Obviously Rommel was a nice man. "The Jews in Nazi-occupied Tunisia, 85,000 (Nov. 1942-May 1943), suffered during 6 months, under antisemitism Nazi terror by the infamous SS- Obersturmbannfuhrer Walter Rauff. A Judenrat was created. Tunisian Jews were subject to acts of violence and terror: arrest of hostages, confiscation of property, ill-treatment -indiscriminate snatching of Jews from street corners and private homes, storming into the synagogue, hitting worshipers-, execution, deportation, and forced labour. Around 5,000 of them had been sent to labor camps near the front lines. It has been estimated that about 100 Jews perished during the period of recruitment: some were murdered in cold bllod by their German guards; others died from ill-treatment, disease, and others were killed in aerial bombardments. The Tunisian Jews were very much concerned with the threat for their existence. And indeed the Germans were planning to exterminate them. An SS unit was preparing gas chambers near Kairouan. Plans were not completed because of lack of time. Tunis was liberated May 7, 1943. " (Reexamining The Wannsee Conference, Himmler's Appointments Book, and Tunisian Jews, at: http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/people/s/shaked-edith/re-examining-wannsee.html) Cheers,
Andy, you cant add Rommel to the Jew Haters Club, he hated the SS, and everything it stood for as much as you hate the names Kumm and Mohnke, for example.
I'm not that sure. In 1939, Rommel firmly believed that "the Fuehrer" was "choosen by God or Providence" to "lead the German people up to the sun" (Syring/Smelser (eds.): "Die Militärelite des Dritten Reiches. 27 biographische Skizzen." Berlin 1995, p. 463). And his responsibility in the atrocities who happened in Italy during his time as the CiC of Army Group B are well-known, too. He did nothing to stop the crimes of the SS-"Leibstandarte" in that times, but he issued orders to "lay down any sentimental restrictions" against uniformed members of the Bandoglio partisan movement. (Rommel's order of Sept. 23 ,1943) P.S. I don't "hate" Kumm, Mohnke, Himmler, Rommel, Heydrich, Manstein etc. as much as I don't worship anybody. These people and their actings are nothing but subjects to military history to me. Whether I personally "like" those persons or not is not of any relevance. Cheers,
Good answer Andy, but one thing about Rommel still has to be said. Those Waffen SS "Leibstandarte" Divs were not under his jurisdiction. What could have Rommel done? Moved several Divisions around till he completely ringed LSSAH in a pocket and attack them? Its very wellknown that Rommel hated the W-SS. Now in the beginning--he was a supporter of Hitlers untill he started to "see the truth" even as early as 1939 or 1940. He gradually started to "distance" himself away from the Nazi party types. He was offered a Waffen SS Division to use as part of his Afrika Korps--he would not let them become a part of his command and did not. I think to defy the higher command in that very early stage of the war--should speak volumes for itself. I think it was 1935 or 1936 when Rommal was only a Major--that he had his first dealings with Hitler. He was made a Kommandant at a Schule in Berlin--or near there--Potsdam if I remember correctly. He was at the Armys Artillery or Army Officer Candidate schule at that time. Rommel did praise Hitler in the early years, but started distancing himself as the years went by. Guderian was more a supporter than Rommel ever was, and HE distanced himself as far away as possible.
http://u.tv/newsroom/indepth.asp?pt=n&id=24623 FRIDAY 18/10/2002 11:23:07 POW compensation bid The government today fought off a claim that British subjects were being wrongly excluded from its compensation scheme for civilians interned by the Japanese during WW2. A High Court judge in London dismissed argument by the Association of British Civilian Internees Far East Region that the decision to exclude around 700 people, effectively for ``not being British enough``, was irrational and a breach of their human rights. The Ministry of Defence announced in November 2000, after years of campaigning by pressure groups, that each ex-Japanese PoW, internee or their surviving spouse would receive a £10,000 ex-gratia payment ``to recognise society`s debt to those who suffered by virtue of their allegiance to the Crown``. The scheme was thought to apply to up to 6,500 PoWs, plus 4,500 widows; 2,500 civilian internees, plus 1,200 widows, and 500 merchant seamen including widows. But many had their hopes dashed when, in June 2001, it was stipulated that civilian internees, in order to qualify, had to be born in the UK or have a parent or grandparent born in the UK. Mr Justice Scott Baker said it was ``a great pity`` that the government`s intention as to who would qualify was not expressed in the original announcement with greater clarity. Considerable distress was caused to those who were excluded, he said, adding: ``I can well understand the feeling of those who were British enough to be interned but not British enough to receive the payment.`` But the question was not whether the ``birth or blood link`` stipulation was unjust, but whether it was lawful. [ 31. October 2002, 11:28 PM: Message edited by: Crapgame ]
http://europe.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/europe/10/31/gurkha.case.ap/ Gurkha ex-POWs seek compensation LONDON, England (AP) --The British government committed a grave injustice when it excluded former Gurkha soldiers from compensation to troops imprisoned by the Japanese during World War II, their lawyers told the High Court. Three of the Nepalese fighters, now in their 80s, are suing the Ministry of Defence, saying they have been the victims of racial discrimination. Pahalman Gurung, Gaurisor Thapa and Hukumsing Pun have asked the court to award them payments of £10,000 ($15,500) each from a government fund set up in November 2000 to benefit surviving British prisoners of war. A ruling in their favour could benefit 50 other Gurkha former prisoners of war who have also been denied compensation. Nicholas Blake, the men's lawyer, said the Ministry of Defence's decision -- upheld by Parliament -- to award payments to white former prisoners but not the Gurkhas was based on racially discriminatory attitudes from the days of the former British Empire. "It is our case that to continue to use that distinction ... results in grave injustice to those who are the subject of this application," he said on Thursday. Blake said the court needs to make a decision in the case urgently because of the men's advanced age and deteriorating health. The hearing is continuing. In a separate case, Gurkhas have asked the High Court to award them the same pensions as their British counterparts. Defence chiefs say Gurkha pensions are now roughly equivalent to one-third of the pensions for British soldiers and are more than adequate for retirees living in Nepal, one of the world's poorest countries. Although the cost of living in Nepal is much lower, the ex-servicemen argue that the pension is still far too low. Lawyers for the Gurkhas cite the example of one World War II veteran receiving a pension of £25 ($37) a month. Gurkhas began serving the British Crown in 1815 in India, and with Indian independence in 1947 became part of the British army. Nearly 3,600 serve now, and in recent years they have taken part in British operations in Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan and Sierra Leone. [ 27. November 2002, 12:50 PM: Message edited by: Crapgame ]
The SS had her own jurisdiction, but the LSAH was under Rommels Command at this time. He was the CiC of Army Group B, the LSAH was one of "his" divisions. If he orderered them to fight here and there, attack there and here, he also could order the CiC of the LSAH, Mohnke to stop any atrocities. Interesting, never heard of anything like that before. Any details on that (sources)? Cheers,
