News-Info-Alerts

Re: Ex-POW Discussion in Iowa

To: ALL

From: Andi Wolos & Bob Necci

(POW-MIA InterNetwork)

Date: September 29, 2002

"Iowa panel discussion includes American POW turned guard and German held in U.S.
        
By Chuck Schoffner
ASSOCIATED PRESS

CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa – Roy Olinger confronted his past and found the bitterness still lingered.

Olinger spent several months as a prisoner of war in Germany during World War II, then served as a guard at a POW camp near Algona in northern Iowa.

Thursday, the Army veteran found himself seated next to a former inmate from Camp Algona, Kurt Butzlaff. Olinger, 79, said he bore no ill will toward Butzlaff. He could not say the same for his German captors.

"You'll never know until you start reading the oral histories what American POWs went through. For four months, we were given a bowl of soup this big," Olinger said, cupping his two hands together, "and there was not much in it.

"We got a slice of bread no bigger than a piece of pie and it was made from 50 percent sawdust. We got that once a day."

Olinger, from Springville in eastern Iowa, was part of a panel that included Butzlaff and relatives of two other former German soldiers held as POWs in Iowa.

The Germans are visiting the sites of POW camps in Iowa and Minnesota on a tour arranged by TRACES, a Mason City-based nonprofit organization that tries to preserve Iowa's links to Germany during World War II.

Camp Algona and its branches in Iowa, Minnesota and the Dakotas housed about 10,000 German and Italian prisoners, according to historian Michael Luick-Thrams, the executive director of TRACES.

Another major camp was located at Clarinda in southwest Iowa. Clinton, Muscatine, Charles City, Waverly and Eldora were among the cities that had branch camps.

The tour, which will end with a conference in Muscatine Oct. 5-8, has angered some Iowa veterans.

"I got a phone call in Charles City from a veteran swearing at me and saying how dare I bring Germans and treat them as honored guests when his buddies fought and died fighting the Third Reich," Luick-Thrams said.

"Another in Knoxville said I was doing a disgrace to all Iowa veterans. I told them I hope that 60 years later they could finally get beyond the war."

Luick-Thrams said a man who was never identified made threatening remarks before the group arrived for Thursday's session at the Cedar Rapids Public Library. The man was allowed to attend the session and left before it ended without causing any trouble.

"We kept an eye on him," said Diana Breuer Baculis, community relations manager for the library.

Olinger was captured near the French-German border in December 1944 and was taken to Stalag 4A near Dresden. He spent the next four months at hard labor, digging up tree stumps, breaking rocks and loading freight cars. He weighed 165 pounds when he entered the camp. When he left he weighed 120 pounds.

"Comparing how you were treated in the States and how we were treated over there, you were fortunate," Olinger said to Butzlaff.

The two shook hands before the session but had little other communication.

"I told him I'm glad our people treated you well and you were able to go home and have a successful life," Olinger said. "There was nothing more that needed to be said."

Butzlaff, 82, a retired art teacher, was captured in Tunisia in 1943 and shuffled among camps in Algeria, Casablanca, Colorado, Wyoming and Missouri before ending up at Camp Algona.

The son of a farmer, Butzlaff recalled working for a family named Adams on their farm.

"That was my good luck," he said. Luick-Thram translated his German.

Butzlaff helped in the oat harvest and said the work was "pleasant." He was treated well, he said, and at lunch the family usually gave him a few tomatoes.

For Rachael Davis of Cedar Rapids, the Germans' visit rekindled memories of her family's trip to Camp Algona in December 1944, when she was 8. Her family wanted to see the Christmas display some prisoners had made and were serenaded by prisoners singing Christmas carols.

They sang in German, but everyone recognized the melodies, she said. Butzlaff, she learned, was one of the singers.

"Many years ago we were in the same building but were kept quite a distance apart," Davis said. "Today I got to hold your hand."

© Copyright 2002 Union-Tribune Publishing Co. "