Allied Internees in Switzerland

In addition to internment camps for Allied airmen shot down or forced to land in Switzerland, there were three so called "punishment camps:" Hunnenburg, Diablerets, and the most notorious, Wauwilermoos. Airmen were sent to these punishment camps for offenses as minor as trying to escape from one of the internment camps. These camps were a clear violation of the Geneva Conventions and held the worst criminals in Switzerland as well as the POWs. The tales of life in Wauwilermoos and the other camps are horrific. Horrendous living conditions--sleeping on feces-covered straw infested with rats and lice, nothing but slop to eat--not to mention continuous abuse and rape from the other prisoners. I was extremely surprised to find out that camps such as these existed in Switzerland in WWII.



http://swissinternees.tripod.com/
http://www.geocities.com/mearseg/wauwilermoos.html
http://www.geocities.com/Pentagon/7185/intern.html

 

Ah, now if only the Soviet POWs were fortunate enough to endure such horrendous conditions.

Unfortunately they were not........

http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/article.php?lang=en&ModuleId=10007183


Though I must say Col. Hessler, such a camp existing in a neutral country does seem surprising.

 

Awhile back I saw a movie about interned POWs from both the Allied and Axis countries sharing the same camp in Ireland. It was interesting. I believe the movie was called "The Brylcreem Boys".

But I am surprised at how Switzerland treated these prisoners. I wonder if they had German POWs as well.

 

It doesn't surprise me at all. In Alsace those who refused to join the German army often attempted to cross the Swiss border. They were returned directly to the Germans by the Swiss border patrols.

 

When guards shoved Dan Culler through the door of Barrack Nine he nearly passed out from the stench. Every Indiana barn he had ever been in smelled better than this place. The wooden floor was covered with filthy straw, which the prisoners slept on and used for toilet paper after they vacated in the miasmic slit trench just outside the front door. "What happened to me that night, and many more to follow, was the worst hell any person ever had to endure," Culler wrote in his searing prison memoir. A group of Russian prisoners held him down, stuffed straw in his mouth, and sodomized him repeatedly. "Coming from a small faming community, I never heard of men doing to me what they did. I... hadn't even been with a girl, except to hold her hand and give her a light kiss on her cheek or mouth. I was bleeding from all the openings of my body, and I prayed to God to take my life from me."
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He was raped again the next morning and forced to have oral sex with several of his assailants, who stuck sticks in his mouth to pry it open. After being knocked unconscious, he awoke to find blood running down his throat. Too weak to move, and with his hands tied behind his back, he was thrown into the waste ditch outside the barracks. "When I finally came to my senses, I crawled from the ditch and tried to wipe myself with straw. I noticed something was hanging from my rectum, and realizing it was skin from the inside, I tried to push it back in."
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Masters of the Air: America's Bomber Boys Who Fought the Air War Against Nazi Germany By Donald L. Miller; Pages 342-343

 

A disturbing and a very sad story..... is it credible? I myself was not aware of any Soviet POWs in Switzerland, not to mention mixed in with the general population as they were usually segregated due to very different conditions impossed on them by their captors in comparison to the Allies.

Any additional info on this, as to how many there were or might have been, when they arrived and what the conditions were like for them?

Thanks

 

There is a distinction to be made. Allied airmen who entered on Swiss territory unarmed and voluntary called local authorities were interned in hotel rooms , not camps.
Those who were sent to camps were those who were shot down while on Operation (fully armed and with an intruding aircraft). It may seem silly, as the poor guys who were having the hardest time to forceland and survive were neither attacking nor a thread, but the distinction was made.

 

Skipper, those entering the country armed and willingly--most of them had no choice--were sent to internment camps. For the most part, they were treated well in these internment camps, generally made to stay in old hotels. If you committed any type of offense--especially attempted escape--they sent you to one of the "punishment camps" which were practially no different than Nazi concentration camps.

 

So in fact the regular camps were cheap hotels, not Stalag type camps, is that correct?

 

That's correct. Stripped down hotels, old resorts, places of the like.

 

Wete they made aware that they's better not try to escape or were they put into camps without a warning?