# Any instances of former POWs going after former captors for "payback"?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-instances-of-former-pows-going-after-former-captors-for-payback/718780
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [April 29, 2015, 4:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-instances-of-former-pows-going-after-former-captors-for-payback/718780 "2015-04-29T04:56:24Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@1kBR\_Kid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/1kBR_Kid)
#### Post date: [April 29, 2015, 4:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-instances-of-former-pows-going-after-former-captors-for-payback/718780/1 "2015-04-29T04:56:24Z")
I mean individual soldiers or a small group of soldiers, acting on their own, rather than war crimes trials. I wondered about that while watching documentaries about the true story of the bridge on the river Kwai and about hunting Nazi war criminals.
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### Author:  [@dr\_zippermeyer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dr_zippermeyer)
#### Post date: [April 30, 2015, 2:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-instances-of-former-pows-going-after-former-captors-for-payback/718780/2 "2015-04-30T02:07:16Z")
I find this question interesting, I have also thought about this. You would assume they will instantly kill their tormentors when friendly troops arrive but apparently this is really rare. I assume it might be because of joy of surviving alive combined with the fact that it takes time for a human brain to “re-wire”. In this case, to turn from helpless victim to a master. And maybe physical weakness had a part too.
But still… it is strange. You would think that after millions and millions of wrongful, cruel, unnecessary killings more people would have returned to take a revenge.
These are the few examples I know: [Joachim Peiper - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joachim_Peiper) (SS officer, who had guts to move to France after the war met a grim fate)
According to this, during a revolt in death camp SS guard was burned alive in crematorium:
> **[Sonderkommando | Revolts](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonderkommando#Revolts)**
>
> Sonderkommando prisoners participated in uprisings on two occasions.
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### Author:  [@Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tim_T-Bonham.net)
#### Post date: [April 30, 2015, 3:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-instances-of-former-pows-going-after-former-captors-for-payback/718780/3 "2015-04-30T03:48:10Z")
Well, there was Simon Wiesenthal. He survived the German death camps in WWII, and afterwards helped research & track down many war criminals from the camps. But I don’t know if he ever caught any of them from the specific camp he was in.
And he didn’t take any personal, vigilante justice on them – he turned them over to the legal system to prosecute.
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### Author:  [@Simplicio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Simplicio)
#### Post date: [April 30, 2015, 4:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-instances-of-former-pows-going-after-former-captors-for-payback/718780/4 "2015-04-30T04:00:17Z")
IThere were a couple cases of Allied troops looking the other way while Concentration Camp survivors dealt with their captors. Those weren’t POWs though.
I would be surprised if there wasn’t some extra-judicial justice handed out by the inmates when some of the more brutal Stalags were liberated, but I don’t know any specific examples.
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### Author:  [@AK84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AK84)
#### Post date: [April 30, 2015, 4:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-instances-of-former-pows-going-after-former-captors-for-payback/718780/5 "2015-04-30T04:11:57Z")
Most of the time the POW guards were just soldiers doing their duty, just like the POWs the,selves so that would reduce the urge for revenge. Also during the wars these were often older men unfit for combat or those whose wounds now precluded more active service.
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### Author:  [@Monty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Monty)
#### Post date: [April 30, 2015, 4:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-instances-of-former-pows-going-after-former-captors-for-payback/718780/6 "2015-04-30T04:56:13Z")
> [@dr\_zippermeyer](#):
>
> You would assume they will instantly kill their tormentors when friendly troops arrive but apparently this is really rare.
Why would you assume that?
> [@](#):
>
> I assume it might be because of joy of surviving alive combined with the fact that it takes time for a human brain to “re-wire”. In this case, to turn from helpless victim to a master. And maybe physical weakness had a part too.
Or perhaps they understood the concepts of _justice_ and _non-combatants_. They understood that any “payback” would be levied by a court empowered to adjudicate war crimes trials.
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### Author:  [@Urbanredneck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Urbanredneck)
#### Post date: [April 30, 2015, 4:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-instances-of-former-pows-going-after-former-captors-for-payback/718780/7 "2015-04-30T04:59:43Z")
As I understand it most of the time by the time allied forces arrived, all the camp guards and staff have fled.
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### Author:  [@UDS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UDS)
#### Post date: [April 30, 2015, 5:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-instances-of-former-pows-going-after-former-captors-for-payback/718780/8 "2015-04-30T05:14:02Z")
I think there’s a confusion here between POWs and concentration camp inmates.
