{"id":28765,"date":"2012-02-16T11:46:13","date_gmt":"2012-02-16T15:46:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=28765"},"modified":"2012-02-16T11:46:13","modified_gmt":"2012-02-16T15:46:13","slug":"nazis-at-fort-sam-houston","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=28765","title":{"rendered":"Nazis at Fort Sam Houston"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>
\nThere’s an article at My San Antonio<\/a> which tells part of the story of POWs buried at the national cemetery at Fort Sam Houston. I just thought it was interesting;<\/p>\n

POWs were buried at their prisons, among them Camp Polk, La., and reinterred at Fort Sam after the prison camps were closed. Many of their fallen comrades went home, as did survivors like Karl-Heinz Blumenthal, a paratrooper who was captured in 1943 in Africa. Those buried in the United States went unclaimed.<\/p>\n

Blumenthal, 88, who returned to the U.S. decades ago and lives in Asheville, N.C., recalled one soldier’s funeral.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were standing at attention, and we had a band that played some music and I remember one song, \u2018Hatt Einen Kameraden.’ I had a good fellow pass away. We all sing that song,\u201d he said. \u201cI felt, I hope I don’t have to die here.\u201d<\/p>\n

The prisoners were enlistees like Karl Waldera, an obergefreiter or German lance corporal, and Guiseppe Slaviero, an Italian sergeant major. Most of the POW headstones are similar to those of the Americans here, listing their names, ranks and dates of death.<\/p>\n

Defiance, pride and sadness, though, echo from the graves of Alfred Kafka and Georg Forst.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe died far from his home for the F\u00fchrer, people and fatherland,\u201d headstones for both say, swastikas etched in an Iron Cross.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I remember in the small agricultural community where I grew up, the old timers (who were about my current age at the time) would tell stories about the POW camp that was where our community center is now and how the prisoners would work on the surrounding farms during the day and then be returned at night to their camp. Many of them enjoyed their time in Upstate New York so much that they’ve returned after the war to visit the farmers for whom they worked during their incarceration. <\/p>\n

It’s odd considering that we’ll probably never fight a civilized enemy again which recognizes that a war is over.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There’s an article at My San Antonio which tells part of the story of POWs buried … Nazis at Fort Sam Houston<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28765","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-historical"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28765","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=28765"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28765\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=28765"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=28765"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=28765"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}