(gentle instrumental music) - [Narrator] They call themselves Kriegie Kids.

Kriegie comes from kriegi, the German word for war.

During World War II, their fathers were prisoners of war in Germany.

- This is my father, and it's really one of the only pictures I have of him in his uniform.

It's always been kinda special picture for me.

- [Narrator] What was the horror his father went through, Jim always wondered?

What traumatized him for a lifetime?

- He's researched, and worked so hard, and tried to find so many answers, and just to be able to- - To get it verified, just to get it.

(suspenseful music) - [Narrator] They still have so many questions.

Their fathers hardly spoke about the war.

They wanted to forget what they experienced.

- This is a great place of their last night in a barn, their last hunger.

(Ellen sobs) My dad talked about how hungry he was every single day.

- [Narrator] As children, they could feel their fathers bore a burden.

What that was, the Kriegie Kids now want to discover.

- It's emotional to follow in his footsteps and be here.

It makes me feel closer to him in so many ways, to have a deep understanding what affected him and what changed his life?

(suspenseful music) - [Narrator] Five US Kriegie Kids want to walk in their father's footsteps in Europe.

Starting in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, they say it is going to be the journey of their lives.

80 years after the end of the Second World War, they, now parents and grandparents themselves, start a trip of discovery deep into the past.

- [Lawrence] I don't think we're gonna have enough room.

- [Narrator] Laura has already been doing research in US archives for years.

- I wrote this book about my father and his war experiences.

And here he is during training.

So he joined the military when he was 19 years old and joined the Army Air Force.

And there's a picture of him soon after he joined, he looked so young to me.

- [Narrator] The last mission of her father ended abruptly in the Rhine-Main area.

(suspenseful music) - [Announcer] From scores of air drones all over Britain, huge fleets take off on daily schedule to rendezvous at some predetermined Nazi objective.

- [Narrator] The US Air Force flew more than 300 missions starting in Great Britain.

On May 12th, 1944, the 96th Bomb Group's targets were oil production facilities in Czechoslovakia and central Germany.

It was his seventh mission.

Laura's father, Lawrence Witt, was shot down north of Frankfurt.

He almost died.

Laura is the eldest of three daughters.

(suspenseful music) What did that mean to be an airman shot down in the middle of enemy territory?

US documents had some information on the crash site.

- But maybe we are in a different area than him.

- Somewhere in the forest near a little village, Usingen near Frankfurt.

- Can you do that?

- [Narrator] The Kriegie Kids have coordinates.

- I don't know which way.

- [Narrator] Now they want to find the exact place.

- I've done this before and it did work, but, okay.

- David, her brother-in-law, sails and understands coordinates.

- Go back.

- Laura.

- Okay, we got it.

- It seems like I was, so he's still confident we're on the right track.

- Good.

- Okay.

- [Narrator] Laura and Ellen's father must have been shot down somewhere here, like 28,000 other American airmen who survived a crash, he became a prisoner of war.

- Well, this may be as close as we get.

No, no.

It came down here somewhere, Ellen, it came down somewhere within a hundred yards of here.

- [Narrator] That was 80 years ago.

Nevertheless, they still hope to find some debris.

(birds chirping) - And what do you have now?

- Oh, wow, wow.

Yay.

(claps) - She says you can put it in your suitcase.

This RA, we Googled it, RA, a Remington Arms.

- That's a US.

- So that would be a US shell.

- That's a US shell.

- The bullet is gone?

- Yeah, the bullet's gone.

- [David] So he's showing this as a machine gun.

- [Laura] But look at this one, that's not the same number on it.

- Well, he said it was from a machine gun.

- I was hoping we'd find the site.

I never thought that there would be more pieces of that plane.

- Yeah.

- So it really tells the story, you know, it was here and it did explode, obviously, there's no big pieces left.

- Let me see that one.

- [Narrator] After the crash, ammunition exploded.

A young German mother and her child lost their lives, according to a report of a contemporary witness.

- It's such a sad place, because five people lost their life in that plane.

And then five became prisoners of war.

And then learning, I did not know, about the civilians that were killed.

(birds chirping) - [Narrator] Allied bombers not only hit strategic targets, the citizens of Frankfurt experienced more than 70 bombings.

The old town was completely destroyed.

At the end of the war, more than 400,000 German civilians were killed by air raids.

(suspenseful music) This caused a lot of hatred and acts of revenge.

Many airmen were lynched by German citizens during World War II.

They knew they put their lives at risk, but did they truly know how dangerous that was?

Kleinostheim, a small village 25 miles away from Frankfurt.

Together with the other Kriegie Kids, Rich hopes to find out more about his father's crash.

- My husband, Richard.

- Richard, my father came down here.

- Yeah.

