Post by Jaga on Jul 29, 2018 19:50:44 GMT -7
I found this interesting story in today's Washington Post:
www.washingtonpost.com/local/americans-poles-meet-in-va-hotel-in-plot-to-save-nearly-forgotten-nazi-pow-camp-in-small-polish-town/2018/07/29/563203c2-932a-11e8-810c-5fa705927d54_story.html?utm_term=.8ce3cd00eb68
For four hours Saturday night, an event space in a DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel near Washington Dulles International Airport became a war room in the fight against forgetting.
The people came from as near as Ashburn, Va., and as far as Szubin, Poland.
They came because they are descendants of American officers once imprisoned in Oflag 64, a small Nazi prisoner-of-war camp that was in Szubin during World War II.
They came because their grandfathers had spoken fondly about the place — or because their grandfathers had always refused to discuss it.
Some Szubin residents came because they had walked by the prison site for years without knowing what it was.
All came to remember.
Wilbur Blaine Sharpe, 96, was the sole Kriegy — a nickname for the officers kept in Oflag 64 and an abbreviation of Kriegsgefangenen, the German word for prisoners of war — who was able to attend.
He came because, well, how could he not?
“I just figured it would be nice to preserve it even though it was a place of adversity,” Sharpe said. “We had a lot of pleasant experiences there, like the theater and the music; all the adults tried to take care of each other. They just didn’t feed us.”
Sharpe talks with members during a meeting of the Oflag 64 Association. He says he and other incarcerated Allied officers staged musicals in an effort to keep up morale at the POW camp. (Bill O’Leary/The Washington Post)
Sharpe, an artillery officer captured by Gen. Erwin Rommel’s Panzer division in World War II, spent 19 months as Prisoner 1,573 in Oflag 64 before escaping.
His weight sank from its initial 150 to a measly 96 pounds. But he found the strength to take leading parts in musicals that the roughly 1,500 incarcerated officers staged, often wearing women’s clothes, in an effort to keep up morale.
More than seven decades later, Sharpe is again taking a starring role — this time as the founder of a Polish American foundation seeking to build a commemorative museum at the site of Oflag 64 in Szubin.
Saturday’s gathering was to announce the establishment of that foundation, as well as a U.S.-based nonprofit group that will raise funds for the museum.
“My generation does not know what happened in the camp,” said Mariusz Winiecki, 42, a Szubin resident and university professor who began researching Oflag 64 more than a decade ago. “Our purpose is to make people aware of WWII and the atrocity that war can cause.”
Only a handful of original Oflag 64 buildings remain standing on the site, which now houses a reform school.
As a boy, Winiecki used to walk through the dilapidated campus on the way to school. In 2007, he started Googling the German name of his hometown and “Oflag 64” and discovered the Oflag 64 Association, a long-standing American group of Kriegies and their families. He eventually began corresponding with several Kriegies, including Sharpe. One former POW sent Winiecki a 17-page handwritten letter detailing his experiences in the camp. Then several members of the Oflag 64 Association visited Szubin to see the site.
www.washingtonpost.com/local/americans-poles-meet-in-va-hotel-in-plot-to-save-nearly-forgotten-nazi-pow-camp-in-small-polish-town/2018/07/29/563203c2-932a-11e8-810c-5fa705927d54_story.html?utm_term=.8ce3cd00eb68
For four hours Saturday night, an event space in a DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel near Washington Dulles International Airport became a war room in the fight against forgetting.
The people came from as near as Ashburn, Va., and as far as Szubin, Poland.
They came because they are descendants of American officers once imprisoned in Oflag 64, a small Nazi prisoner-of-war camp that was in Szubin during World War II.
They came because their grandfathers had spoken fondly about the place — or because their grandfathers had always refused to discuss it.
Some Szubin residents came because they had walked by the prison site for years without knowing what it was.
All came to remember.
Wilbur Blaine Sharpe, 96, was the sole Kriegy — a nickname for the officers kept in Oflag 64 and an abbreviation of Kriegsgefangenen, the German word for prisoners of war — who was able to attend.
He came because, well, how could he not?
“I just figured it would be nice to preserve it even though it was a place of adversity,” Sharpe said. “We had a lot of pleasant experiences there, like the theater and the music; all the adults tried to take care of each other. They just didn’t feed us.”
Sharpe talks with members during a meeting of the Oflag 64 Association. He says he and other incarcerated Allied officers staged musicals in an effort to keep up morale at the POW camp. (Bill O’Leary/The Washington Post)
Sharpe, an artillery officer captured by Gen. Erwin Rommel’s Panzer division in World War II, spent 19 months as Prisoner 1,573 in Oflag 64 before escaping.
His weight sank from its initial 150 to a measly 96 pounds. But he found the strength to take leading parts in musicals that the roughly 1,500 incarcerated officers staged, often wearing women’s clothes, in an effort to keep up morale.
More than seven decades later, Sharpe is again taking a starring role — this time as the founder of a Polish American foundation seeking to build a commemorative museum at the site of Oflag 64 in Szubin.
Saturday’s gathering was to announce the establishment of that foundation, as well as a U.S.-based nonprofit group that will raise funds for the museum.
“My generation does not know what happened in the camp,” said Mariusz Winiecki, 42, a Szubin resident and university professor who began researching Oflag 64 more than a decade ago. “Our purpose is to make people aware of WWII and the atrocity that war can cause.”
Only a handful of original Oflag 64 buildings remain standing on the site, which now houses a reform school.
As a boy, Winiecki used to walk through the dilapidated campus on the way to school. In 2007, he started Googling the German name of his hometown and “Oflag 64” and discovered the Oflag 64 Association, a long-standing American group of Kriegies and their families. He eventually began corresponding with several Kriegies, including Sharpe. One former POW sent Winiecki a 17-page handwritten letter detailing his experiences in the camp. Then several members of the Oflag 64 Association visited Szubin to see the site.