Unlike the German POWs who had been in captivity in Europe during the war, those who had been detained in the United States realized how comfortable their accommodations had been in comparison. At a camp in Hull, England, the prisoners lived in huts instead of barracks, and slept in bunk beds on straw sacks instead of mattresses. The hatred of Germans was palpable, and one report described a situation where prisoners who worked trimming hedges on a farm in the boiling sun had nothing offered to them but a dirty stream from which to drink water.17

Many of the POWs who were sent back to Germany couldn’t believe the devastation. Some cities were unrecognizable. Instead of going immediately home to their loved ones, as they’d hoped, thousands of POWs lived in camps scattered across the country. At one in Münster, in northwest Germany, in the British zone, the POWs were forced to visit concentration camps.

The U.S. military had shown the prisoners detained in America film footage that the Allied forces had taken when they discovered the atrocities of the Holocaust. They wanted to see how the POWs would react. The responses varied; some wept, some held their heads low, others sat stoic. Many believed it was a manufactured propaganda film with actors. Some even thought the lifeless emaciated bodies were actually Germans who had been tortured and killed by the Russians. POW Friedrich Mögel, first detained in Arizona, then after the war, in Münster, was sent with other prisoners to the Dachau concentration camp outside of Munich. He was forced to stay there for two weeks to counter the false narrative that the camps weren’t real. He was given his dismissal papers afterward.18

The exact date that Frederick left the United States isn’t clear, but sometime after the baby was conceived in April 1946, he was sent back to Europe. Frederick’s sister, Charlotte, said he was released to the British army and worked in a camp for approximately six months before returning home. The nature of his work and the details of the conditions he had to endure remain a mystery, with the exception of the bitter memory Frederick shared with Charlotte about being stripped of all his belongings by British soldiers upon entering the country. And like his fellow comrades who knew they were only a few days away from Germany by train, he just wanted his captivity to finally be over so he could begin to rebuild his life.19