Archive for the ‘German POWs’ Category
Saturday, December 17th, 2011
When George W. Barnett attended an auction and entered the winning bid for an old trunk back in 2002, he also acquired a piece of Camp Aliceville history. The trunk is believed to have been given by German POWS as a wedding present to Captain Dodge Old and his wife Margaret while Captain Old was stationed at Camp Aliceville. 
Barnett, who is retired from the US government, grew up in Mississippi and, as a young boy, lived close to Camp McCain during World War II. Camp McCain became the POW camp for German captives who were anti-Nazi, so Barnett already had some knowledge of German POWs in the United States. As an adult, he worked on the Apollo program with NASA and on the Star Wars program with the Army. He and his wife Janet now live just north of Huntsville, Alabama, in a small community called Hazel Green.
The trunk, which is made of walnut and lined with cedar, is entirely handmade. It has a hidden drawer behind the trim at the bottom front that can only be opened when the lid is open. The top of the trunk features a diamond-shaped emblem (seen here in photo), and if this emblem is slid to one side, it raises up to reveal another secret compartment. "A very good craftsman had to have built this trunk," says Barnett. 
The handles at each end of the trunk are heavy brass in the shape of a German eagle. One handle is engraved with the initials DHO (Dodge H. Old) and the other the initials MLO (Margaret L. Old).
After Barnett acquired the trunk, he made minor repairs to the lid, which had been forced open because someone did not realize that there were hidden latches under each front corner. Barnett contacted an Old family member and offered to return the trunk, but they were not interested in it, and he has kept it in his home. He did learn from the family that Captain Old had died in a car accident about a year before the auction.
Barnett visited the Aliceville Museum in 2004 and obtained a copy of special military orders that list Captain Old in three places. Those military orders, dated 18 January 1945, refer to the transfer of German POWs from Camp Aliceville to Camp Forrest in Tennessee and to Camp Sibert (sic), which was also in Alabama. Captain Dodge H. Old was a member of the U. S. Army Infantry and is listed in connection with the Prisoner of War Fund, the Camp Working Committee, and the Camp Safety Council.
If any of my readers have additional knowledge of Captain Old and his experiences at Camp Aliceville or knowledge of the German POW who crafted this fine trunk, please let me know, and I will pass the information along to Mr. Barnett. My sincere thanks to him for sharing this information and these photos.
Posted in Aliceville Museum, German POWs, Uncategorized, World War II | 1 Comment »
Wednesday, December 7th, 2011
More than 19,000 Japanese-Americans served the United States during World War II, mainly in three units–the 100th Infantry Battalion, the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, and the Military Intelligence Service. In November of this year, those three Army units received a well-deserved thank you for their service when the United States Congress awarded them the Congressional Gold Medal during a ceremony in Washington, D.C. The Gold Medal is the highest civilian honor given by Congress.
GenevaPOW.com has carried several posts about the 442nd Regimental Combat Team. This is because, early in their training and before their participation in some of the fiercest battles of World War II, some members of the 442nd served as guards for German POWs from Camp Aliceville who were sent to Dothan, Alabama, for the peanut harvest in 1943.
If you are new to this blog and would like to read about that early experience connected to the 442nd, please search for the following earlier posts and for the story:
August 30, 2007–"Peanuts, POWs and Japanese Guards"
December 10, 2008–"Alabama Mosaic is a Wonderful Resource"
March 5, 2009–"Former 442nd POW Guard Sends Greetings"
The photo at right, (University of South Alabama Archives collection) shows an American soldier of Japanese descent guarding German POWs as they harvest peanuts in Barbour County, Alabama, in 1943.
We congratulate all of the valiant soldiers from the 442nd who were honored in November.
Posted in 442nd Regimental Combat Team, German POWs, Japanese-American guards, World War II | 3 Comments »
Wednesday, September 14th, 2011
 After Eugen Zimmermann arrived at Camp Aliceville as a German POW, he sent this telegram to his family back in Germany on November 14, 1943. It was customary to allow the POWs to send telegrams like these through the International Red Cross, but this is the first one I have been able to post on the blog, thanks to Eugen's granddaughter who sent a copy, along with information about her grandfather's World War II experiences.
