British World War II POWs forced to extract gold from corpses of Jews

British WW2 POWs were forced to dig up the corpses of Jews and take the gold from their bodies, reveals a new first-hand account. In spite of objecting to the practice, Nazi guards forced POWs to comply, said James Wicketts, who was held in Stalag XXIB in Schubin, Poland. "Prisoners were initially made to sleep in the open... Later ... on wooden bunks in barracks infested with rats. The only thing we had to eat were dirty boiled potatoes. One of the jobs ... was the digging up of graves in a Jewish cemetery and taking the gold from the corpses." The gruesome job echoes that given to the Sonderkommando: extracting gold fillings from the bodies of Jews killed in the gas chambers.

Second World War POWs 'made to extract gold from Jews' corpses' - Telegraph

 

I find this and all other similar stories suspicious. Why after all these years are stories like this coming out. Why not years ago?

 

Hm....... Wouldn't the nazis have already taken all their valuables once they captured them?

 

That's a good point.

 

Note that the statement was from "Jewish cemetaries". This implied that these Jews had been buried before the Nazis took control of those areas. These wern't Jews they had captured, killed and then buried. As to why these stories are appearing now, it could easily be that as these men reach their own "final days" they wish to make a clean breast of the times they spent.

A great many WW2 vets, whether POWs or simply servicemen, didn't speak of their war years until late in life. Some didn't want to rememeber, some were ashamed of what they had done, most just wanted to get on with their lives and leave the past in the past.

Just a guess on my part, but my own Dad never really spoke about his timein Transport Command flying C-47s. I found his photo ID by accident when we were cleaning out his office preparing for a move back in the fifties. I hadn't even know he was in the USAAF until then, I was a pre-teen, but he never talked about that time in his life.

When that photo ID from Greenham Common showed up, I asked what he was doing in uniform, and where in the heck was this place? That is how I found out he was a "blue pickle" pilot (enlisted pilot), who had joined the AAC right after Pearl Harbor was attacked, and had his private pilot's licence when he enlisted. One thing led to another and he ended up piloting C-47s towing gliders and dropping cargo by 'chute. He didn't transport any paratroops that I recall him mentioning, just towing gliders and dropping supply canisters.

 

i find stories like this hard to read