- [Narrator] They meet Klaus Bucher.

- [Narrator] The favorite hobby of the 72-year-old pensioner and his detector team, Broken Wings, is researching crash sites and detecting debris.

- And I'm Ellen, yes.

- Fine.

And I will show you a few things, what I have found in the last 10 years, let me say, so it's parts of German and American airplanes as well.

I suggest that you go 50 meters this direction, there is my garage.

- Okay.

- And there are parts.

- Okay.

- Okay.

- Thank you.

- Thank you.

- Danke schon.

- Bitte, bitte.

- [Rich] Does someone know exactly where we are right now?

Is this Bad Camberg?

Is this Bechtheim?

- I don't know where we are.

(laughs) - I don't know either.

- [Jim] We're in Germany.

- [Rich] Jim, I know we're in Germany.

- [Narrator] They have no idea where exactly they are right now, but somewhere nearby, the plane of Richard's father must have come down.

They've received a tip that Klaus Bucher might know more about this.

He's storing the debris in his garage.

- I'd love to see the B-17 parts if I could?

- Of course.

- But I don't want to take one down and drop it.

- [Narrator] Klaus Bucher has stored the debris according to the type of plane.

Richard's father was a radio operator and gunner in a B-17.

Could there be a part of his plane in these boxes?

Rummaging around here is something very special for the Kriegie Kids.

- So do you know where you found these things?

- On different places.

- Because my father's plane came down - Laura, these rivets.

- on May 12th, 1944.

- Are identifiable, like the ones we found yesterday.

- Very near here.

- Yeah?

- Only two people survived.

- Yes.

- One wing.

- [Narrator] Richard's father, Manuel Ruben, was 18 when he joined the Air Force in June, 1942.

On the 12th of May, 1944, he was already flying his 27th mission in a B-17, the famous flying fortress.

When his plane was hit, Manny Ruben was blown out of the exploding plane.

(plane whirring and exploding) His POW card shows his religion, Hebrew.

In Hitler's Germany, Jews were systematically persecuted and murdered.

This picture shows 13-year-old Rich and his dad at Rich's Bar Mitzvah in 1967.

- Yeah.

- And he took the other one off, - Yeah.

- [Rich] and about then, I believe, is when it exploded.

- And what was the idea to come here to Germany to found these places?

- Yeah.

- Interest you?

- To look to see where he was, and he was a prisoner of war for a year.

- Yes?

- So we're going to travel and go to where all of our fathers, there's several of us here, their fathers were prisoners of war.

- Come with me, let's go on the other side, I will show you my paper.

- Oh, guys.

- [Narrator] Every piece of debris tells a story, but is it the story of Richard's dad?

Will he eventually get more detailed information?

- 123 was my dad's- - Klaus Bucher has a list with all American planes that were shot down in this region during World War II.

- 97654.

- Yeah.

- [Narrator] Will they really be able to find the number of his dad's plane?

(all chuckling) - Wow.

- So that's my dad's plane right there.

- 76.

- Do you see that's relating to your dad's plane?

- The number 4297654 is my father's plane.

And it goes straight down.

So it says it came down in Uber Bad Camberg.

The pilot was Captain James Noop, we know that to be correct.

And then as you come over here, it's in German.

Hello, sweetie, yes, and it comes with a cat.

And the cat will point out to us that it talks about the motor and the motor coming down.

Yes, you've seen it.

So what we have is a paper that he's put together with others.

So it's his work and others in the area, he's told us, and they've highlighted in yellow the planes that have come down near and that they found an engine.

Him and I were talking about that, so he is very familiar with the engine being found, and where it was found, and how it was found, and who found it.

And all of this has been documented very well.

- Yes.

- It's amazing, you know, that they could document all these, and these are all different planes, but there's my father's plane.

- He's still alive, maybe I should.

- [Narrator] The Germans really did find the engine of his father's B-17.

The Kriegie Kids are now heading for Bad Camberg, there, the motor, or what is left of it, is supposed to be stored in a little garage of the fire brigade.

They can't wait to see it.

(gentle instrumental music) Hidden in the backyard in a small old garage, the remains of a B-17 engine.

The plane crashed on the same mission as Laura and Ellen's dad.

Together with a local historical club, Alexander Heuser has been researching the history of the crash.

- Wow, that's something.

- [Alexander] It's the most probably what remains of the engine of your father's aircraft.

- [Rich] Wow.

- The spot where it was found is right in the middle of the town of Bad Camberg where your father's aircraft crashed, yeah.

- And no other aircraft that you know of crashed?

- No, both are quite clear and documented in the crash reports.

- [Rich] And this part is what?

- [Alexander] This is one of the three engines, I assume, of the right wing.

- Right.

