Stephen J. Schweitzer diary

Stephen J. Schweitzer (1914-1989) was a Catholic American soldier who was born in Pennsylvania and lived and worked in New York City as an insurance adjuster. He married Helen Nelan in February 1936, and they had seven daughters, Florence, Gretchen, Marianne, Judy, Margaret, Lorraine, and Gina. He was deployed by the US Army as a member of Company L, 423rd Infantry Regiment, 106th Infantry Division, and worked as a radio operator. He was with the 3rd Battalion of the 423rd for only two days before he was captured as a prisoner of war on December 19, 1945 in St. Vith, Belgium during the Battle of the Bulge. He was sent to Stalag IX B, a German prisoner-of-war camp, in Bad Orb, Germany. He was one of 350 American soldiers sent to the forced labor camp Berga an der Elster, a subcamp of Buchenwald concentration camp. He was sent on a forced march in April 1945 with the surviving American POWs as American troops approached the camp, and he was liberated by the 11th Armored Division near Cham, Germany. Schweitzer spent several months in a hospital recuperating and was awarded the Purple Heart. He sailed home in July 1945 aboard the US Hospital Ship Blanche F. Sigman. The Stephen J. Schweitzer diary is a small pocket diary Schweitzer maintained secretly and hid in his socks while he was a POW in Stalag IXB and as a forced laborer in the Berga forced labor camp. The diary contains brief entries describing events and conditions in the camps, the moods of his fellow prisoners, and his thoughts of his family.