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AMERICAN POWs prisoners of the Nazis during World War two
Mauthausen Concentration Camp in Austria after the liberation by General George Patton/6th US Army May 5 1945
Lieutenant Jack Taylor
testified about the treatment which he and other American POWs received at Mauthausen. The following quote is from the testimony of Lt. Taylor at the Nuremberg IMT: International Military Tribunal
"In October '44, I was the first Allied officer to drop onto Austria. I was captured December 1st, by the Gestapo, severely beaten, ah, even though I was in uniform, severely beaten, and, and, considered as a non-prisoner of war. I was taken to Vienna prison where I was held for four months. When the Russians neared Vienna, I was taken to this Mauthausen concentration lager [camp], an extermination camp, the worst in Germany, where we have been starving and, and beaten and killed, ah, fortunately, my turn hadn't come. Ah, two American officers at least have been executed here. Here is the insignia of one, a U.S. naval officer, and here is his dog tag. Here is the army officer, executed by gas in this lager [camp]. Ah...there were...
we have been starving and, and beaten and killed,
ah, fortunately, my turn hadn't come. Ah, two American officers
at least have been executed here. Here is the insignia of one,
a U.S. naval officer, and here is his dog tag. Here is the army
officer, executed by gas in this lager [camp]. Ah...there were...
[Question: "How many ways did they execute them?"]
"Five or six ways: by gas, by shooting, by beating, that is beating with clubs, ah, by exposure, that is standing out in the snow, naked, for 48 hours and having cold water put on them, thrown on them in the middle of winter, starvation, dogs, and pushing over a hundred-foot cliff."
Lieutenant Jack Taylor died at age 51 in El Cerrito (Northern) California
At least 47 American British and Dutch Airman were also executed at Malthusen. Additionally, there were hundreds of Soviet POWs who were sent to Malthusen to be worked to death. The survivors, who didn't want to be repatriated back to Russia were forced onto cattle cars to be shipped to Moscow. There the NKBG, Stalin's brutal secret police interrogated, tortured and brutally executed many officers. The Soviet survivors of Malthusen and other Nazi concentration camps were shipped to remote gulags to be worked to death in mines and forests.
Ted Samuel was a US Army sergeant, who witnessed the forcible repatriation of these soviet POWs. " Some tried to cut their wrists or hang themselves rather than return to an uncertain future in Stalin's Russia....."
Ted Samuel did a brief interview with Peter Paul Ver zola on this topic for the Verzola Audio History Archives. He died in 2007.
