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A co-worker I used to work with was in a concentration camp in Poland during WWII.
He told us a story of a commandant, who had his own personal horse, for riding purposes.
Well, food was scarce. So one day the horse went missing.
He told us that they ate very good.
I can't verify the accuracy of the story, but he wasn't one to exaggerate these kinds on stories.
Enemy at the gates was not true. No German SS sniper was ever sent to Stalingrad to hunt down whatever his name was.
One thing the Germans did do was keep records. There is no record of a Major Konins(?)
the american perspective can be from a US GI holed up in a leaking hold of a ship en-route to the slave factories in Japan and how these seemed to be all swept under the rug? Mitsubishi slave factories where many died!
What even sadder is several of those Hell Ships were torpedoed and sunk by US submarines, as the ships were ordinary unmarked transports. Many of the men on those ships were survivors of the Bataan Death March. As the war progressed, most were moved from prison camps in the Philippines to Japan to work in coal mines, manufacturing plants like Mitsubishi (maker of the Japanese Zero fighter), and as general laborers.
The camp guards in Japanese prisons were the lowest of the low, many were illiterate, and almost all were unsuitable for any front line service in the Army, that's why they were placed in prison camps. They beat and tortured the allied captives with no mercy.
And as with many of their German counterparts, they escaped punishment after the war ended. What's really sad today, is Japanese school books have hardly anything at all relating to WWII...except the Pearl Harbor Attack. That is still played up big in Japan. You'd think they won the war. Many Japanese, even today know very little about the Pacific War, or WWII in general.
Last edited by NumberDummy; Apr 6, 2007 at 07:33 AM.