Forgotten in Buchenwald: The Untold Holocaust Survival Story of Canada’s WWII Airmen
Imprisoned in a Nazi death camp, 26 Canadian airmen endured unimaginable horrors, and their fight for recognition lasted decades
When the cattle-car doors finally slid open on August 20, 1944, the first thing RCAF wireless air gunner, Ed Carter-Edwards noticed was the smell. An acrid, choking smoke drifting from a tall chimney.
As SS guards shouted and jabbed their rifles into the prisoners’ backs, forcing them forward, Ed took in the grim scene ahead: rows of skeletal figures, their hollow eyes fixed in silent warning.
His heart sank. This wasn’t the prisoner-of-war camp he’d narrowly held out hope for. Instead, he’d arrived at the Buchenwald concentration camp, a place built for death. As he scanned the barbed wire, guard towers, snarling dogs, and filth, he now wondered if he’d ever leave alive.
Hello there. I’m glad you’re here to read about one of the most gripping chapters in Canadian wartime history. In 1944, 26 young Canadians found themselves locked inside Buchenwald, a Nazi concentration camp meant for political prisoners, forced labourers, and people the regime deemed “undesirable.”
These Canadians were not supposed to be there at all. They were Allied airmen who should have been treated under the rules protecting prisoners of war.
Their presence in a place of hangings, forced starvation, and mass executions seems unthinkable. Yet that’s exactly where they ended up, trapped behind electrified fences in Germany’s heartland.
This is their story.
It’s a piece of history that stayed hidden for far too long, and I’d like to walk you through it, step by step, so you can see how these men came to be there, how they survived, and why their experiences still matter.
In the spring and summer of 1944, the Allies were finally gaining momentum against Nazi Germany. The Normandy landings in June gave the Allied forces a foothold in Western Europe, and the push toward Paris was well underway by August.
Canadian servicemen played a crucial role in the air war, helping to bomb strategic targets and disrupt German supply lines. If you were a bomber crew member back then, you’d be prepared for many dangers: anti-aircraft fire, mechanical breakdowns, or the threat of capture.
Normally, though, getting shot down meant ending up in a German POW camp, where you’d at least have the protections promised by the Geneva Convention.
You’d never expect to be sent to a place like Buchenwald, which was built to hold, humiliate, and systematically destroy people the Nazi regime viewed as enemies. Yet a group of Canadians, most of them between 19 and 21 years old, found themselves in that nightmare scenario.
They were part of the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF), serving as pilots, wireless air gunners, or navigators. Each man had trained rigorously and believed that if something went wrong, they’d be treated as standard POWs. As outlandish as it sounds, there were, and still are, “rules of war.”
Being trained on what to expect based on these “rules,” the Canadians had no idea what lay ahead in occupied France, nor the betrayal that would change their fate.
Under normal circumstances, Allied airmen shot down behind enemy lines would seek refuge with local Resistance groups. These networks, such as the Comet Line or the Pat Line, provided forged documents, civilian clothes, and safe houses, eventually smuggling the airmen back to England via neutral routes like Spain or Portugal.
But for these particular airmen, their situation took a tragic turn.
Although Resistance operations were a well-tested system, the Nazis had established a countermeasure in the form of a network of informants.
One Nazi collaborator, named Jacques Desoubrie, penetrated at least one of these Resistance safe houses. By pretending to support the Allied cause, he tricked many airmen into exposing themselves. Desoubrie then alerted the Germans, who arrived in time to discover the airmen in civilian clothes and armed with false identity papers, before they could escape.
As mentioned earlier, under the Geneva Convention, captured Allied airmen in uniform were given legal protections as prisoners of war. But there was a loophole. If you were caught in plain clothes with fake papers, the Germans could label you a spy or a saboteur. Offenses punishable by torture, or even death, without the usual POW considerations.
One of our soldiers who got swept up in this betrayal was a Hamilton-born wireless air gunner named Edward (Ed) Carter-Edwards. Like many of his fellow Canadians, Ed Hallifax bomber had been shot down during a bombing run in the summer of 1944, but he reached the Resistance before being captured.
