All of those 168 Allied airmen, including some 83 Americans, had the misfortune of being picked up by the Gestapo. The ones that I know about were with the French Underground at the time, so they were in civilian clothes. They were captured after D-Day when the French Underground was operating in a major way, so the Germans were really cracking down hard.

Until I met Jim Fore, I had no idea that any American POWs had been in Buchenwald. I do remember reading a brief reference about some Americans being captured by the Gestapo but it gave no further material. Jim not only had a story to tell, he has documentary proof. As we were getting ready to publish, he received his POW ID sheet (from when he was transferred to Stalug Luft III) that clearly shows when he was transferred from Buchenwald. The Geman government has paid the survivers* reparations in recent years, so they admit it happened.

If you watched the show last night, you'll see that it was the Luftwaffe who saved those men. When they found out that Allied airmen were being held in Buchenwald against the Geneva Convention, they forced the Gestapo to release them to Luftwaffe custody. As the men last night said (and Jim Fore emphatically states), the Luftwaffe saved their lives. Going from Buchenwald to Stalag Luft III was like "going from hell to heaven." Most of the other SL III prisoners didn't think the camp was all that great (the "Great Escape" had taken place from there earlier in 1944), but they didn't have Buchenwald as a baseline for comparison.

One of the men interviewed last night, Chas Bowen, was the Radio Operator/Gunner on Jim's plane. Of the 82-88 (there is some disagreement on the numbers) American airmen held in Buchenwald, 7 came off of Jim's plane. It was Jim's 28th mission. For everyone else in the crew, it was their first mission. Jim was the Combat Check Pilot, and was 19 years old.

There are a few other accounts of the Allied airmen in Buchenwald. For example, if you go here and scroll down to the entry for Lt. Glenn Horwege, you'll see another surviver story. More recently, the book Destination Buchenwald was published, I think by an Australian survivor.

In addition to the men I've talked about, there was another group of 350 American POWs who spent time in a concentration camp. There may be others that I don't know about. A bit more about these men and the Buchenwald prisoners can be found here.

*There was one American, Lt. L.C. Beck of Huntington Beach, CA, who died in Buchenwald. He was too sick to transfer and died of illness. His is an interesting story. A P-47 pilot, Beck was shot down shortly after D-Day. While hiding out with the French, he wrote a manuscript. When he left to try and make his way back to England, he left the manuscript with the innkeeper who'd been hiding him. After the war ended, the innskeeper sent the manuscript to Beck's parents. The book was published with the title "Figher Pilot." When I was at Oshkosk in 1996, I found two copies of the book and bought them. I kept one and gave the other to Jim. He and Beck were friends.