POWs didn’t have a fun time, but at least as for as soldiers of the western allies captured by the Germans or the Italians go, they weren’t generally brutalised or tortured, and they understood that the camp guards who supervised them were only doing what some British, etc, soldiers were doing to captured Axis troops.
Concentration camps were different.
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### Author:  [@madsircool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/madsircool)
#### Post date: [April 30, 2015, 5:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-instances-of-former-pows-going-after-former-captors-for-payback/718780/9 "2015-04-30T05:34:23Z")
> [@dr\_zippermeyer](#):
>
> These are the few examples I know: [Joachim Peiper - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joachim_Peiper) (SS officer, who had guts to move to France after the war met a grim fate)
This wasnt a revenge killing by camp inmates. He apparantly was murdered by French communists or French Resistance members.
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### Author:  [@1kBR\_Kid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/1kBR_Kid)
#### Post date: [April 30, 2015, 6:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-instances-of-former-pows-going-after-former-captors-for-payback/718780/10 "2015-04-30T06:10:31Z")
I should have said POWs (and others) who were tortured/subjected to inhumane conditions, like the soldiers who built the Thailand/Burma railway. That documentary was hard to watch. I couldn’t imagine someone not wanting revenge. I was amazed that a Japanese engineer, 55 years later, said they did nothing wrong.
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### Author:  [@Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tim_T-Bonham.net)
#### Post date: [April 30, 2015, 6:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-instances-of-former-pows-going-after-former-captors-for-payback/718780/11 "2015-04-30T06:51:42Z")
> [@Monty](#):
>
> Or perhaps they understood the concepts of _justice_ and _non-combatants_. They understood that any “payback” would be levied by a court empowered to adjudicate war crimes trials.
Not likely – war crimes trials had not really been held prior to post-WWII. Either the winning side simply killed them out of hand (like Stalin wanted to do) or they used ‘fake’ legal proceedings, like after the Tudor victory in the English Wars of the Roses.
> [@1kBR\_Kid](#):
>
> I should have said POWs (and others) who were tortured/subjected to inhumane conditions, like the soldiers who built the Thailand/Burma railway. That documentary was hard to watch. I couldn’t imagine someone not wanting revenge. I was amazed that a Japanese engineer, 55 years later, said they did nothing wrong.
Bah. Most of the Japanese population even today doesn’t really believe that they did anything wrong; not the atrocities in China, the back-stabbing attack on Pearl Harbor, the mistreatment of POWs, the starvation/murders in occupied islands, etc.
At least the Germans admitted that their country had done some bad things before/during WWII. They just all said that “it was those Nazis who did all those bad things – I was just one of all the ordinary Germans just trying to live my life while all that was going on. I was never really involved.” The some-other-guy-did-it defense. (One wonders how Hitler was able to imprison so many, raise such large armies, etc., when it was only those few Nazis supporting him. Or how he was even able to win election in the first place.)
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### Author:  [@Slithy\_Tove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slithy_Tove)
#### Post date: [April 30, 2015, 9:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-instances-of-former-pows-going-after-former-captors-for-payback/718780/12 "2015-04-30T09:10:37Z")
Not a POW, but a concentration camp inmate who [followed his captor into the French Foreign Legion and killed him in Indochina](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eliahu_Itzkovitz)
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### Author:  [@Simplicio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Simplicio)
#### Post date: [April 30, 2015, 9:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-instances-of-former-pows-going-after-former-captors-for-payback/718780/13 "2015-04-30T09:41:51Z")
> [@Slithy\_Tove](#):
>
> Not a POW, but a concentration camp inmate who [followed his captor into the French Foreign Legion and killed him in Indochina](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eliahu_Itzkovitz)
Wow, if that’s not a movie already, someone should get on it.
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### Author:  [@dr\_zippermeyer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dr_zippermeyer)
#### Post date: [April 30, 2015, 12:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-instances-of-former-pows-going-after-former-captors-for-payback/718780/14 "2015-04-30T12:23:28Z")
> [@Slithy\_Tove](#):
>
> Not a POW, but a concentration camp inmate who [followed his captor into the French Foreign Legion and killed him in Indochina](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eliahu_Itzkovitz)
That was really interesting, I wonder how I have never heard about this before. Definitely worthy for a movie! Exactly something like this I was wondering before: with millions of participants, why something like this is not reported. But I was wrong.
