Wauwilermoos internment camp

Wauwilermoos was an internment as well as prisoner-of-war penal camp during World War II in Switzerland, situated in the municipalities of Wauwil and Egolzwil in the Canton of Luzern. Established in 1940, Wauwilermoos was a penal camp for internees, including for Allied soldiers during World War II, among them members of the United States Army Air Forces, who were sentenced for attempting to escape from other Swiss camps for interned soldiers, or other offenses. In addition to Hünenberg and Les Diablerets, Wauwilermoos was one of three Swiss penal camps for internees that were established in Switzerland during World War II. The intolerable conditions were later described by numerous former inmates, by various contemporary reports and studies.

Aerial photograph of the Wauwilermoos camp area, assumably in mid-1944.

Wauwilermoos camp probably in late 1944.

Background

During World War II more than 100,000 belligerent troops, mainly Allied soldiers were interned in Switzerland. Internees from England, France, Poland and Russia, and Italians and Germans who fled combat, the Swiss government had to – unlike civilians, for instance Jews refugees, who usually were sent back to the territories occupied by the Nazi regime – keep these soldiers interned until the end of the hostilities, in line to the Geneva Convention of 1929. The soldiers were held in barracks, and they were used as workers for agriculture and industry, except the officers who not were compelled to forced labour and stayed in unoccupied mountain hotels, mainly in Davos.

Starting in 1943 Switzerland shot down American and British aircraft, mainly bombers, overflying Switzerland during World War II: six aircraft were downed by Swiss Air Force fighters and nine by anti-aircraft cannons; 36 airmen were killed. On 1 October 1943 the first American bomber was shot down near Bad Ragaz: Only three men survived. Also, there were 137 emergency landings through May 1945. The officers were interned in Davos, airmen in Adelboden. The representative of the U.S. military in Bern, U.S. military attaché Barnwell R. Legge, instructed the soldiers not to flee so as to allow the U.S. Legation to coordinate their escape attempts, but the majority of the soldiers thought it was a diplomatic ruse or did not receive the instruction directly. Soldiers who were caught after their escape from the internment camp were often detained in the prison camp Wauwilermoos near Luzern.

On 1 October 1944 Switzerland housed 39,670 internees in all: 20,650 from Italy, 10,082 from Poland, 2,643 from the United States, 1,121 from the United Kingdom (including five Australians), 822 from the Soviet Union and 245 from France. In September the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) was commissioned by the U.S. supreme command to organize the escapes of 1,000 American internees, but the task was not effectively accomplished before late winter 1944/45.

History

Established in 1940, Wauwilermoos was a penal camp for internees, particularly for Allied soldiers during World War II, among them members of the United States Army Air Forces, who were sentenced for attempting to escape from other Swiss camps for interned soldiers, or other offenses. The internment prison camp was one of three Swiss penal camps for internees that were established in Switzerland during World War II. In Wauwilermoos prison camp both military internees and male civilian internees were detained who had been convicted under the Swiss Military Criminal Code. Wauwilermoos housed military internees of various nations, including England, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Poland, Russia, Yugoslavia and the USA. Swiss military-run prisons like Wauwilermoos were established earlier in the war, after cantonal prisons became "overcrowded with prisoners convicted in military courts." According to a decree of the Swiss Federal Council in 1941, military prisoners would be confined according to whether their offenses qualified them for Custodia honesta, or honorable confinement. Special military-run prisons would offer confinement for "certain offenses of purely military character," since honorable crimes such as "escape and escape attempts . . . [were] usually not the crimes of common criminals." Regardless of the intent of the Federal Council, for most of 1944 the Swiss authorities did not follow the Custodia honesta model, but "rather grouped American internees with common criminals in Wauwilermoos." From July 1941 to September 1945 Wauwilermoos was under the command of Swiss Army Captain Andre Béguin.

