Hitler's British Slaves (15 page)

For the POWs at Auschwitz, the living conditions they endured were much the same as in many of the other work camps across the Reich. Their accommodation huts were
basic and their food often appalling. When one group arrived to start work at the camp – as punishment for having previously refused to work – they were given a meal of fish that many among them refused. They were right to do so. Those that ate the fish were immediately sick. Yet this meal that included meat had been a luxury, albeit an inedible one. Most meals consisted of simple soups, often made from chestnuts and what seemed to be sawdust. The soup, which the prisoners mockingly compared to dishwater, was served from 25-gallon containers, which contained enough – in the view of the Germans – to feed hundreds of workers. Alongside it they were served a small slice of black bread, apart from that they relied on the contents of Red Cross parcels. With parcels growing increasingly scarce in the latter stages of the war the prisoners saw their own failing health mirror that of the concentration camp inmates. They too grew thin, their bones protruding through pale skin, their bellies yearning for something – anything – to quell the pangs of hunger. By the time the camp was finally evacuated some among them weighed as little as 6 stone. Most grew certain that even if they survived the attentions of the guards they would surely never survive if salvation did not come soon.

Food was not the only thing on their minds and it was not just the sight of inmates being abused and murdered that affected them. They also had to endure the sickly sweet smell of burning flesh that hung over the area. With this smell engulfing their senses the prisoners had to carry on with their daily labours. Whether they were constructing walls, digging ditches and laying pipes or unloading railway wagons, they worked with the knowledge that death was never far away. In some parts of the camp their ears were constantly assailed by the screams of inmates as they were beaten by the sadistic guards. With life so cheap it was little wonder imprisonment
in Auschwitz took its toll. Some found solace in the dangerously cheap alcohol they were able to trade for the contents of their Red Cross parcels. Others retreated into themselves whilst some, unhinged by what they saw around them, made hopelessly suicidal attempts to escape.

It was not only as labourers that some among the POWs found themselves within concentration camps, some were unfortunate enough to be thrown in amidst the mass of inmates. One group of two British sailors and an army NCO who were evacuated from Italy in August 1943 were sent to Dachau, one of the first concentration camps to be established by the Nazis. In this living hell, situated outside Munich, the POWs were subjected to senselessly brutal beatings by guards. With their POW status an irrelevance, they were punched and kicked for no reason other than for being there. After four months they were finally transferred from the camp, although one man – Sergeant Edwards – was left behind due to an attack of malaria. Any hopes the men had of being returned to a Stalag were dashed when they found themselves hustled behind the wire of Buchenwald, yet another concentration camp. The treatment they faced was much the same as at Dachau, with one of the men severely beaten for the simple crime of having his hands in his pockets. After two months a courageous Czech interpreter on the camp staff intervened, they were then finally released and sent to Stalag XIIIc. Just two weeks after leaving Buchenwald the two sailors were classed as fit enough to be sent to a work camp. After just one day’s labour one of the sailors, W. Holt, went straight to bed where he remained until he died a week later. Though the cause of his death was given as influenza it was clear that Holt had never been fit enough to work. As a protest his former concentration camp colleague, Stoker Robertson, refused to do any further work.

The visible mistreatment of concentration camp inmates was a sobering thought for all the prisoners who witnessed it, or even heard rumours of the evil perpetrated by the Nazis. The possibility of being worked to death by their guards hung over all the prisoners like a dark cloud. For some it was made all the more ominous by the knowledge that the protection of the Red Cross would not be enough to save them if the Germans decided to take action. There were many Jewish soldiers among the prisoners. Many were born and raised in cities throughout the British Isles. Others were Jewish exiles from Europe who had adopted British names and officially changed their religion so as to avoid identification if they were captured. Such concealment of their identity was not so simple. There were also large numbers of Palestinian Jews, captured during the campaign in North Africa, for whom the spectre of German abuse was very real. Of the 234 Arbeitskommandos formed from Stalag VIIIb at Lamsdorf 16 were exclusively for Jewish POWs, many of whom were assigned to mines where they experienced conditions far removed from that of their homeland. At E86, in which one of these detachments was based, they were subjected to many reprisals by their guards. In protest 30 men went on hunger strike. Yet surprisingly, despite their fears, most discovered they were treated little differently from prisoners of other religious denominations and were able to work through the hardships until their liberation.

Jewish prisoners were not the only ones segregated into their own work camps. Black British and Commonwealth troops were often sent to segregated work camps, despite being integrated within the Stalags. At AK1740, a work camp dependent on Stalag XIIIc, a group of 48 black soldiers were not allowed to take walks outside their camp. This was a privilege often extended to men at work camps since
their guards knew they would not try to escape. The German authorities gave very definite reasons why the men should not be allowed out into the streets. They thought the sight of negroes would ‘cause a sensation’
²⁷
and thus confined the unfortunate men to the camp.

