Garage Find Reveals Lost WWII POW Testimonies on Nazi Atrocities

In Waterloo, New York, Jason Hurdel was clearing space in his garage for Halloween decorations when he discovered a hidden compartment behind a wooden panel. Inside lay an old, dusty cardboard box. Just as he was about to throw it away, a gust of breeze caught one of the documents, revealing a word written in red: "Secret." Inside the box were nearly 300 pages dating back some 80 years, containing handwritten testimonies from more than 120 American prisoners of war about their captivity in Nazi Germany during World War II. The soldiers detailed starvation, lack of medicine, brutal sanitary conditions, overcrowding, beatings, and murders of prisoners. One testimony recounted how 60 people were crammed into freight cars without food, water, or sanitary facilities while exposed to bombings. Another soldier told of seeing a guard shoot a prisoner who paused to adjust his gear. A further account described rat- and lice-infested quarters "unfit for human beings." These testimonies were gathered from the soldiers after their release in the spring of 1945, intended in part to document Geneva Convention violations and assist in war crimes investigations. Some of the POWs had never spoken to their families about what they endured, and relatives are now discovering these accounts for the first time following inquiries by the Washington Post. Hurdel handed the box over to a local museum, from where the documents eventually reached the U.S. National Archives. They had never appeared on the archives' list of missing files, and it remains a mystery how they ended up in the hidden garage space. The archives plan to digitize them and make them accessible to the public. "These are things you don't learn in history books," Hurdel said. "When you truly see and read them, it's very special. I knew I had to find a home for them."