Eugen Zimmermann was a carpenter by trade, and a very good one according to family accounts. His daughter has said that, while a POW, he was allowed to go into the town of Aliceville with work crews because of his skills. 
 Later, when he was released from Camp Aliceville, Eugen was sent to France. (The photo at left shows him during his time as a POW.) Like many Aliceville POWs (including Wilhelm Schlegel, who is also mentioned on this blog site), Eugen was kept in France for another year after the war. During this extra time as a prisoner,he did backbreaking work in a French coal mine. After the war, he told his family that he was treated well while in the U. S. but that his treatment was more difficult in France. "I guess it's understandable," said his granddaughter, "after what the Nazis did." She added that, although her grandfather served in the German army, he was not a Nazi. While he was away fighting, his wife took in war refugees and cared for them in her home, in spite of her meager circumstances. 
Eugen's granddaughter lives in Oklahoma where her father retired from the U.S. Army at Fort Sill. He met his wife, Eugen's daughter, in Ulm, Germany, and they have been married for 50 years. The family has just begun to research the World War II history, which they consider fascinating and important.
PLEASE NOTE: A journalist in South Carolina is seeking information about German POWs who were interned at Camp Aliceville in Alabama and then sent to an air force base camp at Florence, South Carolina. If any of my readers have information about these men, please leave a comment and I will put you in touch with this journalist.
Tags: Camp Aliceville, German POWs, WWII
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Friday, February 11th, 2011
 I first wrote a post about Camp Aliceville puppeteer Walter Buettner (1907 to 1990) on January 22, 2010. You can go to that post and see the basic information about him (seen here in 1945 with one of his puppets). I am adding additional information based on an article in the Museum News for July 2010.
When Buettner arrived at Camp Aliceville, he volunteered as a fireman in his POW compound kitchen. While working in the kitchen, he met Sergeant Ernst Hummel. Hummel was an artist and created the oil portrait of B. J. Johnston and the pencil sketches of Pep and Karen Johnston that hang in the Aliceville Museum.
 Buettner and Hummel, who had once cared for the props and costumes of a marionette theater in Frankfurt, gathered together twelve to fifteen other creative POWs and founded a puppet theater for the camp. Among their group were a wood carver, a tailor, a musician, a teacher, a music professor, and an "all-rounder." (Buettner is third from right, seated, in this photo.)
 The Camp Aliceville Puppeteers stayed in contact and got together for several reunions after their return to Germany. Seen here is the program for the fifth of those reunions, held in Maschen in August 1960.
The Aliceville Museum task of identifying, locating, and telling the stories of former POWs is both fascinating and daunting. The identification of Walter Buettner as the leader of the Camp Aliceville Puppeteers came about in two parts:
1) Holger Viereck, formerly of the German Supplementary School at the University of Alabama, first identified Buettner by name. Viereck is now an instructor at a university in Stuttgart.
2) Later, a Museum visitor from Bad Wimpfen named Dennis Bernhard, returned to Germany and was able to identify and then communicate with Walter Buettner's daughter Meike. After their visit, Bernhard forwarded several items of interest to the Museum as a presentation from the Buettner family. One of the most significant of these was a copy of the script for the puppet production Indienfahrt (Indian Journey), which was performed at Christmas in 1944 at Camp Aliceville. The family also sent a sketch of Buettner done at the camp by his friend Ernst Hummer, photographs of puppets created at Camp Aliceville, and illustrations from each of three reunions held by the Camp Aliceville Puppeteers.
