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At last, the U.S. POWs of Buchenwald talk
OCR ^ | 11-22-2011 | edcoil

Posted on 11/23/2011 8:32:16 AM PST by edcoil

ANAHEIM – He was beaten. Marched before a firing squad. Starved at Buchenwald.

Only a small twist of fate saved him – four days before the Nazis planned to execute him.

They have survived Buchenwald. But the world isn't ready to hear it. After the war, they are told to not speak about it. The official U.S. stance was that no American POWs went to Buchenwald.

"We were still negotiating certain things with the Germans," says Dorsey, of Temecula. "The government didn't want to upset people by saying U.S. servicemen were held in concentration camps."

(Excerpt) Read more at ocregister.com ...


TOPICS: VetsCoR
KEYWORDS: buchenwald; concentrationcamps; germany; history; military; worldwareleven; wwii

1 posted on 11/23/2011 8:32:17 AM PST by edcoil
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To: edcoil

I read an article about this in the New York TImes Magazine section quite a while ago. In this, POWs with Jewish names were sent to concentration camps. Imagine the horror...


2 posted on 11/23/2011 8:35:54 AM PST by miss marmelstein (Let's have a Cain Mutiny!)
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To: edcoil

“The official U.S. stance...”

The official stance was wide in the bathroom stall.....

PC liberal idiocy from pantywaist bureaucrats is nothing new, I guess......


3 posted on 11/23/2011 8:41:10 AM PST by fishtank (The denial of original sin is the root of liberalism.)
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To: fishtank
This goes along with Truman's other post war policies, including his betrayal of Filipino soldiers.

Rot in Hell, Harry.

4 posted on 11/23/2011 8:45:54 AM PST by MrEdd (Heck? Geewhiz Cripes, thats the place where people who don't believe in Gosh think they aint going.)
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To: fishtank; All

“We were still negotiating certain things with the Germans,” says Dorsey, of Temecula. “The government didn’t want to upset people by saying U.S. servicemen were held in concentration camps.”


it was part PC and part getting as many German scientists on our side before they could go over to the Russian side....the way the gov’t sold out these soldiers and, especially, POW’s from the Pacific theater in WWII was disgraceful...read the way the POW’s held by japan were treated by the American gov’t, especially the survivors of the Bataan Death march- your stomach will turn...


5 posted on 11/23/2011 8:51:39 AM PST by God luvs America (63.5million pay no federal income tax then vote demoKrat)
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To: edcoil

Wow...quite a story. Thanks much for posting. He is lucky to be alive. He and the other airmen showed incredible courage.


6 posted on 11/23/2011 8:55:13 AM PST by Pharmboy (Democrats lie because they must...)
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To: miss marmelstein
Interesting. My late brother-in-law was Jewish and fought his way across France after landing on Omaha Beach during the D-Day invasion. He was captured during the Battle of the Bulge and subsequently escaped.

Though his dog tags had his religion on them, he was never treated differently by the Germans...perhaps because he was an officer, perhaps because he was not part of the resistance but uniformed and fighting with the US Army.

7 posted on 11/23/2011 8:59:50 AM PST by Pharmboy (Democrats lie because they must...)
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To: edcoil

Kind of a good thing to read at Thanksgiving time. Thank you for posting this...


8 posted on 11/23/2011 9:00:11 AM PST by PghBaldy (War Powers Res: http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/warpower.asp)
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To: edcoil
Has any enemy of the United States ever conformed to the Geneva Conventions? I suspect not, which begs the question as to why we are a signatory and continue to feel bound by them?

We have seen such incredible barbarism by Muslims against Americans that I cannot, for the life of me, think how anyone can seriously invoke the Geneva Conventions in criticizing how the US has handled enemy combatants.

And slowly it comes out that NO enemy of the US has EVER felt constrained by the conventions.

9 posted on 11/23/2011 9:02:38 AM PST by In Maryland ("If stupidity got us into this mess, why can't it get us out?" - Mark Twain)
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To: edcoil
"We were still negotiating certain things with the Germans,"

How much leverage could the Germans have had, considering they had no Army and the alternative was the Russians?

10 posted on 11/23/2011 9:03:46 AM PST by Lonesome in Massachussets (Ceterum autem censeo, Obama delenda est.)
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To: Pharmboy

Among the worst atrocities committed by our side was OPERATION KEELHAUL. In 1947, Truman’s watch, hundreds of thousands of Soviet POW were still being held in western Europe. In an effort to curry favor with Stalin and his cutthroats, a great many of these poor devils were forcibly repatriated to the USSR where they were imprisoned in Siberia or executed. Many of them committed suicide rather than go back to the USSR.


