Forgotten Victims: The Abandonment Of Americans In Hitler's Camps

by Mitchell G. Bard

One common explanation for the world’s failure to prevent the Holocaust is that the information about the Nazi extermination program seemed too incredible to believe. Fifty years later, Americans may now also find it difficult to believe that their fellow citizens were among the twelve million people murdered by the Nazis, abandoned to this fate by their own government.The outbreak of war in Europe put tens of thousands of American civilians, especially Jews, in deadly peril, but the State Department failed to help them. As a consequence of this callous policy many suffered—and some died. Later, when the United States joined the war against Hitler, many brave young Americans were captured and imprisoned. Jewish soldiers were at a special risk—they were sent into battle with a telltale “H” (for “Hebrew’’) on their dog tags, which helped the Nazis single them out for mistreatment. One group of Jewish GIs was sent to the brutal Berga labor camp, which had the highest fatality rate of any POW facility. Other POWs were sent to concentration camps, where they became victims of the machinery of the “Final Solution.”Why is it that none of the hundreds of books about the Holocaust has examined the fate of Americans who fell into Nazi hands? Perhaps it is because the number of American victims was relatively small compared to the total that perished. Perhaps it is due to the perception of the Holocaust as a purely European phenomenon; most people assumed that Americans could not have become victims. But, according to Mitchell Bard, the main reason this story has gone untold for a half century is that much of the evidence has been concealed by our own government.The U.S. government had good reasons to cover up this story. The revelation that Americans were mistreated and that their government knew and failed to do anything about it would certainly raise uncomfortable questions about this country’s failure to offer safe haven to the Nazis’ main target: European Jews. Forgotten Victims provides documentary evidence proving that American officials knew that U.S. civilians and soldiers were in danger, that they were being mistreated (including being placed in concentration camps), and that they were even being murdered by the Nazis. The story of how European Jewry was forsaken by the Western Allies is by now familiar, but this book exposes for the first time the abandonment of American Jews.

Genres: Holocaust, World War II

192 pages, Paperback

First published May 25, 1994

About the author

Mitchell Bard is the Executive Director of the nonprofit American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise (AICE) and one of the leading authorities on U.S.-Middle East policy. Dr. Bard is also the director of the Jewish Virtual Library (www.JewishVirtualLibrary.org). Bard holds a Ph.D. in political science from UCLA. He has appeared on local, national, and international media outlets and written and edited 23 books, including After Anatevka - Tevye Goes to Palestine, Will Israel Survive? 48 Hours of Kristallnacht and The Arab Lobby.

Reviews

[Sarah Gatewood · Rating 4 out of 5]

Finished this book about a week ago. I had to set it aside so I could finish my book for book club. This book was an eye opener for me. I didn't know how many American citizens got stuck in German occupied territory during World War II. There were over 30,000 American citizens. And they weren't helped. Their American citizenship gave very little protection especially to those that were Jewish. The citizens told they had to show proof of their passport which in cases of a man in #auschwitz, all of his papers had been taken thus taking away of proof of American citizenship. The other astonishing thing was the amount of American soldiers that ended up in camps, a lot in Berga, a labor camp. They suffered through intense conditions of starvation, beatings, and lack of medical care. Many died while POWs. The sad part was this was if they were lucky as many were immediately killed upon being taken prisoner. Many many gis ended up in these camps and many died. When liberated most were in horrible condition and needed intense medical care. It seems there may have been a cover up of the mistreatment of the POWs as most had trouble claiming their benefits of being in German camps. These men were treated shamefully by the Germans, but also by their own people. The only problem was the author repeated many of the accounts again at the end as if he thought the reader needed a refresher. Eye opening read with pictures I never seen from that time period.

[Tomi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Trust the government? I don’t think so...
I thought I was fairly knowledgeable about WWII and the Holocaust, but I found a lot of new information in this book. I had never heard of Berga, for example. And why would you need your religion on your dog tags? Our government has a lot to answer for; there is no such thing as transparency. (And if you think anything has changed since the events in this book, I have a word for you - Benghazi.