Outside the German prison camp Bad Orb, on a frigid and windy December day in 1944, thousands of American prisoners-of-war held hands as a German commander ordered all Jews to step forward.
A “bell of doom” descended over Private First Class Daniel Steckler, but despite the German’s threats and commands, the entire battalion stood immobile. “We had heard about death camps and ovens,” Steckler told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Immediately after his capture during the Battle of the Bulge, Steckler had ripped off his dog tag with the Jewish name. But after repeated warnings from the Germans, he and 127 other Jews admitted their identity. “I stayed awake wrestling with my own conscience,” Steckler remembered. “Should I deny myself, denying my very soul?”
Ultimately, he could not disregard his background. He was raised in a Conservative Jewish home of self-sacrifice in which his father worked hard to bring him, his four brothers and sisters and his mother through the Depression. But his commitment to remaining Jewish cost him four months of torture and almost his life.
After years of silence, the 62-year-old former P.O.W. emotionally recounts his painful memories–which play in his head like a motion picture–in the television documentary “P.O.W.–Americans in Enemy Hands: World War II, Korea, and Vietnam,” created by Arnold Shapiro and written and directed by Carol Fleisher.
The two-hour special, produced by Arnold Shapiro Productions in association with USAA and shown on about 115 local stations in late January and early February, features nine former P.O.W.s and narrator Robert Wagner.
The P.O.W.s relate their stories of capture, torture, struggle, escape attempts and anxious relatives through insightful interviews. Also shown is rare film footage of the war, some never before seen on television.
Steckler is one of four Jews profiled, all from World War II, but the only one to have suffered because of his religion. “It was a double-edged sword–a P.O.W. and a Jew caught up in the Holocaust,” Steckler said.
At Bad Orb, the Jewish P.O.W.s were separated from the others. Their supposed transfer to a work camp with “better conditions” turned out instead to be Berga, the satellite labor camp of Buchenwald. Steckler likens his torture there to the enslavement of Jews in Egypt.
By this time, Steckler’s 180 pound solid build had wasted to less than 100 pounds. Like many of the other P.O.W.s, he suffered from severe dysentery, among other diseases. He lost body fluids extensively. The 350 prisoners were fed about 200 calories a day, according to Steckler.
While not all those at Berga were Jewish, Steckler remembers “the Jewish boys got all the hell.” They labored at night near eight deafening air hammers. Steckler believes this caused his hearing loss, for which he has recently begun to use a hearing aid. Steckler is heavy-set for his short stature, with a thin gray moustache, darkrimmed eyeglasses and a rounded face capped by short gray hair. His voice exudes pain.
He shut his eyes and reenacted the harsh, but mandatory task of hoisting rails of “an impossible weight… I can feel the weight on my shoulders and knees and legs now.” “We did it,” Steckler explained, “because if you failed, God help you.” The Germans beat them often with rubber hoses, pick axes, shovels and whips. “How anyone survived is beyond me,” Steckler said.
THE MOTTO FOR SURVIVAL
Because of this work, Steckler is missing a disc in his back, suffers a heart condition that resulted in a heart attack about 15 years ago, experiences numbness of the knees and hands and swelling of the legs, and is still afflicted with Beri Beri, a Vitamin B1 deficiency resulting in inflammatory or degenerative conditions of the heart, digestive system and nerves. He walks stiffly and with a limp.
Through the mental anguish and physical abuse, Steckler survived by the motto, “Don’t show the bastards the yellow streak in you.” The P.O.W.s were not afraid to sing American patriotic songs and “Hatikvah.”
Three of his bunk mates died, one from gangrene and another after an escape attempt. “I was becoming a jinx,” Steckler said, suppressing his tears. “I had a guilt complex for years. Why did I survive and not them?” Steckler offered his own answer: “I had God to help me, I had faith in myself and I had faith in the people next to me.”
STILL EXPERIENCES NIGHTMARES
When Berga was liberated, Steckler, lice-ridden and weighing just 85 pounds, received treatment in France and recuperated in the United States, but received no psychological counseling. He still experiences nightmares and his temper is short. “I was afraid to tell people,” Steckler said. “I was afraid of the effects. Why involve them? It made no sense.”
Each year, however, Steckler tells his horrible story at the Seder table, which now includes his wife of nearly 37 years and three children. But “P.O.W.” is the first time he has presented his story publicly.
Steckler was found by Shapiro’s office through a VA hospital in Boston, where he attends weekly P.O.W. therapy meetings. In June 1985, Steckler met two fellow P.O.W.s from Berga and last April 23 invited them to his Seder for the 41st anniversary of their liberation.
He participated in the documentary, he said, in the hope that his story will turn the experience into an instrument for peace and as assistance to others who have caged their own, similar horror stories. Last year, while filming the documentary, Steckler returned to Berga. He called the experience a “horror.” But he plans to go back to the tunnels he slaved in sometime in April.
Not only does Steckler believe in facing reality. He feels he must return. “I want to be able to see the tunnels through the eyes of a free man,” he explained.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
