A ‘Most Astonishing’ Circumstance: The Survival of Jewish POWs in German War Captivity During the Second World War

Date01 June 2021
Published date01 June 2021
DOI10.1177/0964663920946468
AuthorJohanna Jacques
Subject MatterArticles
Article
A ‘Most Astonishing’
Circumstance: The
Survival of Jewish POWs
in German War Captivity
During the Second
World War
Johanna Jacques
Durham Law School, Durham University, UK
Abstract
During the Second World War, more than 60,000 Jewish members of the American,
British and French armed forces became prisoners of war in Germany. Against all
expectations, these prisoners were treated in accordance with the 1929 Geneva
Convention, and the majority made it home alive. This article seeks to explain this
most astonishing circumstance. It begins by collating the references to the experiences
of Western Jewish POWs from the historical literature to provide a hitherto-unseen
overview of their treatment in captivity. It then asks what made their protection from
persecution possible. To this end, it explores Germany’s wider motivations for its
selective application of the Geneva Convention and highlights the role that military
identity played in making its application seem necessary for all POWs from the
Western front, including Jewish POWs.
Keywords
Germany, jews, prisoners of war, war captivity, world war 2, western front
Corresponding author:
Johanna Jacques, Assistant Professor, Durham Law School, Durham University, Palatine Centre, Stockton
Road, DH1 3LE Durham, UK.
Email: johanna.jacques@durham.ac.uk
Social & Legal Studies
2021, Vol. 30(3) 362–383
ªThe Author(s) 2020
Article reuse guidelines:
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DOI: 10.1177/0964663920946468
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Introduction
In the Second World War, between 12 and 35 million people became prisoners of war.
Germany alone took up to 8 million prisoners (Davis, 1977: 624). Unsurprisingly,
therefore, war captivity has been said to be ‘on a par with, if not exceeding, combat
as one of the most common experiences for those in uniform’ (Moore and Fedorowich,
1996: 1), and both memoirs and historical studies of this experience in different parts of
the world abound.
There is, however, a relatively small group of POWs whose experiences have so far
attracted little scholarly attention despite the fact that they are of interest to both histor-
ical and legal scholarship. The POWs in question are American, British and French
(henceforth referred to as ‘Western’) servicemen
1
of Jewish faith who were captured
by Germany. While little detail is known about their lives in captivity, it is known that
this group of prisoners did not suffer the lethal force applied to Jews elsewhere in
Germany and German-occupied territories. This is a surprising fact. As Yves Durand
(1999: 73) puts it in respect of French Jewish POWs:
It is most astonishing that French Jewish POWs, who were during the entire length of their
imprisonment put up in the heart of the Third Reich, escaped the Holocaust, while their
families remaining in France lost their lives. ...This is certainly one of the most surprising
paradoxes in the way the NS-regime functioned and in the behaviour patterns of the pop-
ulation or the decision makers that were subjected to this regime.
2
This article seeks to explain this most astonishing circumstance. The motivation for
this endeavour stems from something So¨nke Neitzel and Harald Welzer write at the end
of their study of recorded conversations between captured German soldiers in Allied war
captivity. Having chronicled and sought to explain these soldiers’ accounts of the terri-
fying acts of violence they committed, Neitzel and Welzer (2012: 342, emphasis added)
conclude that, rather than show surprise at such violence in war, ‘it would be more
productive to ask whether and under what circumstances people can refrain from kill-
ing’. For lawyers, this is an important question, particularly in relation to the Nazi period.
After all, the Nazi regime had not only renounced the abstract values of natural law that
are associated with the legal protection of the person, but purposefully employed law (as
well as the non-legal state apparatus) in the service of national-socialist aims, foremost
among which was to solve what it regarded as the Jewish problem (Fraenkel, 2017:
107ff). If fundamental legal protections of the person can so easily be dispensed with,
any alternative way in which such protections might acquire force becomes significant.
In this sense, the active protection of Western Jewish POWs by Germany under the
Geneva Convention
3
ought not to be dismissed as a mere historical anomaly. It requires
explanation.
The article finds that compliance with the Convention could be attributed to neither of
the three most often cited factors: legality, morality and considerations of utility. It puts
forward an alternative explanation that points to the role that German military identity
played in this respect. If correct, this explanation offers a new understanding of how law
can acquire force through non-legal means.
Jacques 363

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