ABSTRACT
The prisoners of war (POWs) had been taken to Berga, a quaint German town of 7,000 people on the Elster River, whose concentration and POW camps did not appear on most World War II maps. In fact, the hamlet was the site of four camps, three holding POWs of different nationalities and a fourth for civilian political prisoners. The 80 American Jews were sent to this slave labor camp because they were Jews, but once they arrived they were not treated differently from the other POWs in Berga, with a couple of exceptions. Unlike POWs in most camps, who were not required to engage in forced labor, the inmates of Berga were expected to perform the kind of work used by the Nazis to kill Jews slowly. The example of Berga demonstrated, moreover, that even soldiers were unable to put up much of a fight against their guards after weeks of backbreaking work and malnourishment.
