Betrayed: Secrecy, Lies, and Consequences

by Frederic Martini

  After the men were dismissed, Fred, aching and sore and a bit nervous about the whole experience, was treated as a hero. Sam kidded him that he must have intentionally broken the needle to spare Sam and the rest from receiving doses of the mystery drug. Fred found the banter raised his spirits, reminding him of his days with the Jackson crew.

  Outside of Little Camp, just past the cinema building, was a large tent enclosed by an electric fence. Fred had heard that it was the SS brothel, and every once in a while he would wander over by the fence, hoping to get a glimpse of a woman. One morning, he was dismayed to see the body of an obviously pregnant woman dangling from the electrified fence. Later in the day, prisoners passing by told the airmen that she had committed suicide rather than have yet another baby taken away and killed. The guards left her body there for several days, perhaps as a warning to the other women.

  THE FIFTH WEEK

  On 20 September, midway through their fifth week, the airmen were called together, marched out of Little Camp, and taken to the processing area for their first shower. When his turn came, Fred was given 3-4 minutes to rinse in tepid water, with neither soap nor towel. After removing the last traces of the orange X on his chest, he no longer felt like a marked man. His head was then shaved before the airmen were taken back to Block 58.

  Later in the day, Fred was hanging around the open area, smoking a cigarette, when he saw SS guards and a senior SS officer escorting a pair of high-ranking Luftwaffe officers along the northern fence-line. They were heading toward the German Armaments Works. One of the officers was tall and almost regal in his bearing, and his gray uniform was adorned with countless ribbons and medals that Fred didn’t recognize. In addition to the ribbons, he wore an Iron Cross around his neck. This was obviously a person of importance and potential influence. While the SS officer spoke at length and pointed out details of the bombed factories, the Luftwaffe officer’s eyes were scanning the compound.

  After a quick consultation with Lt. Powell, the closest officer, Sgt. Bernie Scharf marched to the closest point on the inner fenceline, snapped to attention, and saluted, calling out a request, in German, to speak with the Luftwaffe officer. The SS officer attempted to move the party along, but the Luftwaffe officer curtly dismissed these efforts, and moved to the fence-line opposite Scharf.

  The Luftwaffe officer was Major Hannes Trautloft. In the exchange that followed, Powell, with Scharf translating, reported that there were 168 Allied POWs being held at Buchenwald in violation of the Geneva Conventions. When asked for additional specifics, he gave the names of Lt. Powell, Captain Larson, and Squadron Leader Lamason. The Luftwaffe officer listened carefully, jotting some notes on a pocket notebook pulled from his uniform jacket. He promised Scharf that he would check out their story, and if true, he would do what he could to secure their transfer to a POW camp.82

  Since their arrival, the Gestapo had been taking one or two airmen aside for interrogation at random intervals. Late in the week it was Fred’s turn. It was an odd session — for some reason they wanted information about his family and Brooklyn. As usual he refused to give any information other than name and serial number, and as usual, this resulted in assorted slaps and punches. As he stood at the end of the session, one of the guards clubbed him in the right side, and the pain it produced was staggering.

  THE SIXTH WEEK

  Fred could feel himself losing a little ground each day. He had a chronic head cold, dysentery was taking a toll, and he itched constantly from fleas, lice, and scabies. He had large pus-filled abscesses on the soles of his feet and at his ankles, and he hobbled to the abort and to the daily appell. Among the other airmen, it was Hemmens who was in the worst shape. He had double pneumonia, rheumatic fever, and blood poisoning, and he was so malnourished and debilitated that his broken arm wasn’t healing. Philip D. Hemmens died early on the morning of 27 September, after 38 days in Buchenwald. He was only 20 years old, and he had been treated like a younger brother by most of the other airmen. Fred had admired his pluck — he had survived the broken and re-broken arm, beatings from guards, and harsh treatment, without flinching or complaining.

