Ed & Ray Hersman in WWII - Robert Marks.org

9.2. CHRONOLOGY Ed & Ray Hersman in WWII2. The Jewish looking prisoners were taken to Berga, a vile concentrationcamp where prisoners worked. Berga was probably the most vile concentrationcamp for GI’s because the GI’s were suspected to be Jewish.The account is documented in three books [2, 3, 5] and a PBS DVDdocumentary [1].This hypothesis is supported nicely be the following.1. Ray Brent Hersman’s also suspected that Berga might be the camp.See Section 8.4.1 on page 107.2. Berga was the concentration camp for Jewish looking prisoners fromthe Battle of the Buldge. Ray Brent Hersman writes “The German’sthought that Dad might be Jewish and assigned him to a special POWunit.” See Section 8.2.1 on page 106.3. The prisoners at Berga were digging tunnels, a concentration campsouth of Leipzig in eastern Germany, for the storage of synthetic fuel[3]. This is consistent with Ray Brent Hersman’s account that Rayworked in a stone quarry. See Section 8.4.3 on page 108.4. There was a train ride from Bad Orb to Berga in unheated trains. Itwas winter and cold.5. Near the end of the war, the camp was emptied and the prisoners wereforce marched away from advancing Allied lines. Forty nine fell duringa 125-mile march on which these broken men were dispatched as the SSmade futile efforts to distance them from their approaching liberators[3].6. Berga was not near Poland, but was close to the front line.7. Ed says “Ray had been on a starvation diet and only weighed eightypounds. He had been in a prisoner of war camp in the eastern partof Germany, but when the Russians advanced were marched almost to114