1945 Lost German girl

[alexWong]

I have been watching this thread since it first appeared in 2008, and I have spent the whole day to day with some 10 hours watching all the clips and all the 98 pages of contributions/comments all over again in one go, we will probably never know who she is and what had become of her ( albeit Raven (CZ) has now brought us much closer), we can only speculate and wish her reaching the safety of American lines and POW camp, survived the war and lives/lived a long life.....

[Adibach]

Hi burghwear,
if you watch the whole of he film you see her with a group of other POW's and she looks a lot more relaxed

[MD2448]

Is it possible that LGG reached the Prisoner of War Temporary Enclosures (PWTE) for Women, Rheinwiesenlager, Germany?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1NhNF9 ... freload=10

[ignacioosacar]

Dear MD 2448,

The LGG caption was taken many days after the Rheinwiesenlager Camp caption. The blackboards show the dates. Besides, even thou they may look very much alike in a front view ( I doubted too at first ), they are quite different if you compare their profiles.

Cheers all

[MD2448]

Yes Igna,
I didn't see anyone that looked like LGG at the camps in the April clip, I just wondered if she and her group ended up there as the camps lasted until September 1945.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rheinwiesenlager

[FF7_12]

The point of the holding camps like Ejpovice was so the POWs could be screened and sent back to the Russians or Czechs if appropriate. There would be no point sending them over to the Rheinwiesenlager.

Which brings me on to another topic. I think I have identified the Obersturmbannführer that Haglund was talking to on 9th May (see a few pages back on this thread). From the film at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSAWP8vz-l4

Kneissl 9 May 45.jpg (58.77 KiB) Viewed 4021 times

Michael Kneissl, who was sent back to the Czechs and executed for war crimes in 1947.

At http://www.pamatnik-terezin.cz/?dl_id=456 there is some detail on his career history and wartime activities, and the picture below from the Bundesarchiv which I reckon must be from 1933, given his insignia and career path. The doc is in Czech but google translate gives one the gist of it and there are some summary passages in English.

Kneissl Bundesarchiv_2.png (201.54 KiB) Viewed 4021 times

I think if you take account of a 12 year age difference there is a reasonable similarity.

The Czech doc says that he was in the column that left Prague and arrived at the Ejpovice camp on 9th May 1945. So time and place match.

Cheers

John ("FF7_12")

[ignacioosacar]

Dear Forum,

The Wounded batch, and the old timer "V" in the right arm are consistent. The chin and ears are identical. I agree that he is the same man.

Cheers

[ignacioosacar]

Sorry ! BADGE

[Saoirse]

HI
Even though it is off topic, what exactly was he charged of that lead to his execution. He looked pretty relaxed in the video clip.

Tks
Rich

[Mauser K98k]

Thanks FF7_12 for that link, nice catch! I found it very interesting to read about Kneissl's career.

In the video of Kneissl's yucking it up with Haglund, you can almost read his mind: "Hey you Americans, I'm just an old guy, and even though I'm SS, I'm just an innocent rear-area minor cog. Nobody's going to be interested in my minor role in this lost war"

I think it's amusing that they hauled his Nazi ass back to Prague and hanged him.

While one can suffer through Google Translating the entire Czech text (which I did) for details, here is the brief condensed English translation of Kneissl's doings in Czechoslovakia from the above link:

"COMMANDERS OF THE SS GUARD BATTALIONS IN THE PROTECTORATE
OF BOHEMIA AND MORAVIA
Jan Vajskebr, Terezín Memorial
Summary
The SS Guard Battalions were rear units whose key mission involved routine guard duties, which
were, at critical moments in the Protectorate’s history, extended to cover diverse repressive operations.
The staff of these units, just as their commissioned officers, definitely did not figure among the
elite of the German armed forces. The units, operating exclusively in the rear, were supplemented
primarily with older men no longer fit for frontline service. This situation kept deteriorating as the
war continued.
The not very high standards of these units were duly reflected in the figures of both commanders
of the SS Guard Battalions in the Protectorate, Hermann Peter and Michael Kneissl. Born in the
early 1890s, both were around 50 years old during WW II. They had fought in the First World War
but this service left its mark on their health; furthermore, they did not have any regular military
training needed to perform their high posts. They owed their military careers to their political involvement
in the NSDAP Party well before the Nazis came to power, and to their early admission in
the ranks of the SS. Thanks to that they were perceived as “old guards” of the Nazi movement. Even
though they partly tarnished their images by affairs in their private lives, their political loyalty, good
contacts with the Nazi high brass and their specific organizational skills secured them adequate
posts within the SS. Their service in the Protectorate can hardly be seen as episodic in their careers,
because both spent major parts of their military careers in occupied Bohemia and attained relatively
important posts and high ranks. However, their destinies took different paths in the second half of
the war. While Peter was to be deployed on the eastern front and in the Balkans, Kneissl finished his
active career in the Czech Lands. In the end, a hangman’s noose was awaiting him after the war in
the country where he himself had previously organized executions of others."