http://www.helsinki-hs.net/news.asp?id=20011113IE22 By Vesa Karonen: "Soviets used Finnish prisoners of war as slave labour - New books discuss POW question Although the Continuation War with the Soviet Union took place six decades ago, the prisoner of war issue remains topical. Many Finnish soldiers who were taken prisoner never came home. In his book Suomalaiset sotavangit Neuvostoliitossa 1941-1944 ("Finnish Prisoners of War in the Soviet Union 1941-1944"), author Timo Malmi writes that the prisoner of war issue was long a political taboo in Finland; memoirs of former prisoners were seen as dangerous literature, and the whole POW issue was a topic of research that historians were expected to shun. In 1995 Malmi wrote his licentiate's dissertation about Finnish prisoners of war. His new book on the subject has 50 pages of historical research, and the rest of it concerns stories told by former prisoners. Tuula Levo's Kaksi nuoruutta ("Two Periods of Youth") tells about a father lost in the war, and Seppo Jääskeläinen's Sodan Vanki ("Prisoner of the War") is about the fates of Finnish POWs. Both books are novels, with a true historical background. In 1999, Timo Malmi published a novel on the subject. Beginning in November 1944 a total of 1,910 men - described as living skeletons covered with skin - were returned to Finland. One POW, captured in the summer of ‘44, was in such bad condition after four months in a Soviet camp that even his own father could not recognise him. Malmi calculates that 3,402 Finns were taken prisoner, and that 1,388 or 40.1% died in the camps. He notes that the statistics can change as new information is found in the archives. By November 3, 1944 Finland had returned 43,010 Soviet prisoners to the Soviet Union. Being a Soviet POW in Finland was no picnic either, especially during the hard winter of 1941 - 1942. Back in Finland, the Soviet Control Commission and Finnish communists kept an eye on former prisoners. There was intimidation. The former prisoners were sometimes approached by strangers who would warn them to keep their mouths shut "or you'll be sent back to Russia". The intimidation was effective. In retrospect the prisoners note that back then, ordinary people in the Soviet Union also went hungry. Now it is possible to say that, for instance, the Karganda mine, where many Finnish POWs were sent to work, was an extermination camp; instead of gas chambers, it used slave labour, hunger, and disease to kill the prisoners. Malmi emphasises that for the Soviet Union, the prisoner issue, like the whole war, was an ideological question. Political pressure and indoctrination of prisoners meant that "some of the leaders of East Germany were recruited from POW camps while the war was still going on". For the same reason Finnish prisoners immediately got better rations if they agreed to take part in "antifascist" propaganda. Other prisoners would shun the men who were part of the "antifascist club". Some of the "antifascists" had voluntarily crossed the front lines to the Soviet side. Malmi says that there were 289 such cases - communists, drunks, the shell-shocked, etc. At one event organised by the Finnish-Soviet Friendship Society after the war, a speaker representing the "antifascists" spoke about the good conditions enjoyed by POWs in the Soviet Union. While he was speaking, a former prisoner shouted: "Stop lying. You weren't a prisoner: you were a deserter." The heckler was lucky to get out intact. Because of the political indoctrination at the prison camps, there was a tendency among some Finns to suspect that all returning prisoners were "lackeys of Russia". Some considered it dishonourable simply to have been taken prisoner in the first place, and many former POWs felt imprisoned by their past. Ideological questions were of foremost importance when the Finnish prisoners were interrogated by their Soviet captors. In the latter part of Malmi's book, those who stuck to their convictions tell their stories. Seppo Jääskeläinen's novel describes how the self-esteem and moral backbone of some men were crushed during interrogation. The propaganda machine takes advantage of a man who spoke too much, and as late as 1962 he is interrogated again in Finland on suspicion of espionage. It is good that Jääskeläinen brings forward this side of the story as well. Major Olli Korhonen is mentioned both in Jääskeläinen's novel and in the recollections contained in Malmi's book. He is the highest-ranking Finnish soldier to have been taken prisoner. Korhonen, who later rose to the rank of general, was known for his uncompromising nature, and supported everyone that he had anything to do with. Tuula Levo's novel "Two Periods of Youth" adds to the research based on documentary evidence by focusing on the emotions of the family of a soldier who is missing in action. Levo uses her material from her own days as a student in Turku during the rise of of left-wing radicalism among students in the 1960s and 1970s, but before that she tells the story of her father, who went missing in action from the school. Levo tells about her parents' youth and about wartime on the basis of her personal memories, painting an exquisite picture of the narrow-mindedness of the countryside of southwestern Finland. The story moves chronologically, and the difficulty is that the stories of the parents and the daughter overlap psychologically. The youthful restlessness of the protagonist of Tuula Levo's novel is not explained until the repressed war and her father's disappearance come up. Tuula Levo goes to the War Archive and finds a piece of paper written on her father's disappearance in the heat of battle in 1944: "Possibly taken prisoner". It will probably never be known for sure if Tuula Levo's father was wounded or taken prisoner. Wounded prisoners were often shot. The Soviet Union took its time sending prisoners of war back home. Timo Malmi says that the reasons were partly economic. More than four million POWs were a free source of labour, and the Soviets held on to them after the war as well. In Seppo Jääskeläinen's novel, a Finnish communist who voluntarily surrendered to the Soviets speaks about how during the time of serfdom, Russia had "free labour, and human beings were of no value". From the 1920s, the Soviet economy used inmates at labour camps as slaves. Many German prisoners of war were not returned until 1955 and 1956. Finnish prisoners of war were considered good workers. Malmi points out that when Finland negotiated for peace in the spring of 1944 one of the conditions set by Moscow was the return of Soviet prisoners of war. However, there was no reciprocal agreement on the return of Finns held by the Soviet Union. The Soviets may have been using the prisoners as political leverage against the Finns. According to historian Juri Kilin this is why the Soviet Union delayed the return of Finnish civilians interned at Suojärvi in the Winter War of 1939 - 40. There was a sense of blackmail in the slow return of POWs from the Soviet Union to Finland in 1944 - 46. The research part of Malmi's book contains a number of regrettable mistakes. For example, the President of the United States during the Second World War was Franklin D. Roosevelt, not Theodore. As a piece of research, Malmi's book is narrow, but important. The Soviet Union did not concede human dignity to the men it took prisoner. Many of those recalling the time of their captivity felt that the return to Finland meant becoming human again. One former prisoner, Mauno Takala, gives a practical example concerning his return to Finland: "In Vyborg a bucket of water was brought into our train car, and we were told to wash our faces. It was then that everyone finally believed that we would get to Finland." Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 10.11.2001" - Just thought that perhaps this could fit the topic. Cheers, Sami
Andy, what can I say--Rommel Really did hate the Waffen SS. I cant site correct sources as most of my stuff is still in storage. I also heard about it in a few documentarys. As I have about 500 taped Docs--I cannot tell you exactly which ones it was mentioned in--at least not till I can get all my stuff together and sift through them.
