World War II Working Group
Chaired by Mr. Timothy K. Nenninger and Colonel Nikolay Ivanovich Nikiforov, the Commission’s World War II Working Group has exchanged and examined thousands of documents dealing with the fates of American and Soviet POWs during and after the war.
Through its investigative efforts, the World War II Working Group has confirmed that there were about 28,000 American Prisoners of War held by the German Nazis and their allies in camps on the Eastern Front. These prisoners came under Soviet control in the war’s final days. U.S. records show that about 25,000 of these POWs returned directly across the lines to U.S. military control. More than 2800 others were returned to U.S. military control through the Soviet Black Sea port of Odessa.
The World War II Working Group is investigating the possibility that some American POWs who remain unaccounted for from the Eastern camps may have been transferred to Soviet labor camps.
The working group has also helped the Russians clarify the fates of more than 300,000 former Soviet POWs and displaced persons.
In August 2000, a joint mission led by General Roland Lajoie, U.S. Commission Chairman, and Russian Colonel Konstantin Golumbovskiy traveled to the Kamchatka Peninsula, in Russia’s Far East, to investigate a crash site that was reported to our Moscow office by a Russian historian from Kamchatka.
The wreckage they found was identified as that of a U.S. Navy PV1 bomber that crashed on Kamchatka in March 1944 with seven men on board. The crewmembers have been identified, and DPMO has been able to locate most of the families to report what we have learned concerning the fates of their loved ones.
Plans for a full recovery operation during July and August 2001 are currently being made. The site is accessible only during July and August because of the harsh climate and difficult terrain of this remote location.
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