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In 'Eisenhower's Death Camps': A U.S. PrisonGuard's Story
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 furloughwas 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 mononucleosiswas then known as the "kissing disease," I mailed a letter of thanks to mygirlfriend.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 towhich I was assigned and don't recall all of them: non-combat units wereridiculed at that time. My separation qualification record states I was mostlywith Company C, 14th Infantry Regiment, during my seventeen-month stayin 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 Iwas 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 theS.S. (I found none.)
In Andernach about 50,000 prisoners of all ages were held in an open fieldsurrounded by barbed wire. The women were kept in a separate enclosure Idid 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 slittrenches for excrement. It was a cold, wet spring and their misery fromexposure alone was evident.Even more shocking was to see the prisoners throwing grass and weeds intoa 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 theywere sleeping in their own excrement, too weak and crowded to reach theslit 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 blandindifference. When pressed, they explained they were under strict ordersfrom "higher up." No officer would dare do this to 50,000 men if he felt thatit was "out of line," leaving him open to charges. Realizing my protests wereuseless, I asked a friend working in the kitchen if he could slip me someextra food for the prisoners. He too said they were under strict orders toseverely 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 andwould sneak me some.When I threw this food over the barbed wire to the prisoners, I was caughtand 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?," hemumbled, "Target practice," and fired until his pistol was empty. I saw thewomen running for cover, but, at that distance, couldn't tell if any had beenhit.This is when I realized I was dealing with cold-blooded killers filled withmoralistic hatred. They considered the Germans subhuman and worthy of extermination; another expression of the downward spiral of racism. Articlesin the G.I. newspaper, Stars and Stripes, played up the Germanconcentration camps, complete with photos of emaciated bodies; thisamplified our self-righteous cruelty and made it easier to imitate behavior we were supposed to oppose. Also, I think, soldiers not exposed to combatwere trying to prove how tough they were by taking it out on the prisonersand civilians.These prisoners, I found out, were mostly farmers and workingmen, assimple 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 toescape in a demented or suicidal fashion, running through open fields in broad daylight towards the Rhine to quench their thirst. They were moweddown. Some prisoners were as eager for cigarettes as for food, saying theytook the edge off their hunger. Accordingly, enterprising G.I. "Yankeetraders" were acquiring hordes of watches and rings in exchange for handfuls of cigarettes or less. When I began throwing cartons of cigarettes tothe 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 puton the "graveyard shift," from two to four A.M. Actually, there was agraveyard on the uphill side of this enclosure, not many yards away. Mysuperiors 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 afairly bright night and I soon became aware of a prisoner crawling under thewires 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 Inoticed another prisoner crawling from the graveyard back to the enclosure.They were risking their lives to get to the graveyard for something; I had toinvestigate.When I entered the gloom of this shrubby, tree-shaded cemetery, I feltcompletely vulnerable, but somehow curiosity kept me moving. Despite mycaution, I tripped over the legs of someone in a prone position. Whippingmy rifle around while stumbling and trying to regain composure of mindand body, I soon was relieved I hadn't reflexively fired. The figure sat up.
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