Given up for dead

First lines

"TODAY I AM a man."

About this book

During World War II, prisoners of war were required by the Geneva convention to be treated according to established rules of warfare. For the most part, the Nazis followed the rules. But in late 1944, when a large number of Americans were taken prisoner during the Battle of the Bulge and elsewhere, their captors had different plans for those Americans who were Jewish or from some other "undesirable" ethnic or religious group. Instead of being incarcerated in regular prisoner-of-war camps, several hundred were separated from their fellow captives and sent to the brutal slave-labor camp at Berga-an-der-Elster in Germany. Until now, the story of what these men endured has been largely untold. Given Up for Dead chronicles the experience of Americans at Berga. Here is an incredible tale of survival against overwhelming odds, inhuman living and working conditions, and the imminent prospect of annihilation during a 300-kilometer death march designed to keep them out of the hands of the approaching Allies. That these men willed themselves to stay alive is an amazing testimony to the resiliency of the human spirit. Using the gripping first-person accounts and definitive factual narrative that have won him acclaim as a military historian, Flint Whitlock pays tribute to these brave men in telling their story, at last. - Jacket flap.

Themes & subjects