USAAF B-17 and B-24 bombers interned at Dübendorf airfield

The intolerable conditions were later described by numerous former inmates, by various contemporary reports and studies, especially the imposed extremely harsh detention conditions. For instance, the American airman Sergeant Daniel L. Culler was one of the first USAAF airmen and was sent to Wauwilermoos in June 1944. His B-24 was piloted by Lt. George B. Telford and landed at the Dübendorf airfield on 18 March 1944. On 12 May Culler, the B-24's tail gunner Howard Melson and the British soldier Matthew Thirlaway slipped away from Adelboden, where they were interned, but did not succeed in escaping via Zürich and Bellinona to Italy, where they had hoped to rejoin the Allied lines near Roma. After three days in the Ticino mountains, Culler's comrades separated as Culler became ill, and he decided to go back to the Adelboden camp. Culler was condemned, still ill, and placed on rations of "bread and water" for ten days in Frutigen, and when he returned to Adelboden he was sent to Wauwilermoos without any explanation (later he was informed that a judge deemed his punishment as too light). Culler's good clothes were confiscated by Béguin in return to "old dirty rags." Sent to barracks 9, Culler was repeatedly raped by internees from Eastern Europe. He reported to the camp commandant André Béguin and some of the guards, who laughed and sent him back. The next days they even closed Culler's barrack at night, and the torture did not end until new internees became Culler's roommates: "I was bleeding everywhere," Culler said later. Culler fell seriously ill, was transferred to the hospital, fled and managed to travel to Geneva. There he met three American airmen. They fled across the border towards France, and were fired "without warning." Béguin was called "a disgrace for Switzerland," was appointed by his own request as the commander of the camp, presumably because no career officer desired that job. The sanitary facilities were disastrous, and Béguin stole the food packages and harassed the Allied internees. "He was a Nazi, not only a Nazi sympathizer," Robert Cardenas told CBS 8 News on occasion of an 2013 interview. Cardenas is a retired U.S. Air Force Brigadier General, and was a captain in the 44th Bomb Group and was interned in Switzerland in 1944. While Cardenas himself not was sent to Wauwilermoos, he did visit it and witnessed the camp's abysmal conditions firsthand. In his recollection "the beds were wooden planks or some of them were only straw on the floor," "American prisoners were subjected to physical and sexual abuse, starvation, freezing, disease-ridden conditions and virtually no hygiene facilities," and the camp "was exactly like, if not worse than any POW camp in Germany, it was horrible."

At least 149 to 161 Americans who were caught attempting escape in 1944 were sent to Wauwilermoos, "where their confinement would eventually test the limits of international law." The American internees remained in Wauwilermoos until November 1944, when the United States State Department lodged protests against the Swiss government and secured their release. The agreement did not impact all nationalities, as Russian internees were still at the Wauwilermoos camp in July 1945.

Location

Wauwilermoos moorland

The site was located on the former Wauwilersee lake in the municipalities of Egolzwil, Wauwil and Schötz in the Canton of Luzern in Switzerland. The former Wauwilersee lake peat was mined since 1820, and the area was drained in the mid-19th century. Due to the fact that the camp was built on a former lake within the marshland, the internees often sank to the ankle in the mud.

Buildings and organisation

Entrance area guarded by two Swiss Army soldiers

The camp was under the supervision of the Swiss Army. From the beginning, Wauwilermoos had a bad reputation. The penal camp was guarded day and night by soldiers with dogs. A sergeant led a guard dog section of 10 soldiers, and was under the direct command of the commanding officer of the facility. In all 47 rifle men formed the guard troops as of 13 February 1945. The camp was additionally secured by several rows of barbed wire.

The sector "Santenberg" was considered a military prison, sector "Egolzwil" housed alcoholics, while the department for "difficult elements" and for repeat offenders was in the sector "Wauwilermoos". In Wauwilermoos prison camp both military internees and male civilian internees were detained who had been convicted under the Swiss Military Criminal Code.

bird's eye view respectively animated map, Notlandung documentary

Multiple fenced, on 40,000 square metres (430,556 sq ft) a total of 25 barracks were situated: eleven barracks for a capacity of about 500 inmates, the majority of 14 barracks were used by the Swiss camp staff. The walled prisoners barracks could accommodate up to 50 people and were built from wood; they were neither isolated nor were they heated in winter. As reported by Wauwilermoos prisoners and assumed in November 2014 by U.S. inspectors, the barracks were equipped with simple beds stuffed with straw, and only officers slept on straw-filled mattresses. Sanitary facilities were nearly missing; the latrines were simple trenches in the earth. Apart from the few and poor diet, the detainees widely were lacking medical care. Even the access to the auxiliary packets from the Red Cross and communicating by letter with the outside world, were denied.

