jewish-american pow

By Robert W. Martin and Dr. Aaron Kuptsow

Interview with a Jewish-American Prisoner of War in Hitler's Germany

On November 26, 1944, thirty-seven aircraft from the 398th Bomb Group, 1st Combat Wing, 1st Air Division, 8th Air Force took off from their airbase in Nuthampstead, England to bomb an oil refinery located at Misburg, Germany. Flying in the "Mickey" plane, a B-17G equipped with radar, was 2nd Lt. Aaron Kuptsow, navigator and operator of the new targeting device. The flight to Germany was uneventful. However, as they approached their target, the flak from the enemy anti-aircraft batteries became more intense. About twenty seconds before the "Bombs Away" order, the "Mickey" plane was hit, taking out the #2 engine and severely damaging the #1. Jagged pieces of red hot metal were sent flying over Aaron's head. Seconds later, another shell struck the wounded bomber, destroying the sputtering first engine and shattering the pilots windshield. Many of the flight instruments were destroyed yet the crew still managed to drop their bomb load and begin the turn for home. As they did, the pilot found that he could not maintain a stable airspeed and altitude. The crew jettisoned as much of their equipment in order to lighten the load, but the lumbering bomber was still falling fast. Then, the damaged wing began to shake violently. Over the Detmold, Germany area, the "Bail Out" bell rang through the crippled B-17 and the crew immediately prepared to jump. It was Aaron's duty to ensure that the secret radar device was destroyed so that the new technology would not fall into the hands of the enemy. After smashing the device with the heel of his GI shoes, he jumped into the afternoon sky. As Aaron recalls today, "I'd never had parachute training, so when I jumped, I pulled the rip cord, then remembered that I was supposed to count to ten first, but anyhow, everything went well. I had no idea how to land, but God was on my side - I hit ground on a back swing, did a somersault, pulled out of the harness, then realized that my GI shoes had broken off with the impact of the parachute opening. They were gone! I was in a field, pulled off my dog tags and threw them away (Jews were instructed to do that), started to run, then heard bullets whizzing past me - stopped, put up my hands and was taken prisoner." It was here that Aaron Kuptsow and the other members of the downed B-17G "Mickey" began their harrowing experience.

When you were shot down, did you have any plans on how to reach safety or were you captured too quickly to even consider your options?

Once my parachute and I hit the ground, I made a dash toward some distant trees - but then I heard the rifle fire and put up my hands. That ended my options. When I think back on it, I have no idea what I would have done. I was hundreds of miles in German territory, had no idea which direction to head, and had never planned ahead. I had never considered the possibility of being shot down or killed. After all, I was part of the youth of America. I had a feeling of invincibility. Even though, each day I saw that crews left in the morning and never returned - it couldn't happen to me. But --- it did. That was the end of the invincibility theory.

Were you treated differently during your interrogation due to your religion?

Thinking back to that period, I don't recall that the subject of my religion came up often during the actual interrogations. I recall on the first visit, it was mentioned that at the time of my capture, I did not have my dog tags on (I had thrown them away after my parachute jump but they were retrieved by a farmer immediately) which technically categorized me as a spy and the fact that I was Jewish did not help the situation - therefore, they could very well execute me as a spy. But I only recall that coming up during that first visit. I figure that I was at the Interrogation Center (Dulag) for about 24 days and was called in about every other day. My usual routine was to give him name, rank and serial number (By the way, the officer was very sharp - had a rich, British accent, uniform was very impressive, his knowledge of me was startling - he knew my home address, my father's occupation as grocer, my education at the University of Penna., the bomber squadron I was flying with, and the fact that I was a Radar-Navigator-Bombardier). I do know that religion came to my mind because of the fact that I was there so long. Prisoners in adjoining rooms seemed to stay only a couple of days, but I was still there. He constantly questioned me about the Radar. but in the back of my mind, I thought that they were just harassing me because of my religion. I found out only recently that, for some unknown reason, the rest of my crew was also detained for about the same period of time. My guess now is that it may have been because we were the lead plane and I think our bomb strike was pretty accurate.

