# Medics carrying weapons in WWII? And what happened to Jewish soldiers captured by Germans? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [February 5, 2010, 11:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/medics-carrying-weapons-in-wwii-and-what-happened-to-jewish-soldiers-captured-by-germans/527863 "2010-02-05T23:43:23Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2010, 9:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/medics-carrying-weapons-in-wwii-and-what-happened-to-jewish-soldiers-captured-by-germans/527863/21 "2010-02-07T09:39:41Z")
> [@RickJay](#): > > Using captured enemy equipment is not a war crime. _Looting_ soldiers is. ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2010, 10:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/medics-carrying-weapons-in-wwii-and-what-happened-to-jewish-soldiers-captured-by-germans/527863/22 "2010-02-07T10:29:12Z")
Cite? ---
**Author:** ![Bear\_Nenno](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bear_nenno/32/3358_2.png) [@Bear\_Nenno](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bear_Nenno)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2010, 3:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/medics-carrying-weapons-in-wwii-and-what-happened-to-jewish-soldiers-captured-by-germans/527863/23 "2010-02-07T15:09:58Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > _Looting_ soldiers is. Yes, but taking a weapon is not looting. You can’t take their identification, wedding rings, personal property, protective equipment (like gas mask and helmet), religious stuff, or anything like that. But you can take any military equipment like weapons, explosives, maps, radios, documents which are military in nature, and the like. You specifically cannot take anything that would signify disrespect to the dead (like an ear, or finger…). Taking pistols and ammo is not looting and is not a war crime. There will be military policy which dictates what a soldier can do with the item. For instance, soldiers in the modern us military are not allowed to keep firearms they find or collect from the enemy. They must be turned in to the company. If the soldier violates this rule, he commits a local crime but not an international war crime. Soldiers in the modern us military are allowed to keep bayonets and knives and such though. We just have to fill out some forms and get a memo, and then it’s fine to keep it. ---
**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2010, 7:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/medics-carrying-weapons-in-wwii-and-what-happened-to-jewish-soldiers-captured-by-germans/527863/24 "2010-02-09T19:37:12Z")
> [@MPB\_in\_Salt\_Lake](#): > > The protagonist of “A Day In The Life Of Ivan Ivonovich” was in the gulag because he was captured by the Germans and then accused of collaborating with them. Ivan Denisovich. Also, is there any information about what would happen to a known American Communist captured by the Nazis? Say they found a copy of the _Communist Manifesto_ in his rucksack. ---
**Author:** ![MPB\_in\_Salt\_Lake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c0e974/32.png) [@MPB\_in\_Salt\_Lake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MPB_in_Salt_Lake)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2010, 8:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/medics-carrying-weapons-in-wwii-and-what-happened-to-jewish-soldiers-captured-by-germans/527863/25 "2010-02-09T20:05:47Z")
> [@Derleth](#): > > Ivan Denisovich. > > Also, is there any information about what would happen to a known American Communist captured by the Nazis? Say they found a copy of the _Communist Manifesto_ in his rucksack. You are 100% correct, and apparently the 2nd person to point out my gaffe—I of course recogonized my skull-fuck within a few min. after posting, when it was too late (naturally) to fix. For the record, I have read ADITLOID several times, (a very engrossing novel, to be in such a dehumanizing situation, thru no fault of your own, and then accept it and attempt to make the best of it) and I cannot believe I mis-identified it for the whole world to see. ---
**Author:** ![MarcusF](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/67e7ee/32.png) [@MarcusF](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MarcusF)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2010, 9:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/medics-carrying-weapons-in-wwii-and-what-happened-to-jewish-soldiers-captured-by-germans/527863/26 "2010-02-09T21:29:28Z")
On the armed medic point, my Dad was an RAF doctor during the Burma campaign in 1944 and he has told me that during the siege of [Imphal](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Imphal)nobody was a non-combatant. All units, including medical units, were expected to man their defensive perimeters during the night - the Japanese were constantly infiltrating and raiding. One story he has told me was that part of his job was to visit outlying units - hilltop radar stations etc - each day and he always carried a sten gun in the ambulance. I suspect the thinking was the Japanese were unlikely to take much notice of a red cross. ---
**Author:** ![sweeteviljesus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/898d66/32.png) [@sweeteviljesus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sweeteviljesus)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2010, 10:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/medics-carrying-weapons-in-wwii-and-what-happened-to-jewish-soldiers-captured-by-germans/527863/27 "2010-02-09T22:13:14Z")
Are medics required to treat the enemy as well? I gather that they will and it makes sense in certain circumstances, but is it a regulation? Thanks, Rob ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2010, 12:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/medics-carrying-weapons-in-wwii-and-what-happened-to-jewish-soldiers-captured-by-germans/527863/28 "2010-02-10T00:17:27Z")
ISTR it is required under the Geneva Conventions. You must treat POWs as you treat your own soldiers - no better and no worse. ---