The officer barracks were designed for only 20 occupants, but had 86 by autumn 1944. As a result, André Béguin explained that "he could no longer provide amenities such as sheets and shaving mirrors for officers below the rank of captain." But also firewood to heat the stoves was in short supply. In response to the Americans "who [threatened to cut] up tables and benches to keep warm," Béguin claimed surprise, and resolved that "if they behaved churlishly we could no longer treat them like officers." The commandant claimed that the allocation of firewood was greater than the quantity rationed to Swiss soldiers, a comparison used to justify many conditions around the camp. Béguin also claimed that "the barracks were built according to regulations, and despite their shortcomings, were 'of the same type as those used in the Army.'" Officials at the U.S. Legation in Switzerland disagreed with Béguin’s "tempered description of conditions" at the penal camp. According to Brigadier General B. R. Legge, the camp was "of the stockade type…surrounded by barbed wire, constantly patrolled by dogs and guards with sub-machine guns." He claimed the conditions as "unreasonably severe, at the lowest subsistence level, and mud ankle deep." General Legge considered them worse than those in POW camps in hostile Nazi Germany. Prior to the escape attempts of summer 1944, only a few American internees were condemned to Wauwilermoos, "normally for drunkenness and disorderly conduct" and with the tacit approval of the U.S. legation. Once the escapes of American POW's increased massively, the "Swiss government sent every offender to Wauwilermoos, normally for two or three months without trial." By autumn 1944, over 100 American internees were incarcerated in Wauwilermoos, and "the Swiss government threatened to keep them there without trial for six to seven months." Many of the American internees were eventually charged in the Swiss military justice system, "an experience that forever changed their perceptions of Swiss neutrality."

Legal premises

For instance, the majority of Americans held in Wauwilermoos in autumn 1944 were in "pre-trial confinement, awaiting a military tribunal by the Swiss Army for the crime of attempting escape." The Swiss military tribunals were convened by territorial courts (German: Divisionsgericht), operating under the Swiss Military Court Regulations of 1889 (Militärstrafgerichtsordnung) and the Swiss Military Penal Code of 1927 (Militärstrafgesetz Bundesgesetz vom 13. Juni 1927). The jurisdiction was established by decree of the Swiss Federal Council in 1939. Presided by a judge or chief justice, the tribunal panels consisted of a mix of six officers and non-commissioned officers under a judge. The Federal Council elected the judges and panel members for three-year terms. They retained their regular military positions while serving the court. The military court regulations specified that the chairmen must "at least hold a major degree," but the judges were not required to be trained in law, despite their position as "chairman of the court." Also a prosecutor, defense attorney, court clerk, and in the case of foreign defendants, a translator were present at the Swiss military tribunals. The authority to try military internees in the Military Penal Code (MPC) meant that "the intent to apply internal Swiss law to internees predated World War II." Internees on trial for escape normally faced charges for "disregard of regulations", an MPC article that allowed punishment of up to six months of penal servitude or imprisonment in times of war. However, the MPC did not specify a minimum sentence and even permitted the downgrade to disciplinary punishment in "mild cases." "This subjectivity gave military tribunals wide latitude to treat escape attempts as minor infractions, or instead to classify them as criminal felonies." Once a tribunal convened, the burden of proof was normally substantiated by escape reports from the internment camp commanders, arrest reports from police, and interrogations carried out by an official investigator, who was appointed to the court for a three-year term. This preliminary investigation was a laborious process, added by the circumstances of the internees' travels during their escapes, and did not facilitate the swift execution of justice. The Swiss military justice system was quickly overwhelmed by the rash of escape attempts in the summer of 1944. For the minority of indicted internees who eventually received verdicts, the average sentence was 74 days in prison, but the average time to complete the investigations and military tribunals was 82 days.