Well, we know his wing was severed, both wings.

- So the left wing came off and the German fighter is reported to have crashed on the right wing.

I don't know if it sheered the right wing off, - Right.

- but he crashed between the number three and four engines.

That's the report from the German guys.

And this is what's left from it.

- Wow.

- We know that the cylinder here.

- [Narrator] The people of Bad Camberg would actually like to see this engine as part of an exhibition about World War II.

but they could not yet agree on the right place.

- They didn't expect.

- Oh gosh, how could you expect it couldn't happen?

It'd be, you know, a million to one, I don't know, I'm not good at that.

But, you know, I can't imagine coming here and finding an engine.

(laughs) I mean, I've never heard of that before.

And I just do hope that the engine gets put someplace where they want it.

It's great to have it in the garage, it's great to save it, it's great to do those things, but obviously it needs to be somewhere.

And you know, I do want to work to see if I can get the Museum of the Mighty Eighth Air Force in Pooler, Georgia to get interested.

Let's save it and let's put it on display somewhere where people can see it.

And that would be amazing.

(gentle instrumental music) - [Narrator] That surpasses all the Kriegie Kid's expectations.

And then, another wish comes true.

They're able to meet a contemporary witness.

(doors banging) In the small village of Bechtheim.

Nearby, Richard's father came down on his parachute.

- Hello.

- Guttentag.

- [Narrator] 91-year-old Helga Schuster still remembers the Allied bombers very well.

- Rich, nice to meet you, Helga.

Thank you for your help.

My father, his plane came down near here on May 12th, 1944.

(Helga speaking in German) - [Narrator] "There were always aired alerts", she recalls, "And she was able to see the bombers attacking Bad Camberg from her attic."

- Windows on the roof, - Yeah.

- she could look out.

She saw the flame of the burning bomber.

And her parents told them, you are young, you have to stay, 10 years she was old.

- My father came through here, I have evidence of him coming into the town and meeting with the mayor with other soldiers.

So what I'm trying to figure out is what would her experience have been, if she remembers, many years ago, 80 years ago, you know?

- She remembers one captured American airmen specifically.

- That came down.

(Helga speaking in German) - I will try to translate that.

She remember that a prisoner was catched here and he has to walk behind the motorcycle, you can remember.

(suspenseful music) - [Narrator] And she tells them how miserable she felt for that guy.

Then Helga Schuster wants to show them the old mayor's office, just up the street, a special place for Rich.

After his dad was captured, he first came here.

(suspenseful music) Rich's wife has found this information in the records.

- [Rich] Elizabeth, I want you in a picture here.

- [Elizabeth] This is fabulous.

- Elizabeth has done a lot of the research to help figure out, she's the one that found some of this stuff.

No, come and give me your.

(people chattering) - Adventure of a lifetime we're having.

- Absolutely.

(gentle instrumental music) - [Narrator] Next stop in this adventure.

Oberusel, north of Frankfurt.

For all airmen shot down, that was the first stop of imprisonment, a Dulag, short for Durchgangslager of the German Air Force.

This camp was its interrogation center.

- So help me with this spot as well.

So your dad came from?

- Came here after.

- And then walked up this street?

- Walked up this street, and then they threw him in cell.

- [Narrator] Their fathers had to walk from the train station to the campsite.

- 'Cause it was all over here, this was all the Dulag buildings, that's huge.

Huge.

- So this is the first stop.

- This is the first stop.

- So I'm pretty sure this is where my dad was then.

- [Jim] Yeah.

- [Narrator] They wonder what is left of the former camp.

The Kriegie Kids are going to meet a local guide.

- My name is Sylvia.

Hello, everybody.

- Thank you, Sylvia.

- I do tours here through the area.

The Dulag is only a short stretch of time, because the history of this area actually goes from 1920 till 1993 when the US forces finally left.

And when it became a camp, we had the barracks built.

The barracks over there.

- Right.

- We had the BUNA where the debris was investigated down that street here.

- For me, being here and just knowing he was here, and just to soak up the surroundings, is incredible.

- Our father hardly ever talked about this experience at all.

He didn't wanna remember any of it.

- So to speak.

- Here in this building was once the command center.

- Let's go inside.

- Let's go.

- [Narrator] One of the few remaining buildings, today it is a kindergarten.

- So, everybody, grab a chair, sit down.

But this actually are the original rooms from that area that were used for interrogation.

- Something.

- They stood in this place?

- Yeah.

- Yeah, just one thing, he didn't talk about it, none of 'em did, obviously.

But this being called out and the German guards taking them in, going, you know, like this, and they were scared to death.

They didn't know what was going to happen.

- Of course they were scared.

Yeah, and you know, war was going on, they didn't know how far had their troops advanced.