Also of interest is the fact that, after Dennis Bernhard saw the painting of Bad Wimpfen that hangs in the Aliceville Museum, he returned home to Offenau and sent a comtemporary photograph that shows Bad Wimpfen from almost the exact same perspective as POW Emil Osterbrug's painting. Osterbrug presented the painting to Harvey Spiller on April 1, 1944, and it is now on loan to the Museum from Mr. and Mrs. Marvin Spiller. Bad Wimpfen is situated on the Neckar River about 40 miles southeast of Heidelberg and approximately one mile from Dennis Bernhard's hometown of Offenau.
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Monday, January 10th, 2011
Thanks to an invitation from my good friend Ruth Breipohl, who used to be associated with the library in Selma, I visited with Alabama's #1 Storyteller at her home in Selma on New Year's Day. When I reminded Kathryn, who is now in her early 90s, that our paths had crossed a number of times at writers' conferences–most recently at the Alabama Book Festival when both of us spoke there–she shared a story I had not heard before:
 "I know all about Aliceville," she said. "But in a roundabout way." Kathryn was born in Selma. After graduating from Huntingdon College in Montgomery in 1939, she worked first as a free-lance journalist in Thomasville and then as a feature writer and police reporter for The Alabama Journal in Montgomery. In 1942, she moved to Birmingham. She began working for The Birmingham News in 1943, editing state news and aviation articles and serving as a courthouse reporter. She also used the newspaper's Graflex camera (like the one at left) to take photos.
 While sitting in her dining room, next to a table laden with freshly cooked black-eyed peas and cornbread, Kathryn told me The Birmingham News sent her to Dothan in August 1943 to cover the peanut harvest because the German POWs were down there helping with it. "I had that big camera around my neck, and I went inside the fence to take some photographs," she said. "One of the POWs didn't want his picture taken, so he kind of came at me. He had a pitchfork in his hand." According to Kathryn, she ran as fast as she could with her camera bobbing and actually managed to get over the barbed wire fence without being harmed.
I have not yet located a newspaper article about this incident, but I do know Kathryn was working for the Birmingham newspaper in 1943 (the year before I was born). For now, you will have to judge for yourself how true-to-life her story is. Keep in mind two things: 1) Kathryn is a great storyteller. 2.) Kathryn and her family have lived for years with a ghost named Jeffrey.
For more information on Kathryn Tucker Windham, see the online Encyclopedia of Alabama at www.encyclopediaofalabama.org. For information about the 2011 Alabama Book Festival (April 16),visit www.writersforum.org. or www.alabamabookfestival.org.
To read more about the German POW participation in the peanut harvest of 1943, please see my previous blog entries for August 30 and 31, 2007 and March 5, 2009.
Tags: Aliceville, German POWs, Kathryn Tucker Windham, The Birmingham News, WWII
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Thursday, December 2nd, 2010
The current issue of Museum News (October 2010) (www.cityofaliceville.com) includes a quote from Stephen Ambrose in his book Citizen Soldiers. This quote, in my opinion, puts into perspective important stipulations of the Geneva Convention as they were applied during World War II. American prisoner of war camps like Camp Aliceville adhered to the directive that they provide the same quality of housing, nutrition, recreation, and religious opportunities that they provided for their own soldiers.
Ambrose stated the following on page 361 of Citizen Soldiers, which is available at www.amazon.com:
 In most cases, being a POW in World War II was about as bad a human experience as one could have. For certain, there was nothing good to be said about being a POW. Which was worse, being a German in Russian hands or a Russian in German hands? No one can say, but on a scale of horror they also rank ahead of being an American in German hands.
For comparison sake, between 34 and 38 percent of Americans held by Japanese as prisoners died; about two-third of Russian prisoners held in Germany appear to have died; and the proportion of Germans captured on the Eastern Front who died has been estimated as high as 80 percent. In the West, .7 percent of Americans held as POWs by the Germans died; 1 percent of the Germans held by the Americans died.
Stephen E. Ambrose was a leading World War II historian who wrote many books about World War II, including Band of Brothers, which was the basis for the movie, Saving Private Ryan. He died in 2002.