  THE SEVENTH WEEK

  The weather continued to deteriorate. Another half-inch of rain fell on 1 October, and temperatures dropped. The high temperature on October 2nd was 46°F. Around that time, the person Fred thought of as “The Movie Star Major” returned, and several hundred additional skilled “volunteers” were collected from Little Camp. Although they would have welcomed better living conditions, Fred and the other airmen loathed the Germans and would never willingly assist them. Earlier that day, he had seen 300 Jews arrive in Little Camp after being shipped by boxcar from a kommando at a salt mine.

  The men, ages 15-65, were exhausted and malnourished, no longer fit for heavy labor. They had been given no food or water during the three days they stood packed together in the boxcars. When they moved past, Fred saw the blank, glazed expressions of people with neither strength nor hope. When they were marched back to the boxcars a day or two later, everyone knew that the men were headed for execution, but they looked just as listless and unconcerned. Fred discussed his observations with Sam and the other noncoms in the squad. They decided that if they knew they were going to be executed they would not go passively. Better to rush the guards hoping that someone would get a weapon and take a few of the Germans with him.

  How much good Fred would be in that effort was an open question, as he was now in serious trouble. He had lost at least 30 pounds, roughly 20% of his body weight. Several teeth had fallen out, lost to pyorrhea (gum disease) and malnutrition, and his feet were swollen and badly infected. There was blood in his urine, his remaining teeth felt loose, and his flak wounds, which had healed months earlier, were reopening.83 He was severely sleep-deprived but afraid to fall asleep because his dreams were so terrible. He considered simply giving up and waiting for the end, but he refused to give the Germans that satisfaction. He would fight them every step of the way and hang on until the bitter end, if for no other reason than to spite the Nazi bastards. No matter the cost, he would survive for his family in Brooklyn and for his friends in Hacqueville, and he vowed that somehow he would settle the score for his betrayal.

  It helped a little to know that many of the other men had similar problems. Snoring and coughing were common at night, but so was whimpering, moaning, and silent crying. What created a crisis for Fred was the pain that had started at his last interrogation and grown to become a gnawing beast tearing at his insides. He’d had episodes of abdominal pain in the past, but nothing like the agony he was experiencing.

  By that evening, Fred had developed a high fever. Several days later, the pain was so intense that Sam had to help him out of his bench and prop him up at appell. However, when SS-Corporal Hoffman spied weakness, he gave Fred a jab with his baton that dropped him like a stone. After a farewell boot in the side, Hoffman ordered Kindinger to deliver Fred to the hospital tent. On a cot in the tent, nothing was done except to take his temperature every hour. While his nervous buddies could visit, they could do nothing, and they watched helplessly as Fred became delirious.

  There was general consensus among the prisoner orderlies that Fred had acute appendicitis and needed immediate surgery, but there was no operating theater, and neither surgical instruments nor anesthetics were available. A transfer to the SS hospital would have only one result — execution by lethal injection.84

  Dr. Balachowski, the prisoner-physician assigned to Block 46, told Sam the situation was hopeless, but an Indian prisoner with limited medical knowledge (he’d trained as a pharmacist) advocated surgery. In preparation, he made a scalpel by carefully shaping and sharpening a discarded spoon. Nobody was very enthusiastic about Fred’s prospects for survival, and Fred, delirious, was in no condition to make a decision. For Fred, it was all a blur, and his memories of Balachowski, Sam, Paul, Ed, and the Indian orderly ran together, with sentence fragments in a mixture of German, French, and English.

&nbs
p; That evening after appell, Ed Ritter was visiting when Fred’s eyes opened and he groggily asked where he was. Delighted, Ed told him that he was in the hospital tent with appendicitis. When the orderly came for the hourly temperature check, he found that the fever had broken. Fred, weak as a kitten but no longer in acute pain, was soon able to sit up and eat a few small chunks of bread soaked in soup broth. The next day, rather than undergoing field surgery with a sharpened spoon, Fred was escorted back to Block 58, where he was warmly welcomed — nobody had expected him to survive.