- Yes.

- Were they on the winning side, were on the losing side?

So what was going on?

So they were, like, shut off from the world here.

- [Narrator] Where kids play today, their fathers once experienced the beginning of their captivity.

Before they leave, Jim has a wish.

- 15th Air Force, 376 Bomb Group, 913th Squadron B-24.

- That's a good place.

- Wow.

- That's a good place.

- That's daddy.

- Let's do here.

- Maybe down there.

- Let's do here.

Here it is, and throw away the key.

(gentle instrumental music) I wanted to leave something here for him, you know?

- That's good.

(gentle instrumental music) - [Narrator] Jim's father, James Vic Hemphill, joined the Air Force in August, 1942.

Shot down in February 44 on his seventh mission in Austria.

He never liked camping, Jim assumes, probably because it reminded him of his 15 month internment.

Since April, 1944, for most of the POWs, next stop was another transit camp, Dulag Luft in Wetzler, 40 miles north of Frankfurt.

Traumatized from the crash and interrogation, this was the first chance to recover, taking a shower and eating their first square meal after days, before being transported to camps further east.

(gentle instrumental music) The Kriegie Kids want to know whether anything is left of the camp.

(rain pattering) Eric Boland, a young reporter of the local newspaper, and Ann Stricklera from the Historical Society of Wetzlar, help them to find the spot.

- This was the area of the Dulag.

And here is nothing left here which could tell.

I lived here my whole life and I didn't knew there was a Dulag, and I didn't find anything which leads to that conclusion.

But then I saw there inside, a few bricks, you can see a little wall of the basement.

(rain pattering) - [Narrator] There's really not that much to see.

- Right here, these bricks.

- Bricks?

- Yeah.

That's the Dulag, or what's left of it anyway.

- The foundations.

- So Christine says.

- Wow, that's something.

(people chattering) - [Narrator] Only a few bricks of a camp where once up to 5,000 prisoners lived.

(video whirring) These pictures were taken towards the end of March, 1945, after the liberation of the camp.

While these Allied airmen were looking forward to going home soon, the fathers of the Kriegie Kids still had a very long and daunting way to go.

Before they continued to follow their father's footsteps, they planned to make a stopover Weimar.

They visit the memorial of one of the most notorious concentration camps, Buchenwald.

The Nazis built it mainly for political prisoners, their guide, Mackenzie Lake, explains.

But there were Jews too.

And at the end of the war, also some Allied POWs.

- So this was the gate into the main camp.

There were two other gates in each corner.

This part of the gate was the prison, the so-called bunker in the camp.

And inside the bunker were solitary confinement cells.

And it was just one of many methods of punishment that were used in the camp.

If you choose to go in, you'll see some biographies dedicated to some the men who died there.

- [Narrator] The bunker is one of the few buildings which are left of the concentration camp, the guard room of the SS.

- [Jim] Oh.

- [Narrator] 30 cells.

To get here, for most of the prisoners, this meant a death sentence.

- Remember how dad always talked about how they slid food through the hole in the door - Right.

- just like this?

- Right.

- Probably the same.

- [Narrator] In the beginning of the internment, the fathers of the Kriegie Kids were also in solitary confinement.

- [Laura] And then they have a little peep hole to see what they're doing.

- [Narrator] In March, 1945, there were more than 100,000 prisoners in Buchenwald, a compound of 33 barracks, only a 10 minute ride away from Weimar.

- What does it say above the door?

- Can you translate what it says on the gate?

- Yeah, so on the gate you see the inscription, "Jedem das Seine", which comes from the Latin.

And if you translate the Latin, it would be, "To each his own", with a sort of positive connotation.

But here it meant more along the lines of everyone gets what he deserves or to each his own due.

- Interestingly, it faces in and not out.

- [Mackenzie] Exactly.

Jedem das Seine is supposed to be read by the prisoners, because this whole front area was the roll call square.

So they would have to see the inscriptions.

- [Narrator] Forced labor and torture determined the daily routine of the prisoners.

The first came in 1937.

Until the end of the war, 56,000 people were killed here.

They built special crematoriums to handle this large number of bodies.

Buchenwald was 1 of 1,000 concentration camps and affiliated camps of forced labor in the territory occupied by Nazi Germany.

Did Richard's father know about the fate of Jews in Europe?

- I think he knew that something was going on, and that Jews were being killed, and that people were being killed.

And he knew that America had been attacked.

You know, I think he knew all those things, you know, as he entered the war.

But I don't think he understood these atrocities.

(rocks crunching underfoot) - [Narrator] Most of the POWs could not imagine these atrocities.

On the 11th of April, 1945, the camp was liberated by the US Army.

The Weimar residents were forced to visit the campsite.

