Hancock Public Library

Soldiers and slaves, [American POWs trapped by the Nazis' final gamble], Roger Cohen

eng

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biography

Soldiers and slaves

compact disc

59669798

Roger Cohen

[American POWs trapped by the Nazis' final gamble]

In late 1944, the Germans, in an effort to offset the effects of Allied destruction of their fuel facilities, began construction of several underground facilities to produce and store synthetic fuel. These facilities were to be built largely by slave laborers, many of them diverted from neighboring concentration camps. In February 1945, these workers were joined by several hundred American POWs captured during the Battle of the Bulge. They had been singled out because they were Jewish or looked Jewish, or perhaps even because of random caprice. At a facility in eastern Germany, these Americans would experience the Holocaust as full-fledged victims rather than as liberators of the death camps, with sadistic guards, starvation rations, and consistent dehumanization of inmates. The death rate for POWs at that place was extremely high; it was exacerbated when they had to endure a forced march as the Nazi regime collapsed

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