**Author:** ![MPB\_in\_Salt\_Lake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c0e974/32.png) [@MPB\_in\_Salt\_Lake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MPB_in_Salt_Lake)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2010, 12:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/medics-carrying-weapons-in-wwii-and-what-happened-to-jewish-soldiers-captured-by-germans/527863/29 "2010-02-10T00:53:38Z")
> [@MarcusF](#): > > One story he has told me was that part of his job was to visit outlying units - hilltop radar stations etc - each day and he always carried a sten gun in the ambulance. I suspect the thinking was the Japanese were unlikely to take much notice of a red cross. Oh, the Japanese took notice all right; they knew how protective the soldiers were of their combat medics and so made them priority targets, fully aware that the Americans/Brits would then attempt to make a rescue, thereby offering easy pickings when the rescuers were occupied giving aid. Flags Of Our Fathers talks about this at length. ---
**Author:** ![Argent\_Towers](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e8c25b/32.png) [@Argent\_Towers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Argent_Towers)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2010, 3:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/medics-carrying-weapons-in-wwii-and-what-happened-to-jewish-soldiers-captured-by-germans/527863/30 "2010-02-10T03:25:38Z")
What good is the Geneva Convention when the only people who seem to obey it are all allied together? In the past 60 years, has anyone that a Western military fought ever obeyed the Geneva Convention? ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2010, 3:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/medics-carrying-weapons-in-wwii-and-what-happened-to-jewish-soldiers-captured-by-germans/527863/31 "2010-02-10T03:27:14Z")
> [@Argent\_Towers](#): > > What good is the Geneva Convention when the only people who seem to obey it are all allied together? In the past 60 years, has anyone that a Western military fought ever obeyed the Geneva Convention? Well, even though it was in WWII, the Germans were punctilious about following the Conventions. I also think both sides in the Falklands played by the rules. ---
**Author:** ![Shmendrik](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ee7513/32.png) [@Shmendrik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shmendrik)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2010, 4:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/medics-carrying-weapons-in-wwii-and-what-happened-to-jewish-soldiers-captured-by-germans/527863/32 "2010-02-10T04:01:29Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > Well, even though it was in WWII, the Germans were punctilious about following the Conventions. > > I also think both sides in the Falklands played by the rules. Punctilious? Hardly. [QUOTE=Adolf Hitler] From now on all enemies on so-called Commando missions in Europe or Africa challenged by German troops, even if they are to all appearances soldiers in uniform or demolition troops, whether armed or unarmed, in battle or in flight, are to be slaughtered to the last man. It does not make any difference whether they are landed from ships and aeroplanes for their actions, or whether they are dropped by parachute. Even if these individuals, when found, should apparently be prepared to give themselves up, no pardon is to be granted them on principle. [/QUOTE] ---
**Author:** ![Shmendrik](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ee7513/32.png) [@Shmendrik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shmendrik)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2010, 4:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/medics-carrying-weapons-in-wwii-and-what-happened-to-jewish-soldiers-captured-by-germans/527863/33 "2010-02-10T04:13:20Z")
[More](http://www.historynet.com/world-war-ii-today-hundreds-of-american-gis-held-in-concentration-camp.htm)German punctiliousness: > [@](#): > > About a month later, the camp’s commander told the prisoners to line up and ordered all of the Jewish soldiers to take one step forward. When few volunteered, Acevedo says, about 90 Jewish soldiers and more than 250 others the Germans thought “looked like Jews” were put on a train to Buchenwald. Acevedo, a Mexican American, is not Jewish. And [here:](http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/berga1.html) > [@](#): > > Like other U.S. soldiers captured in the Battle of the Bulge in December 1944, Fellman was first sent to Stalag 9B, a prisoner-of-war camp, But then the Germans separated Fellman and the other Jewish soldiers- as well as other GIs - and shipped them in boxcars to a small town on the Elster River. They were housed in barracks, sleeping two or three to a lice infested bunk. They also worked under forced labor conditions - like Jews and other “undesirables” in Nazi Germany but unlike most American POWs. > > At Berga, some were put to work as electricians, carpenters, locksmiths. The worst duty came in the mines, where the Germans were excavating tunnels for a munitions plant. The POWs dug through slate for hours on end, breathing fumes and mine dust. Their diet consisted of hardened bread heavy on sawdust, an occasional slice of meat and a nearly inedible soup. > > Within weeks, most of them were walking skeletons. Some had blisters and open wounds, respiratory ailments and dysentery. They were being worked to death. > > Of the 350 American POWs who had emerged at Berga from boxcars on Feb. 13, 1945, about 70 would perish from malnutrition, disease and beatings . “Where we were, a lot of us died,” said Swack, 71, who lives in North Caldwell with his wife. “The bodies were all over the place. They didn’t bury them… The problem was there was death all over the damned place.” ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2013, 7:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/medics-carrying-weapons-in-wwii-and-what-happened-to-jewish-soldiers-captured-by-germans/527863/34 "2013-03-19T19:33:54Z")