My thanks to Mary Bess Paluzzi at the Aliceville Museum for including this quote in the recent newsletter.MyMy
Tags: Camp Aliceville, German POWs, POW, WWII
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Thursday, November 18th, 2010
November 18, 2010
The Fort McClellan POW Society holds an annual ceremony in memory of World War II soldiers who died on foreign soil, among them 26 German and 3 Italian soldiers who died as prisoners of war in Alabama. This year's ceremony was held on Sunday, November 14, at the German-Italian cemetery on the grounds of Fort McClellan near Anniston, Alabama. It was held in commemoration of all foreign and US military soldiers who gave their lives for their countries.
Anniston Army Depot Lt. Col. Willie Flucker gave a speech that included this profound statement:
I have a connection to those who rest here. We are connected by our somber respect for the deadly business we are in. We value the military as a high calling and we honor all those, irrespective of nation, who answer that calling.
 Nearly 100 people attended this year, including military officials and Calhoun County residents who watched as wreaths were placed in front of the cemetery's iron cross–one to honor America's fallen heroes and one to honor the fallen German and Italian POWs. Other speakers were German Lt. Col. Christian Uhlig and Italian Lt. Col. Ezio Vecchio. "We have a message," said Uhlig, "and the message is to protect the world from having a future like the past." Vechhio agreed and spoke of the important human bond among people, regardless of nationality.
Ray and Karen Curvin said Sunday was the third time they had attended the ceremony. Ray's mother Anna grew up in Germany and married his American father when he was stationed there during military service. He offered this explanation for why he returns to this cemetery year after year:
I was born in Germany. I have aunts and uncles in Germany. It's the politics that start wars, but it's the people that fight in them. And people are people, everywhere.
I found this to be so true when I was writing about the POWs at Camp Alliceville. My thanks to Cameron Steele for reporting about this ceremony in The Anniston Star (www.annistonstar.com). The information in this blog post comes primarily from her article. My thanks also to historian Daniel Hutchinson for copies of the cemetery photos shared here.
For additional information about German POW involvement at Fort McClellan, please go to www.mcclellan.army.mil and click on "History."
Tags: German POWs, WWII
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Tuesday, November 16th, 2010
On page 311 of Guests Behind the Barbed Wire, I wrote about a New Year's sketch created by Hans Kopera while he was at Camp Aliceville. At the time, I did not know the thinking behind the creation of this sketch, which is described in detail on page 311. Below you will find a copy of the sketch and a better explanation of its meaning, which Dr. Kopera provided this week:
In Germany, people consider it good luck to meet and even touch a chimney sweep (Rauchfangkehrer) on New Year's Day. Chimney sweeps, who do not work on the holiday, often run about with their cleaning brushes so people can meet them and get their good luck for the coming year.
It is also traditional in Germany for people to eat–as their very first food on a New Year's morning–a piece of cooked, warm "pig head," (a piece of the snout or cheek), which is considered a symbol for a Happy New Year. They eat this with a delicious dip (Apfelkren) made of grated apple, horseradish, oil and vinegar.
When Hans Kopera created the sketch you see below in December 1944, he created it as a symbol for a happy new year by combining both of these good luck signs in one figure–the chimney sweep in his pants and jacket and top hat holding high the pig's head. My thanks to Dr. Kopera for this additional explanation.
Tags: Aliceville, Camp Aliceville, German POWs, WWII
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Tuesday, November 2nd, 2010
Here is the rest of the story about Dr. Hans Kopera's return to Camp Aliceville. He believes it is important to recognize and remember the important work of "the Birmingham doctor" who took the time to drive him back to Aliceville: (PLEASE NOTE: THE NEXT POST, ON NOVEMBER 3, 2010, CONTAINS MORE INFORMATION ABOUT "THE BIRMINGHAM DOCTOR" AND HIS WORK.
