In 'Eisenhower's Death Camps' -
A US Prison Guard's Story
By Martin Brech
12-28-03
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 ãrepo depotä(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 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, 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, 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 I had learned in high school German ("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 until he
died. 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 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.
I was used increasingly as an interpreter, and was able to prevent
some particularly unfortunate arrests. One rather amusing incident
involved an old farmer who was being dragged away by several M.Pâs. 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
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; ours was at hand. But two wrongs don't make a right. Rather
than copying our enemyâs 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, 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 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 is difficult for the average citizen to admit witnessing
a crime of this magnitude, especially if implicated himself. Even
G.Iâs 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 feeling suppressed too long, a liberation, and
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.
Source: Reprinted from The Journal of Historical Review, vol. 10, no.
2, pp. 161-166.
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