a fire hose was thrown into the midst of the densely crowded prisoners and then turned on. Because of the high water pressure the hose moved violently to and fro. Prisoners tumbled, fell, got up and ran again to catch a bit of water. In that confusion the water went to waste, and the ground under us turned into slippery mud. All the while the 'Amis' watched that spectacle, finding it very funny and most entertaining. They laughed at our predicament as hard as they could. Then suddenly, they turned the water off again.
 
We had not expected that the Americans would behave in such a manner. We could hardly believe it. War brutalizes human beings.
 
One day later we were organized into groups of 400 men .... We were to receive two cans of food for each man. This is how it was to be done: The prisoners had to run through he slippery mud, and each one had to grab his two cans quickly, at the moment he passed the guards. One of my comrades slipped and could not run fast enough, He was shot at once ....
 
On May 10th , several truckloads of us were transported the garrison of Ulm by the Danube..... As each man jumped into the truck, a guard kicked him in the backbone with his rifle butt.
 
We arrived in the city of Heilbronn by the Neckar, In the end we counted 240,000 men, who lived on the naked ground and without cover.
 
Spring and summer were mild this year, but we were starving. At 6;00 am we received coffee, at noon about a pint of soup and 100 grams of bread a day........
 
The 'Amis' gave us newspapers in German language, describing the terrors of the concentration camps. We did not believe any of it. We figured the Americans only wanted to demoralize us further.
 
The fields on which we lived belonged to the farmers of the area...soon nothing of the clover and other sprouting greens were left, and the trees were barren. We had eaten each blade of grass.....
 
In some camps there were Hungarian POW's. 15,000 of them. Mutiny against their officers broke out twice amongst them. After the second mutiny the Americans decided to use German prisoners to govern the Hungarians. Since the Hungarians were used as workers they were well fed. There was more food than they could eat. But when the Germans asked the Americans for permission to bring the Hungarians' leftovers into the camps of the starving Germans, it was denied. The Americans rather destroyed surplus food, than giving it to the Germans.
 
Sometimes it happened that groups of our own men were gathered and transported away. We presumed they were discharged to go home, and naturally, we wished to be among them. Much later we heard they were sent to labour camps! My mother's cousin, feared that he would be drafted into the Hitler Youth SS, he volunteered to the marines, in 1945 his unit was in Denmark. On April 20th they were captured by the Americans. his experience in the POW camp was identical that of my brother's. They lived in open fields, did not receive and food and water the first six days, and starved nearly to death. German wives and mothers who wanted to throw loaves of bread over the fence, were chased off. The prisoners, just to have something to chew, scraped the bark from young trees. my cousins job was to report each morning how many had died during the night. "and these were not just a few!" he adds to his report he wrote me.
 
It became known, that the conditions in the POW camps in the American Zone were identical everywhere. We could therefore safely conclude, that it was by intent and by orders from higher ups to starve the German POW's and we blamed General Eisenhower for it. He, who was of German descent could not discern the evildoers during the Nazi time from our decent people. We held that neglect of knowledge and understanding severely against him.
 
I wish to quote the inscription on the grave stones of those of my German compatriots who have already passed away:
 
We had to pass through fire and through water. But now you have loosened our bonds.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Errors & omissions, broken links, cock ups, over-emphasis, malice [ real or imaginary ] or whatever; if you find any I am open to comment.
 
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Updated on 03/01/2024 12:05