A German POW in Pennsylvania--At 101, He Tells His Story

Comments · 1.9K

• KH

  @khecke · 5 months ago

  I was drafted into the Volkssturm by the end of December 1944 in Lower Silesia at the age of 11 years. We were trained on the Panzerfaust, while the Russian Army was coming.<br>We were about 30 kids of my age and we always were hungry, since we got very little to eat - and it was worse directly after the war. The Russian soldiers treated us better than the Germans.<br>Ernie had it definitely better in Pennsylvania.<br>I wondered that I survived at all - today I am 92 years and live in Northwest Arkansas.

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• LI

  @limitlessvision · 3 months ago

  101? He looks more like 80. God Bless him

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• BR

  @brianbordoni2168 · 4 months ago

  A German luftwaffe pilot lived in my neighborhood. He was shot down early in the war and sent to a POW camp in I think Brownsville Texas. There he learned English from the guards which used some colorful language. After the war they had a chance to go back to Germany or stay in the USA….he stayed and became a citizen and eventually a police officer of our town.

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• IS

  @Isacc_Bjornsen · 5 months ago

  That’s one mentally sharp 101 year old.

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• T4

  @t44s · 4 months ago

  this is a beautiful man. Every student in America should see this.

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• HA

  @hankb1604 · 5 months ago

  Ernie is the type immigrant the USA needs. &nbsp; Hard working and thankful for an opportunity! &nbsp;A truly blesed human!.

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• CO

  @codyhilton1750 · 5 months ago

  We need people like Ernie to tell these idiots today what it is like when you do not have freedom.

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• DA

  @danschneider9921 · 4 months ago (edited)

  My grandfather was 19 when he was captured by the US Army in January of 1945. He had previously served in Northern Russia with the 212. Infanterie Division, had been wounded and sent back to Germany. When the Battle of the Bulge began to falter, he was sent back to the line, still wounded where he surrendered to the Americans first chance he got. &nbsp;<br>He immigrated to the states in 1955. Married my Grandmother who is Austrian and came to the states in 1937 at age 8. He became very &quot;American&quot;, and wasn&apos;t so much ashamed of but considered his wartime service &quot;all in the past&quot;. As he got &nbsp;older and I became obsessed with history he opened up a little. He remembered after being captured, being processed as a POW in a rear area, seeing trucks loaded with &quot;coke a cola and toilet paper&quot; . And he said that the &quot;German Army didn&apos;t have trucks to move the wounded, so if the Americans could afford them for luxuries like that, they (the Germans) were finished&quot; He earned the EK2 and black wound badge. I have those and his Wehrpass. He passed in 2007. Lived in Kansas from 1960 until then. Worked for International Harvester as a salesman from 1960-86. Cool guy. Funny, big heart.

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• RJ

  @rjb6327 · 5 months ago

  &quot;Freedom is the key, if you don&apos;t misuse it&quot;. &nbsp;If only a lot of people understood that.

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• GW

  @GWWalker-s5o · 3 weeks ago

  This Man just wanted a hand up not a handout. A true American.

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• ST

  @stephenLarson-vs7fu · 4 months ago

  I had friends from Nebraska who told me that German POWs came to work on their farm. The farmer would pick them up in the morning and take them to farm where they would be fed and worked all day. The only thing they asked for was for the farmer to go through town on the way home so they could look at the girls! Even though the war was still going on, no one seemed interested anymore.

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• JA

  @jamespaine-h9h · 5 months ago

  They should have him tour the colleges and tell his story to all our spoiled children, what a blessing this man !

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