Lichtblau points out how many Jewish survivors had to be
bunked side by side with the Nazi POWs, while in certain cases
the Nazi tormentors were given the duties of overseers of
the camps including medical care. These terrible conditions
in the Displaced Person’s Camp were highlighted, showing
how the detainees were kept there because of illness, lack
of resources, or because visas were limited. The author compares
this to the thousands of Nazis able to gain entry as self-proclaimed
refugees, or with the help and protection of US government
agencies.
The author commented, “History has forgotten what happened
to the survivors. There is an image that they were embraced
by the allied forces as they flooded out from the camps, given
warm showers, beds, and plentiful food. It was really not
like that at all. The blame has to go to U.S. Army General
George Patton who was in charge of the displaced persons camps.
He had sort of an odd fondness almost for the Nazi prisoners,
believe it or not. He believed that they were the ones in
the best position to efficiently run the camps, and he gave
them supervisory approval to basically lord over the Jews
and the other survivors. I hope the book makes people aware
of the horrific conditions of the camps and Patton’s
overt Anti-Semitism. Jewish groups complained to President
Truman who did not ignore it. After an investigation there
was a blistering and condemning report, lost to history, by
Penn Law School Dean, Earl Harrison. This report to Truman
stated, “As matters now stand, we appear to be treating
the Jews as the Nazis treated them except that we do not exterminate
them.” Even though conditions did improve some survivors
were kept in the camps for as long as five years. They were
still confined behind barbed wire, under armed guard in camps.”
Nazis who were able to flourish in the US included Dr. Hubertus
Strughold, Arthur Rudolph, Otto von Bolschwing, and Rocket
Scientist Werher von Braun. American civilian and military
leaders chose to look the other way because of the information
and knowledge in science, medicine, military, and engineering
the Nazis provided during the Cold War fight. For example,
Dr. Hubertus Strughold, M.D., once director of the Aviation
Medical Research Institute in the Third Reich, was recruited
by the U.S. Air Force and rose to head its School of Aviation
Medicine in San Antonio. He became celebrated as "the
father of space medicine,” even though he performed
medical experiments at Dachau involving subjecting victims
to high altitude and freezing torture. There is also the case
of Otto von Bolschwing, an asset for the CIA, even though
he was a onetime colleague of Adolf Eichmann's who had laid
out a plan for persecuting Germany's Jews.
Lichtblau noted, “There was this blind spot of the
benefit of having them help in the Cold War effort. Remember
the Dulles quote, paraphrasing, ‘I would deal with the
devil himself if it would help national security.’ In
the early months, and the first few years after the war, beginning
in mid-1945, there were only a very limited number of immigration
visas to get into the United States. There were many, many
thousands of Nazi collaborators who got visas to the United
States while the survivors did not.”