German treatment of Jewish Anglo-American POWs

[Von Schadewald]

How were Jewish Anglo-American military prisoners of the Germans treated?

Were any mistreated, brutalized, killed or sent to Auschwitz?

Or did they handle them according to the Geneva Convention?

[Poot]

Based on surviving POW accounts, once the German captors learned that some US POWs were Jewish (as designated by an 'H' on the lower third of their 'dog tags,' or identity tags worn by each serving member), they were either shot immediately or sent to a forced labor or death camp. There were even some US troops who weren't Jews that were mistaken for being Jews because their features and coloring were what the Germans associated with being Jewish. There were US POWs of Mexican ancestry that fell victim to this.

Here's an article about the dilemma face by Jewish G.I.'s who wore dog tags designating them as Jewish:
http://www.hakirah.org/Vol15Males.pdf

Pat

[history1]

Based on surviving POW accounts, once the German captors learned that some US POWs were Jewish (as designated by an 'H' on the lower third of their 'dog tags,' or identity tags worn by each serving member), they were either shot immediately or sent to a forced labor or death camp. [...]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roddie_Ed ... rld_War_II
Stalag´s are not forced labor nor death camps but camps for unlisted men and NCO. And according the Geneve conventions those men can be used/made work. Not so soliders of officer rank who are allowed to work but can´t be forced.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roddie_Ed ... rld_War_II
The downside on this story: My research came to the result that there was no commander in this camp nor any other officer with this or a similiar name. It seems that the "Righteous" Edmonds was a political gift for the USA.

Here's an article about the dilemma face by Jewish G.I.'s who wore dog tags designating them as Jewish:
http://www.hakirah.org/Vol15Males.pdf
Pat

Which dilemma? Guess how many Jewish men were forced in the East to pull down their trousers to check if they´re circumcised or not. Throwing away a dog tag doesn´t help in such case. What them did help is that they belonged to the Western Allies who were treated far better than Soviet POW. But one need to keep in mind that the Soviets didn´t sign the Geneve nor Hague Conventions.

[history1]

How were Jewish Anglo-American military prisoners of the Germans treated?
Were any mistreated, brutalized, killed or sent to Auschwitz? [...]

I don´t know a single case where a US POW of Jewish faith was transfered to Auschwitz (the only POW there were from Soviet forces). Nor to any of the other concentration camps.
Though I can´t exclude that someone might have been killed as POW , there were a couple cases were bomber crews did parachute and got shot or beaten to death for their terror bombing of civilian targets. But not for being Jewish.
But in general I think they were treaded according the Geneve Conventions.

[David Thompson]

For interested readers -- see:

US PBS Special on Berga-US Jewish POWs
viewtopic.php?t=23431

[Poot]

David Thompson,
Thanks for that link, Berga was the camp I was thinking of, and the approximate time period of capture for the troops in question was winter 1944.

history1,
Glad you found the murder of POWs and the forced labor of others to be so entertaining. You (very) apparently didn't bother to read any of the link I listed, but want instead to cling fast to the quaint notion that Germans never violated the Geneva Convention. Since I can't take you seriously, don't bother responding.

Von Schadewald,
Check out the link to the Berga thread provided by David Thompson. There was also a one hour TV show on this episode that aired in the USA in 2019. If I can find the title of it, I'll get ahold of you.

[history1]

[...]
history1,
Glad you found the murder of POWs and the forced labor of others to be so entertaining. You (very) apparently didn't bother to read any of the link I listed,

LOL
Bad luck, I read the text in the link. And? It proofs nothing. And as you obviously didn´t read or understand my post entirely. Jewish men are circumcised, a fake dog tag is thus not providing any protection!
Do you seriously beleive because a Holocaust survivor is telling something it must be the truth and can not contain mistakes? Then you´re very wrong!
Already in the Frankfurt Auschwitz trials survivors/witnesses told the court that they saw Mengele and men from the accused SS staff on the ramp in Birkenau- at a time were they wasn´t there! Their errors were of course used by the defense lawyers.
The USHMM spreads also misinformation with their First person-program, eg allowing a Jewish emmigrant to tell his story. And what he tells? That he was forced to hide in the metro of Paris in Sept. 1939 to avoid being hit by a bomb from the German airplanes over the city! While in fact France was invaded 8 month later! Ooops! And the USHMM did NOT correct this misinformation! He also told that he escaped then to the UK and sailed after missing the original ship the next day from Southampton to New York. During this ~3 weeks lasting travel he and the other passengers had to wear permantenly gas masks and life wests on board because the German U-boats in the atlantic ocean!
Guess what!? In my resarch I found out that the Gentleman did board the ship in the UK even BEFORE WWII STARTED! In mid Sept. he landed already on Ellis Island! That means that he was already before Sept. 1st 1939 in the UK. BTW, I don´t blame the man that he can´r remember the facts so many decades later, but the USHMM which does in this way misinform their audince and violate their own rules.

