ZGram '- 2/18/2002 - "A U.S. Prison Guard at one of "Ike's Death Camps'" - Part I

[irimland@zundelsite.org]

Copyright (c) 2002 - Ingrid A. Rimland

ZGram - Where Truth is Destiny

February 18, 2002

Good Morning from the Zundelsite:

I got this two-part ZGram from David Irving's website at "The International
Campaign for Real History ___ http://www.fpp.co.uk/ The title says it all.

The only thing I want to add is to say that Ernst's father, who was a medic
in the war, experienced Allied imprisonment in one of these camps - and he
came back a broken man.  He never talked about it either - nor did he hold
his hand out to those who tortured him.

[START}

How Eisenhower's orders killed Germany's prisoners or war after WW2 -
(written in 1990 - and apropos today as America is taking Afghan prisoners)

 A U.S. PRISON GUARD AT ONE OF "IKE'S DEATH CAMPS"

 By Martin Brech - Martin Brech, Adjunct Professor, Philosophy & Religion,
Mercy College; Ex-G.I., describing himself as "Finally Free":

 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 was 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 cigarettes 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.

[END]

=====

Thought for the Day:

"America needs more Holocaust museums. But instead of museums depicting
false atrocities perpetrated against Jews, it needs museums depicting the
real atrocities perpetrated by Jews."

JBR Yant, Mortal Words v 8