This film is part of the memorial's exhibition, showing the liberated camp.

(video whirring) 21,000 prisoners were left in the camp, many of them starved to the bones.

Hundreds of them died even in the weeks following the liberation.

(video whirring) - Oh goodness, I'm just thinking of how we stop this from ever happening again, that's one thing.

And then to see this and to know that maybe our dad's experienced a little bit of it is extremely painful.

You know, if they witnessed it on their march, and then they, of course, suffered cruelty themselves.

And that just breaks my heart.

It breaks my heart for the world to witness this.

- My father did mention he was aware, or he was made aware that Bergen-Belsen, he didn't know the name of it, but there was a concentration camp.

And he said that a guard said something, like, pointing out smoke and saying, "That'll be you."

And that's the the one story that he ever said about concentration camps.

I don't know how much he knew, but you have to think that Allied airmen shot down throughout the war, they knew news, because new people came into the camp that could tell them what they knew.

So they weren't totally isolated from the world.

- [Narrator] One thing the Kriegie Kids are certain about, they are proud their fathers helped end these atrocities.

- I mean, yes.

- Our father joined, I mean, for that purpose.

- Without the allies, we would not have the freedom we have today, so.

(gentle instrumental music) - [Narrator] Ellen's father, Joseph Weaver, was 18 years old when he joined the Air Force in 1943.

It was on his 52nd mission when he was shot down in May, 1944 on the coast of France.

This picture shows the family after the war, little Ellen on the right.

(car whirring) The war experience of their fathers has left its mark on the Kriegie Kids too.

- And I'm not sure how the trauma of my father gets passed on to me, but I've always tried to have courage and to do the right thing by people.

And he taught me to kill with kindness, just every time somebody was, you know, hateful or angry with me, just to be kind.

And I've always tried to do that.

- [Narrator] Ellen's father was also transported to the east.

They drive on to Zagan, former Germany, in current day Poland.

There was one of the biggest POW camps of the German Air Force.

Zagan was a camp for officers only.

Richard's father was a technical sergeant.

Nevertheless, there are indications he was there as well.

- [Announcer] In one mile, the destination is on your left.

Stalag Luft III Prisoner Camp Museum.

- Well, I'm not sure what to expect.

So this is a very interesting location to me, because all of my father's records from the United States say that he went here, to Luft III in Zagan.

But I'm hoping to find out.

- [Narrator] The other Kriegie Kids have already collected more information.

Rich is still at the beginning of his research.

Will he find more answers in Zagan?

At the museum, the director, welcomes the Kriegie Kids.

- Morning.

- Morning.

- How are you?

- Okay.

- Good to see you.

- Good to see you.

Thank you for- - Welcome.

Welcome to Zagan, welcome to the POW Camp Museum, Stalag Luft III.

Good, let me show you the museum.

- Okay.

- Let's go, let's see.

(footsteps crunching) - [Narrator] During the war, over 10,000 Allied POWs were housed here.

Americans, British, French, and many other nations.

- In two sections.

We found all these items all the time.

We found many dog tags.

For instance, from cell bock eight as well.

I got an email from lady, from France, and she said, "I'm looking for some information about my father."

I went through my files and we have his dog tag, because we found his dog tag in the camp the other day.

- This is my father's, were they allowed to keep the dog tags on - Yes.

- at the camp?

- Yeah, indeed.

Because we still have these, and it's a clear situation, because you have a name on the dog tag.

So it's easy to find a man, right?

That's the one.

- [Narrator] A personnel card was made for each prisoner of war.

- But that's why I'm saying.

- Richard's father's card is a major clue to his story.

- So the only photo from that time, you know, from the war period, that I have, is from his POW record.

And that's it there.

Here you do have, that says, religion.

So you do have that.

So that's why I say they knew that he was Jewish.

He said, "Well, they did ask towards the end for Jewish soldiers to step forward when they'd call your name."

You know, he'd stand in the yard and everybody'd be in line, and they'd say, "Take one step forward if you're Jewish when we call your name."

And I said, "Did you ever take a step forward?"

He said, "No, I wasn't.

I told 'em name, rank, serial number, I wasn't telling 'em anything else.

And I certainly wasn't stepping forward."

I said, "Did anybody step forward?"

He said, "Very rarely."

But if somebody did, the whole line stepped forward."

- [Narrator] A POW camp, ultimately it was the safest place for a Jew in Nazi Germany.

- Help me on these cards, 'cause I have my father's card like that, - Hmm.

- but it doesn't look like that.

- [Marek] That's the name of the camp.

- Yeah, and you can't read it.

(Marek speaking in German) - [Marek] And it's a shame we can see, of the Luftwaffe.

- Yeah.

- So the key part is gone.

- Is gone.

