Escape From a POW Camp

Escape From an American Prisoner of War Camp

My cousin Nikolaus told me this amazing story when we visited him in Sankt Stefan im Rosental last August.

Peter Böhm was born in Vienna in 1925.  He was Nikolaus's father (and my uncle).

Peter Böhm, age 4.
Kalksburg, Vienna, 1929

Peter's father Franz had passed away in 1936, so Peter lived with his mother Bianca and his older sister Erna (my mom) in their apartment at at Reischachstraße 3.  Peter was conscripted into the German Army in 1942, at age 17.   He was still in High school.

Peter Böhm, wearing lederhosen, age 9.
Vienna, Austria 1934.

His high school was Gymnasium Stubenbastei, the same school I attended in 1963.  It was a boy's school at that time.  My nephew and niece Oleg and Milla are in that school now!  Uncle Horst Pillau also went to that same school.  It has seven floors and a gym with a locker room that smells really bad.  There are no showers!

Gymnasium Stubenbastei School
Zedlitzgaße, Vienna,  2019

Peter served in the infantry somewhere in southern Germany and was shot in combat with a bullet wound in his thigh.  He was evacuated back to Vienna to recover.

As soon as he could walk, he was sent back to the front in southern Germany.  He was captured by the Americans and they put him into an American prisoner of war (POW) camp in Germany.

When they found out he could speak English, they used him as an interpreter.  Because of his work translating he learned that there would soon be a prisoner exchange with the Soviets and he knew that he wouldn't survive in that Soviet prison camp!

At night he escaped from the U.S. army prison camp with two friends and secretly sneaked through the war zone back to Vienna.  They walked by night and hid out by day in barns and forests.  They begged farmers for food.

His mother Bianca had no news from Peter or from the army so she was very surprised when he suddenly showed up at her apartment in Vienna!  By that time the war was probably ending.  Anyway he didn't go back to the army.

This website has lots of amazing photos of what post-war Vienna looked like in 1947.   https://www.eclecticatbest.com/2014/05/the-scars-of-war-vienna-1947.html

Peter finished high school and enrolled in a university medical school to become a doctor.  He specialized in internal medicine and worked at a hospital in Vienna.

Here are Peter (33) and his wife Anne (22) at their wedding in Vienna, 1958.  The flower girl is my sister Catherine (4).

Anne and Peter's Wedding
St Maria Rotunda, Vienna, Oct. 4, 1958

Anne was a fashion designer from London.  Her father Sidney Daw worked for the British embassy in Austria.  The reception was at Ambassador Peter Wakefield's residence, Brucknerstrasse 8.  The catering was from Hotel Sacher!

Anne Daw, Peter Böhm, with Anne's parents Sidney Daw and Corrine Daw.
Wedding Reception, Brucknerstrasse 8, Vienna, 1958.

There are many more wedding photos from their wedding album online here: https://photos.app.goo.gl/csmoASEx28Wx6RtG7

Anne and Peter had 3 boys, Nikolaus, Georg and Benedikt.

Anne Böhm (born Daw) with one of her 3 boys (Benny?)
Vienna, circa 1966

Peter died of "sarcoma of the omentum" in Vienna, 1969.

Dr. Peter Böhm, Vienna, 1969

Here are Peter and Anne's three boys at El Yunque, Puerto Rico, 2019.

Benny, Georg, Barbara, Nikolaus, Albert.
 "Saying Goodbye!"  El Yunque, Puerto Rico, 2019

Many thanks to Nikolaus for telling us his father's POW escape story and for supplying most of the photos.  Thanks to Martin Grünberger for researching Peter's biography on MyHeritage.com.

P.S. ABOUT WAR

This is a difficult and painful part of our family and world history, but I think it's in everyone's interest to LEARN from history so we don't repeat these horrific actions.  Younger generations don't have any direct war experience, and today our countries can wage foreign wars (Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan) without any protest or hardship at home.  Drones do our awful work of killing people by remote control.  Nobody sees the blood or the suffering, the dead children, the destroyed villages.  Nobody seems to care much.  Our happy life goes on as usual and we pretend war doesn't exist.

"The United States invasion of Afghanistan started on October 7, 2001. The United States sought to remove the Taliban from power as they were hosting al-Qaeda terrorists and camps, who were the main suspects of the September 11 attacks." [Wikipedia]

The US still has 12,000 to 14,000 troops in Afghanistan.  This war has been going on for 18 years!