By Martin Brech
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 "repo depot" (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.P's. 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
enemy's 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.I's
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
More update and information on Eisenhower's Holocast
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