Not Without Honor: The Nazi POW Journal of Steve Carano; With Accounts by John C. Bitzer and Bill Blackmon

Introduction

1SLOAN_pages_i-104.qxd 8/20/08 10:49 AM Page xviii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Without the generosity and enthusiasm of the Carano family, this project would never have made it to fruition. Rose Carano graciously invited me into her apartment in Plantation, Florida, showing me photographs and letters from her husband written while he was at war or in Stalag XVII B. Her son, Steve Carano, and his wife, Cathy, were instrumental in giving me access to letters and documents relevant to the project. In a telephone interview from New York, Hugo Carano, the brother of Claudio “Steve” Carano, deepened my understanding of his family’s artistic background and his brother’s bravery. The grandchildren, Steve, Jean, and Mary, helped me photograph loose pages in the journal, sharing stories about their grandfather as we worked. Rose Carano also helped me locate her husband’s comrade, Bill Blackmon, a fellow POW in Stalag XVII. I found Bill living in Baton Rouge and interviewed him several times, discovering one of the best Southern raconteurs I’ve met. He possesses an exceptional memory for people and events, and he generously gave me a wealth of information in records, photographs, and stories. Through our long conversations and visits I have made a new friend, and to him I am deeply grateful. When I met John and Marion Bitzer at a POW commemoration in Wissous, France, in February 2006, I learned that John Bitzer had kept his own World War II YMCA Wartime Log after he was captured by the Germans in 1944. His journal entries begin at liberation, the moment when Carano had stopped. John sent me a copy of his Log Book, and Marion tucked in her “two cents’ worth,” as she called it, which was a copy of the powerful speech that John had made in 2001 to the Rotary Club in Cleveland, Ohio. All of it revealed a different wartime experience from that of Steve Carano. I met the Bitzers when Mme. Pierett Rembur opened her home to us all in Wissous, providing a place where Americans and Europeans could come together in appreciation of our past alliances and xix 1SLOAN_pages_i-104.qxd 8/20/08 10:49 AM Page xix of American sacrifice in World War II. With her energy and determination , she was instrumental in establishing the town’s annual commemoration for the ten young American soldiers whose bomber crashed just beyond the village limits of Wissous on February 6, 1944. So successful is the Wissous commemoration that other POWs such as John Bitzer, who crashed in a nearby area later, now attend. Through Sandra and Bill Doepp and Amy Boltz—my sister, brotherin -law, and niece—I came to know about the Carano manuscript. Spread on their dining table in Florida, with Bill’s sophisticated camera equipment focused above the pages, the manuscript was first introduced to me. I’m especially indebted to Bill, a professional photographer, for his expert help on this project and the long hours he spent meticulously photographing not only the journal pages but letters and articles saved by Steve and Rose Carano while he was in Stalag XVII B. Robert E. Mathis, my uncle and a World War II Army veteran of the Pacific battles, gave me invaluable perspectives on the war’s effect upon his generation.Though never a POW, his impressive encyclopedic knowledge of the war, both from his own experience as a ground soldier and from his extensive reading and research, gave me useful direction on this project. In addition, Verne Woods, a POW in Stalag Luft I, gave me information about his crewmate, Roke Lieberman, who led Jewish services in Stalag XVII B. Miami University funded a leave that provided me the opportunity to advance this manuscript toward publication, a portion of which first appeared as an article in American History. While teaching at the Miami University Dolibois European Center in Luxembourg, I heard a panel of European survivors of World War II: Joseph Schlang, Rene Kerschen, Jean Majerus, Aloise Raths, and Pierce Pixius, all young men when they were imprisoned by the Germans for either their resistance or their ethnicity. Listening to their testimonies was a powerful experience, as they opened their histories to my students and revealed the suffering and bravery endured by so many. Paul Dostert, the director of the Resistance Documentation Center, provided historical information prior to the question and answer period, and Professor Emile...