What did you do to occupy your mind and maintain good morale while you were in your one month solitary confinement? What were the conditions like?

That month in solitary was probably one of the most distressing times of my life. The room was essentially bare - a wooden bed with a burlap mattress containing some straw that flattened as soon as you lay on it, and a small flat top stool that served as a table. There was a window covered with outside shutters that allowed light into the room - the slats were angled so that I could peep in a downward direction and could see people moving around outside. There was an electric heater on the wall - it would get so hot during the day that it was intolerable, but then it was turned off at night and it was freezing in the room (if you check back to that time, around the time of the Battle of the Bulge, that was a particularly cold winter). Light was turned off at night. I had a thin blanket and I remember that I slept in the fetal position trying to keep warm. There was nothing to do during the waking hours. One becomes very introspective. I thought about home a lot, of things that I had done during my short lifetime. Also, I started to feel very sorry for myself - why were they keeping me there so long? My interrogator kept hounding me with questions and then abruptly sent me back when he didn't get the answers he wanted. Also, I could hear men in the adjoining rooms - they seemed to stay a couple of days and then someone else was in the room. Were they giving away information and then being sent on? I could communicate with them by tapping on the wall. I learned, through the tappings and the wall map in the interrogator's room that there was a big Bulge and the war was going badly for us. What would happen to me? Should I talk and answer his questions? That month dragged on and on. I had the same woolen shirt on all that time and no shower. My wrists started to itch and I developed a rash. The interrogator let me see someone about it - it was Scabies. They let me go for a shower (if I had known about their reputation with showers I would have been scared to death). As it turned out, when I undressed for the shower, I put my shirt on the electric heater - when I came back to dress, most of the shirt had burned - that's how hot the electric heater was. They did give me a different shirt, which helped to cure the Scabies. I do think that that month in solitary has had a profound after-effect on me. I'm still very introspective - I spend more time thinking than talking. It also settled me down a lot - where I had been an average student in college, once I got back and into Medical School, I was a straight A student. I have some horrible memories of World War 2 and the many friends that never returned, but still, in some ways, I think that I benefited

Were you or any other Jewish prisoner either physically or psychologically assaulted during your incarceration?

The only physical assault on me personally occurred immediately after my capture - I had thrown away my dog tags (which were stamped with an H for Hebrew) as Jewish fliers were advised to do. The dog tags were found immediately by, I believe a farmer, and when they lined up our entire crew, I was the only one without a dog tag. They then rationalized that I was the Jew - one of them yelled "Yud" and proceeded to sock me in the jaw (as I write about this, I can feel the pain of that instant) - it was quite a blow but not severe enough to knock me down. The only other physical problem resulted from walking for miles to the local police station in my flying boots - my feet were covered with bleeding, painful blisters - I do recall the thoughtfulness of one of the guards who gave me a basin of water in which to soak my feet. As far as psychological assault - I would mention the fact that shortly after we arrived at Stalag 1, a group of us was re-assigned to a separate barracks, totally apart from the rest of the camp, with our own barbed wire enclosure - we gradually came to realize that we were all Jewish and rumors started to spread that we were to be exterminated. Within the past year, I have learned that orders had been written to exterminate us - this was during the Battle of the Bulge when the Germans were feeling pretty cocky and felt that they could end up victorious. Meanwhile, we did get the American Commander of the camp to send a protest to the Geneva Convention but understood that it would take months before any action could be taken. That I would categorize as a psychological assault that lasted for months. In passing, I might also mention that at that time, I don't believe that any of us knew anything about the existence of the Concentration camps such as Auschwitz. If we had, the psychological effect might have been awesome.

Were you allowed to hold religious services as the rest of the camp was?

To the best of my recollection, we did not have any Jewish religious services during our incarceration. I do know that other denominations did hold regular Services, we never had any as far as I can recall.

