POW notes

Walter Panknin (1898 – 1977) and His Family – Part 25

/ Peter Klopp / 9 Comments

POWs on Starvation Diet

Papa compared the US camp administration with the Sphinx of Ancient Egypt. The secrecy about the political development in their respective home provinces was a riddle to which there was no answer. With its heavily censored articles, the camp newspaper ‘Wahrheit’ (Truth) offered very little information and even less ground for an early dismissal. One thing Papa was able to figure out, though. The Russians had taken over Thuringia and Saxony and had become the master over his hometown Gotha. Whether his wife and children had been able to survive the war, he did not know. He repeatedly expressed his worry and concern over their safety.

The Family Constantly on Papa’s Mind

Among the captured officers, many intellectuals, professors from various disciplines were taken out of their university. They served in the army in a commanding position. To fight boredom and help their colleagues get their minds off the common misery, they offered lectures on their expert knowledge of their particular field of research. These open-air sessions were top-rated and offered a broad range of topics, interpreting operas, 5000 years of Ancient Egypt, understanding Goethe’s Faust, to name a few. Through conversation with some of these impressive presenters, Papa hit on the idea of jotting down all the books, which they recommended for further study and which he was eager to read to feed his idea-hungry intellect. A glance at the list gave me deep insight into Papa’s enquiring mind, and I could not help admiring his fascination for history. Later on, after his release, he began to acquire these books, primarily historical and devoured them at a rapid pace. He went through an entire set of over 20 volumes on world history written by world-renowned historian Leopold von Ranke.

Papa’s Partial Book List


Unfortunately, from week to week, the food situation was getting worse. One day their thin, sugary breakfast soup arrived only at one o’clock in the afternoon. Even the most exciting talk about ancient history could not detract from the fact that the POWs at the Bad Kreuznach Camp were starving and growing weaker every day. Papa noticed the absence of mice, which was highly unusual considering so many men concentrated in such a small area. He concluded that in the most humble household, there was always some food left in the pantry. Here at the camp, with thousands of men milling about in constant search for food around the camp kitchen or some mouldy scraps from the garbage cans, nothing was edible left that might attract even a hungry rodent.

Walter Panknin (1898 – 1977) and His Family – Part 24

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Food and Cleanliness at the POW Camp

In the next section of his narrative poem, he addresses in a satirical fashion liberally sprinkled with sarcasm all housewives in general and his wife Elisabeth in particular. To wash clothes is easy, he says, when you have buckets, detergent, water, and means of bringing it to a boil. With those things readily available, every man could do the same, he claims. Then he begins to enumerate all the difficulties of doing the laundry in a POW camp. In wartime, people have to line up for butter and bread. Similarly, the prisoners first had to stand in line to receive some water, then sneak into the packed laundry house. To wash your clothes anywhere else was strictly forbidden. For the entire cleansing exercise, the camp rules allowed per company only twenty minutes, during which time the POWs could wash their face and body. Papa bemoaned the resulting failure of keeping body and attire clean. 

I placed a quarter on the tiny paper that Papa had written his POW notes. It gives you a sense of how tiny the paper was he used.

Dust also was a big problem when they were beating their blankets in the morning or frantically tried to sweep off the dusty dirt floors. Following the vigorous action of multiple brooms in action, fine particles remained floating in the air for a long time and eventually settled exactly in nooks and crannies in a never-ending cycle, which would make German housewives boil over in anger and frustration. Papa would have written many more verses on dirt and dust in the camp. Alas, for lack of paper and pencil, he was unable to jot them down. When finally he traded in a good chunk of chocolate for those most precious writing utensils, he had forgotten them all. And indeed, there were more important things to report.

