Prisoner of the Swiss

2017-08-19 Biography & Autobiography

Author : Daniel Culler
Release : 2017-08-19
Genre : Biography & Autobiography
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 551/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis Prisoner of the Swiss by : Daniel Culler

Download or read book Prisoner of the Swiss written by Daniel Culler. This book was released on 2017-08-19. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A harrowing memoir revealing the horrors that occurred within a little-known prison camp in Switzerland, by a POW who survived it. During WWII, 1,517 members of US aircrews were forced to seek asylum in Switzerland. Most neutral countries found reason to release US airmen from internment, but Switzerland took its obligations under the Hague Convention more seriously than most. The airmen were often incarcerated in local jails, then transferred to prison camps. The worst of these camps was Wauwilermoos, where at least 161 US airmen were sent for the honorable offense of escaping. To this hellhole came Dan Culler, the author of this incredible account of suffering and survival. Prisoners slept on lice-infested straw, were malnourished, and had virtually no hygiene facilities or access to medical care. But worse, the commandant of Wauwilermoos was a diehard Swiss Nazi. He allowed the mainly criminal occupants of the camp to torture and rape Dan Culler with impunity. After many months of such treatment, starving and ravaged by disease, he was finally aided by a British officer. Betrayal dominated his cruel fate—by the American authorities, by the Swiss, and, in a last twist, in a second planned escape that turned out to be a trap. But Dan Culler’s courage and determination kept him alive. Finally making it back home, he found he had been abandoned again. Political expediency meant there was no such place as Wauwilermoos. He had never been there, so he had never been a POW and didn‘t qualify for any POW benefits or medical or mental treatment for his many physical and emotional wounds. His struggle to make his peace with his past forms the final part of the story. An introduction and notes from military historian Rob Morris provide historical background and context, including recent efforts to recognize the suffering of those incarcerated in Switzerland and afford them full POW status.

Prisoner of the Swiss:

2014-07-01 History

Author : Rob Morris
Release : 2014-07-01
Genre : History
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 542/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis Prisoner of the Swiss: by : Rob Morris

Download or read book Prisoner of the Swiss: written by Rob Morris. This book was released on 2014-07-01. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dan Culler's The Black Hole of Wauwilermoos first came out in 1995. It was self-published, written in a burst of creative energy over a three-month period during which Dan sometimes worked day and night. A small print run of 1,000 books resulted, and were quickly sold out. Despite its small scale and lack of promotion, Black Hole of Wauwilermoos has become a book that is widely admired and often quoted by World War Two scholars and historians, most recently in Donald Miller's best-selling Masters of the Air. I have attempted to stay true to the book's original premise and style. All I've done is tighten it up (it's about half as long as the original). If, upon finishing, one is left wanting more, I recommend the original version of Black Hole, and Dan's memoir of his childhood and young adulthood, The Circle of Thorns: Birth and Learning Years. Dan is a prolific and thoughtful writer of short stories, poems, and books, most of which he shares only with a few friends. Reading Dan's collected works has allowed me to get to know a man who is at the core intensely guarded and private, a man who has been deeply impacted by his wartime experiences who carries with him a multitude of physical and emotional scars that will never heal. Despite his having lived through the banality and evil of war and imprisonment, despite being betrayed by his own government, he continues to courageously reach out to others. Given every reason to reject a loving God and a rational universe, he continues to be a spiritual man. We both hope you learn from the book and that it opens your eyes to a little-known story of World War Two.

Shot from the Sky

2016-03-15 History

Author : Cathryn J Prince
Release : 2016-03-15
Genre : History
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 476/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis Shot from the Sky by : Cathryn J Prince

Download or read book Shot from the Sky written by Cathryn J Prince. This book was released on 2016-03-15. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Now available in paperback, Shot from the Sky uncovers one of the great, dark secrets of World War II: neutral Switzerland shot and forced down U.S. aircraft entering Swiss airspace and imprisoned the survivors in internment camps, detaining more than a thousand American flyers between 1943 and the war’s end. While conditions at the camps were adequate and humane for internees who obeyed their captors’ orders, the experience was far different for those who attempted to escape. They were held in special penitentiary camps in conditions as bad as those in some prisoner-of-war camps in Nazi Germany. Ironically, the Geneva Accords at the time did not apply to prisoners held in neutral countries, so better treatment could not be demanded. When the war ended in Europe, sixty-one Americans lay buried in a small village cemetery near Bern. Cathryn J. Prince, brings to light details of this little-known episode as she describes the events and examines the Swiss justification for their policy. She demonstrates that while the Swiss claimed they satisfied international law, they applied the law in a grossly unfair manner. No German airmen were interned, and the Nazi aircraft were allowed to refuel at Swiss airfields. The author draws on first-person accounts and unpublished sources, including interviews with eyewitnesses and surviving American prisoners, and documents held by the Swiss government and the U.S. Air Force.

Black Hole of Wauwilermoos

1995 History

Author : Dan Culler
Release : 1995
Genre : History
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 011/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis Black Hole of Wauwilermoos by : Dan Culler

Download or read book Black Hole of Wauwilermoos written by Dan Culler. This book was released on 1995. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Internment in Switzerland During the First World War

2019-08-22 History

Author : Susan Barton
Release : 2019-08-22
Genre : History
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 737/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis Internment in Switzerland During the First World War by : Susan Barton

Download or read book Internment in Switzerland During the First World War written by Susan Barton. This book was released on 2019-08-22. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In contrast to the plethora of works focusing on the tragic loss of human lives during the First World War, little is known about the more hopeful realities of thousands of prisoners of war from Britain, France, Germany and Belgium who were sent to Switzerland from 1916. This book explores the everyday lives of these prisoners and their impact on Switzerland. Internees were warmly welcomed by local people and given education, training and employment. Leading relatively free lives, they were able to engage in leisure activities and develop new relationships. However, they also contributed to the country's economy, helping to keep Swiss tourism alive at a time when businesses were struggling and alleviating Switzerland's labour shortage as Swiss men were called-up to defend their borders and preserve the country's neutrality. Drawing on a wide range of sources from official records to magazines and postcards, Susan Barton provides an absorbing account of the social and cultural history of internment in Switzerland.

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