For four months during World War II, Morton Brooks was imprisoned at a sub-camp of Buchenwald outside Frankfurt, Germany, doing slave labor in a mine, building an underground factory for the Germans. Later, when American troops started closing in, Brooks’ along with the other inhabitants of the camp, was led on a death march.
Brooks survived, but he’s still haunted by memories of those who didn’t. For a long time he didn’t talk about his experience.
This may sound like a familiar survivor’s story, but it’s not. This one has a different twist. Brooks is an American and was an Army infantryman who was captured by the Germans.
“Of course it violated the Geneva Convention,” said Brooks, discussing the conditions of his imprisonment during a phone interview. “But when we brought it up, we were just laughed at.”
Brooks, who lives in Florida, is now talking about his wartime experience. Last month, he spoke at the Contra Costa Jewish Community Center in Walnut Creek. He also has been interviewed by Charles Guggenheim for a PBS documentary on the subject.
That American military men and women were placed in concentration camps, fed starvation diets and forced into slave labor, is a little-known chapter of World War II history. And those POWs like Brooks who were Jewish — religious affiliation was designated on military personnel’s dog tags — were singled out by the Nazis for harsher treatment than their non-Jewish counterparts.
“The information was never publicized,” said Brooks, 76. “All the fellows I knew didn’t talk about it. When we first came out most of us were in pretty rough shape. We weren’t encouraged to talk about it and didn’t want to share a miserable experience.”
But that is changing. In 1994 Mitchell Bard published “Forgotten Victims: The Abandonment of Americans in Hitler’s Camps.” Since then, American World War II POWs began meeting to talk about their experiences in the camps. Out of that grew a speaker’s bureau. Brooks, along with others who had similar experiences, started going to schools and other organizations to tell their stories.
After being captured on the French border, Brooks was brought to a German prison camp, Stalag 9B. Although inquiries were supposed to be limited to name, rank and serial number, servicemen were asked if they were Jewish. The 80 men who were, were segregated. Shortly after, about 350 men, including all the Jews, were moved out of Stalag 9B because of overcrowding.
“We thought we were going to another POW camp,” Brooks said. But instead, they were moved to Buchenwald, where Brooks and all his fellow Jewish prisoners were put into a forced labor and mining operation. Although some non-Jewish prisoners also worked in the mines, most were assigned to other, less arduous work details.
“Jews were not given a choice. It was a work-to-death program,” said Brooks. Fed only 400 to 500 calories a day and forced to perform extreme labor — drilling into rock and then hauling it into and out of the mine — many lost their lives. According to Brooks, about 35 percent of the 350 prisoners who were transferred to Buchenwald died there.
The German SS, well known for brutality, ran the camp and the prisoners lived in constant fear that their fate might be the ovens.
“The commandant and vice commandant were brought up before Nuremberg and sentenced to death, but those sentences were commuted because of the lack of sufficient evidence,” said Brooks. Like other survivors, Brooks received reparations from the German government.
“About three weeks before the camp was liberated, we were [led] on a death march. A high percentage of the men died because they were so weakened by the march and lack of food,” said Brooks. “I vividly remember the horror of being marched down the road with prisoners [Americans and Europeans] lying on the side of the road with bullets in their heads. We thought that was going to be our fate.”
One night in late April 1944, they were all put in a barn. The following morning the guards tried to get them out but word went through the group not to move. The guards were shouting at the prisoners when they heard shots.
“The guards took off. Someone looked through the back of the barn and saw the Eleventh Armored coming down the road,” said Brooks. “They loaded us onto their tanks and other equipment and we went with them to the town where they were headed.”
After being liberated, Brooks was hospitalized in a field hospital in Germany. He was later transferred to a hospital in England, then North Carolina and finally Long Island. It wasn’t until December 1944 that he was released.
“These are stories that were not widely circulated,” said Brooks who has taken on the task of educating people and adults about Americans in German concentration camps. “With young people I try to make it a history lesson. I explain what freedom means. That sometimes, freedom doesn’t come cheap and you really have to fight for it. I want people to understand what our country, our Constitution is all about.”
Brooks is originally from Buffalo, where he was a psychologist working mainly with children with learning and emotional disorders. He is now retired and living in Boynton Beach, Fla.
“I am fortunate to be alive,” he says, adding that his educational mission is, “one way I can pay a debt to those who didn’t make it back.”