Hitler’s G.I. Death Camp
Dec 17th, 2011 | 8 responses
Our Copy Editor, Holly Robinson, forwarded me an announcement for an upcoming (tomorrow!) documentary on the National Geographic Channel.
Although I am preparing for travel shortly, I would be remiss if I were not to at least — using the text of the announcement — make our readers aware of what promises to be an astounding, eye-opening program about our American Jewish G.I.s who were held by the Nazis as POWs during World War II. So here it goes, and hope you watch it, tomorrow, December 18th at 9pm ET/PT on the National Geographic Channel:
One common explanation for the world’s failure to prevent the Holocaust is that the information about the Nazi extermination program seemed too incredible to believe. More than 60 years later, Americans may now also find it difficult to believe that their fellow citizens were among the 12 million people murdered by the Nazis, abandoned to this fate by their own government.
The outbreak of war in Europe put tens of thousands of American civilians, especially Jews, in deadly peril, but the State Department failed to help them. As a consequence of this callous policy many suffered – and some died.
Later, when the United States joined the war against Hitler, many brave young Americans were captured and imprisoned. Jewish soldiers were at a special risk – they were sent into battle with a telltale “H” (for “Hebrew”) on their dog tags, which helped the Nazis single them out for mistreatment. One group of Jewish GIs was sent to the brutal Berga concentration camp, which had the highest fatality rate of any camp where American POWs were held. Other POWs were sent to other notorious concentration camps, like Buchenwald and Mauthausen, where they became victims of the machinery of the “Final Solution.”
Why is it that none of the hundreds of books about the Holocaust has examined the fate of Americans who fell into Nazi hands? Perhaps it is because the number of American victims was small compared to the total that perished. Perhaps it is due to the perception of the Holocaust as a European phenomenon; most people assumed that Americans could not have become victims. But the main reason this story has gone untold for a half century is that much of the evidence has been concealed by our own government.
The U.S. government had good reasons to cover up the story. The revelation that Americans were mistreated and their government knew and failed to do anything about it would certainly raise uncomfortable questions about this country’s failure to offer safe haven to the Nazis’ main target: European Jews.
To learn more, watch the new National Geographic documentary, or the AICE-sponsored documentary, Berga: Soldiers Of Another War. And read Mitchell Bard’s book, Forgotten Victims: The Abandonment of Americans in Hitler’s Camps.
Image courtesy isurvived.org (Jan Hartman’s Holocaust)
8 Responses to “Hitler’s G.I. Death Camp”
Although other books have been written including Flint Whitlock’s 2005 ‘Given Up for Dead: American POWs in the Nazi Concentration Camp at Berga’; the secrecy part is correct. From ‘Given up for dead’:
“Of the 350 GIs in the original contingent, 70 of them died within the first two months at Berga; the others struggled to survive in a living nightmare. As the Allies’ front lines moved inexorably closer to Berga, the Nazi guards forced the inmates to endure a death march as a way of keeping them from being liberated; many died along the route. Only the timely arrival of an American armored division at war’s end saved them all from certain death.Strangely, when the war was over, many of the Americans who had survived Berga were required to sign a “security certificate” which forbade them from ever disclosing the details of their imprisonment at Berga. Until recent years, what had happened to the American soldiers at Berga has been a closely guarded secret.”
A more personal story here:
https://www.amherst.edu/aboutamherst/magazine/issues/2009fall/vogel
Amazing, Ohioan. Thank you for the link.
I don’t know. It’s easy to look back in time and condemn by current standards. Some say the U.S. is remiss for not making raids deep into Germany and Austria to free people from concentrations camps. That was impossible and is a totally unfair accusation. Blaming the U.S. for what the Nazis did is wholly unfair IMO. I can imagine our leaders having this knowledge and being afraid to publicize it, not having a clue how the Germans would react, but undoubtedly suspecting the worse. The Germans might have just started killing them sooner and faster and killed American non-Jews off in spite.
As for dog-tags. You could put whatever you wanted on your dog-tags, or nothing at all and still can, but back then everybody was “something” regarding religion.
We’ll see what the documentary says.
I don’t blame the US for what the Nazi’s did but why not bomb the train tracks to the camps once we finally entered into the war?
Unfortunately, the US was in an isolationist period, and also anti-Semitism was fairly pervasive in our country too- even in our own State Dept.
bluebelle
Exactly. Hoover and the State Department were the front line against Jews immigrating, even refugees from the Nazis. One shining star was Frances Perkins, Secty. of Labor and the first woman Cabinet member.
[Although secondary to the Department of State in visa affairs, the Department of Labor was until 1940 in charge of immigration and naturalization issues, and it soon emerged as a prominent factor with respect to the German- Jewish refugee issue.]
……
[Perkins's firm stands on what she considered "just causes" was especially evident on the issue of Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany. No one could intimidate her or deflect her from following "the command of duty," even if that meant facing animosity and criticism from the Department of State; as she put it, "Immigration problems usually have to be decided in a few days. They involve human lives. There can be no delaying."]
http://www.francesperkinscenter.org/refugees.html
Roosevelt was not at his finest in this situation.
Bluebelle-
We did bomb train tracks, but train tracks are easily rebuilt. We had to bomb factories to stop war production instead of things they could rebuild overnight.
Ohian-
Hoover was out of office before Hitler came to power. What did Hoover have to do with it?
I might also point out that thousands of Africans are starving right now and we STILL are not bringing them here in numbers large enough to save them. Maybe that’s because we have 12 million illegal aliens here right now from south of the border. I think it is.
Now, the protocol is such that, Economic reasons cannot be a reason to grant asylum. So as far as immigration is concerned policies probably follow along those lines, but I don’t know exactly.
Allen
J. Edgar not Herbert. Sorry I didn’t make that clear.
Watched it.
Nothing suspicious. No anti Jewish government cover-up. Nothing.
Just some Jewish soldiers and others getting the Nazi treatment by Nazis during WWII. Sad, but something you would expect.
At least some survived and not gunned down like at Malmandy.