Latest news with #prisonerOfWar
Daily Mail
14 hours ago
- Politics
- Daily Mail
Hitler's last soldier... in the US: How German tank commander evaded FBI for 40 years by building new life as all-American ski instructor after escaping PoW camp at end of WWII
To his friends, his wife and even local newspapers, Dennis Whiles was everything he claimed to be. He was a dashing ski instructor and tennis pro, living it up in California and Hawaii and even mixing with Hollywood film stars. But anyone who had reason to compare an FBI Most Wanted poster issued in 1945 for an escaped German prisoner of war with Whiles's face might have stopped in their tracks. For as Whiles would tearfully admit to his wife in 1984 - nearly 40 years after he had fled an internment camp in New Mexico - he was really Georg Gaertner, a former tank commander in Adolf Hitler's Wehrmacht. As a new Sky History documentary details tonight, Gaertner had built a new life from nothing, even as the federal authorities searched for him and his real family back in what had become Poland felt his absence keenly. The German spent years perfecting an American accent and a back story that his parents' death in a car crash had left him an orphan. But in September 1985, having told his distraught wife, he opted to 'surrender' on prime time NBC TV programme The Today Show. Rather than deport him, US officials decided he had no case to answer and eventually let him become an American citizen. Anyone who had reason to compare an FBI Most Wanted poster issued in 1945 for an escaped German prisoner of war with Whiles's face might have stopped in their tracks Tonight's programme, Greatest Escapes of WWII: Hitler's last soldier in America who defied the FBI for 40 years, recounts his wife Jean's memory of her husband's admission. She said: 'I remember him being in tears, I remember him sitting up on the kitchen counter, and he was sitting there crying and pouring out this story, just like an avalanche, a waterfall coming out, about what had happened. 'He told me the whole story'. Born in Schweidnitz, Lower Silesia (now Świdnica, Poland) in 1920, Gaertner enlisted in the German army in 1940, aged 19. Having been sent to fight with Erwin Rommel's Afrika Korps in North Africa, he was captured by British troops in Tunis in 1943. He was then sent to America to be held prisoner at Camp Deming in the town of the same name. By September 1945, weeks after the Second World War had come to an end, Gaertner had decided that he did not want to grapple with the possible fate that awaited him back home. Świdnica was now controlled by the Soviet regime and would remain under the rule of Poland's puppet Communist government for decades to come. It meant that, as a former soldier, he faced arrest, persecution and even death. So on September 22, Gaertner slipped under the fence of Camp Deming and boarded a freight train to California. He had nothing but the clothes he was wearing. Historian Matt Maclachan says in tonight's programme:'The story of Georg Gartner is almost the antithesis of the escape story. 'A man who was doing everything he could to stay in the country.' The expert adds: 'He had seen the opportunities that America presented for a better life, and he simply didn't want to go home'. Gaertner's first year on the run was perhaps his worst. He needed to make a living without revealing his real identity. And his spoken English was by no means perfect. The FBI's Wanted poster included front-facing and side-on shots of Gaertner, plus a full physical description and scans of his finger prints. So the former soldier kept his head down, finding work as a dishwasher and gardener. Then, after getting a job as an architectural consultant in the construction industry, he assumed the identity of Dennis F. Whiles and perfected his English. In the winter, he worked as a ski instructor in the Sierra Nevada mountains. The fact that the authorities were still looking for Gaertner and dozens of other escaped German prisoners did not deter him doing things that would get him noticed. In 1952, a huge blizzard left a train stranded. Gaertner was among those who took food, medicine and hot drinks to its stranded passengers. He became a local hero, with his photo featuring in the newspapers. But, remarkably, he was not recognised. Then, the following year, Gaertner was flicking through Colliers, a popular national magazine, when he saw a feature about German soldiers who had managed to hide themselves in America. He was stunned to see that his mugshot was among the photos. But again, he remained undetected. Worse was to come when he bumped into a fellow former German soldier who recognised him from North Africa. Remarkably, Gaertner managed to bluff his way out by insisting that he was not who the man thought he was. In 1964, the German met his future wife. Once married, he and Jean set up a tennis centre in Santa Cruz, California, and then moved to Hawaii. Gaertner even played doubles with film stars including Lloyd Bridges. But his wife began to have suspicions about his past, which were fuelled by Gaertner's refusal to expand on his backstory. Historian Kate Vigurs says in tonight's show: 'She knew nothing at all about her husband's past. 'He had no childhood, no youth, he didn't tell her anything about his life, basically before he met her. 'This drove her to distraction. She got to the point where she was ready to leave him.' Jean had even tried to find the orphanage where Gaertner claimed he was raised. But she found it did not exist. Knowing that his wife was on the verge of quitting their marriage, Gaertner finally owned up to both his wife and the authorities. Dr Vigurs adds: : 'He was essentially, four decades later, the last German soldier to surrender from the Second World War. And the story went wild. 'A biography was written, Hitler's Last Soldier in America, and finally, he was able to tell the truth.' By then, the US authorities had no interest in Gaertner. He was never charged with an offence because he had been brought to the US against his will. And all German prisoners of war had long since been repatriated. He finally became a US citizen in 2009 and died aged 92 in 2013.