Uhm, bad, I'd really like to see some hints to follow that road. Actually I never have read something to the effect that Rommel "hated" the Waffen-SS or even opposed a deployment in the African theater. Cheers,
Rommel as many, many other officers in the Wehrmacht did not like the SS at all. My grandfather is the perfect example, and he remembers field marshalls Erwin Rommel, Friedrich Paulus and Fedor von Bock having said that they did not like the SS, they hated to relate politics and the military. Even if Paulus and Rommel were strong supporters of Hitler in the early years of the war. And Jews in North Africa being subject of atrocities? With Rommel in command? I do not think so. Besides, there were many more things more important than that.
Rommel was in charge of a detachment of Gebirgsjager during a ceremony for Hitler. The Liebstandarte was placed in front of the Gebirgsjager, and Rommel immediately threatened to take his men out of the march because of this. It suggested to him that his men were not good enough to guard the Fuhrer.
The Black March of Stalag Luft IV http://www.pantagraph.com/stories/111002/new_20021110023.shtml News Sunday, November 10, 2002 Prisoner of the Reich By Steve Arney Pantagraph staff Harold Bathe supposes he should have stayed with his original plan for World War II service. He was going to be an airplane mechanic planted miles behind the shooting. Instead, he wound up: • Aboard a bomber plane taking heavy fire on missions over Germany. • In a parachute falling safely from a damaged plane but landing in hostile Yugoslavia. • Inside Stalag Luft IV, a German prisoner-of-war camp. • On a 600-mile forced march of prisoners in brutal weather with little food. The ordeal is known as "The Black March" and "The Death March of Stalag Luft IV." In the historical accounts of World War II, The Black March gets nearly lost -- overshadowed by greater atrocities and stories of great battles. Bathe, of Bloomington is just now starting to talk about it publicly. Seeing a 1945 news clipping last year, he decided that people should know of the misery endured by the men of Stalag Luft IV. He has given a few talks and is working on a written account to help with future lectures. Bathe (pronounced Bayth) is 84, a retired cemetery owner/operator and former owner of Eastlawn Memorial Chapel in Bloomington. He and Freda, his wife of 54 years, have lived in the city since 1951. In 1942, he was 24 years old and living in Sullivan, a small town west of Mattoon. Enlisting in the U.S. Army Air Forces, he assured his parents that he would have a safe mechanic's job. During training, he changed his mind. "I wanted to get in the airplanes and fight the war," said Bathe. "That wasn't real smart, but I did. Many young men wanted the same thing." By the spring of 1944, he was a technical sergeant flying missions in a B-17 bomber. Based in Italy, he served as an engineer in a 10-man crew making raids on German industrial sites. Their plane -- every plane -- took hits. For souvenirs, the men collected shrapnel that landed safely inside the bomber. Shot down and captured The Army required that crews complete 50 missions. Bathe finished 35 before his plane was shot down on its way to an Austrian oil field. Two men bailed early, while the plane was still over the Alps. Bathe assumes they died. The rest waited until the plane sputtered over Yugoslavia before they abandoned the aircraft. On the ground, Bathe hoped to find Tito's anti-Nazi fighters as he fled into timber. "That's exactly where a Gestapo agent sent people to find me," he said. After being roughed up by the Yugoslavians and handed over to the Germans, Bathe and other prisoners were taken to an interrogation center in Hanover. The airmen were isolated and, Bathe believes, the Germans deliberately infested their bedding with fleas to torment them. He saw Americans whose skin was raw from flea bites and scratching. Bathe cannot explain why, but fleas and mosquitoes never bite him. Stalag Luft means a German prison camp housing airmen. Bathe went to Stalag Luft IV along the Baltic Sea in the Prussian province of Pomerania, which now belongs to Poland. The train route ended about three miles short of the camp. From there, guards made the prisoners run. Those who lagged behind were bitten by dogs and poked in the buttocks with bayonets. Inside, the rations were sparse, sickness was widespread, the treatment sometimes heartless. One man who complained of illness and demanded a doctor was told by a guard that what he really needed was exercise. He was forced to run outside. After the run, he agreed that he felt much better and didn't need a doctor to cure him. Another POW was shot dead for climbing out a barracks window. 'We didn't invite you for dinner' Bathe complained about the food once to a camp official. The German replied, "We didn't invite you here for dinner. We'd have fed you had we invited you." The German Luftwaffe ran the camp, and rules were absolute, punishable by death. However, Bathe found most guards tolerable as long as those rules were obeyed. For the Americans at Stalag IV, cigarettes became the currency and poker and bridge games helped pass the time. One of the POWs gave daily German lessons. The chill of the air in the last days of 1944 got Bathe thinking that the light U.S. Army jacket provided by his captors wouldn't help much during the Eastern European winter. He approached an American who was savvy at getting things from the Germans. The next day, Bathe had a winter coat. He approached again. He received new boots. Because he was able to get winter wear, Bathe assumes the Germans had gear for every American in Stalag Luft IV. He states this as fact: The Germans didn't systematically distribute the items to POWs, even as they were forced to march hundreds of miles in bitter cold starting in February 1945. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * http://www.pantagraph.com/stories/111002/new_20021110026.shtml Sunday, November 10, 2002 Thousands of prisoners faced ordeal in dead of winter By Steve Arney Pantagraph staff BLOOMINGTON -- As winter of 1944-45 began, signs of the Third Reich's pending defeat were evident, even inside a German prisoner of war camp. Harold Bathe of Bloomington was among the captured U.S. airmen hankering for news at Stalag Luft IV, a German POW camp in land later annexed to Poland. New prisoners would update the men on what seemed an inevitable Allied victory. Their optimistic reports didn't foreshadow what was to befall Bathe and his comrades. The Germans foresaw the Soviets overrunning Stalag IV, so they evacuated it with a forced march of up to 10,000 prisoners. It was Feb. 6, 1945, and The Black March of Stalag Luft IV had begun. It was a journey into the Europe's winter with many men underdressed and all of them undersupplied. "That first morning, it was zero," Bathe said. "They handed everyone a food parcel." On the forced march, sometimes referred to as a death march, they endured illness, hunger, frostbite, trench foot, assorted other ailments -- and death. Bathe's parcel contained