In 1975, Dr. Charles Kochakian was Director and Professor of Experimental Endocrinology at the University of Alabama, Birmingham, Medical Center (now known as the University of Alabama at Birmingham). Dr. Kochakian was the first scientist to demonstrate, through animal experiments and human investigations, that androgenic Steroids have an additional effect. He called this effect "anabolic," and thus coined the word ANABOLIC, which is a term now recognized throughout the world. Since that time, numerous investigations have confirmed Dr. Kochakian's original observations.
Dr. Kochakian then published an extensive summary of these findings, Anabolic-Androgenic Steroids: Handbook of Experimental Pharmacology (Springer Verlag). For the publication, he invited 18 authors (15 from the USA and 1 each from South America, Japan, and Europe) to contribute. The invited European author was Dr. Hans Kopera.
Before the manuscript was completed in 1976, Dr. Kochakian invited all of the authors to a meeting in Birmingham to discuss the work, and Dr. Kopera was a guest of the Kochakians in their home for several days during the meeting. One evening he mentioned that he had spent two years in a POW camp called Aliceville "somewhere near Birmingham." Neither doctor knew where Aliceville was, but they looked it up on a map, and Dr. Kochakian offered to drive Dr. Kopera there (about two hours away in Pickens county) to see what remained of the camp.
I wrote about this visit in Guests Behind the Barbed Wire, describing how the two men inquired at the Aliceville post office where they met a local resident named David Stringfellow who showed them around. Most of the camp had been dismantled and sold for scrap after the war, but they did locate one of the old buildings, and Dr. Kopera took a photograph of it. When I wrote about this incident, I did not know who the Birmingham doctor was.
A few weeks after that visit, a letter arrived at the City Council chambers in Aliceville. In it, Dr. Kopera expressed his heartfelt thanks to those who had made him feel welcome when he came to renew old memories. These words from his letter, written 30 years after his POW experience, are important words of perspective with a message for all of us:
…what I did not expect and actually found was the extremely kind reception by people with whom I talked in Aliceville. In particular, one of your town councilmen was so kind to even give us a sort of 'sightseeing tour. I believe this attitude towards a former prisoner of war excellently demonstrates how much the thinking of people has changed to the better. The ready acceptance which I have found in your town by members of the younger and older generation convinced me once more that the desire to promote understanding between nations has become strong enough to suppress or perhaps even forget bad experiences of periods full of insanity and lack of humanity. I can assure you I was happy to be back in this part of America and to meet so many friendly people.
Dr. Kochakian passed away in February 1999 at the age of 91. Dr. Kopera retired in 1986 at the age of 62. He has been a widower since 1964. Dr. Kopera has three children. One son is a dental doctor in Graz, Austria. The other is F&B Vice President of Rosewood Hotels and Resorts in Dallas, Texas. His daughter is a singer and actress in Vienna.  [Dr. Kopera with his daughter Sabine]
This past year, Dr. Kopera visited Aliceville again, this time with his son Gert who lives in Dallas. (See photo below.) Father and son toured the site of the hospital where Dr. Kopera had worked and studied during the war, and they talked with employees of Alabama Casting LLC, which is now located on that site. The employees recently discovered a broken piece of dinnerware from the camp hospital with the medical caduceus emblem still visible. They presented the pottery piece to Dr. Kopera. 
Also during that three-day visit, Dr. Kopera met with graduate students who are participating in a German Studies seminar conducted by Dr. Thomas C. Fox at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa. The students are translating issues of Der Zaungast, a newspaper that was published by Camp Aliceville POWs during WWII. Following this visit, Dr. Kopera again wrote to express his appreciation:
…Gert and I think of the extremely kind hospitality we were privileged to receive from you. The visit to Aliceville remains unforgettable to us. It was an exceptional experience….I hope your quite unique museum will keep the attention it deserves and remain of interest for many people.
If you are interested in visiting this "quite unique museum," please contact the director, Mary Bess Paluzzi, through the museum website at www.cityofaliceville.com/MuseumMain.htm. If you visit the museum website listed here and click on "Museum News," you can view the October newsletter and see photographs of the camp dinnerware piece and of Dr. Tom Fox's German studies seminar class members on their visit to Aliceville.
