Jewiish POWs under Nazis

[TheForeigner]

We all know about the exterminationist policies of Nazis against the Jews and Gypsies, but what happened to Jews and Gypsies or even blacks who were soldiers in the armed forces of the enemy powers fighting Germany? I mean the ones taken as prisoners by the Germans.

[Hubal]

Jews went to war?

[Longbowman]

Usually treated fairly well, if they were Western, as I recall.

[Jackson]

I think western POW's were treated according to the conventions of war, although standards were lowered when it came to Soviet prisoners - although the Soviets did not follow the Geneva conventions of the time, Germany was supposed to nonetheless, and didn't always.

The fate for Jews working for the USSR was more clear than the broad narrative of the holocaust, as partisans and soviet military/intelligence personnel (including specifically individuals who were Jewish and also working within/for the Soviets) were among the targets for the action groups working along the eastern front. Although these individuals were i think taken prisoner, there were often executions and mass executions, which the Germans recorded (including the reasons, e.g people who tried to escape from German controlled settlements and who were considered as threats might incur harsh punishments, and partisans/Soviet personnel and i believe local resistance were often subject to shootings - either as punishments for these sort of 'transgressions' or in retaliation for attacks by partisans on German personnel. My understanding is that it got pretty nasty, so partisans (and Jewish partisans) and the German military & action groups would carry out killings in retaliation for killings that were retaliations...e.g it escalated a lot. Which resulted in mass executions, including some that were of Jewish partisans. Although they may not necessarily be consider POW's as such because of their partisan status, being captured as a Jew fighting the Germans in the east would likely have proved a lot worse for self-preservation than a Jew fighting in the British army for example, having been captured.

More specifically, i think there were Jews fighting for the Soviets who were not treated as well, basically. So being a Jew captured fighting for the Soviets was no doubt a bad position to be in.

Been a while since i read about this stuff, but that's the general gist. The official instructions for the action groups can be found iirc, something of an anti-espionage task force that got ugly in an ugly environment.

I think there are photographs of western internees in German camps that i have seen, looking reasonably good, so unless they had some process for sorting out the Jews from the gentiles and sending them off for 'resettlement' (and whatever you make of it), then i would guess they were treated similarly to their co-incarceratees (a new word?).