- We can also check his pilot where.

- James Noop.

- Show me the name on there.

- So hold on, lemme get it.

- Of his pilot.

- Yes.

There's a KU there.

- Okay, two minutes.

- And there's a KU559.

- One second.

- Thank you.

It's really interesting to be here.

You know, it's eye-opening.

You know, whether my father was here or not, it's moving to be here.

It's helping me conclude that it's very unlikely he was in this camp.

- His pilot was in West Compound.

- Right.

- It's him?

- Yes.

- Yep.

May 29th, 1944.

- That's the date the pilot arrived here?

- Yes.

- So that would've been 17 days after they were shot down.

Oh, wow.

- Yeah.

- That's really surprising that it took that long.

(gentle instrumental music) - [Narrator] The drive further to the north of Poland to the Baltic Sea.

As the eastern front in 1944 drew ever closer, the Germans cleared the camps.

Jim's father was in Stalag IV in Tychowo.

He and 2,000 fellow prisoners were evacuated from there by sea.

- And they put him in the bottom of a captured Russian coal scow.

It was dark, it was frightening.

They could barely breathe.

This was one of the worst 72 hours of his whole 15 month experience.

And I think it affected him.

And for the rest of his life, he fought the villains, I guess, in the middle of the night, he'd wake up frightened.

And he was an amazing guy, he was able to overcome everything and suppress those memories, but not all his life.

And he ended up having a pretty tough time.

(waves crashing) Yeah, it's gonna be tough tomorrow.

Tough right now.

But I'm glad to be here and I'm glad for it to be cold and a little damp, because it gives us just a little bit of a feeling, maybe, of what they were dealing with, so.

- [Narrator] Next stop in Western Pomerania.

Jim's father arrived here in July, 1944.

Pawel is a historian and researches the fate of the prisoners in Stalag IV in Tychowo.

Jim tells him what he knows of his father.

- He got off the train and there were some large boxes that had red cross marks on 'em, and they thought they were gonna get something to eat.

But when they got outta the train, the boxes held shackles, and they were shackled together.

- [Narrator] "Many prisoners who were evacuated from the camp Stalag IV had been taken their shoes away," Pawel tells them.

"They had to walk barefoot."

- We've been leaving these across Europe, but I don't know what to do with it, but I'm gonna give it to you to do what you want to do with it.

(Pawel speaking in Polish) - [Narrator] He says he will find a place in the military museum.

After their arrival, Jim's father and his fellow comrades were marched by force up to the camp.

The notorious run up the road.

- There's people yelling at him, and dogs nipping at him.

And young Hitler youth guys sticking 'em with bayonets.

They had machine guns set up out here, hoping they would try to.

- To get away?

- Hoping they would try to get away so they could shoot 'em.

And some of the guys fell out, they never saw 'em again.

And so I don't know how any of them survived.

They just were scared, tired, - Yeah.

- hungry.

5,000 miles away from home.

(footsteps crunching) - [Narrator] Up the road on the top there once was Stalag IV.

Today, there is a memorial.

- Joe O'Donnell was a friend of my father's.

His head's on this monument.

They were marching pretty much together.

And I don't have anymore words.

- It's very emotional.

(sniffs) This has been so important to him.

Just getting to be here.

And walk on the ground that his father was on.

So, I'm so glad he got to come and do this.

He's researched, and worked so hard, and tried to find so many answers.

And just to be able to- - To get it verified, just to get it.

- [Narrator] Thousands of miles away from his US home, Jim now comes closer to his dad than he has ever imagined.

- This is my father, and it's really one of the only pictures I have of him in his uniform.

And this would've been taken a few months before he was here, but not many months before he was here.

So it's always been kinda special picture for me.

(Pawel speaking in Polish) - [Narrator] "Here you can see how the camp was built," Pawel explains.

"The barracks, the kitchen, and the magazines."

(Pawel speaking in Polish) - So you can see how.

- The historian also had more information about Jim's father.

(Pawel speaking in Polish) - [Narrator] Warrant Officer Second Class James Hemphill was mentioned in three letters as a prisoner at Stalag Luft IV.

He was evacuated from the camp on the Baltic Sea and taken in here.

This was one of the most brutal moments for the prisoners of this camp.

- It's an important thing to those of us whose fathers endured that, it was a really bad deal.

And I'm just glad you know about it.

Will you tell Pawel we love him?

(all chuckling) (Pawel speaking in Polish) - [Jim] I mean it.

I feel a real closeness to Pawel.

He cares about not only the the place, but he cares about the men that were here.

That means a lot.

- [Narrator] In February, 1945, this camp was also evacuated.

The fathers of the Kriegie Kids began a forced march through snow and ice.

- This is where we know we're walking literally in dad's footsteps.