Spam, sugar, powdered milk, coffee, raisins, crackers and candy. He and other men had crafted homemade backpacks and stuffed food into them as the march began. Men without backpacks tired of carrying the parcels in their arms. They stuffed their pockets, but some of the food didn't fit. Ignorant of the length of the march to come and the scarcity of supplies, they tossed what they couldn't carry into roadside ditches. According to Bathe, those parcels were the only food supplies for the next 15 days. After that, the Germans provided as little as one raw potato per man for a day of walking. Sometimes, they provided no food at all. The prisoners' drank melted snow, ditch water and unpurified well water. Diarrhea, dysentery and lice compounded the misery of walking in the cold. At night, the Americans stayed in unheated barns and sheds or in open fields. They tried to stay warm by huddling together and sharing blankets. They created a buddy system, forming partnerships for warmth and to tend to each other's health. Bathe's buddy was a bunk mate and bridge partner from Stalag IV. One night, Bathe shared body heat with five men in a field. Their blankets, layered below and above them, formed a shelter. "When we woke up the next morning, the guard told us it was 30 below zero," he said. The Americans on the march became desperate and, to Bathe's surprise, they sometimes turned on each other. He said they: • Panicked in their rush to get to a vat of soup. Bathe dipped a can into the vat as men crushed toward it. "I couldn't get my can out. Men were piling up on top of me." He let go of the can: His meal for the night was the potato soup he licked off his hands. • Brawled over loaves of bread, ruining most of the food in the melee. After the fight, Bathe, who hadn't eaten in two days, met an 8-year-old Polish boy who had watched the spectacle from behind a shed. The German that Bathe had learned in the prison camp became useful. The American man and the Polish boy didn't know each other's languages, but could stumble through conversational German. Bathe convinced the child to retrieve food for him, and the boy returned with a mound of hash browns. The next day, the captors again provided no food. "Before the next day was over, I was sure he saved my life," said Bathe. One day, the Germans promised to ease the travel with a train ride and crammed the men into rail cars. But instead of relief from the suffering, it intensified. The Americans stood shoulder-to-shoulder for 24 hours in locked cars that never moved. In Bathe's car, the men -- many of them with diarrhea -- used cans for human waste. They passed the cans over their heads to the back of the car, where they were emptied through a hole. A short time after the train incident, the men on The Black March got a three-day rest at a camp where, Bathe said, the bug-coated barracks walls appeared to move. Back on the march, Bathe and other POWs received milk from a German civilian. Within an hour, diarrhea started taking Bathe's last bit of energy. There are questions about what happened to the men who couldn't press on. Some were taken to hospitals and left at camps, but men who have documented the march believe some of the sick were shot by guards. The Germans showed mercy in Bathe's case. On the second day of his illness, three guards walked with Bathe and nine other sick men on a short march -- five miles -- to a farm. That night, a single soldier guarded Bathe and his sick comrades inside an unheated shed. Bathe coaxed the guard into letting him relieve himself outside. The guard stayed inside. "I never stopped. I just kept right on walking," said Bathe. The next day, he met Polish laborers, who also could speak a little German. They fed him, helped him walk and hid him in a large shed. They told him not to leave for the rest of the war. Within a day, Bathe was joined by two Russian and three British POW escapees, also led to the shed by the Poles. Bathe had cigarettes, which the Brits used to buy a horse. They returned with fresh meat. Bathe also had powdered milk and a clean sock stuffed with flour. He made gravy and flour patties. "I had myself a banquet," said Bathe. The next morning, the escaped prisoners heard loud machines outside the shed. For the rest of the Stalag IV prisoners, the marching would continue for another month until they were liberated by American, British and Soviet troops. But the war had ended for Bathe. The machines were British trucks and tanks. He thinks the date was March 28, 1945. He hadn't showered or changed clothes -- or even changed his socks -- since the camp evacuation started seven weeks earlier, but what alarmed him was the pathetic condition of his body. When the march began, Tech. Sgt. Harold Bathe was a lean 5-10, 170 pounds. Now, he could wrap his fingers around his forearm and touch the fingers to his thumb. He weighed 118 pounds. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * http://www.pantagraph.com/stories/111002/new_20021110027.shtml Sunday, November 10, 2002 Evacuation was 'death march' with no body count By Steve Arney Pantagraph staff The forced march endured by Harold Bathe and fellow airmen at the end of World War II often is called "The Death March of Stalag Luft IV," but there are no sure statistics on deaths. March survivor Joe O'Donnell of Robbinsville, N.J., has found no official estimate during research that included production of five self-published books on Stalag IV. "You cannot say 10 were killed, 100 or 1,000," said O'Donnell. To his knowledge, no authority ever compiled a complete account on what O'Donnell calls "The Shoe Leather Express." O'Donnell believes guards, while out of sight of the ranks of Americans, shot some of the prisoners who couldn't continue. Prisoners saw guards with sick Americans. They heard shots and then saw the guards return to the lines alone, he said. Bathe, of Bloomington, remembers hearing shots periodically but didn't know what they meant. In testimony for a war-crimes investigation, an American doctor who was on the march said he could confirm just seven illness-related deaths. That doctor, Air Forces Capt. Leslie Caplan, lost track of men left behind as the march continued. Caplan complained of inhumane treatment, filthy conditions, inadequate food and almost no medical supplies. He attributed part of the problem to the deterioration of the German government, but added that much of the misery appeared to be easily preventable by German guards. O'Donnell said about 10,000 men started the march and were divided into three groups -- three marches to three destinations that ended April 26, May 2 and sometime in mid-May, 1945. He and Bathe were with the May 2 group but did not know each other. On the Net http://www.b24.net http://members.fortunecity.com/aries78/title_page.html
Well I agree with some of the things you are saying but you must also remember the Facist to Communist views. THEY ARE ON OPPOSITE ENDS OF THE SCALE. YOU CANT EXPECT EITHER TO TREAT EACH OTHER WITH DIGNITY. the stuff about the bolsheviks is plain wrong, germany helped incite the Russian revolution.