When the Jewish barracks were isolated, were you kept from participating in camp events (i.e. sports, 4th of July, etc.)?

In the beginning, I don't recall too much inter-action between our "ghetto" area and the rest of the camp, but it seems that the rules were more relaxed later. We did eat in the mess hall with others in our Compound. I also recall that there was a musical production in which our POWs acted, sang and played musical instruments (I believe that one of the songs written for that production was later published and became a hit (can't remember the name) I also recall that there was a boxing exhibition in which Col. Zempke was one of the participants. There were no celebrations of American holidays, etc. I know that there was some athletic material around but I never got involved.

What were some of the books you read? Were they predominately propaganda or did they allow general literature?

I did read a lot of books - mostly soft bound "Pocket Books" of general literature. That's one thing that we had plenty of. The Red Cross issued to each POW a blue covered notebook which we used as a diary. I still have mine and in it I have listed about 50 or 60 books that I read during my stay. According to the Geneva Convention, officers were not allowed to do forced labor - so there was not too much to do other than read. Four of the men in our room spent every waking hour playing bridge - I vividly remember one of them was constantly combing his mustache as he played. Funny - I also recall that he had an altercation with one our men, accusing him of stealing his heavy undershirt - then weeks later, when he finally went to take a shower, he found that he had been wearing it all that time. The Germans never tried any propaganda on us.

By surviving on such a poor diet, how did your body react? Do you have lingering effects even to this day?

While I was at the Dulag (solitary) the food situation was horrible. I jokingly refer to the fact that the food was catered - by that I mean that one of the guards came by three times a day, opened the door, and handed in the meals. Then locked the door and disappeared. Breakfast consisted of a cup of ersatz coffee (horrible tasting but hot), and a very thin slice of very dark bread (half bread and half sawdust) with a thin dab of jelly or cheese. I used to gather the topping at one end of the slice and save that for the last bite so as to savor the flavor. Lunch was a bowl of sauerkraut soup - the bulk of which was sauerkraut, grass and an occasional worm. That was just about every day resulting in the fact that, to this day, I can not stand the sight or smell of sauerkraut. Dinner was a repeat of the breakfast. I was constantly hungry and had many dreams of restaurants and delicious food. When I first got to the POW Camp, I was assigned to a room in the 4th (newest) compound. I don't remember how many men we had in the room but we had access to Red Cross parcels which were made up in the States and shipped over for us. I think that we were entitled to a parcel a week - each parcel had, as I recall, a B Bar (very nutritious chocolate), a can of Klim (Powdered milk), Spam, some cereal, a slab of cheese, a couple packs of cigarettes, and other things that I can't remember at this moment. We would pool the food and room-mates were assigned to different duties - laundry, room cleaning, keeping the fire going in the coal stove, cook, etc. One man had the job of slicing the bread - this was an important job - we would get a loaf of their famous very dark and very heavy bread (a takeoff of pumpernickel) but it had to serve all of us in the room. His job was to slice it as thin as possible (a quarter of an inch would be great). So it wasn't too bad at that time. Shortly after my arrival, all of the Jewish POWs were transferred to our segregated barracks which was in another section of the camp (Compound # 1). This was the oldest section - some of the men had been there for years. Over a period of time, apparently, they had constructed a mess hall and, even though our barracks was segregated, we did eat our dinner meals in the mess hall. They had been quite resourceful and by pooling all of their food, and having some pretty good chefs, they turned out some pretty decent meals. It turned out to be a break for us because, later on, the Red Cross parcels came in dribs and drabs. Apparently, the Germans refused to mark the trains carrying the parcels (they were supposed to have a large Red Cross on the top of the trains) so our own planes were shooting up the trains and destroying the parcels. The POW's in the other compounds were in a bad way due to the lack of parcels and we could see some of them scrounging through the garbage looking for morsels that they could eat. Our compound did still have some food but we were not allowed to share. But, all of us did suffer a substantial loss of weight during our incarceration. We constantly talked about food, about restaurants that we remembered and the delicious food that we had eaten. After we were liberated and got to Camp Lucky Strike, our Forces set about the task of building us up before we got back to the States. We had regular Army food which wasn't half bad - also, we always carried our canteens wherever we went, and there was always large containers of egg nog for us to dip into - that helped to fatten us up. I would say that the only lingering effect to this day is my intense dislike of sauerkraut. At this time I would say that I enjoy all kinds of food.