Telegraph
6 days ago
- General
- Telegraph
Ukraine struggles to solve unprecedented PoW problem
When Maksym Kolesnikov returned from almost a year in a Russian prison camp, 32kg lighter than he was before, the first things he wanted were warm socks and fried chicken. Captured in March 2022 while defending Kyiv, Mr Kolesnikov endured relentless horrors at the hands of Russian soldiers. The Ukrainian was tortured with electric shocks and beaten, his knee shattered. He was starved and became emaciated. In the biting cold, Mr Kolesnikov wore the same clothes he was captured in, the same thin socks on his frozen feet. But none of this compared with the psychological horror. 'In Russian captivity, you are never safe,' Mr Kolesnikov said. 'At any moment, they can beat or torture you. You eat badly, you sleep badly, you know that they can do what they want because they don't see you as a human being.' At home, when he was finally reunited with his family, Mr Kolesnikov said: 'People saw the human in me again.' But gallstone disease, muscle atrophy, chronic fatigue, contusions and a shattered knee were just some of the scars that followed him and his fellow captives home from months of hell. The 1,000 Ukrainian prisoners of war exchanged last week for the same number of Russians will confront the same challenges. 'It's a situation of such long-term stress,' Mr Kolesnikov said of being a prisoner. 'When you come back, you're a different person.' The largest exchange in the war to date saw a staggered release of hundreds of flag-donning Ukrainian captives from Friday through to Sunday. Some of the prisoners have spent as long as three years in Russian jails. But once the cameras stopped filming the tearful reunions, the former captives were left to return to normal life. The initial gruelling stages of physical and psychological rehabilitation will take place at military hospitals and sanatoriums across the country. But reintegrating into civilian society will be even more complex. Ivona Kostyna, the chairman and co-founder of the NGO Veteran Hub, said an overarching national strategy for veterans and prisoners of war is not there. She said that veteran reintegration in Ukraine is posing an unprecedented public health challenge. Many veterans, especially former prisoners of war, will return with complex health needs and may struggle to adapt to the workplace or rediscover their place in the community. Veteran Hub provides free legal, psychological, educational and employment support to veterans and their families, which would be impossible without the help of NGOs. The charity began in 2016, when it was becoming clear that veterans returning from the war in eastern Ukraine were struggling. 'When we started, we didn't even have a vocabulary for veteran reintegration,' Ms Kostyna explained. At the start of the full-scale invasion, Veteran Hub was forced to dramatically upscale. With funding rescinded from the US this year, it is under huge strain and fears that the Ukrainian authorities will not pick up the mantle of its work. 'We are just a patch on a broken system. The only reason we exist is because the system doesn't work,' Ms Kostyna said. Ukraine's veteran reintegration effort has never been done on such a large scale. Today, Ukraine has 1.2 million registered veterans, but official projections say the figure will rise to between five and six million in Ukraine's 40-million population after the war is over. This means that veterans could account for 15 per cent of Ukraine's population. Many will struggle to find stable employment or opportunities for retraining. Some will have sustained permanently disabling injuries and carry a heavy psychological burden, which threatens to destabilise themselves and their families. 'Most of the data we have [on veteran reintegration] is from Western societies, where a smaller number of people have been sent overseas to fight and then they have come back to a peaceful society,' Ms Kostyna explained. 'In our case, you go to war, you come back home, and you're still at war. For some people, you're from the occupied territories, and you also no longer have a home.' 'Foundation of national security' Ukraine draws heavily from its reserve of veterans because they are skilled and require less training than newcomers. Ms Kostyna estimated that up to 70 per cent of Ukrainian veterans could stay in the reserve. 'Veterans are the foundation of national security,' she said. 'But we understand that this means veterans are never fully going back to civilian life.' 'So you have this disparity between a civilian who has never served, and a veteran who has served two or three times, maybe over 20 years. And that veteran has never had time to commit to civilian life, so they will have a much lower well-being,' Kostyna said. 'The challenge here in Ukraine is that we are becoming a country of veterans. We have already been fighting for 11 years. We could be fighting forever, for whoever knows how many more years, how many more iterations of war.' To tackle the lack of employment opportunities, the government established a fund for entrepreneurship among returning veterans and their spouses. Veteran-run businesses can be found dotted around cities in Ukraine, such as Veterano, a lucrative franchise of war-themed pizzerias and cafes founded and run by veteran pizza chefs, and TYTANOVI coffee, a cafe which hires veterans with prosthetics as baristas. Oleksandr Manchenko, 40, built the Ola Dance Studio with the help of his wife, a fellow dancer who he met via TikTok while he was serving on the front line. Alongside their usual operations, the studio in central Kyiv runs dance classes for other veterans to help them rehabilitate when they return from combat. 