German POW's USA

[audi]

There are fascinating documentations of German POW's in USA. As a rug rat during WW 2, we lived near a camp in NYS. A very attractive aunt of mine would visit them. I do remember a truck loaded with German soldiers ; POW written on truck. They had more freedoms then the blacks.

[CampEvelyn]

My father returned to USA from the 5th US Army in Italy in early 1945 due to length of service to serve as a POW Camp Evelyn guard in northern Michigan near Lake Superior. He spoke German (our heritage) and as a result a number of prisoners contacted my father to sponsor them in immigration to USA after the war. I wonder if there are any former German POW's that possibly could still be alive that were taken to Camp Evelyn and perhaps remember my father. Most I believe had been taken prisoner in North Africa.

[Haven]

Image: A German POW throws a pot at Camp Aliceville (Photo Courtesy of the Aliceville Museum, Inc., Aliceville, AL)

Reporter Karen Duffin and her father were talking one day when, just as an aside, he mentioned the Nazi prisoners of war that worked on his Idaho farm when he was a kid. Karen was shocked ... and then immediately obsessed. So she spoke with historians, dug through the National Archives and oral histories, and uncovered the astonishing story of a small town in Alabama overwhelmed by thousands of German prisoners of war. Along the way, she discovered that a very fundamental question - one that we are struggling with today - was playing out seventy years ago in hundreds of towns across America: When your enemy is at your mercy, how should you treat them? Karen helps Jad and Robert try to figure out why we did what we did then, and why we are doing things so differently now.

CORRECTION: A previous version of this podcast stated that the Nuremberg Laws and the Mississippi Black Code could be viewed side by side at a museum in Nuremberg. We were unable to confirm the existence of such an exhibit. We were also unable to confirm that the Nuremberg Laws were literally copied from the Mississippi Black Codes. The audio has been corrected to reflect this.

Listen to the show: http://www.radiolab.org/story/nazi-summer-camp/

[victoryfilms]

Interesting podcast. A former POW at Aliceville told me that when the prisoners were first treated to such bountiful meals, they were convinced that the Americans had ulterior motives. The pervading thought among the prisoners in their early days at the camp was that they were being fed well because the Americans had planned to send them to the South Pacific to join the fight against the Japanese. This former POW's name is Peter Ertel. His experience at Aliceville is just one part of an extraordinary personal story that he tells in a unique, new documentary. To discover more about it, please visit http://www.peterertelfilm.com.