One day, after hiding out in a barn, Carter-Edwards was making his way through the French Underground toward Spain, when a German officer who had been tipped off by an informant seized upon him. The Nazi soldier scoffed at the forged documents and shoved a Luger in the Canadian’s face, demanding to know his true identity.
When Carter-Edwards admitted that he was a Canadian airman, the German ripped Ed’s dog tags off from around his neck and said, “Now who are you? You’re a spy and will be shot.”
With no tags to prove he was military personnel, he had no defense and his Nazi captors could do anything they wanted with him.
The Gestapo’s next step after ferreting out Allied airmen like Carter-Edwards was to send them to Fresnes Prison. Located just outside Paris, Fresnes had a reputation for brutality.
Picture the worst prison you’ve seen on TV or in the movies, and then understand this place was 10 times worse. By this point in the war, it was known for vicious interrogations, relentless beatings, and soul-crushing threats.
Whenever the Canadians who were wrongly detained there tried to protest that they were regular aircrew, the Germans laughed in their face. “You’re terrorists,” the Nazi guards would say. “You’ll never leave here alive.”
German-controlled Fresnes was crowded with all sorts of detainees: Resistance fighters, political prisoners, and common criminals. The Canadians were jammed into small cells, given almost no food, and subjected to constant physical and emotional abuse.
Guards would barge into their cells at all hours, screaming for confessions or details about Allied plans. The Canadians tried to reassure each other that, under the laws of war, they were supposed to be POWs and surely the mistake would be rectified soon. But no one was listening.
Then, in August 1944, events outside the prison walls pushed everything to a crisis. Allied troops were advancing toward Paris, just ten days away from liberating the city.
The Germans decided it was time to evacuate Fresnes. So they crammed the prisoners onto trucks, herded them into rail yards, and forced them into cattle cars bound for Germany. Amongst the prisoner population, there were a total of 168 Allied airmen: 26 Canadians, 82 Americans, 48 British, 9 Australians, 2 New Zealanders, and 1 Jamaican.
When the cattle car doors were slammed shut on August 15, 1944, there were around 80 or 90 people squeezed inside each one. These train cars measured approximately 8 meters (26 feet 2 inches) by 2.7 meters (8 feet 10 inches), A bucket in the middle served as the only toilet.
There was no water, almost no food, and little ventilation. During the five days it took to reach Germany, men had to take turns sitting on the filthy floor, and everyone was coated in grime. Worse yet, Allied planes sometimes bombed or strafed trains, unaware that these particular boxcars held their own countrymen.
The Canadians and other prisoners found themselves in constant terror of being struck by bombs from above, or shot at if they tried to signal that they were on the same side.
Whenever panic rose, German guards threatened immediate gunfire. One account says that the prisoners were forced to strip naked because the guards suspected an escape attempt. The humiliation tactic was used to make them second-guess making a run for it, while being totally exposed. Combined with the suffocating August heat, the journey became a rolling nightmare.
Finally, on August 20, 1944, the train pulled up to an ominous location. The men expected a POW camp like the ones they had been briefed on, such as Stalag Luft III or Stalag Luft I, which were operated by the Luftwaffe. Instead, they arrived at Buchenwald concentration camp, a place built for terror and extermination.
Stepping out of the cattle cars, the Canadians were met by SS guards with rifles and boots. They were shoved forward, exhausted and dehydrated, past electrified fences.
Prisoners in ragged clothing, barely more than skin and bones, stared at them with hollow eyes. Thick smoke billowed from a high chimney that never stopped. Ed Carter-Edwards later recalled how that chimney was the most terrifying sight of all. “The only way to get out of Buchenwald,” he said, “was through the chimney.”
At that moment, the airmen realized this was not a standard POW camp. They saw emaciated men, some too weak to stand, guarded by Nazi personnel who looked at them with contempt.
Once inside, a gauntlet of “welcoming rituals” awaited them. Vicious dogs snarled inches from their faces, then were jerked back by the guards, who seemed to find it hilarious. The men were quickly told: “You have no rights here,” because the Gestapo considered them spies, not soldiers.
Those initial hours set the tone. As the 168 Allied airmen who arrived at Buchenwald that day soon found that it was a place of daily cruelty, beatings, disease, and arbitrary executions.
