PBS - Berga Soldiers of Another War (2002) Part 1
BERGA SOLDIERS OF ANOTHER WAR is the untold story of 350 American prisoners of war caught in the tragedy of the Holocaust. The film is the final work in the distinguished career of late documentary filmmaker Charles Guggenheim, winner of four Academy Awards. He wrote and directed BERGA, and because of his personal connection to the story narrated it in the first person. After the war, Guggenheim tried to locate a friend from his 106th Division but learned he had died in captivity. Through research in War Crimes Trial Documents at the National Archives, Guggenheim found that his friend had been imprisoned in a slave labor camp at Berga, Germany. It was a shocking discovery that became an obsession for Guggenheim and subject of this film. In December 1944, thousands of American soldiers captured during the Battle of the Bulge were first transported to Stalag 9B, a prisoner of war camp. A German military order was issued for all Jewish soldiers to identify themselves. After the Americans refused to comply, Nazi guards selected GIs who “looked Jewish,” had “Jewish-sounding” last names or were classified as “undesirables,” though fewer than a third, in fact, were Jewish. They were then shipped off to Berga, a satellite of the notorious concentration camp at Buchenwald, where they suffered attrocities alongside Jewish slave laborers from other Nazi concentration camps. BERGA SOLDIERS OF ANOTHER WAR reveals this little known story lost until now in the trauma of World War II.
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