For instance, Sgt. Dale Ellington, a gunner on a B-17 bomber based in England, was shot by German anti-aircraft fire in April 1944. The airplane was shot again by Swiss fighters and anti-aircraft batteries after crossing the Swiss border and then landed at Dübendorf airfield. Initially interned in Adelboden, Ellington remained there until September when the American forces were approaching the France–Switzerland border. On 17 September 1944 Ellington slipped out by using his passable German to purchase train tickets for himself and three other internees. Dressed in civilian clothes, the group traveled unaccosted to a city near France, but they were questioned and arrested by an observant Swiss soldier. They were first confined in the Basel city jail for three days and then transferred to Wauwilermoos, where Ellington recalled "barbed wire, straw bunks, and guard dogs." After nearly one month in Wauwilermoos, Ellington and his fellows were transported to Bern to appear at the Swiss military tribunal. Each defendant was given a copy of the poorly translated charges, and "methodically listed the identities of the defendants, the charges against them, a catalog of evidence, and the names of their tribunal jurors," in fact the only trial record they received. The tribunal panel consisted of three Swiss officers (the highest ranking were two captains) and three enlisted soldiers. During the interrogation, a Swiss captain asked why they had traveled so far from their camp at Adelboden, and in response, "one of the airmen defiantly informed the juror that "we were chasing butterflies." According to Ellington, the response to this lack of candor was: "You have served thirty days at the detention camp and you will now return there and serve forty five more!" Ellington was returned to Wauwilermoos until 1 December, the verdict of the tribunal was not delivered for another 20 days, by a slightly altered panel in which one of the Swiss captains had been replaced by another officer of the same rank. The verdict was 75 days confinement for all four defendants, with 45 days deducted for pre-trial confinement. In addition, their pro-rated share of the trial cost of 17.5 Swiss Francs were to pay. Ellington was unaware that the tribunal continued after his departure, and was never informed of the actual verdict. This "demonstrates that internees had difficulty comprehending their experience with Swiss military justice due to both language and cultural differences, and the fact that they were effectively serving their sentences in advance of the tribunal verdicts."

Conditions, human rights violations and inspections

Wauwilermoos barracks assumably in late 1944.

Interior of the barracks: beds of straw to the right and latrines to the left.

Wauwilermoos camp assumably in winter 1944/45.

Under the title "Das ist ein Skandal, Mit Hunden gehetzt" (literally: "This is a scandal, rushed with dogs") reported the Swiss newspaper "Berner Tagwacht" on 7 January 1944, the fate of the Soviet Russian internee Dobrolyubov in late November 1943. After a failed escape from Wauwilermoos, Dobrolyubov was condemned to the punishment cell. Because he was sick, Dobrolyubov asked to be sent to the camp's sickroom, but this was denied by Béguin. When Dobrolyubov disagreed, a dog was sent in, pulling him to the ground and tearing his clothes. A guard kicked the internee lying on the ground before Dobroliubov was sent forcibly to the punishment cell.

Symforian Dziedic, a Polish lieutenant, was voluntarily returned to Switzerland after fleeing to France. After a second attempt to escape end of 1943, he was imprisoned in Wauwilermoos again. Béguin locked, as specified by the lieutenant, Dziedic in an "arrest local beside the pigsty". Dziedic had to take off his uniform and put on rags, and was paraded before his comrades through the camp.

In the second half of December 1943, the then 26 Soviet Russian internees were sent along with other detainees, among others from England, Italy and Poland, to fetch wood in the forest. They were accompanied by several guards with dogs who ordered the soldiers to collect significantly more wood than normal and take it to the prison camp, 1.5 kilometres (0.9 mi) from the forest. The Russian internees refused to comply with this harassment, and the guard fired his gun into the air and rushed the dogs on his prisoners. For the alleged resistance, soldier Malfejw was detained ten days in the punishment cell. In a fight among inmates of barrack 29, on 28 September 1944 a 27-year-old Russian internee was shot by the guards and another wounded by two bullets.

Robert Gamperl, probably a German renegade, reached in Switzerland in November 1943. He and other internees in the camp Lindenhof-Witzwil had refused to work. He was "punished to twenty days sharp arrest and transfer to the prison camp Wauwilermoos for three months," in order that the detainees wanted to force an investigation of the local "undemocratic and inhumane conditions." On 30 April 1944 Gamperl asked the Swiss Commissariat for Internment by letter to "review the real reasons, a hearing by the legal officer and reprieve to the clarification of the matter." His letter was never forwarded from Wauwilermoos, as well as the letters from Alfred Friedrich and Josef Haslinger, who had written a letter in the same matter at the same time.

Jules Keller, a medical student, was deserted from the German Army. From Wauwilermoos he sent between 23 August and 2 November 1944 at least five requests to the address of the Federal Commissioner for Internment. Keller asked for health reasons to spend internment near his aunts near Zürich. He argued that because of a chronic gastrointestinal disease he was "camp- and incapacitated," and Keller asked, supported by further justifications and medical certificates, to be transferred to a nursing home. His letters were never answered, as well as three letters (August/September 1944) by Josef Dudkowiak, an officer of the German Air Force. Dudkowiak had deserted after four and a half years, after he denounced his superior officer for corruption. Dudkowiak also mentioned that he had been sent to the Wauwilermoos penal camp without any explanations.