What was a "Mickey man"?

In the early stages of the war, the British apparently preferred doing their bombing missions at night. They would send out single bombers to a number of targets. That was strategic bombing. On the other hand, the Americans preferred saturation bombing. They would send out hundreds of planes, in formation, and saturate the target area. The problem was that if we got to the target and the area was 'socked in" due to heavy cloud formations, the planes would have to divert to a secondary or tertiary target. Remember, there were no beams that we could lock on, and the bombs would have been dropped all over the area resulting in many civilian casualties. Fortunately, the British had developed a system which they called Radar. It was based on the fact that they could send out a very high frequency wave (Microwave) and find that it would bounce back and could be detected on a receiver scope. Initially, they set up a radar detection system along their coast to detect enemy planes coming toward England. America took that system and found that they could mount the transmitter on a plane and then pick up the "bounce back" with a scope on the same plane. You would pick up a black and white picture on the scope. If the wave hit water, most of the wave would be absorbed and the scope would give a black area, farmland would come back in shades of gray, but concrete or steel structures would come back as white. By comparing the outline of the structures with aerial photographs, you could identify specific targets. It was also terrific for navigation in bad weather. The decision was made to equip certain planes with this equipment and let those planes be the leaders of the flights (Pathfinders). When a mission went out, if the weather was clear, the Navigator led the group to the target and the Bombardier zeroed in on the target. If the weather was bad, The Mickey Man (short for microwave) led the group to the target and did the fine tuning to zero in on the target. The other planes in the group would salvo their bombs on signal from the lead planes. The early radar had a tendency to blow fuses or malfunction at crucial times, so we had to be prepared for that. Also, the lead planes were a primary target for anti-aircraft fire once the Germans realized that the accuracy of the bombing could be relying on the lead planes. Therefore, we usually had two or three Radar planes flying in the front positions during a mission - if # 1 went out for some reason, the deputies could take over. I had received my commission as a Navigator, but then, some of us were assigned to Langley Field for specialized training as Radar-Navigator-Bombardiers. That's the story of a Mickey Man. As it happens, on my crucial mission, I was in the # 1 plane, and our plane was shot down by flak shortly after bombs were dropped - the #2 deputy was also shot down at the same time. It's also interesting that the Microwave has found many other uses in present day technology

. For years after the war, many veterans refused to divulge their personal experiences. When did you first start talking in detail about your internment?

I guess in the first 50 years I may have mentioned it casually to some close friends but never in any detail. On November 26th, 1994 - the family was gathered to celebrate Thanksgiving and I told them that something had happened exactly 50 years ago that could have resulted in none of us being seated at the table for the celebration. After dinner, I elaborated on being shot down and of some of my experiences as a POW. Since that time, I have spoken about it frequently and occasionally to some groups who have requested my talk. Since Mary Smith contacted me and set up her web site, the story has spread far and wide.

Have you ever returned to Barth, Germany and Stalag Luft I?

I have never returned to Barth, Germany since the war. I was invited to attend a reunion this past summer, but was unable to attend. I have traveled in England, Italy, France, Spain and Portugal, but never have gone back to Germany. I would love to go back, but who knows, maybe someday I will. On behalf of the Military History Community at About. com, I would like to thank Dr. Aaron Kuptsow for all of his time and effort in answering our questions. I would also like to thank the members of this community who submitted questions for this interview. Finally, I would like to extend our deepest appreciation to Mary Smith, webmaster of Stalag Luft I Online, for all of her help in coordinating this interview. All of your efforts have produced a highly informative interview which many readers will enjoy. Thank you.