Soldiers and Slaves: American Pows Trapped by the Nazis' Final Gamble
Written by Roger Cohen
Narrated by Michael Prichard
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About this audiobook
Starved and brutalized, the GIs were denied their rights as prisoners of war, their ordeal culminating in a death march that was halted by liberation near the Czech border. Twenty percent of these soldiers-more than seventy of them-perished. After t_he war, Berga was virtually forgotten, partly because it fell under Soviet domination and partly because America's Cold War priorities quickly changed, and the experiences of these Americans were buried.
Now, for the first time, their story is told in all its blistering detail. This is the story of hell in a small place over a period of nine weeks, at a time when Hitler's Reich was crumbling but its killing machine still churned. It is a tale of madness and heroism, and of the failure to deliver justice for what the Nazis did to these Americans.
Among those involved: William Shapiro, a young medic from the Bronx, hardened in Normandy battles but, as a prisoner, unable to help the Nazis' wasted slaves, whose bodies became as insubstantial as ghosts; Hans Kasten, a defiant German-American who enraged his Nazi captors by demanding, in vain, that his fellow U.S. prisoners be treated with humanity, thus committing the unpardonable sin of betraying his German roots; Morton Goldstein, a garrulous GI from New Jersey, shot dead by the Nazi in charge of the American prisoners in an incident that would spark intense debate at a postwar trial; and Mordecai Hauer, the orphaned Hungarian Jew who, after surviving Auschwitz, stumbled on the GIs in the midst of the Holocaust at Berga and despaired at the sight of liberators become slaves.
Roger Cohen uncovers exactly why the U.S. government did not aggressively prosecute the commandants of Berga, why there was no particular recognition for the POWs and their harsh treatment in the postwar years, and why it took decades for them to receive proper compensation.
Soldiers and Slaves is an intimate, intensely dramatic story of war and of a largely forgotten chapter of the Holocaust.
From the Hardcover edition.
Roger Cohen
Roger Cohen is a columnist for the New York Times. As foreign editor, he oversaw Pulitzer Prize-winning coverage in the aftermath of 9/11. He worked as a foreign correspondent for many years, beginning at Reuters. He has won numerous accolades and was honoured with the Lifetime Achievement award at the International Media Awards in 2012. Raised in South Africa and London, a naturalized American, he lives in London and New York. @NYTimesCohen
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