North American Jews Should Pay For This!

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Wade Hampton III
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North American Jews Should Pay For This!

Post by Wade Hampton III » Sun Jan 20, 2019 3:55 am

Wade says, "Maybe other Jews across the Oceans are beyond our
reach, but not the ones here in North America!"

A U.S. Prison Guard Remembers...

Martin Brech....
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In October 1944, at age eighteen, I was drafted into the U.S. army.
Largely because of the "Battle of the Bulge," my training was cut
short, my furlough was halved, and I was sent overseas immediately.
Upon arrival in Le Havre, France, we were quickly loaded into box
cars and shipped to the front. When we got there, I was suffering
increasingly severe symptoms of mononucleosis, and was sent to a
hospital in Belgium. Since mononucleosis was then known as the
"kissing disease," I mailed a letter of thanks to my girlfriend.

By the time I left the hospital, the outfit I had trained with in
Spartanburg, South Carolina, was deep inside Germany, so, despite
my protests, I was placed in a "repo depot" (replacement depot).
I lost interest in the units to which I was assigned, and don't
recall all of them: non-combat units were ridiculed at that time.
My separation qualification record states I was mostly with Company
C, 14th Infantry Regiment, during my seventeen-month stay in Germany,
but I remember being transferred to other outfits also.

In late March or early April 1945, I was sent to guard a POW camp
near Andernach along the Rhine. I had four years of high school
German, so I was able to talk to the prisoners, although this was
forbidden. Gradually, however, I was used as an interpreter and
asked to ferret out members of the S.S. (I found none.)

In Andernach about 50,000 prisoners of all ages were held in an
open field surrounded by barbed wire. The women were kept in a
separate enclosure that I did not see until later. The men I
guarded had no shelter and no blankets. Many had no coats. They
slept in the mud, wet and cold, with inadequate slit trenches
for excrement. It was a cold, wet spring, and their misery from
exposure alone was evident.

Even more shocking was to see the prisoners throwing grass and
weeds into a tin can containing a thin soup. They told me they
did this to help ease their hunger pains. Quickly they grew
emaciated. Dysentery raged, and soon they were sleeping in
their own excrement, too weak and crowded to reach the slit
trenches. Many were begging for food, sickening and dying
before our eyes. We had ample food and supplies, but did
nothing to help them, including no medical assistance.

Outraged, I protested to my officers and was met with
hostility or bland indifference. When pressed, they explained
they were under strict orders from "higher up." No officer
would dare do this to 50,000 men if he felt that it was "out
of line," leaving him open to charges. Realizing my protests
were useless, I asked a friend working in the kitchen if he
could slip me some extra food for the prisoners. He too said
they were under strict orders to severely ration the prisoners'
food, and that these orders came from "higher up." But he said
they had more food than they knew what to do with, and would
sneak me some.

When I threw this food over the barbed wire to the prisoners,
I was caught and threatened with imprisonment. I repeated the
"offense," and one officer angrily threatened to shoot me.
I assumed this was a bluff until I encountered a captain on
a hill above the Rhine shooting down at a group of German
civilian women with his .45 caliber pistol. When I asked,
"Why?," he mumbled, "Target practice," and fired until his
pistol was empty. I saw the women running for cover, but,
at that distance, couldn't tell if any had been hit.

This is when I realized I was dealing with cold-blooded
killers filled with moralistic hatred. They considered the
Germans subhuman and worthy of extermination; another
expression of the downward spiral of racism. Articles
in the G.I. newspaper, Stars and Stripes, played up the
German concentration camps, complete with photos of
emaciated bodies. This amplified our self-righteous
cruelty, and made it easier to imitate behavior we
were supposed to oppose. Also, I think, soldiers not
exposed to combat were trying to prove how tough they
were by taking it out on the prisoners and civilians.

