US-CAPTIVITY, END OF WAR (ERWIN SCHULZ)

We were shipped - or rather – we were on a ship, to travel onwards from the Mediterranean Sea. - I
don’t know. – But we came back and later on (I don’t know how the agreements between the allies
were) we were handed over to the Americans. We travelled to Casablanca, through Morocco, by train. Casablanca is situated quite low down. There was a huge camp; everything after the capitulation came to Casablanca, and from there we were transported to the United States. The confrontations had already been getting stronger. The antifascists tried to stay together as far as possible and not to be solitary. The Nazis tried to keep up
their former command as our officers. And they tried this also when we came over to America. In the camps, they took over the orderly room, the kitchen, everything. They were the non-commissioned ranks, the sergeants, the sergeant majors, and we were only ordinary soldiers, as one says. We tried
to get them out of the camp. We tried this there in Aliceville. And tried to influence the young soldiers who also belonged to this. This was changed around. In the night, one of us would go on guard that
we were not surprised in our sleep. Well, the American army did not treat us any better. What I remembered much later like this: officers were probably not able to understand these things in their own awareness; that soldiers who had been fighting in the Hitler-army were now turning against it. This problem of the controversy fascism against antifascism was something the officers could not understand. That happened in these days. Later on, towards the end, they got some different views; after they got to know: about the concentration camps, what happened to the people there, the way they were murdered there, and disposed off. Auschwitz was only then liberated by the Soviet army, the Red Army. That was when the exchange happened and they at least started to realise that there were people who were fighting against ‘their country’, as they said. Later on I was taken back to Fort Devens, where I witnessed the end of the war. There we had the
magazine ‘German-American’ which was edited by immigrated union men and political immigrants. ‘German-American’ well, it was in German and English. It was delivered into our camp. Before, in
McCain, it didn’t come into the camp. But now, towards the end of the war many things changed. You could buy this magazine. We also had contact to the issuers, illegal ones – you know – because the commands were working in the motor pool, where, again, progressive Americans helped us with the information. Well, that is an extra chapter that could be attended. Anyway, there some political and cultural life started. The Americans filmed ‘Buchenwald’ (Nazi concentration camp in Thuringia, Germany), the heaps of dead bodies they found and the circumstances. These films were shown in the USA and then all the prisoners of war had to watch these films, as well. Now to my release: We were transported to Belgium. There the conditions were the same as in
Aliceville, where we were taken in the first prison camp. Just before I was released the documents came, like when somebody was moved to another camp. And there was an associate, Fritz Fiedkau, who was declared (in the documents) to be an SS-man.
So, in the camp, where he had been before they changed his documents in the assessment – you know – they made the antifascist into an SS-man. And an SS-man had already gone home as an antifascist! I did report that later on. We went over to Munsterlager which had the same pattern; corporals, sergeants and so on, they were in command there. “Don’t let yourself get released towards the east!” and many other things. Anyway, in October 1946 I got on a transport to West-Berlin. I used
to live in West-Berlin before. This is how I got home from war captivity. My parents lived somewhere else, as they had been bombed out. And now the new life began after all these incidents that you experienced over the years.

more clips: Contemporary witnesses of the Nazi-Regime • 1945 • THE END OF THE WAR / REFUGEES • Schulz, Erwin
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