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bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem
In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful
=== News Update ===
The postwar photographs that British authorities tried to keep hidden
Ian Cobain
Monday April 3, 2006
The Guardian
· Treatment of suspected communists revealed
· Four court martialled after police inspector's inquiry
Archive pictures of German prisoners held by the British following the
second world war
Archive pictures of German prisoners held by the British following the
second world war. Photographs: Martin Argles
For almost 60 years, the evidence of Britain's clandestine torture
programme in postwar Germany has lain hidden in the government's files.
Harrowing photographs of young men who had survived being systematically
starved, as well as beaten, deprived of sleep and exposed to extreme
cold, were considered too shocking to be seen.
As one minister of the day wrote, as few people as possible should be
aware that British authorities had treated prisoners "in a manner
reminiscent of the German concentration camps".
Many other photographs known to have been taken have vanished from the
archives, and even this year some government officials were arguing that
none should be published.
The pictures show suspected communists who were tortured in an attempt
to gather information about Soviet military intentions and intelligence
methods at a time when some British officials were convinced that a
third world war was only months away.
Others interrogated at the same prison, at Bad Nenndorf, near Hanover,
included Nazis, prominent German industrialists of the Hitler era, and
former members of the SS.
At least two men suspected of being communists were starved to death, at
least one was beaten to death, others suffered serious illness or
injuries, and many lost toes to frostbite.
The appalling treatment of the 372 men and 44 women who were
interrogated at Bad Nenndorf between 1945 and 1947 are detailed in a
report by a Scotland Yard detective, Inspector Tom Hayward. He had been
called in by senior army officers to investigate the mistreatment of
inmates, partly as a result of the evidence provided by these
photographs.
Insp Hayward's report remained secret until last December, when the
Guardian secured its release under the Freedom of Information Act. The
photographs seen here were removed before the Foreign Office released
the report, apparently because the Ministry of Defence did not wish them
to be published. That decision was reversed last week, following an
appeal by the Guardian.
One of the men photographed, Gerhard Menzel, 23, a student, was arrested
by British intelligence officers in Hamburg in June 1946. He had fallen
under suspicion because he was believed to have travelled to the
British-controlled zone of Germany from Omsk in Siberia, where he had
been a prisoner of war. His weight, measured several weeks after his
arrest at 10st 3lb, had fallen to 7st 10lb by the time he was
transferred from Bad Nenndorf to a British-run internment camp eight
months later.
In the meantime, he told Hayward, his hands had been chained behind his
back for up to 16 days at a time, periods during which he was repeatedly
punched in the face. He had also been held in a bare, freezing cell for
up to two weeks at a time and doused in cold water every 30 minutes from
4.30am until midnight, a practice the detective discovered to have been
common.
A doctor at the internment camp reported that Mr Menzel was one of a
group of 12 inmates transferred from Bad Nenndorf, all emaciated and
dressed in rags. Previous arrivals had also been half-starved. Some had
facial scars, apparently the result of beatings. A few had scars on
their shins, said to be the result of torture with shin screws which had
been retrieved from a Gestapo prison at Hamburg.
Mr Menzel "was only skin and bones," the doctor wrote. "He could neither
walk nor stand up without assistance, and could only speak with
difficulty because his tongue and lips were swollen and broken open.
"It was impossible to take his body temperature because it was not
higher than 35 degrees Celsius and the thermometer only starts at 35."
The prisoner was also confused, anxious and suffering memory loss, his
lungs were badly infected and his blood pressure was dangerously low.
Only after being washed, fed and heated with lamps could his body
temperature be raised to 36.3C, but the doctor feared his chances of
survival were slim.
Another man pictured, Heinz Biedermann, 20, a clerk, had been arrested
in October 1946 because he was in the British zone, while his father,
who lived at Stendal in the Russian zone, had been identified as "an
ardent communist". By the time he was transferred from Bad Nenndorf four
months later his weight had fallen from 11st 3lb to 7st 12lb. He said he
had been held in solitary confinement for much of the time, threatened
with execution, and forced to live and sleep in sub-zero temperatures
while barely clothed.
One British army guard told Inspector Hayward that Mr Biedermann had
"wasted like a candle" during his imprisonment. Another, a private in
the Essex Regiment, told the detective that he complained that he and
his comrades were behaving as badly as Germans. "I became very unpopular
after this ... the sergeant appeared to take a poor view of my remarks."
On Mr Biedermann's transfer to the internment camp, an officer at Bad
Nenndorf requested he be detained "for an adequate time" to prevent him
giving the Soviets "detailed information on this centre and methods of
interrogation".
Foreign Office records show that the navy officer commanding the
internment camp, Captain Arthur Curtis, was so shocked by the condition
of the men being sent to him that he ordered these photographs be taken
to support his complaints about the treatment of these "living
skeletons". Photographs of several other prisoners, taken at the same
time, appear to have vanished from the Foreign Office files.
On the other side of the British zone, meanwhile, a Royal Artillery
officer was complaining about the state of Bad Nenndorf inmates who were
being dumped from a truck at the entrance to a military hospital. Some
weighed little more than six stones, and two died shortly after their
arrival.
The records show that Bad Nenndorf was run by a War Office department
called the Combined Services Detailed Interrogation Centre (CSDIC).
By late 1946, CSDIC appears to have lost interest in Nazis, and was
targeting communists. It appears the prisoners were questioned about
Soviet methods and intentions, rather than about the Communist party
itself.
Some of Bad Nenndorf's inmates were indeed spying for the Soviets: one
prisoner, who was half-Norwegian and half-Russian, told Hayward he was
an officer in the NKVD, the predecessor of the KGB, and had been
operating continuously in Germany since 1938. Another, a German
journalist who had been freed by the Soviets from a Gestapo prison, was
caught flying into Croydon aerodrome with false British papers. Both men
were starved and badly tortured.
Others clearly were not spies, however. One man who was starved to death
was a gay ex-soldier caught with forged papers while crossing into the
British zone in search of his lover, while the other was a young German
who was being interrogated because he had volunteered to spy for the
British in the Russian zone, and was wrongly suspected of lying because
of an official error over his medical records.
Four British officers were court martialled after Hayward's
investigation. Declassified documents show that the hearings were held
largely behind closed doors to prevent the Soviets from discovering that
Russians were being detained.
Another consideration was admitted to be the determination to conceal
the existence of several other CSDIC prisons. While it is now known that
one interrogation centre was in central London, little is known about
those in Germany, other than their locations.
Following the courts martial, the prison at Bad Nenndorf, which was in a
converted bath-house, was replaced with a purpose-built interrogation
centre near an RAF base at Gütersloh, and orders were issued for inmates
to be examined by a doctor before interrogation. It is unclear when this
centre closed.
The only officer at Bad Nenndorf to be convicted was the prison doctor.
At the age of 49, his sentence was to be dismissed from the army. The
commanding officer, Colonel Robin Stephens, was cleared of a charge of
"disgraceful conduct of a cruel kind" and told he was free to apply to
rejoin his former employers at MI5.
source:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/germany/article/0,,1745662,00.html
===
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