Day 152 - Heard today!

New Readers: Day 1 is an introduction to my Dad's WWII memoir!

I am Louis' daughter, Paula.  I started blogging his memoir in late December 2011.  I recently heard someone say that depending on who you talk to and what nationality and culture they are from -that their WWII stories and perspectives differ quite dramatically. My Dad was Flemish from Belgium! 

Day 1 - Day 130 are his story and I added a mish mash of related things from approximately Day 130 onwards.

I was just going to write -  I hope you enjoy my Dad's story which is similar, I guess, to hearing someone say Happy Remembrance Day,  which just goes to prove that every communication boils down to a matter of a person's unique perspective on life!


Written: November 11, 2012

Today, I attended a, "Remembrance Day" ceremony and later went for something to eat.  While waiting at the front of the restaurant, a young child went up to the "Greeter's post" and the employee said to the child, "Happy Remembrance Day" - haven't heard that one before!!! 

Day 150 - Proud to be Belge

Just like my Dad always was - Proud to be Belge!

Day 149 - I am sure my Dad would have liked this video!

Little Belgian boy salutes Canadian troops.


 http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&v=nDMzHlkB-Yg&feature=endscreen )

Day 148 - For my Dad! My Hero!

Day 147- another email sent today no name!

I just received this email - author unknown!!!!!

I have continued to read more of your Dad's memoir on your blog.


I think you should read about how German soldiers were treated by the
Allies after they surrendered to end World War II.


Read this website for a start:
http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v10/v10p161_Brech.html


I wrote about Eisenhower's death camps on my website at
http://www.scrapbookpages.com/EasternGermany/Gotha/index.html


I wrote about how German "war criminals" were imprisoned at Dachau on
this page of my website:
http://www.scrapbookpages.com/DachauScrapbook/NaziPrison.html


The attitude taken by your father in his memoir makes me very angry.  He
was legally a war criminal.  Yet he expected good treatment at the hands
of the enemy when he was captured.  The Germans were legally Prisoners
of War after they surrendered.  But General Eisenhower changed the rules
of the Geneva Convention so that the Germans could be legally mistreated
in his death camps.


You need to look at World War II from both sides, not just from the side
of an illegal combatant who was not satisfied with his treatment.  If he
had been in one of Eisenhower's camps, he would have had something to
complain about.


I am now through reading your blog.  It is too upsetting to me.

Day 146 - Another email with no name!!!

Sent to me today: Interesting ......


After I recovered somewhat from reading the hatred of the German people
expressed in your father's memoir, I went back and read your post from
Day 1.


You said that your father had a tattoo on his arm from his time in
Buchenwald.  Did you actually SEE this tattoo, or did your father just
tell you that he had a tattoo put on his arm at Buchenwald?


As far as I know, prisoners were tattooed ONLY at the Auschwitz camp.
Did he get this tattoo at Auschwitz?  You implied in your blog post that
he was tattooed at Buchenwald, which I don't believe.

My brother and I were trusting our memories as to the number we had remembered from our Dad's arm as children - when I started blogging I assumed that he had been tattooed in Buchenwald as he was liberated from that camp. In fact, before blogging and reading my Dad's memoir, I had only a vague idea of what had happened to him during the second World War..

Later, after blogging for a while, someone put me in touch with a place where I could obtain his records and had suggested to me that he thought that the number we were remembering sounded like an Auschwitz number.  Through this kind man's efforts, I was able to establish that the number on my Dad's arm was indeed, from Auschwitz.   Since blogging, I have been able to obtain more information about my Dad, as many, many kind people have come forward to help us fill in the pieces and to help us learn more about my Dad's life!    

You mentioned that he was a Nacht und Nebel prisoner.  Nacht und Nebel
was an expression originated by Goethe.  The English translation from
the German original words is Night and Fog.  You can check with
Wikipedia on the meaning of Nacht und Nebel, as related to the prisoners.


This quote is from Wikipedia:


Begin quote:
The decree was meant to intimidate local populations into submission by
denying friends and families of the missing any knowledge of their
whereabouts or their fate. The prisoners were secretly transported to
Germany, vanishing without a trace. In 1945, the seized
Sicherheitsdienst (SD) records were found to include merely names and
the initials NN (Nacht und Nebel); even the sites of graves were
unchronicled. To this day, it is not known how many thousands of people
disappeared as a result of this order. [1]

The International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg held that the
disappearances committed as part of the Nacht und Nebel program were war
crimes which violated both the Hague Conventions and customary
international law.[2]
End quote


The Nacht und Nebel decree was used in an effort to prevent "political
prisoners" from fighting illegally.  The idea was to make their families
believe that they had been killed, so that no other civilians would
become Resistance fighters.  The idea was NOT to kill the illegal
combatants, only to make their families believe that they had been killed.


You wrote that the Germans SUSPECTED that your father was in the
Resistance, implying that he was not.


You wrote that your father's tattoo was etched in your mind as a symbol
of your father's INTEGRITY.  A person who was an illegal combatant in a
war did not have INTEGRITY.


I think you should keep in mind that Germany surrendered in May 1945,
and *the country of Germany is still occupied after 65 years.*


I lived in German for two years after the war, and I saw first hand how
the Germans were treated.  They were insulted and humiliated on a daily
basis by the American soldiers, whom they had to serve because there
were no other jobs for them.  There were very few men in Germany after
the war because they had been kept in Eisenhower's death camps until
they died.  There were 1.7 million German soldiers who never came home.