Daily existence at Buchenwald was designed to break the human body and spirit. For the first three weeks, the Canadians and their allies had to sleep outdoors without proper shelter, shoes, or protection from the rain and cold nights.
Soon after, they were herded into overcrowded huts, where five men might share one bunk. If one needed to roll over, all five had to do it in tandem. Roll calls (called “Appell”) happened twice a day and could last for hours. If prisoners collapsed, guards would routinely shoot them on the spot.
Dysentery was rampant, and men soiled themselves because they were forbidden to leave the formation. Food consisted of watery soup made from cabbage or grass, often crawling with fleas. A chunk of bread about an inch wide was the daily allowance.
Some men lost 30 kilograms (66 pounds) in mere weeks. Hygiene was nonexistent. Lice, fleas, and bedbugs infested every corner of the concentration camp.
Small cuts festered into infected sores fast. If you got pneumonia or pleurisy, that often spelled your end. The 26 Canadians tried to rely on each other for moral support, but the camp’s overall environment was enough to crush anyone’s hope.
On top of the physical hardships, the airmen saw constant acts of violence. People were beaten to death for minor infractions or hanged for defiance. In Buchenwald, a large crematorium burned day and night, funnelling thick smoke into the sky.
One Allied prisoner described how the smell of burning flesh never stopped. The Canadians discovered that Buchenwald had a record of executing Allied intelligence officers by hanging them on hooks. They learned they might be singled out for a similar fate, or possibly strung up by piano wire. Every day brought the fear that their turn was next.
They were also forced to watch as the SS tested medical experiments or gave lethal injections to prisoners who seemed too frail to work. Dead bodies were then stacked daily onto carts and trundled to the oven.
This industrial approach to murder was more than any soldier was trained to handle, especially men who’d expected, at worst, a normal POW camp. They’d heard vague rumours about Nazi atrocities, but nothing could have prepared them for the reality. The horror wasn’t just unimaginable, it defied the limits of what a human mind could process.
The psychological toll was enormous. Each morning, they’d wake up wondering if the guards would come for them.
Illness was nearly impossible to avoid in Buchenwald. Ed Carter-Edwards fell prey to pneumonia and pleurisy, which landed him in a hut reserved for the dying. Dozens of prisoners per day lost their lives there.
Under the usual camp procedure, guards might decide that a prisoner like Carter-Edwards was too sick to recover and give him a lethal injection. But in a remarkable display of prisoner solidarity, some inmates worked together to keep him alive.
They moved him from bed to bed each nigh to look like he hadn’t been in one spot too long, and that way the Nazi doctor on rounds wouldn’t mark him for death the next morning. A French doctor who was also imprisoned used a makeshift syringe to draw fluid from Carter-Edwards’s lungs.
That, combined with secret nighttime relocations, likely saved his life. These small acts of humanity, carried out by people who refused to lose hope, showed that even in a place engineered for cruelty, people found strength in banding together.
Carter-Edwards later spoke about how these fellow inmates pulled him back from the brink of death, reminding him that solidarity can exist even in a “death camp.”
By October 1944, the Canadians had spent about two brutal months in Buchenwald. Then, in a twist of bureaucratic fate, they were told they’d be moved to a real POW camp. Rumour has it that the German Luftwaffe discovered that Allied airmen were being held illegally in a concentration camp, a violation of the Nazi regime’s own rules for captured airmen.
Under pressure, the SS had to release them from the concentration camp. Most of the Canadian group went to Stalag Luft III. Conditions there were far from pleasant, but at least it was a recognized prisoner-of-war facility with marginally better oversight.
Not everyone left at the same time. Carter-Edwards was too ill to travel and was only moved in November. A few others stayed behind temporarily due to their physical condition. But the majority arrived at Stalag Luft III, where they found they were no longer in imminent danger of being hanged or summarily killed.
By the time the war ended, 166 of the 168 Allied airmen who’d been sent to Buchenwald managed to survive. The two who died had succumbed to disease while still inside. In a remarkable show of will and determination, all 26 Canadians made it out alive, although their bodies and minds were permanently scarred.
