cover image Forgotten Victims: The Abandonment of Americans in Hitlers Camps

Forgotten Victims: The Abandonment of Americans in Hitlers Camps

Mitchell Geoffrey Bard. Westview Press, $24 (192pp) ISBN 978-0-8133-2193-6

Based on original documents and interviews with survivors, this shocking study reveals that Washington officials knew that U.S. citizens were brutalized and murdered in Nazi concentration camps, and failed to take steps to save hundreds, perhaps thousands, of American lives. Bard describes the fate of American civilians trapped in Europe by the outbreak of WW II and the mistreatment of American military POWs, with special attention to Jewish GIs. He discloses the failure of American prosecutors in post-war crime trials to bring to justice perpetrators of crimes against U.S. civilians and captured military personnel. He explores the feasibility of reparations for surviving American victims of the Holocaust who were abandoned by their government. His harsh indictment concludes with a warning that Americans overseas should not count on protection from the U.S. government. Bard is executive director of the American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise. Photos. (June)