On December 16, 1944, Charles Guggenheim was at home, safe in his sickbed. Across the Atlantic, his fellow GIs were not so lucky. At the Battle of the Bulge, the Germans captured 6,000 Americans, many from Guggenheim’s own infantry division. A shocking number never returned. For the next 50 years, Guggenheim wondered why he’d been spared.
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About five years ago, Guggenheim–by then a renowned documentary filmmaker–attempted to trace a friend, who was among those captured. He’d been told the man had died in a German salt mine; upon investigation, that “salt mine” turned out to be Berga, a satellite labor camp of Buchenwald, the concentration camp in Eastern Germany where 56,000 people were murdered. Further inquiries led Guggenheim to 124 World War II veterans who survived Berga, many of whom had suppressed all memories of the camp for 50 years. This shocking discovery inspired Guggenheim’s documentary, Berga: Soldiers of Another War. The film would be his last–Guggenheim died six weeks after Berga was completed.
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Using Guggenheim’s own narration, archival images, interviews with survivors, and dramatic reenactments, Berga reveals a long-obscure aspect of World War II history. After their capture, the Americans were brought to a prisoner-of-war camp, then segregated. Although only 80 of them actually claimed to be Jewish, the Nazis used names and facial characteristics to “identify” 350 Jews. These men were then herded into boxcars and taken to Berga, where they were forced into labor, digging tunnels for a future underground factory. Several of the men unsuccessfully attempted escape; most simply remained camp inmates until the end of the war.
Guggenheim’s emotional narration reveals a desire to empathize with the soldiers’ stories, and to bring the audience as close to the experience as possible. With the reenacted scenes, he tries to make the viewer a part of the action. The camera pans at eye-level, surveying the surrounding horror: crowded boxcars, men swinging from a rope, bodies by the side of the road.
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Yet, the most moving element of Berga is not the reenactments, most of which unnecessarily reiterate the survivors’ accounts, but the riveting interviews with the survivors themselves. Their struggle to remember and comprehend makes these 50-year-old nightmares all too real. In an age inundated with Holocaust imagery–gaunt survivors, piles of corpses–human faces conjure up the horror more effectively than any staged scenes could.
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Taken in battle, these men did not see themselves as camp inmates, but as prisoners-of-war. Many identified more strongly as Americans and infantrymen than as Jews. “We don’t differentiate by the religion,” a survivor remembers telling their captors. “We’re all Americans.” Captured as soldiers, these men longed to fight back as soldiers. One tells us how he searched German POW camps upon his liberation to find and kill the guard who’d beaten him. He recalls that his only wish, if executed, was to take a German down with him.
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If only Guggenheim gave us more of this American perspective. The middle portion of the film–a collection of testimony on camp conditions–is horrifying, but anyone who has read a book or watched a film on the Holocaust will find the material familiar. These Americans had a radically different perspective on the camps: they were soldiers, not civilians; foreigners, not natives; and returned to a prosperous homeland, rather than war-torn wreckage. This should help them give us new insights into the camp experience. Too little of the testimony we hear does so.
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Guggenheim also shows a tendency toward sentimental patriotism. When the soldiers are forced into one of the infamous “death marches” in the winter of 1945, they disobey their guard, and reach the American front line against all odds. Victorious American tanks drive up to the ragged survivors in slow motion, the music swells, and the interviewees wax poetic about the American flag. This scene would be moving without such emphasis. As it is, Guggenheim’s need to empathize infuses the scene with a “happy ending” quality, an author’s touch better left to stories that actually have happy endings.
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The conclusion of the film shows how strange the soldiers’ homecoming actually was. “We weren’t heroes,” says one survivor. “We were prisoners of war!” Others mention their recurring nightmares and admit they’ve been reluctant to discuss Berga with their families. Guggenheim juxtaposes this testimony with a joyful montage of soldiers being welcomed home as heroes. Words and images clash, rendering each familiar element strange, and reminding us of the contradictions–between being a hero and a victim, between being a soldier and a survivor–that are at the heart of this unusual story.
Berga: Soldiers of Another War will air on PBS on Wednesday, May 28th.