Tags: Aliceville, Camp Aliceville, German POWs, Graz, WWII
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Monday, November 1st, 2010
In my next two posts, I'd like to update my readers on the experiences of a prisoner of war who made of the most of a difficult captivity. He emerged from the darkness of World War II to become a valuable contributor to the medical knowledge of our world.
Among the many individual stories in my book, Guests Behind the Barbed Wire, was that of Hans Kopera who was a young citizen of Austria when German troops entered his country and formed a Nazi government in 1938. He wanted to become a doctor, but because of the war, he and many of his high school friends enlisted in the German army. At the age of seventeen, Hans Kopera was assigned to the Second Kradschuetzen (motorcycle) battalion of the 10th Panzer Division. After action in France, his unit was transferred to Tunisia in northern Africa. Kopera participated in a number of battles in late 1942 and early 1943. He was promoted to sergeant and received the Iron Cross for bravery after facing British and American forces at Kasserine Pass, Tebourba, Tebessa, and Medenine.
 Because his motorcycle unit was captured on Good Friday morning 1943 in the hills above the Medjerda Valley, Hans Kopera became one of the earliest prisoners of war at the newly opened Camp Aliceville in Pickens County, Alabama, on June 3, 1943. As a nineteen year old POW, he found some solace in his situation when he became an interpreter and was able to work and study with both the German and the American doctors in the camp hospital. Hans had a talent for drawing, and during his time at Camp Aliceville, he created hilarious caricatures of other POWS and even of American officers in the camp. These sketches were often in demand as simple wartime gifts for birthdays and other special occasions. During his last year at the camp, Kopera spent his mornings on a small chair he had made, studying everything from basic chemistry to histology. In the afternoons he interpreted for the doctors, and at night, he visited the x-ray lab to make medical sketches.
 After his release in the spring of 1945, Hans Kopera spent time in several other camps, including one near Washington DC where he ran a dispensary for POW patients. He cared for the mildly ill and sent those with serious medical issues to Walter Reed Hospital for treatment. When he left the United States, he spent time in a camp in Bolbec (France) before being discharged at Corinthia in Austria in July 1946. Kopera has commented that his treatment in these subsequent camps was "distinctly worse" than his experiences at Camp Aliceville.
When he was accepted into medical school at the University of Graz in September 1946, he received a full year of credit for his studies and medical experience while a POW at Camp Aliceville. Dr. Kopera received his MD degree from the Medical School at the University of Graz in 1951. After three years' practice in hospitals and several months as a general practitioner in Basel, Switzerland, he specialized for four years in Pharmacology, partly at Graz and partly at Oxford in England. His connection to Camp Aliceville might have ended there as he went on to become Head of clinical research for the pharmaceutical company N. V. Organon in the Netherlands and then returned to the University of Graz as Head of the Clinical Pharmacology unit where he was also a lecturer and a professor until he retired in 1986. During his professional career, Dr. Kopera held leading positions at the International Health Foundation in Geneva and with other scientific organizations in Rome and at Oss in the Netherlands. His scientific work was concentrated on Endocrinological Pharmacology–specifically Gynecology, Anabolic Steriods, Neuropharmacology, and Contraception.
In Guests Behind the Barbed Wire, I wrote briefly about Dr. Kopera's first return trip to Aliceville, Alabama in February 1975. I mentioned "a doctor from Birmingham" who drove him to Aliceville to visit what was left of the camp. Two weeks ago, I was delighted and surprised to receive an email from Dr. Kopera offering additional specific information about this internationally known "doctor from Birmingham" and that visit. In my next post, I will share with you the rest of this story, Part II, about how Dr. Kopera came to visit Dr. Charles Kochakian in Birmingham and then revisit Camp Aliceville with him. 
** Please check back in a day or two for (as Paul Harvey would have said) "the rest of the story."
Tags: Camp Aliceville, German POWs, Graz, Tunisia Kassarene Pass, WWII
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