These prisoners, I found out, were mostly farmers and
workingmen, as simple and ignorant as many of our own
troops. As time went on, more of them lapsed into a
zombie-like state of listlessness, while others tried
to escape in a demented or suicidal fashion, running
through open fields in broad daylight towards the Rhine
to quench their thirst. They were mowed down.

Some prisoners were as eager for cigarettes as for food,
saying they took the edge off their hunger. Accordingly,
enterprising G.I. "Yankee traders" were acquiring hordes
of watches and rings in exchange for handfuls of cigarettes
or less. When I began throwing cartons of cigarettes to
the prisoners to ruin this trade, I was threatened by
rank-and-file G.I.s too.

The only bright spot in this gloomy picture came one night
when. I was put on the "graveyard shift," from two to
four a.m. Actually, there was a graveyard on the uphill
side of this enclosure, not many yards away. My superiors
had forgotten to give me a flashlight and I hadn't bothered
to ask for one, disgusted as I was with the whole situation
by that time. It was a fairly bright night and I soon became
aware of a prisoner crawling under the wires towards the
graveyard. We were supposed to shoot escapees on sight, so
I started to get up from the ground to warn him to get back.
Suddenly I noticed another prisoner crawling from the graveyard
back to the enclosure. They were risking their lives to get
to the graveyard for something. I had to investigate.

When I entered the gloom of this shrubby, tree-shaded cemetery,
I felt completely vulnerable, but somehow curiosity kept me
moving. Despite my caution, I tripped over the legs of someone
in a prone position. Whipping my rifle around while stumbling
and trying to regain composure of mind and body, I soon was
relieved I hadn't reflexively fired. The figure sat up.
Gradually, I could see the beautiful but terror-stricken face
of a woman with a picnic basket nearby. German civilians were
not allowed to feed, nor even come near the prisoners, so I
quickly assured her I approved of what she was doing, not to
be afraid, and that I would leave the graveyard to get out
of the way.

I did so immediately and sat down, leaning against a tree at
the edge of the cemetery to be inconspicuous and not frighten
the prisoners. I imagined then, and still do now, what it
would be like to meet a beautiful woman with a picnic basket
under those conditions as a prisoner. I have never forgotten
her face. Eventually, more prisoners crawled back to the
enclosure. I saw they were dragging food to their comrades,
and could only admire their courage and devotion.

On May 8, V.E. Day [1945], I decided to celebrate with some
prisoners I was guarding who were baking bread the other
prisoners occasionally received. This group had all the
bread they could eat, and shared the jovial mood generated
by the end of the war. We all thought we were going home
soon, a pathetic hope on their part. We were in what was
to become the French zone [of occupation], where I soon
would witness the brutality of the French soldiers when
we transferred our prisoners to them for their slave
labor camps.

On this day, however, we were happy.

As a gesture of friendliness, I emptied my rifle and stood
it in the corner, even allowing them to play with it at their
request. This thoroughly "broke the ice," and soon we were
singing songs we taught each other, or that I had learned
in high school German class ("Du, du, liegst mir im Herzen").
Out of gratitude, they baked me a special small loaf of sweet
bread, the only possible present they had left to offer. I
stuffed it in my "Eisenhower jacket," and snuck it back to my
barracks, eating it when I had privacy. I have never tasted
more delicious bread, nor felt a deeper sense of communion
while eating it. I believe a cosmic sense of Christ (the
Oneness of all Being) revealed its normally hidden presence
to me on that occasion, influencing my later decision to
major in philosophy and religion.

Wade says, "Cosmotheists can step in here and fill in the
blanks."

Shortly afterwards, some of our weak and sickly prisoners
were marched off by French soldiers to their camp. We were
riding on a truck behind this column. Temporarily, it slowed
down and dropped back, perhaps because the driver was as
shocked as I was. Whenever a German prisoner staggered or
dropped back, he was hit on the head with a club and killed.
The bodies were rolled to the side of the road to be picked
up by another truck. For many, this quick death might have
been preferable to slow starvation in our "killing fields."