Early in 1945, the war in Europe was turning decisively against Nazi Germany. American, British, and Soviet forces were advancing from multiple fronts. Prisoners from camps across Germany were sometimes marched for miles, in what became known as “death marches,” as the Nazis tried to prevent Allied troops from freeing them.
We don’t know exactly how many of the Canadian Buchenwald survivors endured those forced marches, but many POWs across Germany did.
By April and May 1945, Allied forces liberated camp after camp. The U.S. 6th Armored Division reached Buchenwald on April 11, 1945, though our Canadian airmen had already been transferred. It was during these springtime concentration camp libeartions, that the atrocities of the Nazi murder machine was uncovered to global onlookers.
Once freed from their POW camps that April, many of the Canadians were barely recognizable to friends and family. Malnutrition, disease, and a total lack of medical care had taken a terrible toll. But somehow, they’d survived and were going to finally be able to go home.
Yet returning home proved to be more challenging than they thought. Families were thrilled to see their loved ones, but these men had witnessed scenes no training could prepare them for. That kind of trauma doesn’t vanish when you board a ship back to Canada.
Unfortunately, you often still see it when you close your eyes, hear it in your nightmares, and even smell it still even though you’re a continent away from that Hell.
Adjusting to regular life in Canada was far from simple. Some men tried to hold down jobs, start families, or return to school, but the mental strain showed up in nightmares, anxiety, and depression.
At the time, the term “PTSD” wasn’t in wide use, so many of these 26 survivors just had to cope in silence. Worst of all, many Canadians back home found it hard to believe their story.
The claim that RCAF personnel had been thrown into a concentration camp meant for extermination and torture sounded absurd. People would say, “Oh, we heard that Allied airmen weren’t treated as harshly as others.” Their claims were often dismissed as hallucinations, misremembrances, or mental deficiencies.
But these men had the scars, the memories, and the nightmares to prove otherwise.
Edward Carter-Edwards, for instance, took it upon himself to speak publicly about their experiences in Buchenwald. He participated in documentaries such as The Lucky Ones: Allied Airmen and Buchenwald, made by the National Film Board of Canada.
In interviews, he explained how close they had come to execution and how the conditions nearly killed them. He also lived to see more attention paid to this forgotten chapter. Before he passed away on February 22, 2017, in Smithville, Ontario, Carter-Edwards helped ensure the world wouldn’t forget.
Over time, thanks in large part to the efforts of Carter-Edwards, more awareness grew about the Allied airmen who were briefly swallowed up by the Holocaust’s machinery.
In the 1990s and early 2000s, books, documentaries, and media reports finally highlighted the captivity of these airmen at Buchenwald. But in the decades since their ordeal, these brave men often had to fight for their long-lasting wounds to be recognized. They faced intense scrutiny by medical professionals who downplayed their experiences and were often told to “suck it up,” or “you’re country doesn’t owe you anything.”
RCAF veteran, Bill Gibson, was one of the 26 Canadians who returned home too disabled to work but was barely awarded enough of a pension for his basic needs. Carter-Edwards miraculously still had enough fight left in him to mount a campaign of letter-writing, petitioning, media engagement, and meeting with MPs to make things better for the survivors, who were now being victimized back home in Canada.
Carter-Edwards eventually testified before a Senate subcommittee to have Canada’s War Compensation Act reviewed, and finally, things started to improve, although too late for some, but at least not too late for future members of Canada’s armed forces.
On April 13, 2014, seventy years after these horrors ended, a plaque was unveiled at the camp to honor the 168 Allied airmen who had been held there, including the 26 Canadians, and to remember the two who died: Lt. Levitt C. Beck, Jr., USAAF and F/O Phillip Hemmens, RAF. Four of the surviving airmen even attended this ceremony, though most had passed on by then.
Edward (Ed) Carter-Edwards, one of those survivors, spoke at the unveiling:
“For 70 long years, we tried to tell our stories and share our experiences with our militaries and government, but no one would listen. Friends, strangers alike, doubted our experiences. Our politicians weren’t interested, and historians felt they already knew the whole story of Buchenwald, and we weren’t in it. After 70 years of fighting for recognition, we have finally found our chapter of the Buchenwald story recorded officially with this commemorative plaque.”
