Murder at Aiken POW Camp

[Kyt]

http://www.aikenstandard.com/2007red...2721671248.php

The Escape

At some point before lunch time on Monday, Jan. 24, 1944, prisoner Gurd Guztat slipped away, unnoticed, from his work detail group in Hitchcock Woods, old Aiken Standard newspaper clippings report.

His absence was not discovered until the group broke for lunch and a head count was taken. Guztat was a German prisoner of war being held at the Aiken POW Camp located where Mattie C. Hall now sits today. He was described as having blond hair, blue eyes and a fair complexion. When he disappeared, he was wearing the blue dungarees issued to each prisoner.

A manhunt was immediately launched by the Aiken City Police Department, the Aiken County Sheriff's Office and the FBI. Local roads were blocked off and guarded, cars were stopped and searched and, in what seemed to be a last ditch effort, bloodhounds were brought into Aiken from Columbia to help with the search.

Following a tip from a citizen, officers finally discovered and apprehended Guztat on the following Wednesday hiding in the city's trash dump. It was reported that after questioning the escapee, the FBI announced his break had been carefully planned. Guztat had buried a cache of nine cans of German sardines, 16 German candy bars and two Hershey chocolate bars to sustain him. Some of the items were part of a Christmas care package sent by the German government to POWs and some items other prisoners had given to him.

"He had planned on taking an airplane and flying it back to Germany," said David Watts, who has meticulously gathered information on the camp over the years.

Reportedly found on Guztat's person was a traced map of Aiken with all roads leading out of the city. The location of the POW camp was marked on the map with a swastika, the symbol most commonly associated with Nazi Germany and the Nazi Party.

"When arrested Guztat accepted his fate stoically," a newspaper clipping claims. "However, according to the FBI, his fanatical faith in the German cause seemed undimmed."

The Camp

Roughly 300 German men were imprisoned in Aiken from 1943 until 1948 when the camp was dismantled. The prisoners that remained were transported back to Germany.

They had served under Erwin Rommel in the Afrika Korp, said Elliott Levy, executive director of the Aiken County Historical Museum.

Before the City of Aiken leased land for the camp, the prisoners were housed temporarily at the Powderhouse Polo Field, according to a short article entitled "When the Nazis Came to Aiken" by Donald Skinner.

Aiken Mayor E.H. Wyman signed the land lease with owner Jack Roberts of Concord, N.C. on January 21, 1944. The contract provided the City would underwrite the rental cost of the site and furnished with camp with free water. Aiken County would pay for the electricity and those that employed the POWs for labor would help pay the rent of the property, according to newspaper articles.

"The camp itself was primarily a tent camp," Watts said. "It was inspected by the YMCA."

It was surrounded by a multi-strand barbed wire fence and elevated guard towers. Watts said the camp was patrolled by two officers and 40 enlisted men.
A prisoner's daily life was filled with labor — they harvested peanuts and pulpwood and were paid for their efforts to the tune of $.80 per day. Skinner wrote when they had time for leisure activities, the prisoners would play sports, performed theatrical productions and skits or watched movies.

"Aiken continues to capture history," Levy said. "It gives it a different place. Did any of them come back after the war (World War II)? They weren't mistreated here but they were POWs."

The Murder

On April 6, 1944, Cpl. Horst Gunther, 24, was found hanging by a noose from the cross-arm of a telephone pole. His death was initially ruled a suicide.

But it was later discovered Gunther had been denounced as a "traitor to the Reich and to the fuehrer" by his fellow inmates, according to a newspaper article. Prisoners claimed he was traitor because he liked jazz music and spoke in favor of America. Reports indicate Sgt. Eric Gauss and Private Rudolph Straub, with four others, attacked Gunther. Skinner's story reports the unidentified four restrained Gunther while Gauss and Straub strangled him with rope, but newspaper articles report Gunther was beaten to death.

Gauss and Straub were later found guilty and convicted of Gunther's murder during a court martial at Fort McPherson in Georgia. Both were sentenced to death by hanging.

Gauss and Straub were hanged on July 14, 1945 at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas, according to Skinner.