http://www.etaiwannews.com/Taiwan/2002/11/18/1037583603.htm Former POWs gather to honor fallen comrades 2002-11-18 / Taiwan News, Staff Reporter / By Hung-fu Hsueh Four former WWII prisoners of war yesterday attended a memorial service at a former POW camp located in the old mining township of Chinkuashih in Taipei County to pay respects to their fallen compatriots. The former POWs were accompanied by their families and the relatives of deceased POWs from British Commonwealth countries and the United States. The campsite, with only one piece of wall left standing, once held more than 1100 Allied POWs during World War II. On November 23, 1997 a memorial plaque was erected at the former camp in honor of the soldiers that were interned during the war. Former POW Jack Edward came up with the idea for the establishment of the memorial and worked tirelessly towards this end. Every year, ex-POWs return for rememberance services. Most Taiwanese are not aware of the memorial site, even fewer know that Taiwan had numerous POW camps dotted round the island. Responsiblity for hosting the memorial service rotates between the representative offices of the Commonwealth and other Allied nations in Taiwan. Yesterday's service was organized by the Australian Commerce & Industry Office and hosted by Representative Frances Adamson. Adamson delivered the opening address by reminding people not to forget the enormous pain and suffering of the POWs housed at Chinkuashih. She also urged listeners to continue to live their lives with the nobility of humanity in mind so that the atrocities committed during WWII would never happen again. The service continued with prayers led by Reverend Edmund Ryden and a speech of remembrance entitled "We Will Remember Them" made by the POW attendees. The service finished after the former POWs, their families and friends, placed wreaths on the memorial. The former POWs that came to Taiwan to attend the service were Harold Brant, Leslie Davis, Jack Edwards and William Kingate; representatives for Sir Wilfred Kent Hughes and Arthur Robinson also arrived in Taiwan to attend the service. Edwards and his three comrades showed the event's participants around the campsite and pointed out the original arrangement of the camp. The aged former POWs still remembered vividly the suffering the Japanese soldiers inflicted on them. "I will never forget the ordeal I suffered, and the way in which my comrades were abused and died here," said Edwards. According to Edwards' estimate, only thirty percent of the original arrivals left the camp alive. "We were fed with limited food and clothes, we were overworked in the copper mine, and had to bear the terrible temper of those soldiers who could punish or abuse us physically as they wished; we were slaves instead of POWs," said Edwards. Edwards was determined to tell the truth of what happened at the POW campsite in Chinkuashih - formerly known as Kinkaseki in Japanese. He wrote a book titled, "Banzai, You Bastards." The book provides a detailed account of the experiences he and his friends went through. Edwards' book has been translated into Japanese and simplified Chinese characters, and he hopes to publish a traditional character version in order to make the book more accessible to Taiwanese readers. "I really want my Taiwanese friends to know about the history and to be aware of the truth about what happened in Taiwan during the war, and my next job is to have the Taiwanese version of my book published as soon as possible," said Edwards.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/cms.dll/xml/comp/articleshow?artid=29594162 UK court awards damages to Gurkha WWII heroes PTI[ WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 27, 2002 10:25:57 PM ] LONDON: In a historic verdict, a British court on Wednesday ruled that three elderly former Gurkhas who had served the UK government during the Second World War were entitled to a compensation of 10,000 pounds each. The three war veterans had challenged a Ministry of Defence (MoD) ruling which prevented them from claiming compensation for the brutality they suffered at the hands of the Japanese. After winning their case, the three ex-soldiers, now settled in Nepal, are eligible for "ex-gratia" payments of 10,000 pounds each from a fund set up to benefit surviving British prisoners-of-war. The former Gurkhas were excluded from the fund - set up two years ago - because at the time of their service the regiment formed part of the Indian Army. The successful outcome could influence more than 300 other surviving ex-Gurkhas, the claimants' solicitor said. "The Gurkhas have fought enough battles to prove their loyalty and dedication to Britain," Solicitor Phil Shiner of Public Interest Lawyers said announcing the win at Preston Crown Court. The case had been heard by Justice Richard McCombe, sitting in London, as a matter of urgency because of the age and health of the applicants - Pahalman Gurung, Gaurisor Thapa and Hukumsing Pun. All three are now in their 80s. One of the three Gurkhas, Pahalman Gurung, said "I am delighted to have won. I was proud to remain loyal to my British oath in the Second World War because of which I took severe punishment from the Japanese. "To be acknowledged for this at my age of 81 is very important to me. It is an issue of principle for me and others that we should be treated equally and recognised for our service to the British." In the court, their lawyers argued that the decision by the MoD not to compensate them had been a breach of their human rights. In making his judgement, Justice McCombe found that the decision to exclude the Gurkhas from compensation payments was irrational and inconsistent with the principle of equality. The challenge was one of a series of discrimination cases being brought by Gurkha soldiers against the British government. The main case, which is expected to be heard early next year, alleges discrimination against them in pay and pensions. A win by the Gurkhas could cost the Defence Ministry 2 billion pounds.