- Yeah.

- He was here on this road twice for sure.

- [Rich] And I know now that he came in on this path and that he left on this path.

And you know, I feel that he was very lucky all the way through this, so he always kinda had a guardian angel, maybe, on his shoulder.

- [Narrator] Almost 1,000 miles, more than 80 days, their fathers were on the road amidst the chaos of the last weeks of the war.

In winter, without food, without shelter.

They slept in open fields or in barns.

The Kriegie Kids now can have a look at one of these barns.

- There's an opening there, can we go in?

- Yeah, well, it might be.

- [Narrator] Ellen and Laura, the two sisters, can't believe it.

They really found one of the barns their father slept there in February, 1945.

- [Jim] A lot of barns that look like this, but you see something there, absolutely.

- [Laura] This has windows.

- Hmm.

- That's why, I don't know.

- [Narrator] After a 25 mile long march, their father supposedly spent one of their first nights here.

- When I first message about coming on this trip, and I made a list of the things that we definitely wanted to see.

And I did say, "Can you find us a barn?"

Because the whole story of the march was being packed in these barns, tight as sardines.

And it just took my breath away to come in here and to think that night after night, my dad was sleeping in something like this.

And to see the size, to see how it's built.

Yeah, I'm a little overwhelmed by it.

(gentle instrumental music) - [Narrator] In 1945, their father still had a long way to walk.

Next stop was Swinoujscie.

There they didn't even have a barn to spend the night.

Here near the port, the men spend two nights in the open, in bitter cold.

- You are here.

- Okay.

- So we are and we wanna go here.

- Yeah, that's right.

It hasn't left in forever, though.

- [Narrator] They must have used a barge at that time.

- From what I've been told, I always had imagined it, and I'm not sure if I was specifically told this, and it as being just some small barge.

That's how I pictured it.

- [Narrator] Richard's father was no longer with them at that time.

He had already been evacuated from Tychow before by train in January, 1945.

In a boxcar filled to three times capacity, little food and water.

But he didn't experience the death march.

No one knows why he was transported to another camp in Barth, 100 miles from Swinoujscie.

(gentle instrumental music) The German Air Force had opened this POW camp in 1940, Because of the Geneva Convention, the International Red Cross checked the conditions in all camps for Allied POWs regularly.

Nevertheless, especially towards the end of the war, the conditions were very poor.

At the end of the war, there were about 9,000 POWs in the camp.

Here, the Kriegie Kids are greeted by Dieter Boedeker, who works for the local documentary center.

- Rich Ruben.

- Hi, Dieter Boedeker.

- [Rich] Nice to meet you, Dieter.

- Nice to meet you.

- Thanks for meeting us here.

- Yeah, no problem.

So this was part of the main camp.

And from the solar panels up to the edge of the forest there was the northern camp with three compounds.

And now it's agricultural land.

But there you could see at those times all the barracks with the POWs inside.

And if you go to the field, if you find some brickstone parts, you can take one.

- Thank you.

- Wow.

- It's from the foundation of the barracks.

- [Narrator] After a year of imprisonment, Richard's father was freed here.

- It's been a wonderful trip with great people.

But just to learn, to understand how these men, I mean, besides, you know, falling from the air and being captured, having moved from one camp, to another camp, and to another, and just not knowing what really was ahead.

But it's just to be put through it all.

- I've been able to fill in most of the blanks on my father.

But to just be here and feel it, it's amazing.

- [Narrator] The German guards left the camp April 20th, 1945.

After negotiations between the Soviets and the US Army, the POWs were flown out, so-called Operation Revival.

Those not evacuated by train were on the death march towards the west.

After almost 1,000 miles, they finally arrived in Fallingbostel at the beginning of April, 1944, 60 miles south of Hamburg.

(gentle instrumental music) The last few miles, Laura's father was able to go by train.

(sheep baaing) - My father became very sick, very weak, and he couldn't continue the march.

And I understand he was put on a train at Klees.

Yeah, he came here, he came to this place, he came on a train on these rails.

And so, yeah, just soaking that up, it's very emotional.

- [Narrator] Again, they had to walk from the station.

The last mile Laura's father drags himself on.

One more camp.

- [Laura] This is the path that he walked, I know this for sure.

One of the things that's not a missing piece of the puzzle.

So I am gonna actually follow in his footsteps.

I don't think he knew at the time that he would be liberated here, but I think he had hope.

(cars whirring) (gentle instrumental music) - [Narrator] A few broken pieces of concrete are all that's left of a camp where 17,000 POWs were being held captive at the end of the war.

Today, this is a residential area.

(cars whirring) - My dad was not freed here.

This is an important moment, and actually, Laura's dad was freed here.

