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Helmut Fischer

Helmut Fischer
Born [date unknown] [location unknown]
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Biography

Prisoners of Silence : In a Small Kansas Cemetery, the Graves of 14 German POWs Represent One of the Last Untold Stories of World War II - By DAVID LAMB, NOV. 30, 1990 (Staff writer Tyler Marshall in Berlin also contributed to this article. )

Off to one side, separated from the other graves, were 14 tombstones, each with a German name, half inscribed with the same date, Aug. 25, 1945 . . . the graves of the only prisoners of war ever executed in the United States . . . each escorted by an eight-man guard, walking to the makeshift gallows the fort had set up in the elevator shaft of an old warehouse. . . “These guys just don’t belong in that cemetery. They were honorable military men and, right or wrong, if Germany had won the war, they’d have been given a medal. They ought to be reinterred in Germany, in a place of respect. . . Besides, they were executed after the war was over, and that raises a lot of questions over whether they were the victims of a society’s desire for revenge against all Germans.” The 14 condemned men--one of whom was a grocer in civilian life, one a pattern cutter, another an engineer--were among 400,000 Germans held prisoner during World War II at 500 camps scattered across the United States. The German prisoners worked in the wheat fields of Kansas, stuffed olives with Spanish peppers in Texas, repaired Army vehicles in Virginia, sewed U.S. Army uniforms in Maryland, picked peas in Upstate New York.

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