Criminal treatment of German POW's
Moderator: John W. Howard
Criminal treatment of German POW's
I have a friend who's father served in the Afrika Korps as a Panzer officer, he was wounded in early 1943 and discharged from service. As the Reich began to fall, the SS forced him back into service in March of 1945 (at gunpoint according to his widow). He was forced into a crack SS tank unit on the eastern outskirts of Berlin. He was captured by the Bolsheviks in late April of '45 and sent to a Gulag in the Kaukasus Mtns. He was used as forced labor in this Gulag mining coal until 1955 when he was released. The Soviets claimed he was a "war criminal" because he was in an SS unit, and this is why he served 10 years in the Gulag. In actuallity, he was forced into the SS, and spent less than 8 days in this unit. After his release, he returned to Germany, gathered his wife and children and moved to Cleveland, Ohio. He and his wife were never allowed to become U.S. citizens because of his "evil SS history". Just last year his elderly widow attempted to return home to Germany to visit her relatives one last time before she died and the U.S. government in no uncertain terms told her "You can leave the U.S.A. but we can not gaurantee that you will be allowed back in since you are not a U. S. citizen and you have known ties to an enemy of the U.S.A., the SS" I have seen documents that confirm this nonsense, and I ask is this not a war crime? A faithful U.S. citizen being condemned for crimes that were never committed nearly 60 years ago?
A man who takes a stand is sometimes wrong. A man who never takes a stand is always wrong.