http://www.wlox.com/Global/story.asp?S=1028257 11/26/02 Former World War II POW Tells His Story Of Torture And Survival A survivor of Adolf Hitler's concentration camps says the leader brainwashed his people by bombarding them with racist propaganda. Hitler's genocide killed 11 million people before and during World War II. Six million were Jewish, and five million were not. French soldier Claude Letulle survived the death camps. Letulle spent 1, 379 days in four different Nazi concentration camps. It was 1, 379 days surrounded by death, misery, and hunger. "I was so hungry, some prisoners killed a little doggy and I eat myself the whole meat," said Letulle. Captured by the Germans in 1940, Letulle and 75 others spent a week traveling inside a cattle wagon that could hold 40 at most. He says the Nazi torture was endless. Letulle said "One of them put his dirty finger inside my mouth and I spit on his face. A soldier beat me with his riffle and they put me in a cell for 17 days with only a little cup of soup a day." Stories six decades old brought fresh tears to many eyes. The stories included how a German soldier had held a gun to Letulle's forehead. Then for a few agonizing seconds, he waited to die. "I opened my eyes," said Letulle. "I looked at him and he said, 'You are okay. Not today. You know why? Because this morning I have a brand new uniform and I do not want to have a blood stain on it.'" The atrocities Letulle witnessed during World War Two are something he'll never forget or forgive. After he was released from the Germans, Claude Letulle joined the French Resistance to fight the Nazis. In the late sixties he came to the United States. He now lives in Louisiana and has written two books about his experience as a prisoner of war.
http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?BRD=2247&dept_id=453363&newsid=6442793&PAG=461&rfi=9 Memoir from Bob Lammey of Holocaust, baseball and Camp Stalag 2-B By Joe D'Angelo December 19, 2002 In his memoir which he shared with me, Bob Lammey mentions very few of the atrocities he saw during his 30 months as a prisoner of war. He did, however, mention one incident he felt he had to write about, after reading of people in America who didn't believe these things happened. He felt he had to tell about this one incident that sickened him, along with 299 prisoners plus some of the German guards, a scene he will never forget. "Visualize a compound like the one we were in, except this compound had only one barracks that housed 250 Jews. The time had come for them to be exterminated. They knew their time had come. We didn't know what was going on until someone happened to see the Gestapo trying to count them. To better understand, Germans did not do anything until all the paper work and duties to be performed matched. In this case, the Gestapo would line up the Jews in ranks of five and would start counting, 5, 10, 15, 20, etc. One or two Jews would sneak down the back of the line and cause the count to be different from the tally sheet the Gestapo officer had. This went on several times, with about 15 to 20 minutes delay each time. Finally, the Gestapo had all of the Jews "clubbed" over the head and laid out on the ground to be counted. The Gestapo guards who were standing around doing nothing, I believe, enjoyed seeing the Jews making a fool out of their superior. This was the only way they could get the right count. After about an hour or two, the Jews were lined up and marched to the gas chamber. They were all male prisoners, some were father and son. For anyone who has doubts about the Holocaust, if they could have witnessed a half hour of one of these typical mistreatments, they would become believers. These types of happenings did occur, some worse than the one I described. The Germans didn't want any Americans to see what the Gestapo did to the Jews. Within a couple of days, we were sent back to Stalag 3-B. The worst thing that happened to a prisoner is too much idle time with nothing to do. So while waiting to be transferred to another Stalag, I unraveled a sleeveless vest my girl friend made for me and wrapped it around a piece of wood which I whittled into the shape of a small ball. When the ball looked big enough, I gave it to a Serb friend who was in the next compound. He worked in town at a shoemaker shop. He covered the ball with leather. This was the beginning of baseball at Stalag 3-B. Mickey Grasso, a professional baseball player with the Boston Red Sox was a prisoner at 3-B. After the war, I saw Mickey Grasso in Philadelphia when he came to town to play against the Athletics. He remembered the leather ball, but never knew who made it. After the game, we got together and went downtown. Mickey introduced me to many of his teammates. We had lots to drink and lots of laughs. Stalag 2-B was a Prisoner of War camp that held French, Serbian, Russian, English and American military prisoners. There were approximately 20,000 prisoners in this camp, including about 3,000 Americans. This camp was used to supply forced labor to work in various places, i.e., coal mines, farms, cleaning up after air raids, etc. During my stay, I was lucky. Each time I was sent out to work, it was on a farm. The farm work consisted of cutting down trees, which the civilians used for firewood. There was one time I was picked to work in the field for "dissel sticking." Translated, it means weeding the garden. That job lasted about half a day. To explain how a prisoner was picked to work on the farm was simple. Each American prisoner was questioned as to what was his work in civilian life. An American POW who spoke fluent German acted as the interpreter. Regardless of what you told them you did in civilian life, you were assigned to a farm. In my case, I told the interpreter that I racked balls in a poolroom. The interpreter told me not to fool around and tell the truth. I told him to tell the [German] exactly what I said. The reply was 'Bower,' which means farm. By the way, I gave my name as Vernon Alexander, a friend of mine whose eyes were so bad he would never be drafted into service. Picture this. We were standing in about four to six inches of snow. They would call out the names in groups of 15 to 20 and that group would be sent to a farm. Each time they would call Vernon Alexander, naturally, there was no answer. The guards would not do anything unless it checked out with the paper he held, so we had to stand for hours waiting for Vernon Alexander to answer. The guy next to me said, "I'm getting cold. I wish that guy would answer when called." I told him the reason he didn't answer was because he was 6,000 miles away in Coatesville, Pa. I thought the guy was going to "rat" on me, but he didn't. I knew he was upset because he had to stand out in the cold. So was I, but the idea was to make things as confusing as possible. The reason the guard called off forming groups to work was because he was as cold as we were, and canceled until the following day. The next day, I was caught in my prank and was given 18 days in the cooler, then sent out to a farm at Wilhelmsdorf, East Prussia." Until next time, Ciao Joe D'Angelo P.S. According to Bob, when mail was received, it was opened and close to being destroyed. "If you were lucky enough to receive a package, you would have to open it and take it to one of the officers who would take his bayonet and use it to see if there was anything in the box that should not have been mailed," he related. "They seemed to get a kick out of destroying things that didn't belong to them."