Kinzig-Remagen POW Camp Spring 1945 – U.S. Army Archives

Food or rather its dwindling rations became once again the number one topic at the camp. And the chicaneries resumed. The POWs complained that the kitchen staff had maltreated them at a recent call to a non-existing breakfast. In a sadistic response to the justified complaint, the German kitchen personnel collaborated with their American supervisors and devised another sinister plan to make life more miserable for the prisoners. What they came up with was to serve breakfast between four and five. That would take care of the complaint of being called for breakfast and not getting one. Breakfast consisted from now on of watery vegetable soup. Add to this the long wait for lunch, which made their suffering even worse. When finally they received coffee or tea with one slice of wheat bread, it became evident they were set on a starvation diet. The word circulated from company to company that they should do as little physical activity as possible to conserve precious calories. Their survival was at stake.

Walter Panknin (1898 – 1977) and His Family – Part 22

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Reflections on Life as a POW

With more time for thought and reflection, Papa, making full use of his poetic talent, began to describe his life as a POW more vividly and in much greater detail. To make it easier for the reader to decipher this unusual piece of literature, he underlined the rhyming words and indicated with a slash the end of each line. Papa often went beyond a mere description of the good and bad times at camp.


He began by reflecting upon what makes a man truly free and what makes him a prisoner, not just in the literal sense of being surrounded by miles of barbed wire fences and guards ready to shoot at anyone attempting to escape. Freedom for Papa was more than having food, drink and shelter; slavery more than being deprived of these things. If the human spirit prevails despite severe deprivations, it is free. If, on the other hand, it drowns in a flood of material goods, it becomes a slave, not of some exterior force, such as a dictatorial political system, it puts on shackles of its own making.
Papa stated in his notes that something very positive came out of these horrible times at camp. He appreciated food, even the simplest meals, so much more. (Indeed, he would get furious when his children refused to eat what was so lovingly prepared and often left on the plate what he would have gladly eaten while being a POW. ) He addressed the reader directly by saying, ‘There is a sense of fair balance in human life. The hungry and deprived individual relishes a slice of dried bread and finds that it tastes much better than a rich man would ever experience eating a sumptuous gourmet dinner. Indeed simple, modest food will spare the less fortunate in life many diseases afflicting the wealthy gluttons in society. Dear reader, remember that times of adversity can be helpful. So if you don’t forget them, you will savour even the most basic food with great enjoyment when you are doing better. The more you are mindful of your past ordeals, the more you will thank God and be content when you receive your daily bread and no longer suffer from your hunger pangs.’

Walter Panknin (1898 – 1977) and His Family – Part 19

/ Peter Klopp / 11 Comments

Arrival at the Rheinwiesen Camp

 Soon an army truck pulled up at the house to pick up the prisoners. The order was to move them farther to the west. After all, the war wasn’t over yet.  The prisoners had to be as far away from the battlefield as possible. The Germans had built the concrete superhighways, the so-called Reichsautobahns, to carry troops and supplies under the motto ‘The wheels must roll for victory.’ Now they ironically assisted the enemy in bringing in war materiel even faster while moving the POWs away from the front. Together with thousands of other POWs, their final destination was Bad Kreuznach, a picturesque town west of the River Rhine. But the camp near the city was anything but romantic. Sheer horror seized Papa when he saw a giant empty field surrounded by a high barbed-wire fence. It did not even remotely look like a camp. There were no buildings for shelter against the cold and the rain. Soon it began to dawn on him that the cramped quarters at the confiscated house in Hersfeld were luxury accommodation by comparison to this desolate place without tents or barracks.

Papa Panknin wrote his POW experiences on cigarette paper. The example above is one of the over 60 papers I found among his belongings. Only after scanning and magnifying them I was able to read his notes. How he was able to write on these tiny pieces of paper with a pencil is a mystery.

Like cattle, the guards drove them onto this field of muck and clay. There they left them without any provisions for shelter during the night. Before nightfall, the American camp officers organized the new arrivals into companies and then ordered them to build primitive hovels out of clay. They were somewhat like the sandcastles that tourists would make on the beaches of the Baltic Sea. Fortunately, although the nights were uncomfortably cold in late April and early May, the bright sunshine and fair weather contributed a lot to make life quite pleasant for the POWs. Some were sunning themselves, while others played games to while away the time. It didn’t take Papa, a passionate Skat player, very long to find partners for the most popular card game in Germany.