Segregation was also used for political purposes. The German authorities were confident they would be able to turn some among their captives against the British. As a result the Irish were singled out for special attention. It was hoped that they would find Irish nationalists among the captured men and be able to turn them against their supposed oppressors. However, the Germans were in for a shock. They established Arbeitskommando 961 at Friesack, which came under the jurisdiction of Stalag IIIc. Here 120 ‘Irishmen’ were assembled into a working party that was kept away from the influence of the ‘English’. The plan had numerous drawbacks that undermined their intentions. Though the camp had both hot and cold running water, with showers described by inmates as ‘excellent’ and with ‘perfect’ latrines, the prisoners were not satisfied. Nor did the fact that they seldom worked for more than 3 hours a day, or the fact that they were given days off when the weather was bad, help to sway their minds. The problem was the ‘Irishmen’ were from a wide mix of backgrounds. There were men from both Ulster and from the Free State. Some were simply men from England of Irish heritage and others were men born in Ireland yet brought up in towns across the United Kingdom, or simply Englishmen serving in units like the Irish Guards. Even those from the south of Ireland were men who had happily joined the British Army, either out of a determination to fight the Nazis or from a sense of adventure. Many among them simply considered themselves British despite their heritage. Whatever their cause or their backgrounds the Germans failed to raise any
significant interest among the prisoners. Despite initial efforts to bombard the men with anti-British propaganda there was no question of an Irish legion being raised to fight for Irish independence. Indeed most among them questioned why they had been forced into the camps and argued for their reintegration into the camps from which they had originally come. For some Irishmen segregated in working parties just for the ‘Irish’ the situation was made worse by the widespread belief that they were receiving preferential treatment and extra Red Cross food and clothing. One ‘Irishman’ later reported how they actually received no Red Cross parcels and no spare clothing. At work they would be handed one of two coloured tickets, according to how hard the foreman believed they had worked. Men with red tickets could draw full rations, but those with green received just half the ration.

Whether at segregated detachments or in work camps that simply picked men at random from the hordes within the Stalags, most of the working prisoners faced the same basic concerns. As the war progressed they faced questions over their future. What worried them was the heavy and debilitating nature of their work, the shortages of food and what the enemy intended for their fate when the Reich finally collapsed. Throughout the war – whether whilst the Third Reich was at the height of its power or descending into chaos – when questioned by the Red Cross about the conditions faced by the prisoners the Germans offered simple answers. They claimed working conditions endured by POWs matched those of civilian workers, hiding the fact that most civilians had suitable protective clothing. They also pointed to events that undermined their efforts to provide for the prisoners – most notably the Allied bombing raids that increasingly battered the Reich’s infrastructure. In particular they highlighted the shortages of Red Cross parcels caused by the fact that the
Allied advance had cut the normal supply lines via Portugal, France and Switzerland.

Though they made such claims about wartime conditions undermining their efforts and despite problems of infrastructure and inefficiency there was seldom a delay in sending newly captured men to work. A group of 80 paratroopers captured at Arnhem in late September 1944 had already been working in a sugar refinery for five weeks when they were visited by the Red Cross in early November. In those five weeks they had not been given a single day off, were working 12-hour shifts and had no cooking and washing facilities or sanitation. Nor were the prisoners given proper protective footwear despite often working with their feet submerged in water. The lack of access to cooking facilities was in many ways an irrelevance since they received no Red Cross parcels of food to be cooked. The discomfort of their immediate introduction to the rigours of working in German industry was a fitting precursor for the turmoil they and their fellow workers would endure in the final months of the war.

4

The Land Army

‘I knew all the places to get food … If you walked in a barn and you saw a hen start moving and cackling then she’d laid an egg…

You knew if a cow kicked out when you touched its udders then it wanted milking. I used to know when the pig was going to have babies, then I’d wait a couple of weeks and go down and knock one off… There were lots of things you could use, it was like fieldcraft.’
¹

Whilst those prisoners forced to labour in heavy industry endured appalling conditions and bemoaned their fate, many of those sent to work on farms praised their good fortune. Compared to some of the work on offer, the Landwirtschaft Arbeitskommandos were not a bad place to be sent. Whether they were working on small family farms high in the mountains of Austria or vast state farms in the newly acquired lands of the east, the prisoners enjoyed a relatively comfortable life. It was not that their work was not heavy – indeed like all prisoners they endured much during their captivity – yet the countryside offered a freedom that many were to enjoy to the utmost. As a result agricultural labouring became possibly the most favoured of all work details. The work was demanding, especially at harvest time, but they spent most of their days outside in the fresh air and compared to life down coal mines or in heavy industry, it was a blessing. There was usually enough food, even if it had to be stolen, there were plenty of women and in many cases little restriction was put on the prisoners, as one remembered: ‘They sent me to a farm for three and a half years. It was a state farm in a little village not far from Marienburg, about 20 or 30 houses. Actually we ran the farm. We had two old guards, one of them spent most
of his time with one of the women, getting his end away, so he never used to bother us much. So we ran the place.’
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With many of the agricultural prisoners free to make their own way to and from work they found they had entered a world far removed from the unreal world of prisoner of war camps.

Ken Willats recalled the first time he was called for work from Stalag XXa:

I don’t know how they decided who was going to go on a working party. But the Germans told farmers that if they wanted labour the Wehrmacht would supply them if they would provide board and lodging. Your name and POW number was called out from a list. The first one I was sent out on was to Bromberg on a project to strip large trees of their bark and then using a big machine to get the roots out of the ground.
³

Working at an Arbeitskommando in a Polish forest was just one of the many jobs Willats would have before he eventually settled down to spend almost three years on a state farm where labouring in all the jobs available he soon began to learn the ways of the countryside. For all he learnt in his new employment it could never erase the vivid memories of the world he came from – the same world he yearned to return to.

For some prisoners agricultural details were the perfect place to be sent. Those born and bred in the countryside were relieved to be somewhere where they could continue to practise their peacetime occupations. The livestock offered no shocks to them and the cycle of seasons and nature was what they expected of life – they had always risen with the sun and worked through the daylight hours. They had all the talents needed – they understood when animals were sick, they
could predict what weather lay ahead and they could maximise their efficiency to minimise their workload. Whether crofters from the Scottish Islands or dairy herders from the pastures of England, whether cattle ranchers from the plains of Canada or shepherds from the rolling hills of New Zealand – all had talents they were eager to use. For such men to be detailed to stables to groom horses was no chore, merely a continuation of life under different circumstances.