'We had one guy who was here, and for a time, when he came back, he just wanted to kill everyone,' says Mr Manchenko. 'After about a month and a half with us, it was clear that his thinking had changed and that period of his life was over.' For Mr Manchenko, this is proof that the best form of recovery is community. 'It was difficult for me, coming home. I had PTSD, and it took some time to become used to normal things. From time to time, things I didn't understand happened, and I became full of anger and hatred. But things got better when I made the decision to start dancing and talking again.' With funding granted for fewer than 600 veteran-owned businesses as of last year, entrepreneurship may be little more than a cosmetic fix for the scale of economic and social disadvantage felt by soldiers. Without a structure to help them cope in the long term with persistent health complaints from traumatic brain injury or other common disabilities, as well as repeated psychological trauma, the effects of unsuccessful reintegration could be felt for decades. Mr Kolesnikov, now back to a healthy weight, works for a defence tech company to feel 'closer to the military community'. Though there are still difficulties – while holidaying abroad, he was paralysed with fear at the sound of a plane because of its similarity to an FPV drone – being close to his former combatants helps. 'The other day, four guys from my battalion went to get a coffee in Kyiv, and we all had the same thought at the same time,' he said. 'Kyiv is still free, and this is our impact... it was our fight.'
Daily Mail
25-05-2025
- Politics
- Daily Mail
Moment Ukrainian soldier kisses his wife after being freed during Russia and Ukraine's swap of over 300 more prisoners
A Ukrainian prisoner of war broke down in tears as he lovingly kissed his wife after he was freed in an exchange with Russia today. Serviceman Vitaly embraced his wife Olena in the third and last part of a major exchange that reflected a rare moment of cooperation in otherwise failed efforts to reach a ceasefire in the more than three years of war. He was one of several hundred soldiers to have been swapped only hours after a major Russian drone-and-missile attack struck the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, and other regions, killing at least 13 people and injured dozens. Russia 's Defence Ministry said each side brought home 303 more soldiers, after each released a total of 307 combatants and civilians on Saturday, and 390 on Friday - the biggest swap of the war. Crowds welcomed the soldiers home, who were draped in the bright colours of the Ukrainian flag. Others held up photos of missing loved ones to the returned servicemen, hopeful they might be able to tell them anything about the men pictured. Medics were also at the scene to attend to the POWs as the soldiers filed out from buses to an undisclosed location. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy confirmed the exchange, saying on X on Sunday that '303 Ukrainian defenders are home.' He was one of several hundred soldiers to have been swapped in the third and last part of a major exchange that reflected a rare moment of cooperation He noted that the troops returning to Ukraine were members of the 'Armed Forces, the National Guard, the State Border Guard Service, and the State Special Transport Service'. The POW exchange was the latest of scores of swaps since the war began but also the biggest involving Ukrainian civilians. In talks held in Istanbul earlier this month - the first time the two sides met face to face for peace talks - Kyiv and Moscow agreed to swap 1,000 prisoners of war and civilian detainees each. The exchange has been the only tangible outcome from the talks. Ukrainian officials described last night's onslought as the largest aerial assault since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, with the Kremlin firing 367 drones and missiles. In all, Russia used 69 missiles of various types and 298 drones, including Iranian-designed Shahed drones. There was no immediate comment from Moscow on the strikes. For Kyiv, the day was particularly somber as the city observed Kyiv Day, a national holiday that falls on the last Sunday in May, commemorating its founding in the 5th century. Zelenskyy said Russian missiles and drones hit more than 30 cities and villages, and urged Western partners to ramp up sanctions on Russia - a longstanding demand of the Ukrainian leader but one that despite warnings to Moscow by the United States and Europe has not materialized in ways to deter Russia. 'These were deliberate strikes on ordinary cities,' Zelenskyy wrote on X, adding that Sunday's targets included Kyiv, Zhytomyr, Khmelnytskyi, Ternopil, Chernihiv, Sumy, Odesa, Poltava, Dnipro, Mykolaiv, Kharkiv and Cherkasy regions. 'America's silence, the silence of others in the world, only encourages' Russian President Vladimir Putin, he said. 'Without truly strong pressure on the Russian leadership, this brutality cannot be stopped. Sanctions will certainly help.' Sounds of explosions boomed throughout the night in Kyiv and the surrounding area as Ukrainian air defence persisted for hours in efforts to shoot down Russian drones and missiles. At least four people were killed and 16 were injured in the capital itself, according to the security service. 