Finding your ancestry, family photos, original documents, dairies and journals, is something that many family members treasure, especially as they grow older.
In the case of German-born Birgit Albers, learning of the existence of her father’s diaries while he was a Prisoner of War in the 1940s was a story she was thrilled to find. Her sister and brothers were not at all interested.
Birgit not only devoured the words and stories from a historical look, but she hoped to get closer to knowing her father, and who he was as a person. She was just 19 when he died.
“What I did not find in his writing were the emotions I had hoped to see. He was an engineer and very factual. That part has helped me know him and what his life was like at that time,” she pronounced. When she began reading his journals in 2019, she soon made a plan to follow his journey of captivity to see it though his eyes. In March of 2025, Birgit and her daughter, Yvonne flew to Los Angeles from Tasmania, where they now live, and began a journey through New York State POW camp sites.
In her time here, after leaving her daughter in New York City to return to home, Birgit began meticulously following the travels of her father.
So precise were his diaries that the timetable for his train movements, were the routes she followed.
Leaving Fort Devens in Masachusetts (where he arrived in 1945) his timetables read:
September 1945
Sept. 3 Montag
to Sonderlager (POW Camp)
8:00 am, mit LKW zum Bahnhof Ayer
9:00 Abfahrt mit Zug
9:30 Fitchtaburg
10:30 Athol - Millers Falls
11:15 Greenfield
11:45 Shelburne Falls
12:15 East Portale anschlissend
grosser ( large) tunnel
13:30 Johnsonville
14:15 Troy Hudson River Albany
14:30-17:00 Aufenthalt Schenectady
19:00 Utica-Rome-Syracuse - Newark
21:45 Rochester
22:45 Buffalo
Birgit visited all the sites of the POW camps her father cataloged. At some she was able to gain information about the camp and the timeframe of his incarceration. Some had military bases on site and no entrance could be given. Some no longer exist, and some have a few buildings remaining, like Camp Marion.
“I remember that at one camp nothing was left for me to see or take a photo of. But, I remember one huge tree on the spot where the camp had been, and I went over to it and threw my arms around it to hug it and feel my father’s presence.”
Heinz Albers was consigned to the German Army in 1943. It was a time during World War II when Hitler and Mussolini had made a pact to fight against the Allies. Heinz was sent with his division from Geneva to Sicily to fight when he was just 21 years old.
Heinz was in the German Army fighting in Tunisia when his group was captured in August 1945 by the British and U.S. Armies. Without space to accommodate all the prisoners they took, the Allies sent them to Prisioner of War Camps in America, mostly in Massachusetts and Upstate New York.
Heinz first arrived in the POW camp Fort Devens in Massachusetts- a huge two story barrack.
After a short time, Heinz was sent by train to the POW enpampment in Marion NY. He arrived in September (precisely September 3, 1945). He spoke little English, but soon learned. The camps did not always know what to do with its prisoners. They fed and clothed them. Sometimes they showed them movies. According to his diary, Heinz remembered seeing Bing Crosby in “Birth of the Blues”. Many were sent to work on farms picking tomatotes.
Because Birgit’s father was an engineer, he was, early on, sent to the Mississsippi Delta where he spent over a year working with other engineers on the Delta project.
German POWs that were in the Mississippi Delta during the period during the WWII years (1942-1945). There were several POW camps located in Mississippi. He was assigned to Camp Clinton. POWs were housed in barracks that held up to fifty men. Each five barracks had a mess hall with cooks, waiters, silverware, and by all accounts very good food. Individual barracks even fielded teams for sports.
Brigit, in researching this time, found many statements/letters from people who had worked with the German POWs, appreciated their work, and befriended them. She noted that many were pastors in the area. Eventually his part was completed, and Heinz was sent by train back to the Fort Devens Camp.
“I was beginning to feel really close to him when I did the research and read his diary, and especially after being inthe places he spent time,” said Birgit.
“He never said it, but I could feel his fear. Fear of the unknown, not knowing if he and the others were to be taken out one day and shot or where they were going when they boarded a train.
He and others from Camp Devens were sent to Camp Marion, in Wayne County because the camps near Niagara Falls were also overflowing. The POWS in the New York camps were non-Nazi supporters. The Nazi loyalists were sent elsewhere.
In 1945 October, according to his diaries, while in the POW Camp in Marion, Heinz worked for farmer Owin Clark and picked tomatoes 9-6 daily. Later it was for Farmer Morgan.
At 8 am on October 4th, a truck with no sides, left with some of the prisoners in Marion to travel to Lyons, NY. for a dental appointment. The transport had an accident and several were thrown from the truck. Heinz injured his leg and was sent for surgery and to recover at Niagara Falls in an Army hospital for 6 weeks then back to a camp in Attica before returning to Fort Niagara then to Montag, Massachusetts. Four months later, in 1946, the POWS were send back to England to be released, most returning to their homes in Germany by late 1946, early 1947.
Later, after he was home in Germany, Heinz composed a letter to the Superitendent of Police in Lyons asking for the name of the farmer and owner of the truck in which he was injured, to compensate him for his pain and suffering. No response was made and no record of his letter has been located in any archives here. Although the letter appears in his journal. You will note, his English is very good at this point.
"March 19, 1947
To the Superintendent of Police, Lyons, N.Y. Dear Sir, may I trouble you with a special request? I am a released POW and was in fall 1945 in Camp Marion, N.Y. On Oct. 4th, 1945, I was ordered to a new detail which I worked for a farmer. We were picked up at 8 am with an open platform-truck without side-boards, with 12 sitting on two planks lying over boxes. On U.S. Highway Route 31, passing the Town of Lyons about 9:00 a.m. ,our truck went into collision with a car and I was hurled down together with other POWs, I came to the Hospital of Fort Niagara, NY. because I got fracture of my fibula (right leg) beside effusion of blood and spraining of my right foot and heavy bumps on left wrist, right shoulder and chest. I had a very fine treatment, but I am still suffering for this accident injuries especially with weatehr change. Through a fault in report I get no pay for sickness. You will wonder and ask why I tell you all this stuff; I beg you hearty to write to me the address of the truck-owner and farmer. I wish to write to him and pray for some help. I hope for some mercy, because it was not my fault that I had to ride in such an insuffient vehicle which caused my downfall during the crash, but I had the pain and the loss of earning. When I was released 5 months ago, for England, I learned that I lost everything by Russian plundering...my flat totally emptied and demolished, so I have no clothing and I am in poor circumstance now here in Naumburg. The whole situation here is Germany is horrible, the living standard is too low...and no sources of work. Dear Sir, I hope you are able to fulfill my request and write to me the name and address. I thank you for your interest and send best banter-greetings."
Respectfully yours, Heinz Albers