On the occasion of a lecture in front of Swiss officers explained Béguin his "art of bulk handling" (German: Kunst der Massenbehandlung) on 26 June 1944: "115 internees refused to work. Three times we gave the command to work. It was refused. We examined all 115 men's pockets, left nothing therein as the handkerchiefs, and we locked all in a barrack. We told them at the same time, that they only would get food when they were working. During 14 days we left these 115 men without any food. On the 14th day, they told us to dy. Our answer was: Since man can live 24 days without food and drink, we'll order the doctor to day 23. Some hours later, they demanded to eat. We said: There are 57 blades and 58 pimples. If you'll have worked for an hour, you'll get food. An hour later, after 60 minutes of work, 114 men were eating. The 115th (man) endured 17 days. Then he ate."

An U.S. military memo of 1944 mentioned the conditions in Wauwilermoos as "worse than in enemy prison camps" and confirmed the first-hand impressions. The "meals consisted of watered-down soups and scorched stale bread." The sanitary circumstances were subpar: for instance, the latrines were just trenches, very unsanitary, and to clean the trenches were hosed down every few weeks. Reportedly, "lice and rats were everywhere and the men got sick with boils due to the unsanitary conditions" the soldiers had to live in. They "also lost weight, mostly about 40 pounds." Béguin castigated American internees by "subjecting them to cruel punishments and solitary confinements for minor infractions." The soldiers also were "imprisoned a total of 7 months"; the Haque Convention allowed only 30 days confinement. In addition, the internees did not know the time to be served their punishment.

Raiding a German airfield on 18 March 1944, a German air combat fighter struck a B-17 bomber of the 511th Squadron, 351st Bombardment Group (Heavy), piloted by Lt. George Mears. A German aircraft shot out two of the B-17's engines and an oil fire started on a third. The pilot and copilot were able to regain control, and headed for Switzerland to land there. In September 1944 George Mears, 1st Lt. James Mahaffey and two other officers tried to escape to the French–Swiss border before they were arrested and sent to the Wauwilermoos prison camp. 2nd Lt. Paul Gambaiana was another USAAF airman sent there. Just before D-Day his aircraft went down, the crew "wanted to get back to our base so we attempted to leave Switzerland, and they got us and put us there. It was a Swiss concentration camp. About the only thing I can remember ... we had cabbage soup which was hot water and two leaves of cabbage floating around...The rest I have put away and forgotten. I'm trying to forget the whole thing," Gambaiana said in a telephone interview from his home in Iowa in 2013. James Misuraca told about the compound of single-storey buildings surrounded by barbed wire, the armed Swiss guards with dogs, and the commandant, "a hater of Americans, a martinet who seemed quite pleased with our predicament." Sleeping on lice-infested straw. Arrived on 10 October 1944, Misuraca and two other U.S. officers made an escape on 1 November. They'd "timed the rounds of the guards, climbed out a window and over wire fences and walked for miles." Then an U.S. Legation officer drove them to Genève at the border to France, and on 15 November they reached the Allied lines. Most of the Wauwilermoos prisoners had never shared their stories until Mears's grandson contacted them. The "survivors reported of filthy living quarters, of skin rashes and boils, all reported that they were underfed. Some reported being held in solitary for trying to escape. Some went in weighing in the 180s and 190s and came out 50 pounds lighter."

In early December 1944 USAAF First Lieutenant Wally Northfelt was nearing his second month of imprisonment at Wauwilermoos. Nine months earlier, the navigator's B-24 bomber crash-landed at the Dübendorf airfield. Northfelt attempted to escape from Switzerland near Geneva in September 1944, but he was apprehended by border guards and confined at Wauwilermoos. After his arrival at the punishment camp, Northfelt quickly tired of the "meager rations of coffee, bread, and thin soup, which he blamed in part for his weight loss of forty pounds over the course of his time in Switzerland." Northfelt claimed that "he was only able to get enough food to survive by purchasing it off the black market." Northfelt was also ill; sleeping on dirty straw had caused him sores all over his body, and he had problems with his prostate gland. Medical care was given by a doctor, Northfelt claimed, who was "specialized in women’s cases." Northfelt claimed Béguin was a "pro-Nazi" who "only cleaned up the camp when inspections by high ranking officers or American dignitaries were announced."