  There was more good news. At long last, the airmen were given shoes, flat wooden sandals with cloth straps that were one-size-fits-all. They took some getting used to, but they offered much better foot protection than pieces of boards or strips of cloth. The shoes were welcome, but they had arrived far too late for most of the airmen who, like Fred, had badly infected feet and swollen legs.

  THE EIGHTH WEEK

  The week of 8 October was cold, gray, and miserable, matching the moods of the airmen. No one, not even the officers, talked about escape plans. Instead, they spoke of survival or said nothing at all.85 Fred needed no coaching as he was already committed to hanging on. He hobbled to the abort, to appell, and on work details. When several teeth fell into his hand after a prolonged coughing spell, he just shook his head in disgust and tossed them aside. He swore to himself that the only way the Germans were going to defeat him was to shoot him.

  Midweek, SS-Corporal Hoffman and a platoon of SS guards entered the compound and ordered Kindinger to assemble the airmen. The 155 airmen — 12 were in the hospital tent, too sick to move — were marched out of Little Camp and taken to the cinema block, where a decorated, senior Luftwaffe officer was waiting for them.

  When the airmen were present and accounted for, he introduced himself as an officer from Dulag Luft, the processing center for POW airmen. He said that the Luftwaffe had lost track of the airmen when Paris was evacuated, and it had taken this long to locate them. He apologized for the delay, promising to return as soon as suitable transport had been arranged for their transfer to a Luftwaffe-run POW camp. The relief in the room was palpable, and the march back to Block 58 seemed shorter and easier.

  Lamason remained uneasy. He knew about the DIKAL classification, and also knew that their execution orders were on file in the camp office. All it would take would be a phone call from the RSHA giving the final authorization, and they would be scheduled for immediate execution. Lamason gathered that there was no love lost between the SS and the Luftwaffe, and the simplest way for the SS to avoid a political tug-of-war over their fate would be to kill them before the Luftwaffe arrived to remove them. That did seem to be the plan, as he soon received word that “the call” had been received and their execution scheduled for Tuesday, October 24th.

  THE NINTH WEEK

  While the airmen waited in anticipation, life and death in Buchenwald continued as ever. On 16 October, punishment was administered to three Polish prisoners. The three had escaped from an outside work kommando. With no idea of where to go in central Germany, they were soon recaptured. They were brought back to Buchenwald after five days, but they were either caught at different times, or two of them had bribes or other bargaining chips, as only one was executed.86 The sentences were carried out at appell, in front of the assembled ranks of prisoners, and the proceedings were broadcast over the speakers.

  Fred, in the main camp on a kitchen assignment, watched the events unfold. A chained prisoner was escorted from the cell block, and SS-Sergeant Werner Warnstedt took him to the gallows. After the execution, the other prisoners were led out and stretched across the whipping table where the 25 lashes were administered. It was all done with little apparent emotion, and in near-total silence. The Poles offered no resistance, the SS guards showed a cold detachment, and the assembled witnesses — all 25,000 of them — stood quietly at attention with their hats off, waiting for the proceedings to end. Fred realized that he no longer seethed with outrage at the brutality around him. It was just another day at the office for the staff and prisoners at Buchenwald. With bodies stacked like cord wood throughout the camp, why make a fuss over a single death?

  Although Hemmens had so far been the only casualty among the airmen, Fred knew that all of them were on thin ice. He had no idea how much more weight he could lose — he hardly recognized his own body. Everyone had lost considerable weight, but the high fever and appendicitis had hit him hard.87 A dozen airmen were in the hospital tent, their fates uncertain. Fred was determined to hang on as long as possible, but he still worried that the Luftwaffe transfer might come too late.

  Fortunately, the Luftwaffe knew that the airmen were in dire straits, and the planning was expedited. Two days later, the airmen were collected and returned to the cinema block for another meeting with the officer from Dulag Luft. He informed them that transport had been arranged, and that they would be leaving Buchenwald the next day. One detail needed to be taken care of before this could happen, however. All of the airmen would need to fill out the Red Cross cards that his aides were distributing. Anyone who did not fill out his card would not be considered a bona fide POW, and would be left behind. The officer and his aides then left the room.