'A difficult Sunday morning in Ukraine after a sleepless night,' Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said on X, adding that the assault 'lasted all night.' Fires broke out in homes and businesses, set off by falling drone debris. In Zhytomyr region, west of Kyiv, the emergency service said three children were killed, aged eight, 12 and 17. Twelve people were injured in the attacks, it said. At least four people were killed in the Khmelnytskyi region, in western Ukraine. One man was killed in Mykolaiv region, in southern Ukraine. Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said a student dormitory in Holosiivskyi district was hit by a drone and one of the building's walls was on fire. In Dniprovskyi district, a private house was destroyed and in Shevchenkivskyi district, windows in a residential building were smashed. In Markhalivka, just outside Kyiv where several village homes were burned down, the Fedorenkos watched their ruined home in tears. 'The street looks like Bakhmut, like Mariupol, it's just terrible,' said 76-year-old Liubov Fedorenko, comparing their village to some of Ukraine's most devastated cities. She said she was grateful her daughter and grandchildren hadn't joined them for the weekend. 'I was trying to persuade my daughter to come to us,' Fedorenko said, adding that she told her daughter, 'after all, you live on the eighth floor in Kyiv, and here it's the ground floor.'' 'She said, `No, mum, I'm not coming.' And thank God she didn't come, because the rocket hit [the house] on the side where the children's rooms were,' Fedorenko said. Ivan Fedorenko, 80, said he regrets letting their two dogs into the house when the air raid siren went off. 'They burned to death,' he said. 'I want to bury them, but I'm not allowed yet.' Battles have continued along the roughly 1,000-kilometer (620-mile) front line, where tens of thousands of soldiers have been killed, and neither country has relented in its deep strikes. Russia's Defense Ministry quoted Yaroslav Yakimkin of the 'North' group of Russian forces as saying Sunday that Ukrainian troops have been pushed back from the border in the Kursk region, which Putin visited days ago. 'The troops continue to advance forward every day,' Yakimkin said, adding that Russian forces have taken Marine and Loknya in Ukraine's northeastern Sumy region, which borders Kursk, over the past week, and were advancing in the Kharkiv region around the largely destroyed town of Vovchansk. Speaking on Russian state TV on Sunday, a Russian serviceman said that Putin was reportedly flying over the Kursk region in a helicopter when the area came under intense Ukrainian drone attack during his visit. Putin's helicopter was 'virtually at the epicenter of repelling a large-scale attack by the enemy's drones,' said Yuri Dashkin, described as commander of a Russian air defense division.
Al Arabiya
22-05-2025
- Politics
- Al Arabiya
Kremlin says work is underway on the large Russia-Ukraine POW swap
The Kremlin, asked on Thursday about a planned prisoner of war swap with Ukraine of 1,000 captives each, said that work was underway, and that each side wants to complete the exchange as quickly as possible. The swap was agreed during negotiations between the two sides in Istanbul last week, the first direct talks between Russia and Ukraine since 2022.
Free Malaysia Today
20-05-2025
- Politics
- Free Malaysia Today
Australia condemns Russia's jailing of Melbourne man
Foreign minister Penny Wong said they were appalled by the sham trial and 13-year sentence meted. (EPA Images pic) CANBERRA : Australia's foreign minister on Saturday condemned a 13-year prison sentence handed by a Russian court to an Australian citizen for fighting alongside Ukrainian forces. Oscar Jenkins, 33, will serve the sentence in a maximum-security prison after being found guilty by a Russian court of participating in an armed conflict as a mercenary, state prosecutors in a part of eastern Ukraine controlled by Russia said on Friday. Foreign minister Penny Wong said in a statement that Australia's government was 'appalled at the sham trial and 13-year sentence' given to Jenkins, previously a teacher in Melbourne. 'As a full serving member of the regular armed forces of Ukraine, Mr Jenkins is a prisoner of war,' said Wong, a long-time strident critic of Russia's war against Ukraine. 'The Australian Government has made clear to Russia that Mr Jenkins must be given the protections afforded to him as a prisoner of war. Russia is obligated to treat him in accordance with international humanitarian law, including humane treatment,' the foreign minister said. She said Australia's government would work with Ukraine and the International Committee of the Red Cross to push for Jenkins' welfare and release. Jenkins was serving with Ukraine's military when he was captured by Russia last year as a prisoner of war, Australian media reported earlier this year. A video taken at the time showed him, dressed in combat uniform, being asked if he was a mercenary, reports said. Australia is one of the largest non-Nato contributors to the West's support for Ukraine and has been supplying aid, ammunition and defence equipment. It has banned exports of alumina and aluminium ores, including bauxite, to Russia, and has sanctioned about 1,000 Russian individuals and entities.
