50 years after the Schoeneck Crash
     continued...........

The Assassination of the members of the 446th

The crew of the Liberator counted ten men: an on-board commander, a copilot, a navigator, a radio operator, and six airmen. According to the report of the Department of the Air Force, they knew diverse fates: death found five and four were made prisoners. There remains the enigma of the pilot, lieutenant Ralph Schaffer, originally from Akron, Ohio, carried as missing in action. A descendent of German immigrants who came to the United States in the course of the 19th century, he was 24 years old and was married. After his training and his pilot's commission from the air base at Pampas Texas, he had joined the 8th Aircorps of the U.S. Army in England.

The copilot and 2nd lieutenant, George Lesko, from Cleveland, Ohio had seen his commander on-board jump last from the plane. "His parachute opened normally before the trees masked the field of vision." George Lesko remained on the ground 24 hours in the German-infested area, before being captured by soldiers. Alphonse Stoppa, 15 years old and an apprentice pastry-baker in Saarebruck, at the time, found himself by chance in the market square in Burbach. He helped in the arrest of the aviators:" My attention was attracted by a mob in the general area of Jacob Street; I approached. An American aviator, hands in the air, legs spread wide, was leaning against a garage. Persons exercised by the recent bombings of Saarebruck, shouted and claimed they had been butchered. The American was struck with his cap and leather jacket. The scene turned into a lynch-mob frenzy, a soldier took out his pistol, but a woman prevented him from shooting...Finally a German policeman arrived on the scene and took him away to the post office despite the protests of the crowd."

A dangerous commando group of SS fanatics, charged with high and low crimes, was then raging in Saare and in the Palatinate. Brought before the Nuremburg Tribunal, they recounted having recovered at the end of the summer of 1944, three American pilots from the commissariats of Malstatt and Burbach and having then executed them with bullets, since they had supposedly escaped. They were acting under Himmler's orders or of Gal Stroop. " All pilots found after their planes have crashed must be executed. They are criminals! Those who do not obey this order will know the same fate as the pilots or should commit suicide!"

War Crimes

The executions which are known received their epilog in the Nuremburg process with 7700 other crimes at the end of the war.

(Extremely rough German translation follows):

What happened at the Police station in Malstatt?
X....came out of the building with an American flier in uniform. He beckoned the flier to sit next to him in his black car. We sat in the backseat. We went to the woods of the "Seven Oaks". X....said to the flier to get out. He stepped out also. And Y...and myself. The flier was to go a little way into the woods. He did. When he was 10 or 20 steps away, I saw X...shoot the American flier with a pistol. The flier collapsed. He turned back and stared at X...four or five more shots. The flier appeared to be completely lifeless. X...said:"The man is dead."
What happened then?
We left the corpse there. We got back into the car. We went to the Burbach Police station. X..came out after a short time with another American flier. We went to the so-called "Black Way:, a short trip from Heydt. X...said to Y..."Now comes your turn!" Y...made his weapon ready..."What is this", said X...impatiently, " Hurry up and get ready..!" A short time later I heard some more shots. The body was covered with branches. Back in the car, X...said to me:"Next comes your turn!"
Where did you go next?
To the SS Station 85. It was again a captured flier. We went with him to the Spiesser Heights in the Bildstocker Woods. X...beckoned to the flier to get out. Then he said to me I should also get out. Already earlier in the car he had told me I must shoot the flier. We followed the flier with drawn pistols. After we had gone 30 or 40 meters X said to me:"Shoot!" I answered: "Karl, I cannot. I cannot shoot!" He answered "You coward!" Then he shot a round at the flier. The flier collapsed. We concluded that he was dead. On the next day we found that it was not fatal. Later we drove to the St. Arnual airport, where 10 American fliers were held. We were to shoot them all. Nevertheless, when we arrived there, the fliers were being held. I will still say that on that day after the shooting in the woods we went to fetch the bodies. The details of these trips however are unclear to me.

Three of the authors of these crimes, equally implicated in other crimes, were hanged. Two were condemned to prison for life.

Continued