US PoW's in concentration camps

In researching the US casualties buried at Margraten I have come across several documented cases of US PoW's being taken, not to a PoW camp, but to a Concentration-camp. Berga is the most known for this. Quite a few US soldiers were killed here. I have also read about US PoW's being found in other concentration-camps when they were liberated.

Besides a flagrant violation of the geneva convention, these men were forced to work, I am led to believe.

As my information on this is sketchy, I wonder if any of you guys know about this; US PoW's being taken to Concentration-camps. Is it known (through documentation) what the German idea was behind this? Does anyone know of cases were this happened?

i am trying to make an inventory of how often this happened and why the Germans did this, etc.

Any help/pointers would be appreciated.

regards,

Stevin

 

Can't help you with the US forces, Stevin, but I've read somewhere of RAF Bomber Command aircrew being taken to Mauthausen and worked to death on the notorious quarry steps there.

 

I know that German POWS worked at US POW camps, usually doing farming work as there was a shortage of man power during the war. They were paid about a $1 per day.

I also read France made the Germans it captured work in the coal mines after the war and the Russians kept many of their Germans all the way until 1955.

Perhaps it has something to do with what German service captured the US prisoners and what branch of service the US prisoners were in.

 

Sorry, Steven. I can't help you out with numbers. But, I remember watching something like this on the History Channel. An American Airman was shot down over Nazi occupied France. The French Resistance brought him in and hid him. Then he was supposed to meet someone who would lead him to Spain , I believe. But, the person turned him in to the Gestapo. They interrogated him for a while then sent him to a concentration camp because he didn't have his dog tags. When he was there, he and a few other airmen convenced a Luftwaffe Officer visiting the camp that they were airmen. They then got transfered to a POW camp.

 

After I posted that I decided to do a little searching. I came up with this. http://www.wpafb.af.mil/museum/history/wwii/ce49.htm

 

Thanks guys! That is very helpfull. When I visited Sachsenhausen years ago, I was told that several Allied soldiers were held there, amongst them a British submarine crew, some Americans and Dutchmen.

I have received some more information on Berga; about 350 US Army PoW's were taken there when the Germans lacked slave labourers and someone came up with the idea to use Jewish PoW's. As there were 'only' 80 found it was decided to take all "who could be Jewish". About 80 of them died at Berga.

Buchenwald was new to me. As was the British crew in Mauthausen, so thank you all for that info. More to research.

Also found out two books have been released on Berga as well:

Soldiers and Slaves by Roger Cohen and Given up for Dead by Flint Whitlock.

Thanks guys!

Stevin

 

Stevin,

It sounds like you may already have this information, but the U.S. Public Broadcasting Service ran a documentary on Berga a couple of years ago: Berga: Soldiers of Another War.

The DVD of the documentary and Roger Cohen's book are both available online from the P.B.S. store.

[ 11. May 2005, 04:58 AM: Message edited by: Deep Web Diver ]

 

TA, There is a memorial and a lot of history and anguish recounted by many locals in the Remagan area where German pow's held by USA. Not commenting on it myself, but having been there, or blundered into what is left of the bridge on expiditon training in army, we found the site of a camp there, and on asking locals about it got short shrift and lots of anger...

 

I did know there had been PoWs in concentration camps, whether they had been captured without uniforms and dogtags (therefore, considered spies) or African-American or Jewish-American.

And let's not forget that Auschwitz's gas chambers and the Zyklon B were tested not on concentration camps' prisoners, but on Soviet PoWs.