IT WAS NOT ALL MISERY

New Zealand Listener, Volume 10, Issue 235, 24 December 1943, Page 12

IT WAS NOT ALL MISERY

Life In German Prison Camps IFE in a German prisoner-of-war camp is not all misery, according to repatriated men who returned to Wellington recently. It was misery at first, when food was so short that some men (not New Zealanders), died every day of hunger and exhaustion, and the discipline was so severe that the answer to disobedience was the crack of a pistol or a tommy-gun. But that was before these men had been registered and notified as prisoners of war, and there was a good deal of tension on both sides. The Listener saw several repatriated men on the day of their return, and came away from them with the impression that it was, all in all, much better to have fallen into the hands of the Germans than into the hands of the Italians; better to have been a New Zealander than a soldier from Britain; best of all (in qa German camp), to be French, and worst of all to be Russian. The consideration shown to French prisoners was part of the plan for detaching France from the United Nations; the treatment of Dominion troops showed a desire to sow dissension between them and Imperial regiments, between the people of Canada, Australia and New Zealand and those of the United Kingdom; the brutality to the Russians was partly hate and partly fear. The Germans know, we were assured, that victory over Russia is now impossible. They have known it since Stalingrad and a little longer. They even confess it secretly. If they go on fighting it is because they must, but the most they now hope for is better terms-especially if they can provoke quarrels among their enemies-than they think they would get by immediate surrender. That was the position when our repatriated men left Germany. Now of course the prospect of separating their enemies may still be a desperate hope, but it can no longer be a belief. Some Amusing Features The, reports given of the camp and their guards of course varied. Some were good camps, some bad; some had reasonable commandants, some unreasonable. But all agreed that the guards behaved well-that is to say "correctly,’ as soldiers; that they were honest; and that relief parcels and personal provisions were res scrupulously. ‘ "Interpretations of rules were often funny," one ex-prisoner told us. "You might be robbed of your nail-file, because that was a dangerous weapon. But you would get a receipt for it, and if you asked for its return when you were marched out it would be there." Another amusing feature was the cleverness of the guards in unearthing really obscure things and overlooking the obvious. "I had never believed in the text-book German," a second man told us, "until I met him. But he exists. In our camp, for example, every (continued on next pege)

(continued from previous page) prisoner made plans for escape. The guards knew this, and were always making searches for secret materialcompasses, food, maps, and so on. They would come in suddenly in the middle of the night and examine un-heard-of places for contraband. But if the forbidden article was left lying in an obvious place-a hat, a boot, or a kit bag-they would probably overlook it. And one of our searchers-in-chief was a Professor of Astronomy!" No Signs of Starvation None of the men we spoke to would agree that the Germans were starving, or even ill-fed. "I saw no difference in them," one man said, "in nearly three years. They had enough to eat, were not well-clothed certainly, their uniforms being often old and patched, but their morale remained unshaken. If there was a change, it began with the war in Russia, but it was not an obvious change. A little less confidence, perhaps, and a more marked desire to make a good impression. When I was first taken in, they were on the top of the world, and arrogant. That mood certainly passed. I actually heard more growling about their cigarette ratidnthree a day-than about the shortage of food; and it is a fact that we could always exchange cigarettes for foodeven good food like eggs." One man who had been a prisoner in Austria said that although the Austrians did not like the Nazis, they seemed to have faith in Hitler. "We delude ourselves if we think that the Fuehrer has lost his prestige. Mussolini, the guards would explain, had built up an army which became a tabble. Hitler’s army had conquered Europe and would hold it." Bomb Damage Kept Hidden One noticeable feature of the journey from‘ prison-camp to the exchange port (Barcelona), was the complete absence all the way-a week’s travelling in some cases-of signs of bomb-damage, "If we had not ourselves known better, we might have supposed that no bomb had ever been dropped on German soil. We travelled in a magnificent hospital train -the best I have ever seen-and were free to watch the country side as we rushed along. But we saw neither a wrecked building nor a bomb-crater the whole way. The Germans are thorough."