When I finally saw the German women held in a separate
enclosure, I asked why we were holding them prisoner. I
was told they were "camp followers," selected as breeding
stock for the S.S. to create a super-race. I spoke to some,
and must say I never met a more spirited or attractive group
of women. I certainly didn't think they deserved imprisonment.
More and more I was used as an interpreter, and was able to
prevent some particularly unfortunate arrests. One somewhat
amusing incident involved an old farmer who was being dragged
away by several M.P.s. I was told he had a "fancy Nazi medal,"
which they showed me. Fortunately, I had a chart identifying
such medals. He'd been awarded it for having five children!
Perhaps his wife was somewhat relieved to get him "off her
back," but I didn't think one of our death camps was a fair
punishment for his contribution to Germany. The M.P.s agreed
and released him to continue his "dirty work."

Famine began to spread among the German civilians also. It
was a common sight to see German women up to their elbows
in our garbage cans looking for something edible -- that is,
if they weren't chased away. When I interviewed mayors of
small towns and villages, I was told that their supply of
food had been taken away by "displaced persons" (foreigners
who had worked in Germany), who packed the food on trucks
and drove away. When I reported this, the response was a
shrug. I never saw any Red Cross at the camp or helping
civilians, although their coffee and doughnut stands were
available everywhere else for us. In the meantime, the
Germans had to rely on the sharing of hidden stores until
the next harvest.

Hunger made German women more "available," but despite this,
rape was prevalent and often accompanied by additional
violence. In particular I remember an eighteen-year old
woman who had the side of her faced smashed with a rifle
butt, and was then raped by two G.I.s. Even the French
complained that the rapes, looting and drunken destructiveness
on the part of our troops was excessive. In Le Havre, we'd
been given booklets warning us that the German soldiers had
maintained a high standard of behavior with French civilians
who were peaceful, and that we should do the same. In this
we failed miserably.

"So what?" some would say. "The enemy's atrocities were worse
than ours." It is true that I experienced only the end of
the war, when we were already the victors. The German
opportunity for atrocities had faded, while ours was at
hand. But two wrongs don't make a right. Rather than
copying our enemy's crimes, we should aim once and for
all to break the cycle of hatred and vengeance that has
plagued and distorted human history. This is why I am
speaking out now, 45 years after the crime. We can never
prevent individual war crimes, but we can, if enough of us
speak out, influence government policy. We can reject government
propaganda that depicts our enemies as subhuman and encourages
the kind of outrages I witnessed. We can protest the bombing
of civilian targets, which still goes on today. And we can refuse
ever to condone our government's murder of unarmed and defeated
prisoners of war.

I realize it's difficult for the average citizen to admit witnessing
a crime of this magnitude, especially if implicated himself. Even
G.I.s sympathetic to the victims were afraid to complain and get
into trouble, they told me. And the danger has not ceased. Since
I spoke out a few weeks ago, I have received threatening calls
and had my mailbox smashed (most likely by Jews). But its been
worth it. Writing about these atrocities has been a catharsis
of feelings suppressed too long, a liberation, that perhaps will
remind other witnesses that "the truth will make us free, have no
fear." We may even learn a supreme lesson from all this: only
love can conquer all.

About the author...

This essay was published in The Journal of Historical Review,
Summer 1990 (Vol. 10, No. 2), pp. 161-166. (Revised, updated:
Nov. 2008)

*

User avatar
Jim Mathias
Posts: 3292
Joined: Mon Jun 13, 2016 8:48 pm

Re: North American Jews Should Pay For This!

Post by Jim Mathias » Mon Jan 21, 2019 1:28 am

Thank you for the history lesson by an eyewitness to it. No more White fratricidal wars.
Activism materials available! ===> Contact me via PM to obtain quantities of the "Send Them Back", "NA Health Warning #1 +#2+#3" stickers, and any fliers listed in the Alliance website's flier webpage.

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