  The discussion that followed was long and at times quite heated. Lamason began by saying that the information requested on the cards would for all practical purposes be worthless intelligence — whatever the men could recall would be so far out of date that it would probably mislead the Germans rather than help them. But he then said that although he would not fault anyone for filling out one of these cards, he intended to provide only his name, rank, and serial number, as required by the Geneva Conventions. Others in the room were much less forgiving, angrily denouncing anyone who filled out a card as a cowardly traitor. Fred stayed out of the discussion, as he had already decided that he would give the Germans no more information than Lamason would.

  When the Luftwaffe officer returned hours later, from the 155 airmen in the hall, he collected 118 “completed” cards, although many of those cards contained deliberate errors and misstatements, and others had only minimal information. There were 37 airmen who had simply refused to fill out the forms, and those men were advised to consider their situation further.

  The next morning, coffee was delivered, and the airmen — all 155 of them, even those who had refused to complete the forms — were taken to the processing room. There they surrendered their metal discs in exchange for their clothing and shoes. There was some grumbling when they found that other personal effects, such as watches or rings, would not be returned, but the general mood remained upbeat.

  Fred could hardly believe how good it felt to strip off his striped suit and don the dirty, smelly, civilian clothes he had worn on the train from Paris. He was equally glad to lose the hard wooden sandals, although his swollen, infected feet protested at being forced into covered shoes. Although he welcomed the prospect of imminent salvation, Fred was worried about the airmen they would be leaving behind, but Lamason had been assured that those men would follow as soon as they were fit to travel.

  The airmen ready to leave Buchenwald were taken outside where they were assembled and counted. It was raining and cold — not yet 50°F — and a layer of smoke from the crematorium hung over the camp beneath the low clouds, but those details probably escaped them. When the counting was completed, the airmen marched, escorted by 30 SS guards, past the crematorium and on to the train yard, following the route taken when they had arrived.

  It was the morning of 19 October 1944, and Fred had survived 61 days in Buchenwald, losing an average of one pound of body weight per day. He emerged as a pared down version of his former self, leaving youth, optimism, faith, and all illusions about human nature behind in the dust and the greasy ashes.

  78 They were taken to Dora Concentration Camp, a sub-camp of Buchenwald that housed laborers for the Mittelwerk.

  79 Probably SS-Major Erwin Ding-Schuler, who performed many medical experime
nts on prisoners.

  80 Reichssicherheitshauptamt, the Reich Main Security Office, run by Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler.

  81 This was probably SS-Sergeant Hermann Helbig, who also worked at Block 99, where Russian POWs were executed.

  82 This was politically challenging. Trautloft was engaged to a woman who was part-Jewish, and if the SS focused attention on him there would be terrible consequences. So he took the matter to his superiors, which led to a meeting among senior Luftwaffe officers, including Hermann Göring.

  83 These problems, common among the airmen, were related to malnourishment and vitamin C deficiency.

  84 Sick airmen were kept in the medical tent, in Block 54, or occasionally in Block 46. Sixty to eighty of the airmen were sick enough to require “hospitalization” while at Buchenwald.

  85 Things were bad enough that Lamason considered gathering up the cached weapons and making a potentially suicidal escape attempt while some of his men could still stand and fight. But the Communists felt that with the SOE agents dead and the airmen all but incapacitated, there was no reason to give them any weapons.

  86 The standard policy was that an escaping prisoner recaptured after less than three days on the run would be publicly whipped. A prisoner at large for more than three days was to be executed, because it was assumed that the only way he could have survived that long would have been to steal food, and theft was a capital crime.

  87 The airmen lost on average 35-40% of their body weight while in Little Camp.

  CHAPTER 11

  Stalag Luft III