Found this today when looking up something else on Allied POWs. The link has photos that I have left for you see for yourself if you choose. While not the worst photos I have seen from concentration camps, I felt it should be a personal choice to see the illustratiing photos. The home hyperlink at the website takes you to the home page for more history on Mauthausen. Prisoners of War executed in the Mauthausen concentration camp Prisoners of War at Mauthausen After the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, a separate POW camp for captured Russian soldiers was established in 1942 at the Mauthausen concentration camp, south of the the main camp, to the left of the entrance road. This location had previously been leveled so it could be used as a soccer field for the Mauthausen inmates. The POW camp was originally called the Russian Camp, but it later became known as the Hospital Camp. Beginning in the Spring of 1943, this section was used to house sick or exhausted prisoners in the infirmary; prisoners who could no longer work in the munitions factories in Mauthausen and its sub-camps were brought here to recuperate or die. [SIZE=-1]Prisoners building the Russian Camp, April 1942[/SIZE] Mauthausen was a concentration camp and as such, it was against the 1929 Geneva Convention to hold Prisoners of War there, although the Russian POWs were technically in a separate section. According to the Geneva Convention, POWs were to be held in separate camps and treated according to the rules of the Convention. The Soviet Union had not signed the Geneva Convention of 1929, so the Nazis felt justified in violating the Convention with regard to them. Before the invasion of the Soviet Union, Hitler issued the Commissar Order under which all Communist Commissars in the Soviet Army, who were captured in battle, would be brought to the Dachau, Buchenwald, Sachsenhausen or Mauthausen concentration camps to be executed. Commissars were Communist political officers in the Soviet Army. Thousands of Russian POWs were executed with a shot in the neck in the Mauthausen camp under this order. Others were allowed to live but were forced to work. The Nazis also violated the Geneva Convention when, in early 1944, Hitler issued the Bullet Decree (Kugel Erlass). According to Robert E. Conot, the author of the book "Justice at Nuremberg," the Bullet Decree stipulated that any officer or non-commissioned officer - except British or American - who escaped from a POW camp was to be shipped to Mauthausen concentration camp with the designation "Stufe III" (Third Degree). There they were either to be shot, or speedily starved and worked to death. To questions by the Red Cross or neutral powers, the Wehrmacht was directed to reply that the prisoners had "escaped and not been recaptured." The Bullet Decree was soon amended to include British soldiers after the "Great Escape" on March 25, 1944 by 80 British, French, Greek, Norwegian, Polish, Belgian and Czech officers of the British Royal Air Force from a POW camp at Sagan in Silesia. It was not against international law for prisoners to escape from a POW camp, and in fact, it was the duty of a POW to try to escape. This was the first successful escape from the Sagan POW camp, although there had been as many as 100 escape tunnels dug in this camp by the prisoners. According to Conot, each time there was an escape from a POW camp, the Nazis would mobilize 40,000 to 100,000 men of the Landeswacht (home guard) to capture them. There were six million foreign workers in Germany and Hitler's greatest fear was that escaped military officers would organize a rebellion among them. The efforts to recapture the POWs also took thousands of man-hours of work away from the factories. For these reasons, Hitler wanted to stop the escapes from the POW camps, according to Conot. Conot wrote the following in his book, "Justice at Nuremberg," regarding Hitler's order in 1944 to shoot the escaped Sagan POWs when they were recaptured: On March 28, the order was issued as an adjunct to the Kugel Erlass. These officers retained by the Gestapo - in principle, though not necessarily in practice, "plotters and escape leaders" - were to be transported to Mauthausen concentration camp. "The camp commandant of Mauthausen is to be informed that the prisoners are being handed over under Operation Kugel." In January 1946, Jean-Frederic Veith, a French prisoner at Mauthausen from April 22, 1943 until April 22, 1945 when he was taken out of the camp by the Red Cross, testified before the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg regarding POWs who were killed at Mauthausen. The following is a quote from his testimony at Nuremberg in answer to a question by the French prosecutor, M. Dubois: Certainly I saw prisoners of war. Their arrival at Mauthausen took place, first of all, in front of the political section. Since I was working at the Hollerith, I could watch the arrivals, for the offices faced the parade ground in front of the political section where the convoys arrived. My knowledge of Aktion K [Operation Bullet, referring to orders to execute all prisoners of war discovered attempting to escape, excluding Americans and British] is due to the fact that I was head of the Hollerith service in Mauthausen, and consequently all the transfer forms from the various camps. According to a book about the escape, entitled "The Longest Tunnel," by Alan Burgess, the recaptured prisoners never reached Mauthausen. Four of them were sent instead to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp where they were held as hostages, but some of the others were murdered. By April 13, 1944, fifty of the escapees, who had been recaptured, had been shot along the roadside as they were being transported to Mauthausen. Their bodies were taken to the nearest crematorium where they were cremated and the ashes were sent back to Sagan for burial. Their death certificates read "shot while trying to escape." Names of the 50 escapees were posted in the camp as a warning against future escapes. Under international law, it is the duty of a POW to try to escape, but following this violation of the Geneva Convention by the Germans in the shooting of the escaped Sagan POWs, the British and American governments relieved their soldiers and airmen of the duty to attempt an escape. Maurice Lampe, a French resistance fighter who was a prisoner at Mauthausen, testified at the Nuremberg IMT about how 47 British, American and Dutch airmen were brought to Mauthausen on September 6, 1944 and executed under the Kugel Erlass. Lampe told the tribunal that he had been assigned to work in the quarry where he witnessed the airmen being murdered by the SS guards. The following quote from Lampe's testimony at Nuremberg tells the story: For all the prisoners at Mauthausen, the murder of these men has remained in their minds like a scene from Dante's Inferno. This is how it was done: at the bottom of the steps they loaded stones on the backs of these poor men and they had to carry them to the top. The first journey was made with stones weighing 25 to 30 kilos and was accompanied by blows. Then they were made to run down. For the second journey, the stones were even heavier; and whenever the poor wretches sank under their burden, they were kicked and hit with a bludgeon. Even stones were hurled at them....In the evening when I returned from the gang with which I was then working, the road which led to the camp was a bath of blood....I almost stepped on the lower jaw of a man. Twenty-one bodies were strewn along the road. Twenty-one had died on the