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### Author:  [@dr\_zippermeyer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dr_zippermeyer)
#### Post date: [April 30, 2015, 12:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-instances-of-former-pows-going-after-former-captors-for-payback/718780/15 "2015-04-30T12:28:49Z")
> [@Monty](#):
>
> Why would you assume that?
Well, if I saw my friend killed just for fun and that same guard would kick me every time he passes me… I could think after that my sense of justice would tell my to at least beat the living crap out of him. But people are different of course.
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### Author:  [@dr\_zippermeyer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dr_zippermeyer)
#### Post date: [April 30, 2015, 12:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-instances-of-former-pows-going-after-former-captors-for-payback/718780/16 "2015-04-30T12:47:48Z")
This might be a bit far-fetched but Spartacus apparently forced some Roman citizens to fight to the death as gladiators. [Third Servile War - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Servile_War#Appian.27s_history)
Spartacus himself was a gladiator and according to some speculations a former “POW”.
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### Author:  [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)
#### Post date: [April 30, 2015, 1:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-instances-of-former-pows-going-after-former-captors-for-payback/718780/17 "2015-04-30T13:11:57Z")
The inmates from Stalag Luft III (the place where “THe Great Escape” took place, as described by Paul Brickhill in his book of that name, and in the theatrical film and the TV movie) had reunions for years after the war. Reportedly, they actually paid to bring over some of their former guards from Germany.
I don’t know of any cases of individual “payback”, but, as Brickhill describes in his book (and as depicted in the TV movie), there were legal cases pursued against those who carried out the “Bullet Order” that resulted in the execution of fifty of the escapees.
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### Author:  [@gnoitall](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gnoitall)
#### Post date: [April 30, 2015, 1:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-instances-of-former-pows-going-after-former-captors-for-payback/718780/18 "2015-04-30T13:19:00Z")
> [@t-bonham@scc.net](#):
>
> Bah. **Most** of the Japanese population even today doesn’t really believe that they did anything wrong; not the atrocities in China, the back-stabbing attack on Pearl Harbor, the mistreatment of POWs, the starvation/murders in occupied islands, etc.
I’ll give you “many”. You can’t sell “ **most** ” without some evidence.
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### Author:  [@Malthus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malthus)
#### Post date: [April 30, 2015, 3:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-instances-of-former-pows-going-after-former-captors-for-payback/718780/19 "2015-04-30T15:02:09Z")
> [@1kBR\_Kid](#):
>
> I should have said POWs (and others) who were tortured/subjected to inhumane conditions, like the soldiers who built the Thailand/Burma railway. That documentary was hard to watch. I couldn’t imagine someone not wanting revenge. I was amazed that a Japanese engineer, 55 years later, said they did nothing wrong.
You should read the book Unbroken - it deals with this sort of theme: POW in brutal Japanese camp, years later looking up guards who made his life difficult. Though he didn’t want to take revenge.
In the non-POW context, the most interesting example I can think of happened to writer, chemist and former death-camp inmate Primo Levy. During the war, he had been enslaved and forced to work in a Nazi chemical factory; after the war, he was working as a professional chemist, when he had in that role business dealings by correspondence with the representative of a German chemical supplier - when he realized from the name that the guy was his former boss in the slave factory!
Again, he didn’t want to take revenge … he engaged in a bizzare sort of dual correspondence: on the one hand, they kept writing to each other over the business problem, in strictly neutral terms; on the other, they started a personal correspondence - the ex-Boss, it seemed, remembered being Levy’s personal saviour and helper at the Camp (but Levy remembered events very differently!).
In any event, they arranged to actually meet … but the German fellow died right before they could.
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### Author:  [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)
#### Post date: [April 30, 2015, 6:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-instances-of-former-pows-going-after-former-captors-for-payback/718780/20 "2015-04-30T18:01:11Z")
I remember a concentration camp inmate describing the liberation at one camp, and mentioned that some of the guards were protected by the inmates from being beaten (or worse) by the liberating troops and other inmates. They knew who were sadistic bastards and who were “just doing their job” and did what they could under the circumstances. I assume the same applied to the Stalag Luft III guards, particularly the sadism would likely be less pronounced in a POW camp for westerners. (Allegedly the eastern front prisoners did not fare so well)
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