[Mikaela]

Dear forum, as I wrote few days ago, Iam preparing LGG summary project for the Dresden gallery Blaue Fabrik. I have been in Rokycany archive and I have documentation of the camera crew operating with Haglund. They were in total 3 man...…I red all the memoirs from the US army in the archive but nothing is about LGG. It is the same with the documentation / pictures from the US soldiers or people from Ejpovice and Rokycany. She is not there.

I have digital documentation of the "memoir book" from police station Rokycany and digital documentation of the chronicle from Ejpovice. In all these three books is the shorts description of the situation on 7, 8, 9 may 1945.I have copied video from the archive where are the pows along the road 605 and pow camps.It is written in Rokycany memoirs that all the pows (they were 40 000) went to Bavaria, not to direction Prague and up to that side of the Germany.

After few hours in archive I went to Ejpovice to put out the posters with LGG face and my phone number if anyone can say something about her. In Ejpovice and Čilina are still living two old man who remember the war time. I had appointment with one of them but in that day has happened that his son died so we cancelled the meeting.I made the landscape panoramatic documentation of the place from the road 605 and face ageing of LGG how can she look like in her 70'. When I will be finished with the project I can share documentation from archive Rokycany and Ejpovice on some viral place, so everybody can download it and use it. The last think i can do is to go to national army archive in Prague to do some research but I think that we need to do some searching in the "field" like german pows from czechoslovakia in Bavaria or Austria or Germany…list of the pow names. Some informations which are talking about the days after moving from Ejpovice to abroad. Who was operating with them when they have crossed the borders. The memoirs say that in mid-september everybody was already gone to Bavaria.Bye to all!! Mikaela

[MD2448]

A list of the US Army divisions present at the time and including those involved with processing of POWs in 1945 ...
http://www.militaryhistoryonline.com/ww ... rview.aspx

[history1]

[...] I think it's amusing that they hauled his Nazi ass back to Prague and hanged him.
[...]

It´s a pitty they didn´t hang the yankees who murdered innocent POW in Dachau too!

[Marcus]

Mauser K98k & History1, drop the opinion posts and get back on topic.

/Marcus

[marliz]

Dear forum, as I wrote few days ago, Iam preparing LGG summary project for the Dresden gallery Blaue Fabrik. I have been in Rokycany archive and I have documentation of the camera crew operating with Haglund. They were in total 3 man...…I red all the memoirs from the US army in the archive but nothing is about LGG. It is the same with the documentation / pictures from the US soldiers or people from Ejpovice and Rokycany. She is not there.

I have digital documentation of the "memoir book" from police station Rokycany and digital documentation of the chronicle from Ejpovice. In all these three books is the shorts description of the situation on 7, 8, 9 may 1945.I have copied video from the archive where are the pows along the road 605 and pow camps.It is written in Rokycany memoirs that all the pows (they were 40 000) went to Bavaria, not to direction Prague and up to that side of the Germany.

After few hours in archive I went to Ejpovice to put out the posters with LGG face and my phone number if anyone can say something about her. In Ejpovice and Čilina are still living two old man who remember the war time. I had appointment with one of them but in that day has happened that his son died so we cancelled the meeting.I made the landscape panoramatic documentation of the place from the road 605 and face ageing of LGG how can she look like in her 70'. When I will be finished with the project I can share documentation from archive Rokycany and Ejpovice on some viral place, so everybody can download it and use it. The last think i can do is to go to national army archive in Prague to do some research but I think that we need to do some searching in the "field" like german pows from czechoslovakia in Bavaria or Austria or Germany…list of the pow names. Some informations which are talking about the days after moving from Ejpovice to abroad. Who was operating with them when they have crossed the borders. The memoirs say that in mid-september everybody was already gone to Bavaria.Bye to all!! Mikaela

After years and years reading this great thread finally a very good news!!! Great Mikaela!