When I lived in Germany in 1957, the streets were full of German people
after midnight because all the Americans soldiers were in their
barracks.  The Germans were dancing and singing in the streets because
the American occupiers were in bed and they could have a few hours of
freedom.


The German girls were all sleeping with American soldiers so that they
could get food for their families.  The soldiers treated these girls
shamefully with a complete lack of respect.


Some of the German people were living in small garden houses after the
war because Germany was so completely bombed that there were not enough
homes left.  These little houses were the size of a one-car garage.  The
Germans, who had a house, were renting out rooms so they could make a
little money.  There were many homeless people in Germany, who were
begging on the streets, 12 years after the end of the war, because there
were no jobs and not many houses left.  These people were the
"expellees" who were ethnic Germans that were chased out of other
countries and forced to go to Germany.


Although the German people suffered greatly after the war, they honored
the terms of their surrender and did not become illegal Resistance
fighters as your father did.  Today, the German people still have no
freedom; Germany is still an occupied country.


How would your father have fared if he had lived in an occupied country
for 65 years, instead of a few months?


Even after the shameful way that the German people were treated after
the war, they managed to bounce back and Germany is now the strongest
country in Europe economically.  They have completely restored the
historic German towns that were bombed by the Allies just for the hell
of it.


Of all the counties in Europe that I have visited, the German people are
the nicest and the most polite.

Day 145 - A sincere apology

I received an email today from an author unknown. The person corrected me on the fact that I have incorrectly referred to my Dad as a POW.  I sincerely apologize to all who might be offended by this oversight on my part!!! I wonder why the person didn't sign it or say who they were!

Copy of what I received today:

 I followed the link to your blog and read all the articles.


I think it is incorrect to say that your father was "a Belgian POW."  A
POW is a soldier, wearing a uniform, who surrenders, or is captured, on
the battlefield where he is fighting according to the rules of the
Geneva Convention.  A person who is not wearing a uniform, nor fighting
on the battlefield, but is a civilian aiding one side in a war, is
called "an illegal combatant."  Such a person was not entitled to
treatment as a POW under the rules of the Geneva Convention of 1929
which was in force during World War II.


Buchenwald was one of the two main concentration camps where Resistance
fighters were sent; the other was Natzweiler.  The first memorial that
was put up at Buchenwald was in honor of the French Resistance fighters.


After World War II ended, the Allies made up new laws, called
"ex-post-facto" laws, which changed the rules of warfare.  After the
war, the Allies claimed that the Resistance fighters should have been
entitled to the same treatment as POWs and should have been put into a
POW camp, not a concentration camp.  The Germans were put on trial at
Nuremberg, under these new laws that had not existed when their alleged
crimes were committed.


At the former Dachau camp, America conducted separate trials of the
Germans under these new laws, that had been created after the war. The
SS men on the staff of several of the concentration camps, including
Buchenwald, were put on trial in the American court at Dachau; the
Germans were charged with being criminals, under a new ex-post-facto law
called "common design" which was also used as the law to charge the men
at Nuremberg.  Under the new law of "common design" there was no
defense; anyone who was associated with a concentration camp in any way
was convicted as a "war criminal" under this new law.


Under the laws that were in existence during World War II, your father
was a war criminal because he was fighting in violation of the laws at
that time, which were the laws under the Geneva Convention of 1929. 
Because the Allies won the war, your father is a victim and a hero
because he fought for the Allies as an illegal combatant.  The American
soldiers who killed the guards at Buchenwald were not war criminals, but
heroes.  Under the rules of the Geneva Convention, the guards should
have been taken prisoner.  Concentration camps were not illegal during
World War II.

The Soviet Union had not signed the Geneva Convention, but the Soviets
claimed that their soldiers were entitled to protection under the rules
of the convention.  Soviet soldiers were executed at Buchenwald because,
under the rules of the Convention, they were not entitled to protection
because the Soviet Union did not honor the Geneva Convention with
respect to German soldiers.  The Allies changed the rules of the
Convention, after the war, so that the Soviet Union was entitled to
protection, although they were not following the Convention themselves.


America had "internment camps" where German-Americans were held until
two years AFTER the war.  Jehovah's Witnesses were sent to regular
prisons in America, not to the "internment camps."  Jehovah's Witnesses
were released from the German camps if and when they agreed to follow
the rules of their country and serve in the Army.


The British sent enemy civilians to regular prisons, not to internment
camps nor concentration camps.


After Germany surrendered, the Germans did not continue to fight as
Resistance fighters, as other countries did.  Poland surrendered after
fighting for only 28 days on the battlefield, but then continued to
fight as "the Polish Home Army" which did not fight on the battlefield,
but as illegal combatants, blowing up troop trains and ambushing German
soldiers from the forests in Poland.  Belgium also surrendered, but
continued to fight illegally.  France surrendered after 5 weeks, but
continued to fight as the "French Resistance."


Only the Germans followed the Geneva Convention to the letter.  Other
countries just changed the rules and then put the Germans on trial after
the war.  Sorry, but this makes me very angry.