Step into the past with us as we explore the intimate diaries of a German Afrika Korps soldier ,who later became American POW during WWII. In this captivating episode, “America Was Truly The Land of the Free.,” witness history through the eyes of a former prisoner as he reflects on his fate after becoming an American citizen.
Experience the emotional journey, insights, and revelations that shaped his perspective during this pivotal moment in history. This is a firsthand account you won’t want to miss!
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Ladies and Gentlemen, this is Part 9 of diary of a German POW who belonged to Rommel's Famous Afrika Korps and was captured from North African Theater of World War 2 ,became an American Pow and later on immigrated to America and became American citizen .
This is Part 1 https://youtu.be/7Ny8CJkvh10
This is Part 2 https://youtu.be/V3auLKCFR5Q
This is Part 3 https://youtu.be/7hLd1qjiPME
This is Part 4 https://youtu.be/B9I088HgY7g
This is Part 5 https://youtu.be/DCokEDdYYn4
This is Part 6 https://youtu.be/pMFDr_vw3k0
This is Part 7 https://youtu.be/Z6juI-VniGE
This is Part 8 https://youtu.be/YYI9lvcDKr0
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My mother was raised in a German community in Indiana. One of her memories she shared was Christmas, where her parents locked the parlor away until Christmas Eve, and what a thrill for her and her twelve siblings when the parlor doors were opened and before them was the Christmas Tree was lit and trimmed beyond imagination.
Wunderbar!
21:20 = Growing up in Cincinnati, there was a large Jewish population. We saw the kids as those who did (or did not, my case) go to a church on a different day of the week. Never bothered to inquire into the religion any more than Roman Catholics or evangelical Protestants; simply didn't care.
34:28 – A northern German once claimed the Bavarians didn't have a language, but a throat disease. It's easy to get northern and southern US residents to agree.
36:40 – There were supermarkets in Cincinnati as I grew up, but Mom still patronized the fish monger, the baker, the butcher (Oh Em Gee, the sliced ham for sandwiches!)
44:50 – Driving in Europe is easy: 500 miles in any direction gets you to the Russian border or water, and if there are mountains in the path, you're headed south.
51:30 – No, American society was not forever changed. I approximate your kid's ages and remain a happily married, successful small business owner with no concerns regarding retirement. Some of us saw through the bogus claims of socialism inherent in "hippyness"; you still have to pay the bills.
So sorry he stayed in the US instead of the wonders of Germany
Why is the pronunciation so weird at times in these videos?
"The beer is too darn cold"!
No way! 😅
Cleaning women in German men's rooms freaked me out as a teenager in 1970.
This is so beautiful❤️
I have never seen snow before
Man three years after landing a good job he got the American dream. I been working for that since I was 18 and aint seen it yet. I finally got good job in 2021 but two years in I got hurt and am on disability till I can return. Had an MRI yesterday. If I return and re injure? I won't be able to work there anymore 🙁 My Grandparents both immigrated from Hess before WWII. Settled in Milwaukee.
The irony is that the first thing Hitler did was outlaw the unions.
It is amazing how so many of the details of his migrant experience echo to this day. Back in the 1980s, while attending college, I used to live in an area with a large migrant population and so much sounds exactly like his own experience.
-A bunch of people show up with some skill (his was bookkeeping) , but do not find employment in their specialty.
-A bunch of those people end up doing manual labor, yet they do have the extra abilities that allow them to eventually move up.
-Like some of the Germans he met, a ton do not assimilate, only hang out with their nationals and keep dreaming that some day they 'will go back'.
-Again, and some do visit their country of origin only to show off how good they did in America.
-The ones that only hang out with 'their own' are pretty miserable in the long run, never fully adapt, never move back.
-Like when he was 'collecting envelopes with money', some perform some obscure duties not sure what they got into.
-The habits lend themselves to GREAT misunderstandings. Once a busboy that did not speak very good English found a box of ice cream almost empty in the cart heading to the dumpster. It was clean, pristine, sanitary, and he could not understand why in the land of abundance the restaurant would throw it away (it was for expedience, you did not want to go fetch a new box when the customer line was long). A nice waitress saw the poor guy at the perfect time (like a Seinfeld coincidence) that she 'thought' he pulled the box out of the trash (he did not). She took the box away from the confused busboy, embraced him and in the most dramatic voice said: "NO, no, no. You are in America NOW. You do not have to do THAT. Let me give you some ice cream and buy you some groceries!" Keep in mind, he did not have a clue what she was saying and she 'thought' he was eating ice cream from the trash. It took him days to realize what had happened and he had a good laugh.