> **[National Museum of the United States Air Force](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Air_Force_Museum)** > > The National Museum of the United States Air Force (formerly the United States Air Force Museum) is the official museum of the United States Air Force located at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, six miles (9.7 km) northeast of Dayton, Ohio. The NMUSAF is the oldest and largest military aviation museum in the world, with more than 360 aircraft and missiles on display. The museum draws about a million visitors each year, making it one of the most frequently visited tourist attractions in Ohio The... I visited the USAF Museum in Dayton this weekend (definitely worth a visit), and there was an exhibit on Army Air Forces personnel taken prisoner by the Germans during World War II. The exhibit signage said that “some” Jewish AAF members were taken from their non-Jewish comrades and sent to concentration camps. At least one is known to have been executed at Dachau. An unknown number were sent to Mauthausen and Buchenwald, where some (again, no specifics) were executed, but others survived the war. ---
**Author:** ![OldGuy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/3bc359/32.png) [@OldGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OldGuy)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2013, 8:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/medics-carrying-weapons-in-wwii-and-what-happened-to-jewish-soldiers-captured-by-germans/527863/35 "2013-03-19T20:16:27Z")
> [@Argent\_Towers](#): > > He claimed that at one point he was in a convoy and there was an MP directing the trucks down a path which they realized headed straight into a German ambush. It turned out the MP was actually a German spy dressed up in an American uniform. The officers dragged him off and shot him on the spot. A German dressed in a U.S. Army uniform and acting covertly like this wold not be covered under the Geneva convention as a prisoner of war I’m pretty sure. I believe he’d be treated as a spy and executed which is what happened. ---
**Author:** ![TSBG](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/77aa72/32.png) [@TSBG](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TSBG)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2013, 9:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/medics-carrying-weapons-in-wwii-and-what-happened-to-jewish-soldiers-captured-by-germans/527863/36 "2013-03-19T21:20:25Z")
This is just one story, but the father of a friend fought in France. America dog tags at the time carried an identification letter so dead soldiers could get last rites. Not sure if it was a J or an H, but in any event he and his Jewish buddies bashed off the letter with rocks before they were captured…which was pretty much a giveaway. In any event they found that they were treated the same as other American prisoners. ---
**Author:** ![TSBG](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/77aa72/32.png) [@TSBG](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TSBG)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2013, 9:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/medics-carrying-weapons-in-wwii-and-what-happened-to-jewish-soldiers-captured-by-germans/527863/37 "2013-03-19T21:23:13Z")
Also, Iraq was a party to Geneva during both wars with the US, as was Iran during the Iran-Iraq War. ---
**Author:** ![dolphinboy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dolphinboy/32/330_2.png) [@dolphinboy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dolphinboy)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2013, 9:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/medics-carrying-weapons-in-wwii-and-what-happened-to-jewish-soldiers-captured-by-germans/527863/38 "2013-03-19T21:38:11Z")
> [@RealityChuck](#): > > The Nazis did honor the Geneva Convention, simply because it applied to their captured soldiers, too. If they ignored it, the Allies would have ignored it, too. I used to think this was true, but really, how would anyone know? Was the red cross visiting POW camps to see how prisoners were being treated? If someone ‘disappeared’ from a POW camp the commandant could say they tried to escape and were shot. How would anyone know the truth? ---
**Author:** ![TSBG](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/77aa72/32.png) [@TSBG](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TSBG)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2013, 9:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/medics-carrying-weapons-in-wwii-and-what-happened-to-jewish-soldiers-captured-by-germans/527863/39 "2013-03-19T21:47:44Z")
The Red Cross could see signs of physical abuse, and could examine and talk to the prisoners. ---
**Author:** ![aruvqan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aruvqan/32/2891_2.png) [@aruvqan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aruvqan)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2013, 11:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/medics-carrying-weapons-in-wwii-and-what-happened-to-jewish-soldiers-captured-by-germans/527863/40 "2013-03-19T23:07:10Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > If you were British or American, being Jewish as a POW was likely not so bad, in most cases. > > Carrying a Luger could have got you in trouble. I think some considered that a War Crime, as you must have looted it. > > My Dad fought the Japanese during WWII, and he had told me some medics carried guns. The Japanese did not respect the Geneva Convention. PSh, the holster for my [P.08](http://i789.photobucket.com/albums/yy176/aruvqan/222909_187629721284521_100001124828.jpg) still has teh remnants of the white medical tape with my dad’s name on it from where he checked it into the armory on the Queen Mary on his return trip to the US prior to being shipped off to the west coast to train up for the Japanese invasion force [that got more or less cancelled with the surrender] If looting sidearms was against the UCMJ, he wouldn’t have checked it into the armory because it was patently a German issue sidearm [the name of the issuee is written on the inside of the holster of that, and the Sauer 38H that he also checked into the armory for the trip back over] and would have gotten he and whomever else checked in weapons of German or Italian origin. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/medics-carrying-weapons-in-wwii-and-what-happened-to-jewish-soldiers-captured-by-germans/527863.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/medics-carrying-weapons-in-wwii-and-what-happened-to-jewish-soldiers-captured-by-germans/527863.md?page=3)