Above and Beyond POW NEWS

will stalag XVII-B live in history

The story of Stalag XVII-B now also lives not only in U.S. but also in Europe

      The play, the movie, and even the TV series about Stalag 17 (not Stalag XVII-B) without any doubt helped to create a lore about our prison camp in Krems, Austria. The Stalag XVII-B Ex-Prisoners of War, Inc. which was organized in the early 1980s, and kept alive all of these years with annual Reunions, and a quarterly Newsletter are some reasons why Stalag XVII-B will live in history. To date, several books have also been published by EXPOWS from this prison camp, among them, Hell above and Hell Below, by Richard H. Lewis, and William R. Larson; Boys at War, Men at Peace, by Ed McKenzie, past Historian of Stalag XVII-B, and in 2005, The Flame Keepers, by Ned Handy and Kemp Battle. These books are shown proudly in my library collection. They are non-fiction, and tell the real life story of this prison camp.

      The men and women who started this unique organization, and those who have kept it alive have a brotherhood - or maybe we should call it a familyhood - because our spouses, widows, and many of our children and grandchildren have become members.

       Ours is not just a story about a prison camp in Krems, a small town in Austria during World War II. It is a story about a generation of men and women: Combat airmen who where shot down and captured by the enemy, and became prisoners of war, and about their wives and children who after the war all became part of the fraternity we call Stalag XVII-B Ex-Prisoners of War, Inc.

      It is a story that should and will be kept alive, long after we are gone.

Stalag XVII-B Resurrected

   Stalag XVII-B was in occupied Austria, and shortly after WWII ended, the Germans or the Austrians tore it down, and only an empty field was there...Several years later, a young Austrian girl, named Barbara, who lived near Krems, was working at the Ludwig Boltzman-Institute for Research on War-Consequences in 1993 where she did research on Austrian POWs in the Soviet Union. When she was to write her thesis she decided that she wanted to find out what was on the other side of the coin, I.e. How foreign POWs had been treated in the Third Reich. She went to Stanford University where she came across Stalag XVII-B . She had never heard of the camp before, even though it was in her own back yard. She was fascinated. This was the place where her forefathers had lived and gone to school. Then she became hooked on Stalag XVII-B.

    In 1995 Barbara Stelzl  received her MA from University of Graz where she did her thesis Kriegies, and won a trip to visit the Stalag XVII-B Reunion in Clearwater, Florida in 1996, where she interviewed many Ex-POWs. Then she received her Doctoral Scholarship of Austrian Academy of Sciences for PhD thesis on Stalag XVII-B Krems-Gneixendorf, and several awards for the book. She is now Dr. Barbara Stelzl-Marx and assistant head of the Ludwig Boltzmann-Institute for Research on War Consequences, in Graz, Austria.

     So here it is, beginning with a young Austrian girl, who was born many years after WWII, has produced the first Internationally documented history of Stalag XVII-B - and this year, she came to America once again to visit the Stalag XVII-B Reunion. Only this time she came as a historian, AUTHOR AND TEACHER, AND AS OUR GUEST.

This Dr. Barbara Stelzt-Marx,s documented history of Stalag XVII-B. It is written in German, but has many pictures and notes from actual POW Logbooks that are in English. It currently is $40 per copy. She only brought a few to the Reunion because it was not her intention to make it a book selling trip.  The books are available and can be purchased through the Stalag XVII-B Newsletter, if approved by the Board of Directors. When and if it becomes available in English it will be announced in this site.

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