P.O.W. A Toilet Paper Diary: Life in an American P.O.W. Camp, March 1945 - April 1946

The wartime diaries and letters of a German cultural historian are now available as a companion to the recently translated book "Dein Volk ist Mein Volk" (Aschendorff, 2017). Albert Hoemberg was a young anti-Nazi professor at University of Münster with a Canadian wife when called up to the Luftwaffe in 1940. He served as a map clerk with a ground crew near Paris and was captured and released after thirteen months of imprisonment under the Americans in April, 1946. In 1950 the diaries and letters of Elisabeth and Albert H. were published under the title “Thy People, My People”. Elisabeth eventually translated Albert’s complete prison journal, written on sheets of toilet paper and only now being published, consisting of his reflections while in the midst of war, occupation and defeat in Paris. He pointed out in 1941 that the Luftwaffe would be no match for the eventual airpower of the West. He foretold the formation of a modern Europe, riven by the Cold War clash between Soviet and American imperialism. Albert miraculously kept his diaries through more than a year of captivity as an Allied prisoner of war, surviving innumerable searches, transfers, and confiscations. He explains that: “All I write has to be written on toilet paper, as prisoners do not receive writing materials. On the other hand, the supply of toilet paper is generous and this product of civilization might otherwise be wasted, our rations having been so drastically reduced that we have little conventional use for it.” The everyday sufferings inflicted by the Nazis on the German people are reflected here in the writings of this noted German academic.