Presumably on 3 November 1944 when the U.S. embassy was informed by three American soldiers who fled from Wauwilermoos, delegates of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) who visited Wauwilermoos "failed to notice much amiss," and ICRC member Frédéric Hefty wrote: "If iron discipline is the norm, there is also a certain sense of justice and understanding that helps with the re-education and improvement of the difficult elements sent there". The reports contained statements from internees that the camp was "a relaxing place that they would happily return to." However, "the internees provided their statements in return for favours from Béguin," even were "Kapo-similar preferred prisoners." The conditions in the camp had not been reported correctly: "Switzerland’s wartime general, Henri Guisan, demanded that all Red Cross reports about the internment camps be submitted to army censors first if delegates wanted access," noted historian Dwight S. Mears. The American military attaché in Bern warned Marcel Pilet-Golaz, Swiss foreign minister in 1944, that "the mistreatment inflicted on US aviators could lead to 'navigation errors' during bombing raids over Germany."

Although the ICRC inspected the camp on a few occasions, headed by Swiss Army Colonel Auguste Rilliet, the inspection team simply noted that sanitary conditions could be improved, and prisoners were not aware of the length of their sentences or why they were in the camp in the first place. Only just prior to the removal of the commandant in September 1945, Rilliet rated the camp conditions unsatisfactory, in spite of the fact that Wauwilermoos was the subject of official protests by the United States, Great Britain, Poland, Italy, and even prevented normalization of diplomatic relations with the USSR. This may have been due to a secret agreement between the ICRC and the Swiss Army, which gave the Swiss Army permission to review and censor inspection reports prior to their release to foreign powers. Numerous Swiss citizens reported that the conditions at Wauwilermoos were in violation of the 1929 Geneva Conventions, including as below-mentioned, a Swiss Army medical officer, an officer on the Swiss Army's General Staff, and also by the editors of two Swiss newspapers.

Already since 1942, several on-site inspections occurred by the Swiss officials. For instance Major Humbert, army doctor (Militärarzt) and head physician in the Seeland district of the Swiss Federal Commissioner of Internment and Hospitalization (FCIH), menitioned in three reports in January and February 1942, the "enormous morbidity" in the penal camp: "The moral atmosphere in the camp is absolutely untenable". Although Major Humbert also noted the despotic punishment catalog and psychological deficits of the commandant of the prison camp, Captain André Béguin, his complaints resulted in no reactions by the authorities, and in February 1942 Humbert dismissed. In the same year an investigation against Béguin because of possible espionage in favour of Nazi Germany was conducted. Although Colonel Robert Jaquillard, chief of the counterintelligence service of the army, spoke against the retention of Captain Béguin as commander of the camp, his report came to the chief of the legal department of the Swiss federal internment department, Major Florian Imer. After an inspection by Imer in the penal camp Wauwilermoos, Imer noted that "in particular the allegations of Major Humbert were exaggerated for the most part." Another report in January 1943 noted the camp's bad sanitary condition. End of 1944 Ruggero Dollfus, interim Swiss Federal commissioner for internment (Internierungskommissär) complained again about the poor sanitation, and, among others, Dollfus noted that the Red Cross auxiliary packets were confiscated by Béguin, and nearly 500 letters from and to the airmen were withheld by the commandant. Although the camp was visited by inspectors, its commanding officer, Béguin, was suspended and banned from entering the camp not earlier than on 5 September 1945, on 24 September 24 he came into custody. On 20 February 1946, the military court sentenced Béguin to three and a half years in prison.

André Béguin

Béguin and Swiss Army officers ranging between Captain and Colonel (Hautptmann and Oberst)

Captain André Béguin was the commander of the camp whose cruel regime during the war times was tolerated by the authorities. Serving as Captain in the Swiss Army, Béguin was also a Nazi sympathizer. As member of the National Union, he previously lived in München, Germany. "He was known to wear the Nazi uniform and to sign his correspondence with 'Heil Hitler,'" for wearing a Nazi uniform in Switzerland, and even was investigated by the Swiss counterintelligence for his pro-Nazi political views. Nevertheless, the command at Wauwilermoos was given to that man. While in command, Béguin "publicly bereted Americans, sentenced them to solitary confinement, and denied Red Cross parcels and mail."