He reminded the crowd that remembering these events is vital:
“Our experience matters, as it holds lessons for future generations. Looking at the world today, it’s clear we have a long way to go. We should not and cannot lose hope… If our story teaches anything, it’s that miracles are possible.”
Films like Lost Airmen of Buchenwald, directed by Michael Dorsey, who became a friend and important ally of the survivors, drew further attention to these events, using firsthand testimonies to illustrate what happened from the moment they were shot down to their eventual liberation.
Meanwhile, Veterans Affairs Canada finally began including these stories in educational materials about POWs, and the Royal Canadian Air Force Association took steps to preserve them.
The National Film Board’s documentary The Lucky Ones described these men’s experiences as “the Allied airmen’s final testimony to the horrors they experienced in Buchenwald.” It served as a clear response to any Holocaust denial, showing that yes, even some of our Allied soldiers experienced the terror of those death camps first-hand.
For many Canadians, the image of POWs in WWII revolves around standard camps like Stalag Luft III or Stalag Luft I, where escape attempts like “The Great Escape” took place. The idea that uniformed Allied personnel were thrown into a camp known for hanging, forced labour, and medical killings didn’t fit the usual pattern.
But the Buchenwald airmen endured unimaginable starvation, brutality, and the constant fear of execution. They saw the crematorium ovens burning day and night and lived each moment knowing their time could run out at any second.
If not for a bureaucratic decision in late 1944, they might all have perished at the gallows or by lethal injection.
Their story reveals the unpredictability of war. Without the betrayal by Nazi informants, these men might have safely reached Spain or England. Instead, a few tragic turns brought them to a place no RCAF crew—or any human being—should ever have seen. That all 26 Canadians survived is remarkable, given the violence around them and the high mortality rate at Buchenwald.
Today, the last of these Canadian airmen has passed away, leaving behind valuable records, interviews, and commemorations. It falls to us and future generations to keep their story alive.
If you listen carefully to their testimonies, you’ll hear their shock at arriving at a place designed for extermination. You’ll also sense their deep gratitude for the small acts of kindness, like a French doctor saving an airman’s life, or prisoners hiding a sick comrade from Nazi doctors.
Their time in Buchenwald lasted only a few months, but it left lifelong scars. Still, they returned home, rebuilt their lives, and started families and careers, often carrying their memories silently.
Most chose not to hold grudges or let their experiences breed hatred. As many of them later explained, hatred of other people was exactly what created and allowed places like Buchenwald to exist in the first place.
By learning their story, we honour their courage and recognize Canada’s extreme sacrifices during the Second World War. Even in the darkest places, moments of human kindness and courage shine through. And even when the worst bullies threaten to break you down, never lose hope.
Continuing to share their memories ensures these young men are remembered. And that their incredible stories of survival are never forgotten.
Canadian Airmen Imprisoned at Buchenwald:
Harold Atkins (Buchenwald #78440) – Only Canadian KLB member not located after WWII.
Harry Bastable (#78378) – Died 23 September 2007.
Don Clark (#78364) – Died 30 April 1988.
John Crawford (#78406) – Deceased.
G.A. Edward Comptom (#78434) – Deceased.
Ed Carter-Edwards (#78361) – Survived pneumonia via secret camp medical aid; died 22 February 2017.
Frederick W. Fulsher (#78418) – Deceased.
William (Bill) R. Gibson (#78394) – Advocated for recognition of Buchenwald survivors; deceased.
Leon (Leo) T. Grenon (#78438) – Died September 1994.
John D. Harvie (#78412) – Co-authored Missing in Action; died 5 January 2011.
Les Head (#78430) – Survived; postwar fate unspecified.
Stanley (Stan) Hetherington (#78436) – Died 16 October 2005.
Dave High (#78422) – Featured in the NFB documentary The Lucky Ones.
Thomas (Tommy) R. Hodgson (#78424) – Deceased.
Charles Richard (Dick) Hoffman (#78429) – Deceased.
Arthur (Art) G. Kinnis (#78391) – Co-authored 168 Jump Into Hell; died 20 January 2011.
Donald (Don) E. Leslie (#78404) – Interviewed for Shot from the Sky documentary.
J. Ralph McClenaghan (#78373) – Deceased.
James E. (Pep) Prudham (#78374) – Died 2000.