Another person told me his father´s story on a social media site, a survivor from the extermination camp Treblinka! Her father told her did he had to clean the crematorium ovens in Treblinka from human ash and bones when he was only 14 years old- IN 1939! When Treblinka was installed years later in 1942! Oooops!


The in the US Jewish World well known Rabbi Nissen Mangel tells the whole world that he is the worlds youngest Holocaust survivor from the KL Birkenau, as he was only 13 years old when he arrived there. Eva mozes Kor and dozens of other children survivors are/were younger then he! ooops!

but want instead to cling fast to the quaint notion that Germans never violated the Geneva Convention. Since I can't take you seriously, don't bother responding.
[...]

The proof that you didn´t read or understand my post. I wrote:

Though I can´t exclude that someone might have been killed as POW , there were a couple cases were bomber crews did parachute and got shot or beaten to death for their terror bombing of civilian targets.

[Poot]

Von Schadewald,
Here are some general links for you:
https://www.npr.org/templates/story/sto ... Id=4672288

More about Bergan specifically:
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/am ... ation-camp

CPL. Anthony Acevedo:
https://www.pri.org/stories/2018-03-29/ ... ation-camp

[history1]

Von Schadewald,
Here are some general links for you:
https://www.npr.org/templates/story/sto ... Id=4672288
[...]

From the link:

INSKEEP: These Americans had become part of the Holocaust. [...] German guards forced them to continue even as Nazi Germany collapsed all around them. [..]
Mr. GERALD DAUB (Brooklyn Native): I was an infantryman in World War II. And during the Battle of the Bulge, I was captured with the rest of my infantry company in a little town called Rimling(ph), which was on the marginal--just between the marginal Seigfried lines. And I was brought to a...

INSKEEP: This is the middle of winter, brutal battle, a brutal German attack.

What a lout, can´t he wait until his guests finish a sentence?
BTW, on April 3rd and 4th 1945 (!!!) the British RAF did bomb the subcamp Boelcke Barracks and caused 1300 dead concentration camp inmates a month before WWII did end! What a brutal British attack!

[history1]

"Mr. ROGER COHEN (Journalist): So I went down to BERGA, a little town in the East. It was a snowy day. Berga is kind of last place you can feel 1945 almost as if it was yesterday because everything had been FROZEN IN TIME BY COMMUNISM. And I saw these sealed tunnels where the US GIs had been put to work as SLAVE LABORERS."

Which Berga is he talking about?
Communism in Nazi Germany pre WWII? ROFL!
Seems Mr. Cohen was/is unfamiliar with the Geneve Conventions? Every POW, except officer ranks, are oblihated to work when asked for and as long as it´s not work which is directed against their own country/forces, eg. operating anti-tank cannons, producing ammunition.

[history1]

Von Schadewald,
Here are some general links for you:
[...]
More about Bergan specifically:
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/am ... ation-camp
[...]

From the POW testimony on that website by an unknown person (strange custom not to provide the name of an alleged witness!PS.: The witness is the man in the third link,Tony Acevedo ):

"[...] We were ordered to march to the gates of a concentration camp calledBad Orb-Stalag 9B [...]"

There is a huge difference from a concentration camp to an POW camp for unlisted men and NCO, that´s what a STAmmLAGer, is.

"[...] a Gestapo Field Marshall walked in wearing a long leather black coat [...]"

There is no such thing as a Gestapo Field Marshall.

On March 20, 1945, a fellow prisoner named Goldstein was shot and killed for attempting to escape.

As I said already yesterday, shot, but not for being Jewish but for the attempted escape.

[history1]

Von Schadewald,
Here are some general links for you:
[...]
CPL. Anthony Acevedo:
https://www.pri.org/stories/2018-03-29/ ... ation-camp

From the link:
"[...] On the night of March 20, 1945, a 20-year-old Mexican American soldier named Tony Acevedo lay in the cold barracks of a Nazi concentration camp.[...] "When we got to Berga, well, they took us to the cremation center to bathe us,” Acevedo said. “We didn't know that that was for bathing. We thought they were going to cremate us.”

