Soldiers and Slaves, Roger Cohen
Soldiers and Slaves, Roger Cohen
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Soldiers and Slaves
American POWs Trapped by the Nazis' Final Gamble

Author: Roger Cohen

Narrator: Michael Prichard

Unabridged: 11 hr 52 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 05/10/2005


Synopsis

In February 1945, 350 American POWs captured earlier at the Battle of the Bulge or elsewhere in Europe were singled out by the Nazis because they were Jews or were thought to resemble Jews. They were transported in cattle cars to Berga, a concentration camp in eastern Germany, and put to work as slave laborers, mining tunnels for a planned underground synthetic-fuel factory. This was the only incident of its kind during World War II.

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.

About The Author

Roger Cohen is a columnist for the New York Times, where he has worked since 1990: as a correspondent in Paris and Berlin and as bureau chief in the Balkans, covering the Bosnian war (for which he received an Overseas Press Club prize). He was named a columnist in 2009. He became foreign editor on 9/11, overseeing Pulitzer Prize–winning coverage in the aftermath of the attack. His books include Soldiers and Slaves, Hearts Grown Brutal, and The Girl from Human Street. He lives in New York City.Michael Prichard has played several thousand characters during his career. While he has been seen performing over a hundred of them in theater and film, SmartMoney magazine named him one of the Top Ten Golden Voices.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Marylou on March 04, 2015

This was one of the most confusing books that I've read in a long time. Roger Cohen was making an effort I think to bring into focus a horrible unjustice from World War II. However, in doing so he lost his way by not sorting the men out somehow. I'm not sure how it should have been done, but it coul......more

Goodreads review by Sonny on April 11, 2017

Brutal. It amazes me that the German people were not massacred down to the last one after the brutality they exhibited toward the Jewish and other peoples of Europe during WWII.......more

Goodreads review by Jean on August 12, 2021

To add to the excellent reviews above, which more than adequately convey the uniquely tragic story of Jews and GI's at Berga, the following: 1) Much of the German high command (and the SS), largely out of fear of the Fuehrer and Himmler and because of the propaganda of Josef Goebbels, plus pure fanat......more

Goodreads review by Annie on July 16, 2014

This book follows two groups of prisoners as they experience "the final solution" of the Nazi war machine during the final months of WWII. One group is Jewish (or suspected of being Jewish) American POWs who are captured and removed from the American POW camp and sent to Berga concentration camp to d......more

Goodreads review by John on July 04, 2020

I finished this for the second time--as an audiobook. I love the history of our part in the wars and find the stories of heroics fascinating. These soldiers were used as pawns by the Germans. Reading about the horrors imposed on them was hard. It's a valuable part of our history as a nation. Highly......more


Quotes

“Roger Cohen has brought us a jewel of a book–a chilling, deeply felt, and powerfully written account of an astonishing episode at the climax of World War II that speaks volumes about human nature, justice, and memory.”
–Michael Beschloss

“Roger Cohen, who has already written one profoundly moving book on the Bosnian war and provides some of the best American journalism about Europe, understands that huge tragedies are constituted by microhistories of suffering. In Soldiers and Slaves he follows the fate of Jewish American soldiers, captured in the Battle of the Bulge and thrown into the vortex of the crumbling Third Reich as brutalized slave laborers and death-march victims alongside the remnants of surviving Central European Jewery. This is a beautifully crafted narrative of cruelty, heroism, dismaying postwar indifference, and finally, at last, memory redeemed.”
–Charles Maier, Saltonstall Professor of History, Harvard University

“Before reading Soldiers and Slaves, I had never heard of concentration camp Berga, ‘an ephemeral little hell’ within the larger hell of World War II. But I know it now and won’t ever forget it, thanks to Roger Cohen’s masterful account, wonderfully reported and written.”
–Ward Just

“This story of American POWs at Berga–their suffering, their pain, their hope, their memories–has surprisingly been forgotten or inadequately recalled by historians. Roger Cohen is to be thanked for revealing to the public its profound human drama with talent, sensitivity, and a commitment to truth.”
–Elie Wiesel

“In this extraordinary book Roger Cohen has brought to light a long-concealed story of Nazi savagery. It brought me to tears–and understanding.”
–Anthony Lewis