Patrick Scullion (#78395) – Deceased.
Ernest G. Shepherd (#78372) – Deceased.
James A. Smith (#78428) – Died 29 July 2013.
E.R. (Joseph) Sonshine (#78343) – Died 13 March 2005.
William Arthur (Willie) Waldram (#78402) – Wrote the poem A Reflection; deceased.
Earl Carruthers Watson (#78431) – Deceased.
Calvin E. Willis (#78342) – Survived; postwar fate unspecified.
KLB Club: The prisoners formed this group to maintain solidarity, later compiling records of all 168 airmen. Postwar efforts traced all but 28 members by 1979; as of 2024, only Stanley Booker (British) remained alive.
Documents: Prisoners’ records were stamped “DIKAL” (Darf in kein anderes Lager), marking them for execution. Their transfer to Stalag Luft III in late 1944 spared them.
Our focus today was to tell the story of our Canadian airmen. We must acknowledge the broader legacy of this terrible chapter of human history.
Buchenwald concentration camp was built in July 1937 near Weimar, Germany. It ran until April 11, 1945, when troops from the U.S. 6th Armored Division liberated the surviving prisoners. By war’s end, the camp had seen around 280,000 people from all over Europe and the Soviet Union imprisoned within its fences: Jews, Soviet POWs, political enemies, Romani people, and others deemed “undesirable” by the Nazi regime.
An estimated 56,545 individuals lost their lives at Buchenwald through starvation, forced labour, execution by hanging or gunshot, disease, and sadistic medical experiments. Some of these experiments aimed to measure how quickly people died from certain poisons or vaccine “tests.”
In the chaotic final weeks before liberation, roughly 28,500 prisoners were forced onto “death marches,” where many died along the roads. A prisoner resistance group in the camp attempted to delay evacuation orders. Their clandestine efforts helped spark an internal uprising on April 10–11, 1945, just as American forces approached.
After liberation, the U.S. Army uncovered evidence of mass graves, crematoria in constant operation, and the systematic abuse of thousands.
Post-war accountability came in the form of the Buchenwald Trial, part of the wider Dachau trials conducted from 1945 to 1948. Figures such as camp commandant Hermann Pister and Ilse Koch (the infamous “Witch of Buchenwald”) faced charges, with sentences ranging from death by hanging to life imprisonment.
Later, the Soviets repurposed the camp for their own detention of German POWs and suspected Nazis, adding yet another tragic layer to Buchenwald’s history. Today, the site stands as a memorial and museum, bearing witness to Nazi atrocities and paying tribute to the countless victims who suffered there.
Have a rad rest of your day!
Sources used to research this story:
https://publications.gc.ca/collections/Collection/V32-165-2006E.pdf
https://www.rcafassociation.ca/heritage/history/buchenwald/canadians-and-the-holocaust/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buchenwald_concentration_camp
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1613036/plotsummary/
https://www.veterans.gc.ca/en/remembrance/classroom/fact-sheets/pow
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allied_airmen_at_Buchenwald_concentration_camp
https://collection.nfb.ca/film/the-lucky-ones-allied-airmen-and-buchenwald-132152
https://veteransbreakfastclub.org/event/the-lost-airmen-of-buchenwald/
https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/2nd-canadian-division
https://www.vhec.org/wp-content/uploads/180308-VHEC_Canada_Responds_Exhibit_Guide.pdf
https://www.canada.ca/en/canadian-heritage/services/canada-holocaust/history.html
https://warfarehistorynetwork.com/article/bombing-buchenwald/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phil_Lamason
https://www.aci-iac.ca/art-books/gershon-iskowitz/key-works/buchenwald/
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4162748/
https://www.canadiansoldiers.com/procedures/prisoners.htm
https://www.warmuseum.ca/liberation/
https://www.acmi.net.au/works/93679--the-lucky-ones-allied-airmen-and-buchenwald/
https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/timeline-event/holocaust/1942-1945/auschwitz-revolt
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_World_War_II_(1944)
We have a responsibility to keep telling these stories. Well done, Craig.
A stunning commentary, Craig. Thank you for your research and skill in putting it together and for your writing skill in weaving such a compelling, shocking story.