The US soldiers passed corpses of gassed prisoners. "

Berga, a Nazi concentration camp? A Stalag with gassed inmates? Holy mackerel!What´s next? Hitler operating the gas chamber?
We know that some veterans are leaning to exaggerations.. One should ask this guy which SS-officer did ran the camp! Ooops?
Why does the Geman Ministry for Justice not list this "concentration" camp? ROFL
https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/begd ... 30967.html
And 6 days on the train from Bavaria to Berga? Ddi they depart on the 5th day after boarding the train only?
https://goo.gl/maps/rdpfLh95RzmtecgR9

[Sejanus]

Based on surviving POW accounts, once the German captors learned that some US POWs were Jewish (as designated by an 'H' on the lower third of their 'dog tags,' or identity tags worn by each serving member), they were either shot immediately or sent to a forced labor or death camp. [...]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roddie_Ed ... rld_War_II
Stalag´s are not forced labor nor death camps but camps for unlisted men and NCO. And according the Geneve conventions those men can be used/made work. Not so soliders of officer rank who are allowed to work but can´t be forced.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roddie_Ed ... rld_War_II
The downside on this story: My research came to the result that there was no commander in this camp nor any other officer with this or a similiar name. It seems that the "Righteous" Edmonds was a political gift for the USA.

Here's an article about the dilemma face by Jewish G.I.'s who wore dog tags designating them as Jewish:
http://www.hakirah.org/Vol15Males.pdf
Pat

Which dilemma? Guess how many Jewish men were forced in the East to pull down their trousers to check if they´re circumcised or not. Throwing away a dog tag doesn´t help in such case. What them did help is that they belonged to the Western Allies who were treated far better than Soviet POW. But one need to keep in mind that the Soviets didn´t sign the Geneve nor Hague Conventions.

History1 is absolutely right about this subject, which I know from having studied it extensively.

The only cases I ever came across involving Anglo-American POWs being sent to a concentration camp (not a POW camp) were the small groups that were sent to Mauthausen as a result of Hitler's adding Anglo-American POWs to the list eligible victims (joining other nationalities) of his "Bullet Decree" (also known as Operation Bullet administered by the Gestapo), this was one of Hitler's reactions to the mass escape of POWs from Sagan during 1944 more popularly known as "The Great Escape."

There is also a report of a very small group Anglo-American POWs being sent to Sachsenhausen. Note that these prisoners were originally sent to POW camps first and only sent to a concentration camp as a secondary measure, after escaping from a POW camp and being recaptured. This still violated the Geneva Convention but to Hitler's way of thinking it was justified to prevent further escapes from POW camps.

The Bullet Decree was intended to target POW escape planners and plotters. However, none of those POWs affected were sent to a concentration camp due to being Jewish. Instead the Jewish Anglo-American POWs were generally treated correctly even when the Germans were aware they were Jewish, I know this from having examined the POW record cards maintained on each prisoner and more (some POWs brought their own file cards home as souvenirs after their camps were liberated, and over the years some of these have appeared on the collector market, the fact many of these POWs made it home unscathed regardless of the Germans knowing of some being Jewish is a testament to their correct treatment).

While it was not policy to murder Anglo-American POWs simply because they were Jewish, it may be possible that some could have been shot out of hand by troops and some of their leaders acting on their own initiative. Some examples of that sort of thing happening (not strictly targeting Jews though) are the Malmedy massacre perpetrated by the Waffen-SS during the Battle of the Bulge, and on the other side - the US Army massacre of SS troops at the liberated Dachau Concentration Camp.

A few select sources: Justice at Nuremberg, Robert E. Conot; The Great Escape, Paul Brickhill.

[LineDoggie]

2 Stalag ID cards for Jewish American POW's. Neither sent to concentration camp or shot Both cards clearly state the men are Jewish religion

https://i.postimg.cc/sgkxQwSM/post-105- ... 406831.jpg

https://i.postimg.cc/Y9bt334f/post-105- ... 405820.jpg

[Von Schadewald]

From this article https://www.timesofisrael.com/unsung-je ... lly-heard/

"The risk taken by Jews who joined the RAF was particularly high. If they were shot down over enemy territory and survived, an uncertain fate awaited them if it was discovered they were Jewish. Some Jewish airmen chose to remove their identity disc, which displayed their religion, before they took off from the UK."