-I have seen my own eyes people from different backgrounds joke about the roots of their friends and coworkers. And NO, it was all of them, not like a group abusing another. And the guy in the narration mentions how people back then would jokingly call him Kraut, in so much time proximity to the end of the war. And he understood it was only joking. Can you imagine something like that happening today without somebody not even a party of the conversation making it his problem?
-The part that he mentions about the sports resonates to this day. The migrants that learn small talk about sports and American pastimes in general are more at ease with everybody else than those that don't. Shut, I had a boss from India that new American Football left and right and it did not cross anybody's mind he has been born somewhere else. Some bitter critic may say that sports knowledge 'should not be a requisite'. And it is not. However, the fellow has climbed through to the top ladder, and people around him having pleasant conversations with him had to be part of it. As intelligent and hard working as he is, still, I think him being able to carry a social conversation with his peers still had to be a good thing.
👍👍👍
I've enjoyed reading about your experiences emigrating to the US after WWII. I was a second generation American whose grandparents stepped off thr gangplank in the 1890's.
i was born in 1947, my father was irish, mother was Swedish and Norwegian. My father died when i was very young so i was raised as a Scandinavian American in Boston by an extended jamily of aunts and uncles so I can relate to some of he customs you were raised with.
After high school I was working as a technician when I joy my draft notice in early 1967, my brothers had served in the army in Germany and Korea and although I did not support the Vietnam war i knew I would serve as they did. i had 4 years of yechnical high school behind me and ended up enlisting to get a 26 week school I thought might be interestig and was in Basic training in late April.
After that is was up to New Jersey for that school and in Dec 051967 I got orders for Ft benning where I spent 13 months running the Army recording studio at the infantry school. At the end of 1968 I got orders for Korea. i ended up on a very remote microwave site on top of a mountain in the middle of nowhere – 26 miles away from HQ maintaining microwave radio's. Sometimes late at night I'd pickup fitr control traffic from Vietnam that made me thank god is was on top of a mountain in Korea..
Ive been retired for over a decade now, spent my life in electronics and as look over my life I realize many of my life choices were made for me not by me, when your in the army where you go and what you will do is completely out of your hands. The song "The Great Mandela" talks about the wheel of life that you step on having no idea where it will take you.
I can't seem to find his name anywhere?
Key word “Was” free
ты большой молодец
A wonderful story
I remember getting the car started in Minneapolis at -30f, letting out the clutch and driving on squared off tires for 2 blocks trying to shift into second gear.
Heinrich Erickson. Not a bad name for living in Minnesota. 😂
That touched me.
"Was" indicates that it no more "is". I agree.
America was the land of the free in the 1950's, unless you were Black, Mexican, Native or a woman.
German POWs weren't any of these.
I find it reprehensible that officials are pandering to terrorists, but i havent heard any condemnation of the extreme antisemitism that is blatant and violent. Also with regard to the oppressed and opresser categories, generally talked about in terms of historical prejudices, the fact that the jews are overlooked as a group that have and are withstanding terrible mistreatment is impossible to stomach.
My dad was in Vietnam and when he came back my mom was cheating on him. We lived in Minnesota and my mom thought my dad was going to divorce her and kidnapped me from kindergarten and left her 3 kids from her previous marriage with my dad (their step father). She was going to raise me with her new boyfriend. When my dad filed for divorce the Minnesota judge was not amused and after my dad kidnapped me back a month later, the judge deemed my mother unfit to be a parent and gave my dad legal custody of all 4 kids which included her 3 kids that were no blood relation to my dad. That was much later than your story. Mine was in 1972, but even then men never received full custody of their own child, let alone 3 step children.
What’s the name if this book ?
General Dwight D. Eisenhower was a 5-star General. If you didn't know that, everything else you said after that is suspect. Not knowing that is like not knowing Rommel was a Field Marshall.
America was Truly the Land of the Free
Well, except if you were an Indian marched out of his house on a death march to a reservation on worthless land out west
Or if you were a black slave on a plantation Or an Irish man in wage slavery Or a black in peonage in the dirty South
Or a Chinaman imported through San Franscisco to work blasting mines through mountains on the western railway
I remember an OLDMAN worked auto retired old guy died alone in kansas City. Must been in Africa croup. He left pennies from Morocco to tunnis
Sad he died. Alone😢
Wow