11 posted on 11/23/2011 9:06:15 AM PST by Ax
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To: God luvs America
getting as many German scientists on our side before they could go over to the Russian side

That's not very good negotiation... IMHO, most Germans were falling all over themselves to come to Americans. Generals disobeyed crazy's orders and allowed escape to the west of whole divisions.

Everybody knew that Russia was not the place to be and America was.

I could understand working on getting Americans to accept Germans, as that was probably a stumbling block for years.

But it just doesn't sound right, there were plenty of bad things that happened that were publicly known. No good reason to hide this, IMHO.
12 posted on 11/23/2011 9:07:18 AM PST by PieterCasparzen (We have to fix things ourselves.)
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To: miss marmelstein

The names in this article, Bowen and Freeman, aren’t particularly Jewish. I knew a Jewish Friedman and a WASP Freeman. Bowen is a Welsh name. And this article doesn’t say anything about whether they were Jewish or not.

A horrible fate and horrible to have your country deny it. It still doesn’t make sense what interest the government did have in denial.


13 posted on 11/23/2011 9:25:31 AM PST by heartwood
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To: Ax

Part of the Yalta agreement was that nationals of the SU
would be repatriated regardless of their wishes.

The result was that the various formations such as Cossacks,
Latvians, Russians were returned to Soviet custody. Otherwize Allied POW in Soviet hands might have been held.

Even Sweden gave up refugees to the SU, I believe it was
Estonian SS who made it across the Baltic. Forced to board Soviet vessels and sent back to Mother Russia.

The lives lost in these repatriations pale in comparison to the numbers killed during the flight of Germans from East Prussia and Silesia and the Czech lands.


14 posted on 11/23/2011 9:32:21 AM PST by RitchieAprile (Precious little in your life is yours by right and won without a fight..)
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To: heartwood

I rad one article that talked about the concentration camps after Hitler fell. The prisoners were released, but nearly half died. They were given rich meals that were too much for their bodies to handle. It took weeks to figure out how to properly feed them back to health.


15 posted on 11/23/2011 9:43:21 AM PST by aimhigh
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To: Ax
Many of them committed suicide rather than go back to the USSR.

My dad was German and the U.S. wouldn't allow him in the service during WWII, so he took a job at the Seaman's YMCA in NYC. Right after the war he said the seamen were telling him about "Russians jumping off the ship or slitting their wrists." and how Russia must really be so bad that people did this.

It wasn't until years later I read how Stalin gulled the U.S. into repatriating all Russians "who belonged back in the Motherland". He wanted revenge on those who were captured, since many were fighting in German regiments.** Others were "contaminated" by being exposed to Western Ideas and needed to be exterminated.

**[excerpt from long article]:
Deprived of their fatherland, scorned by their protectors, regarded generally as traitors, although in their consciences they were not traitors, they fought often for an alien and hateful cause; the only reward which they eventually received for their pains was toil and death, mostly in a foreign land, or "repatriation" to the hell from which they had tried to escape."

16 posted on 11/23/2011 10:05:13 AM PST by Oatka (This is the USA, assimilate or evaporate.)
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To: edcoil
When members of the German Air Force – or Luftwaffe – arrive to inspect the damage, Americans push a shy, German-speaking waist-gunner out to plead their case. Flier-to-flier. Airman-to-airman.
Soon an inquiry is launched. And then, four days before their planned execution, the airmen are put on trains to POW camps.

I heard Air Force guys say that if shot down, you hoped the military found you before the citizens did as they would take out their helplessness on the airmen, usually killing them.

17 posted on 11/23/2011 10:12:08 AM PST by Oatka (This is the USA, assimilate or evaporate.)
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To: edcoil

I read years ago about U.S airmen worked to death at Mauthausen.


18 posted on 11/23/2011 10:57:51 AM PST by PzLdr ("The Emperor is not as forgiving as I am" - Darth Vader)
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To: edcoil

Time or the truth to come out. It is so disgraceful on how our gov’t treated former American POW’s !


19 posted on 11/23/2011 10:59:47 AM PST by CORedneck
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To: edcoil

Kiss the Boys Goodby —the early years?


20 posted on 11/23/2011 11:09:56 AM PST by StonyBurk (ring)
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