WWII slave soldiers reunite after 64 years, prepare for honors

[sabra]

Source: CNN

ORLANDO, Florida (CNN) -- Samuel Fahrer and Sidney Lipson shake hands and smile. It's the first time the men have seen each other in 64 years. They were U.S. soldiers back on a forced death march in Nazi Germany in April 1945.

...

Fahrer and Lipson were among 350 soldiers held at the slave labor camp called Berga an der Elster, a largely forgotten legacy of the war and a subcamp of Buchenwald where soldiers were beaten, starved and forced to work in tunnels to hide German equipment.

More than 100 soldiers died at the camp and on the death march. Buchenwald was one of the largest and first concentration camps on German soil.

The Berga soldiers are being honored thanks in part to CNN.com users, who demanded the Army recognize the men, all in their 80s, after a series of reports late last year. The Army then conducted a months-long review of Berga at the urgings of Rep. Joe Baca, D-California, and Rep. Spencer Bachus, R-Alabama.


...


Those here look forward to what the general has to say. They want desperately to know why the U.S. government commuted the death sentences of the two Berga commanders, Erwin Metz and his superior, Hauptmann Ludwig Merz.

Both were tried for war crimes and initially sentenced to die by hanging until their commutations in 1948.

Read more: http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/06/03/berga.reunion/index.html

[dgibby]

1. Another of them, Morton Brooks (I think)

was interviewed on CNN by Kyra Phillips. He still doesn't know why our government made the men sign that they would not discuss anything about their incarceration (upon penalty of severe punishment).

This is why we need transparency in government. Gawd only knows what else is still classified or why.

Can you imagine being treated like this and being forbidden by your own government from ever talking about it?:mad: :puke: :wtf:

[imdjh]

3. Do you think there might be a very good reason?

I'm not saying that there is, just that as brilliant and informed as we are, there are things we don't know. There could be lives in the balance.

[dgibby]

4. Good question.

I think they may have had good reasons at the time, but I doubt that there's any reason to have kept it secret for 64 years. I do think it may have had something to do with the fact that sending Jewish Americans into that particular theater of war might have been a colossal blunder on our part, and somebody decided to classify the slave camp to save face.

[No Elephants]

5. If I were a Jewish American soldier, I would have wanted to be with a unit in Germany. Maybe

we should have given them a choice, but we should never have automatically segregated them.

[dgibby]

6. I would have too, but considering the probable outcome

had they been captured, it would, no doubt, have created a lot of bad publicity for the government at the time. I'm just speculating, based on my own 22yr military career, but I do know that the government will go to great lengths to avoid criticism if possible. I think classifying the info was probably some bureaucrat's knee jerk reaction after the fact. No matter what the rationale, these men deserve to know the truth now.

[No Elephants]

8. I was only taking issue with your statement that sending Jewish Americans there

would have been a colossal blunder on our part. Sending them there with no information and without giving them a choice--if we did that--would indeed have been a colossal blunder. However, IMO, automatically segregating our Jewish troops out of that theater would also have been a colossal blunder. That was my only point.

I did not argue for secrecy, or claim that our government never covers up its blunders, so no point in bringing up those issues in replying to me. My point was much narrower.

BTW, I don't know why you are saying "had they been captured," as though it didn't actually happen. Jewish American troops clearly were in that theater and clearly among those enslaved.

[No Elephants]

7. Can you think of any way lives could have been at risk bc of this information from WWII until

now? Can anyone?

[imdjh]

10. That would not be a very good standard.

I am decidedly unskilled in cloak and dagger- I couldn't even play high school games of deceit.

My answer would be yes, I can imagine there being very important reasons to keep somethings secret, perhaps well beyond the death of the last person involved. Governments, even those with a noble cause, sometimes have to deal with realities that do not jive with our morality, or even our constitution. At least of of the founding fathers was particularly concerned that our government didn't have the freedom to act and maneuver in ways which would make it able to defend itself either at home or abroad. Hence those remarks about the constitution only being suitable to govern an honest and moral people. Law is a curious thing, some people see principles inadequately expressed by words, others see loopholes and impediments to that which is essential.

No, it is not beyond my imagination that the US had to, or believed they had to, do some things during WWII that we never want to become common knowledge. And yes, I believe that 70 years later there could still be good reasons for not bring this stuff out. There is a certain amount of faith required here, faith that in having a country with at least two parties and in which the government changes hands at the highest levels that there are enough eyes on these and other decisions that we have about as much security and confidence as we can have in the system.

[No Elephants]

11. But my questions were not limited to you, nor did I say that the US did not have good reasons to

keep the internment secret for 65 years. The point is not simply assuming that government "must" have very legitimate reasons for secrecy, as the poster to whom I was responding seemed willing to do. Very often, the reasons for keeping things classified are not valid at all.

Faith in the system? Sorry, I think blind faith in any administration or group of administrations can be very dangerous to the system. For all we know, this stuff was classified only to prevent embarrassment to the government and remained classified all these years because no one reviewed every single piece of classified info whenever administrations changed, or because government wanted to wait until most WWII vets were dead before revealing this.

Don't know what you're off about when it comes to the founders and the Constitution. My post did not relate to any of those things; and the Constitution says zip about keeping things secret from the American people.

And you still did not come up with any specific set of circumstances in which revealing this info sooner than 2009 would have cost lives, which was what the poster to whom I replied posited. So, I am guessing you couldn't think of any.

[Karenina]

2. . .

[No Elephants]

9. Is that Chinese?