Archives

While doing my archival research I came across a report from a Norwegian who had been in one of the German concentration/death camps - Sachsenhausen (which later became  Russian Special Camp no.7)  - and his meeting with a Welsh and British soldier. He later heard from other colleagues who were camp prisoners of his movements in the German concentration camp system. He relayed the following:

This soldier had been taken prisoner during the Dunkirk evacuation, escaped and spent a year working with the Belgian resistance. He was then captured, tried by the Gestapo in Brussels and three times faced a firing squad but each time the order was cancelled. He was transferred to an extermination camp in Alsace and subsequently to Auschwitz. On the approach of the Russian Army he was summoned by the camp commander and asked why he was in the camp and what was his defence.

 'To this he replied [says the transcript from the Norwegian statement] that he had already given his statement to the Gestapo in BRUSSELS, on this remark an[d] S.S. soldier struck [him] who immediately retaliated stating that he would not stand such treatment as a British officer; the soldier thereupon shot him dead.'


This statement had an address and town in Wales and I looked up the town and found their historical society and sent a photo of the letter two days ago. There was a British officer on their roll of the same name and similar address who had been killed at Mauthausen Concentration Camp, (near Linz, Austria) on 9th November 1944 aged 31.

The family were passed the photo of the letter and sent this photo via the Historical Society to me by return. The letter is now by his name on the roll of the fallen.

I went to see John later. He worked with DPs (Displaced Persons) in Caen, Le Havre and northern Germany with the Quaker Relief organisation after the liberation of Europe. He was born in 1921, the fallen officer in 1913.

There is a 375 page guide to the US Archive holdings on the Mauthausen Concentration complex here.