Despite his tarnished record, in 1940 Béguin obtained work as a civilian employee of the Swiss Federal Commissioner of Internment and Hospitalization (FCIH), where he translated artillery manuals that led to his second commission in the Swiss Army as an ordinance officer. "This ill-advised appointment was almost certainly due to the national state of emergency and manpower shortage in the Swiss Army, although this does not explain the decision to place Béguin in charge of soldiers of other nationalities." In July 1941 Béguin was appointed commandant of the Wauwilermoos penal camp, where he had no sympathy (particularly) for the Americans under his charge, as his correspondence revealed: he found "American internees to be undisciplined and ungrateful," claiming that they were "too spoiled by their stay in hotels in the mountains and do not understand purely military treatment." Béguin also scorned the American airmen because of their common background, claiming that "due to their brief military education" they "are specialists, but not soldiers [and] do not know of barracks life, nor that of soldier campaigning; they are uniformed workers and technicians who service aircraft." Béguin’s view produced an absence of "elementary courtesy and politeness…as painful for us as it is for them."

Captain Béguin was suspended and banned from the camp not earlier than 5 September 1945, because he had apparently burned files in the camp on 3 September 1945. On 24 September he was arrested and taken into custody. On 20 February 1946, the Divisionsgericht Zürich military court sentenced him to prison for 42 months, and he lost his civil rights: In its decision, the Swiss military court (Divisionsgericht) described Béguin as a "crook, embezzler, con-man and inhuman." He was convicted of dishonoring Switzerland and its army, administrative misdemeanors, embezzlement, and abuse of authority. The U.S. War Crimes Office also collected "multiple war crimes accusations" against Béguin, but the Allied authorities never attempted to prosecute the commander of the Wauwilermoos camp "due to lack of jurisdiction."

Aftermath

Under pressure from the United States, in late 1944 Switzerland improved the conditions for American internees. Although Béguin was sentenced for his aforementioned formal misconduct, he was never charged for his actions as commandant of the penal camp from spring 1941 to September 1945. For the crimes in the penal camp Wauwilermoos, the responsible authorities never were accused. Only in 1949 internees, according to the Geneva Convention, received the same rights as prisoners of war. To date, only the so-called Polenwege, forest and field paths and roads which were built by Polish internees, mention to the internees in Switzerland during World War II. Kaspar Villiger apologized on occasion of an official visit by Dan Culler in 1995. For 70 years, no memorial reminded the horrors in the prison camp, until a plaque was installed in late 2015.

U.S. Army Major Dwight Mears's grandfather, Lt. George Mears, was also held at the Wauwilermoos prison in 1944. Major Mears was injured in a helicopter crash during a security mission in Iraq in 2003. While still at West Point, the history class motivated him to conduct first-person historical research, seeking out his grandfather’s surviving crew members, researched the story of his grandfather, and among others photographed approximately 30,000 documents from archives in Bern, Berlin and Washington D.C. Major Mears fought diligently for 15 years to get the Wauilermoos airmen recognized as POWs. Major Mears published his 2012 PhD work with a thesis on the American internees in Switzerland.

Prisoner of War Medal

According to Mears, when the POW Medal was created in 1985, "only service members held by enemies in declared armed conflicts were eligible. It was widened in 1989 to also include those imprisoned by hostile foreign forces under similar conditions." But "since Switzerland was neutral — and therefore not hostile to the U.S. — the internees were not eligible for the decoration." His efforts had gained the support of Ann Petersen, former Air Force general counsel, as well as Eric Fanning, acting Secretary, and General Mark Welsh III, Mears said in an interview to the Air Force Times in November 2013. The fiscal 2013 National Defense Authorization Act included an amendment, allowing to award the POW Medal to "any service member held captive under conditions 'comparable to those circumstances under which persons have generally been held captive by enemy armed forces during periods of armed conflict.'"

General Mark A. Welsh III hosted an office call for the eight Army Air Corps members before presenting them with the Prisoner of War Medal during a ceremony at the Pentagon on 30 April 2014.