first day. The twenty-six others died the following morning.... Jean-Frederic Veith told a similar story. In answer to a question by M. Dubost, the French prosecutor at the Nuremberg International Military Tribunal, Veith testified as follows: Q. Did you witness the execution of Allied officers who were murdered within 48 hours of their arrival in camp? A. I saw the arrival of the convoy of the 6th September. I believe that is the one you are thinking of; I saw the arrival of this convoy and the very same afternoon these 47 went down to the quarry dressed in nothing but their shirts and drawers. Shortly after we heard the sound of machine gunfire. I then left the office and passed at the back, pretending I was carrying documents to another office, and with my own eyes I saw these unfortunate people shot down. 19 were executed on the very same afternoon and the remainder on the following morning; later on all the death certificates were marked: "Killed while attempting to escape." The next day, Veith continued his testimony at Nuremberg, answering more questions put to him by M. Dubost: Q. Will you give some additional information concerning the execution of the 47 Allied Officers whom you saw shot within 48 hours at camp Mauthausen where they had been brought? A. Those officers, those parachutists, were shot in accordance with the usual system used whenever prisoners had to be done away with. That is to say, they were forced to work to excess, to carry heavy stones. Then they were beaten, until they took heavier ones; and so on and so forth, until, finally driven to extremity, they turned towards the barbed wire. If they did not do it of their own accord, they were pushed there, or they were beaten until they did so, and the moment they approached it and were perhaps about one metre away from it, they were mown down by machine guns fired by the SS patrols in the miradors. This was the usual system for the "killing for attempted escape" as they afterwards called it. These 47 men were killed on the afternoon of the 6th and morning of the 7th of September. Q. How did you know their names? A. Their names came to me with the official list, because they had all been entered in the camp registers and I had to report to Berlin all the changes in the actual strength of the Hollerith Section. I saw all the rosters of the dead and of the new arrivals. Q. Did you communicate this list to an official authority? A. This list was taken by the American official authorities when I was at Mauthausen. I immediately went back to Mauthausen after my liberation, because I knew where the documents were, and the American authorities then had all the lists which we were able to find. Note that Veith described these POWs as "parachutists" indicating that they were "Commandos" who parachuted into territory that was behind enemy lines with the objective of carrying out sabotage. They were sent to Mauthausen under Hitler's infamous Commando Order, another example of Nazi barbarity and the disregard of the Geneva Convention. According to William Shirer in his book "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich," the Top-Secret Commando Order, dated October 18, 1942, was one of the documents found by the Allies after the war. On October 7, 1942, the justification for this order was broadcast by the German Army over the radio, according to Robert E. Conot, who quoted from the broadcast in his book "Justice at Nuremberg": "In the future all terrorist and sabotage units of the British and their associates who do not act like soldiers but like bandits will be mercilessly exterminated in battle." He (Hitler) directed (General) Jodl to draw up the appropriate order that commandos "regardless whether as soldiers and irrespective of the kind of uniform are to be annihilated to the last man without mercy," since their actions "differ from the basic rules of warfare and [they] thus place themselves outside the rules of warfare." If they gave up, they were to be shot on the spot. "Whoever performs acts of sabotage as a soldier with the idea of surrendering without a fight after the act is successfully completed does not conduct himself as an honorable warrior." Hitler, as he had done in the Commissar Order and similar instances, made himself the unilateral arbiter of the Geneva Convention and declared null and void whatever section was not convenient to him. In his book, Conot included a quote from the British Handbook of Irregular Warfare, a book that was found on one of the Canadian Commandos who was captured on August 19, 1942 in a battle at Dieppe. According to Conot "Some of the German prisoners taken were handcuffed; and a few, who fell into the hands of the special forces, were trussed up in 'death slings.'" In other words, the German POWs were tied up by the Commandos with a noose around their necks which was attached to their legs, so that if the prisoner stretched out his legs, the noose would tighten and the man would be strangled. The following quote from the British Handbook is from page 307 of Conot's book "Justice at Nuremberg": This (book) instructed the commandos "never to give the enemy a chance; the days when we could practice the rules of sportsmanship are over. For the time being every soldier must be a potential gangster...The vulnerable parts of the enemy are the heart, spine and privates. Kick him or knee him as hard as you can in the fork...Remember you are out to kill." William Shirer mentions the following incident in which British and American Commandos were murdered at Mauthausen, on page 956 of his book, "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich": Some fifteen members of an Anglo-American military mission - including a war correspondent of the Associated Press, and all in uniform - which had parachuted into Slovakia in January 1945 were executed in the Mauthausen concentration camp on the orders of Dr. Ernst Kaltenbrunner, the successor of Heydrich as head of the SD and one of the defendants at Nuremberg. Had it not been for the testimony of the camp adjutant who witnessed their execution, their murder might have remained unknown, for most of the files of the executions at this camp were destroyed. One of the US Navy Commandos who was captured after a sabotage mission and sent to Mauthausen under Hitler's Commando Order was Lieutenant Jack Taylor. Lieutenant Taylor testified about the treatment which he and other American POWs received at Mauthausen. The following quote is from the testimony of Lt. Taylor at the Nuremberg IMT: In October '44, I was the first Allied officer to drop onto Austria. I was captured December 1st, by the Gestapo, severely beaten, ah, even though I was in uniform, severely beaten, and, and, considered as a non-prisoner of war. I was taken to Vienna prison where I was held for four months. When the Russians neared Vienna, I was taken to this Mauthausen concentration lager [camp], an extermination camp, the worst in Germany, where we have been starving and, and beaten and killed, ah, fortunately, my turn hadn't come. Ah, two American officers at least have been executed here. Here is the insignia of one, a U.S. naval officer, and here is his dog tag. Here is the army officer, executed by gas in this lager [camp]. Ah...there were... [Question: "How many ways did they execute them?"] Five or six ways: by gas, by shooting, by beating, that is beating with clubs, ah, by exposure, that is standing out in the snow, naked, for 48 hours and having cold water put on them, thrown on them in the middle of winter, starvation, dogs, and pushing over a hundred-foot cliff."