Our dads had to go back out for another a hundred mile walk.

- [Narrator] On April 16th, 1945, the war ended in Fallingbostel.

When the British Army freed the camp, it was completely overcrowded.

The British made film recordings.

In the council chamber, the Kriegie Kids can see these recordings together with the city representatives and Gunther Pankoke, who also still remembers the Soviet POWs.

- My father was a railway official, and we lived very near the railway station.

I was 10, and I will never forget these scenes.

When you see that human bodies were torn out of the wagons.

The 30,000, 30,000, from '41 to '45, that means every day carts full of human bodies were just put into the graves.

But these pictures here, the liberation of the camp with all the other prisoners of war, you saw them well fed, yeah?

You just saw the pictures, well fed at the end of the war.

But the Russian prisoner of war camp.

Well, excuse me, please.

So many pictures come up.

Thank you for listening.

- I'd like to thank you for sharing that story, I think it was very painful for you to revisit that time.

- We're not gonna let this happen again.

There's gonna be solidarity between our nations and others, and we're not gonna let it happen again.

Okay?

So when you go home at night, I want you to think about all of us younger people and how things are gonna get better, okay?

Okay.

- [Narrator] 3 million Soviet POWs starved to death in captivity or were murdered.

Up to this point, the Kriegie Kids mainly saw the suffering of their own fathers.

The pictures, the stories, the encounters of this trip widened their view.

Laura's father was lucky, but the war wasn't over yet for Ellen's father.

For many other evacuated POWs, the death march went on.

They had been forced to leave just before the British came.

(gentle instrumental music) Ellen's father marched to Gudow, east of Hamburg.

Her dad was liberated on the 2nd of May, 1945, only a few days before the official end of the war.

(gentle instrumental music) In the little village of Boize, Ellen found the barn where her father spent the last night of his imprisonment.

(car whirring) - I can just imagine him here in the filth of a barn, the fleas, and the rats, and the cow dung.

When he came back, he had to be clean.

He took two showers a day, so anyway, clean sheets, very important.

This is a great place of their last night in a barn.

Their last hunger.

- [Laura] Number four on the side of the door.

(Ellen sobbing) - My dad talked about how hungry he was every single day.

And that even when they saw the British in Gudow, and he was getting food, he kept three potatoes in his pockets.

And he did not get rid of those until he had knew the war was over and he wasn't gonna be imprisoned again.

(gentle instrumental music) - [Narrator] The long forced march, the war experience left traces in their father's lives, internally and externally.

Ellen's father was finally freed in Gudow, very close to his last barn.

- Six, seven.

- Achtung.

- Achtung, alright.

- [Narrator] Detlef von Bulow, our host, has prepared a guided tour through the village.

Here the POWs met with British troops.

Ernsting was a child back then.

- Okay.

- He shows where it all happened.

(birds chirping) - [Ellen #1] To be here where all these airmen were liberated, and actually walk and then see it myself is very exciting.

- If you look at his barn, Ernsting, this is his barn.

And here we can see the British reconnaissance tank standing on the street.

(cars whirring) - [Narrator] Ernsting wants to say goodbye.

- Okay.

Okay.

(all chuckling) Yeah, this is good, 'cause he was right here, and my dad walked right here.

I'm glad you're here.

I'm glad you're well.

Danke schon.

- Bitte schon.

- Okay.

(cars whirring) - [Narrator] The journey of the Kriegie Kids comes to an end in a very special event in a memorial service, they, together with local residents, once again commemorate the victims of the war.

A young female minister, Vanessa Hoffman, translates for the Kriegie Kids.

(Vanessa speaking in German) - [Vanessa] God above us.

(Vanessa speaking in German) - [Vanessa] God around us.

- [Rich] My puzzle is mostly together, I have a couple pieces still missing, but I'm certainly grateful that he did.

- God bless the road you're walking on, God bless the place you're standing on, and God bless the girl you're living for.

Amen.

- Amen.

(footsteps thudding) (gentle instrumental music) - [Ellen #1] I just wish my children and my grandchildren were here.

You know, 'cause, I want them to do this trip as well.

- [Ellen #2] Great experience after reading her book, and learning the stories, and seeing her photos, and things, it does bring closure.

- [Narrator] This trip has not only brought the Kriegie Kids closer to their fathers.

- Unbelievable, I have never in my life appreciated our national anthem as much as I did in that service.

It was wonderful.

And what it meant being here with the German people, it's just, it was overwhelming for me.

- It was very special, thank you.

- I'm so happy to hear that.

- Just celebrating the friendship between countries that were once at war, what a beautiful moment.

And I think how our dads would feel to know that we were here in this place, worshiping together, how happy they would be as well.

(people chattering) (gentle instrumental music)