The Pentagon awarded 143 posthumous POW Medals to World War II veterans who were held in the Wauwilermoos punishment camp: On 30 April 2014 eight survivors of the camp were awarded with the Prisoner of War Medal, "thus being recognized for the suffering they endured during their imprisonment . . . the first time that the medal was granted to soldiers that were held prisoners in a friendly country." General Mark A. Welsh III, the 20th Chief of Staff of the United States Air Force, hosted an office call for the eight Army Air Corps members before presenting them with the Prisoner of War medal during a ceremony at the Pentagon. The eight aviators who received the medal were: Sgt. William G. Blackburn, Tech. Sgt. Alva H. Moss, 1st Lt. Paul J. Gambaiana, retired Lt. Col. James I. Misuraca, retired Maj. James V. Moran, 1st Lt. James F. Mahon, Staff Sgt. John G. Fox and Sgt. George E. Thursby. "They served each other and our country proudly," the Chief of Staff said, "They saved a world and they inspired a nation."

Wauwilermoos penal camp in film and television

The 1993 Swiss documentary Helden vom Himmel first mentioned that dark chapter of Swiss history. On 27 October 2015 the Swiss television channel Schweizer Radio und Fernsehen SRF broadcast Wauwilermoos: Kriegsgefangene im Luzerner Mittelland, and one day later the Swiss documentary film Erzwungene Landung respectively Notlandung (Forced Landing) by Daniel Wyss. Thus far, the fates of the internees in Wauwilermoos were widely unknown to the public. In publications on Swiss history, the internment in Wauwilermoos have hardly been explored in depth. In reports, Wauwilermoos is very rarely mentioned, and the Swiss politics has hardly taken care, except to the 1944 interpellation from M. Brawand, and the reports by two Swiss newspapers in 1944 and 1946. Nevertheless, the contemporary films do not mention Wauwilermoos, about the prison camp there were mostly rumors. Daniel Wyss, the director learned in the same way from the penal camp, contacted Major Dwight Mears, participated in the ceremony in April 2014 in Washington D.C., and met the eight survivors of the camp.

Strafanstalt Wauwilermoos

Assumably since September 1945 also local prisoners were housed in the barracks. Since 1947 in Wauwilermoos a prison is situated that was rebuilt in the early 1980s as a semi-open institution where custodial sentences are carried out. The Wauwilermoos penitentiary (German: Strafanstalt Wauwilermoos) also serves as a deportation center.

See also

• Akte Grüninger
• Bombings of Switzerland in World War II

Literature (selected works)

• Cathryn J. Prince: Shot from the Sky: American POWs in Switzerland. Kindle Edition. Naval Institute Press/Amazon Media EU S.à r.l., 2015, ASIN B00ZSDPIHE.
• Rob Morris: Prisoner of the Swiss:: A World War II Airman's Story. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2014, ISBN 978-1-500-68354-2.
• Dwight S. Mears: Interned or imprisoned? The successes and failures of international law in the treatment of American internees in Switzerland, 1943–45. Ann Arbor, Michigan: UMI, [University Microfilms International], 2010, ISBN 978-1-109-74571-9.
• Rob Morris: Untold Valor. Xlibris Corporation, 2005, ISBN 978-1413472776.
• Roger Anthoine: Infringing Neutrality: The RAF in Switzerland 1940-45 (Revealing History). Tempus 2005, ISBN 978-0-752-43420-9.
• Stephen Tanner: Refuge from the Reich: American Airmen and Switzerland During World War II. Da Capo Press, illustrated edition, 2001, ISBN 978-1-885-11970-4.
• Daniel L. Culler: Black Hole of Wauwilermoos: An Airman's Story. Sky & Sage Books, Green Valley 1995. ISBN 978-1-887-77601-1.
• Peter Kamber: Schüsse auf die Befreier. Die 'Luftguerilla' der Schweiz gegen die Alliierten 1943–45. Rotpunktverlag 1993, ISBN 3-85869-092-9.
• Jürg Hofer: Die Strafanstalt Wauwilermoos LU. Sauerländer 1978, ISBN 978-3-794-11844-1.

External links

• Wauwilermoos: Geschichte des Straflagers on lagota.ch Template:De icon
• Straflager Wauwilermoos on raf.durham-light-infantry.ch Template:De icon
• Strafanstalt Wauwilermoos Template:De icon
• Wauwilermoos on the website of the Swiss television Schweizer Radio und Fernsehen SRF