Enjoy.
Mosca
By BILL HUGHES
THE JOURNAL NEWS
(Original publication: May 09, 2001 )
Copyright The Journal News. Reprinted with permission.
'Behind the Barbed Wire' - YONKERS, NY -- On Valentine's Day in 1943, Army Signal Corps photographer Angelo SpineIll ran out of both film and luck.
He was under orders to photograph the 1st Armored Division's assault on Field Marshal Erwin Rommel's tank divisions holding the Kasserine Pass in North Africa when he was captured by the Germans.
"I was out of film, so I was just sitting around when this lieutenant asked me to escort some German prisoners to the rear for interrogation," SpinelIi said. "We got all turned around, and the next thing you know it, we walked right into a German patrol, and they turned the tables on us."
In the next 27 months, SpinelIi, a former Yonkers resident who now lives in Florida, was held as a prisoner of war, spending most of that time in Stalag 3-B, roughly 50 miles southeast of Berlin near the Polish border. Shortly after he arrived, he bribed a German guard with eight packs of cigarettes in exchange for a 120 mm Bessa-Voightlander folding camera.
In the ensuing months, under the risk of being shot as a spy, Spinelii set out to chronicle life in a German POW camp through a series of approximately 1,200 photographs he secretly shot and developed while he was held prisoner. This month, 92 of those photographs are on display in the Mamaroneck (NY) Library in an exhibit, "Behind the Barbed Wire."
Simon read about Spinelli's photographs in a POW magazine, and wrote to Chief Park Ranger Fred Sanchez, who worked on restoring the negatives and first put the exhibit together in April 2000.
"This collection is one of a kind. There is nothing else in existence like the SpinelIi photographs," Sanchez said. "Had he been caught, there is a very high likelihood that he would have been killed. We certainly know of incidents in which the Germans killed soldiers for less."
SpinelIi managed to befriend one of the older German guards who got him the camera and set up a system where he would pay him one pack of cigarettes to get him a roll of film, and another pack to get it developed. "They told us we weren't going to get out of there alive anyway, so I figured what did I have to lose?" SpinelIi said.
He received a steady supply of cigarettes from Red Cross care packages and from his family back home. He bartered with an Air Force POW for a pair of baggy airman's pants, in which he would hide the camera. Sometimes enlisting the aid of lookouts, Spinelii would sneak the camera out and click off a frame when a good opportunity arose.
Because the instructions that came with the film were in German, at first SpinelIi had to use trial and error to figure out what the film speed markings meant. Without a light meter, he was forced to guess the correct shutter speeds. Consequently, less than 400 of the 1,200 photos came out properly exposed.
The 92 photographs on display offer a rare glimpse at the daily life of American POWs in the 1940s. They depict the drudgery of POW life and the men's attempts to occupy their time, along with showing some of the squalid conditions they had to endure. Other, more lighthearted prints show the men playing sports, putting on theater skits, or performing in choirs and bands.
To conceal the prints and negatives, SpinelIi dug out a hiding place underneath his bunk bed. "The barracks had bricks on top of a sand floor, so I lifted one of the bricks under the leg of the bed and dug a hole in the sand as deep as my arm could reach," Spinelli said. "I traded cigarettes for some cement and made a cover for the hole, and whenever I heard there was going to be a search, I'd put all my stuff down there."
According to Spineili's account, the guards would warn the prisoners in advance of any searches because there was so much contraband traded between them and prisoners, the guards knew they would be punished if the goods were ever discovered.
"Historically, the task of guarding prisoners fell to personnel who were unfit for front-line duty," said Simon, who was a bombardier in a B-17 when he was shot down ow~ nm th~nl Italy and turned over to the Germans by Italian police. "These guys would do almost anything for a pack of cigarettes back then; they were more valuable than gold."
By the time the Russian Army began pushing its way into Germany, Spinelli had amassed a collection that took up the same amount of space as a small shoebox. He had also managed to procure an additional camera and a collapsible tripod.
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As the Russians advanced, the POWs in Stalag 3-B were ordered to march to another camp further to the west. SpinelIi stashed his photographic equipment and supplies in the bottom of a rucksack. When he arrived at the new camp, he saw the guards were searching all the POWs' bags at a table near the entrance.
"At first I thought, this is the end, they're going to find me out and I'm finished, but then I got an idea," SpinelIi said. As he approached the table, he dumped out all the contents except for the photographic equipment, then dangled the bottom portion of the bag over the edge of the table closest to him and slid it along toward the end of the table.
"There was a guard who saw what I was up to at the end who asked me what was in the bag, so I reached in, pulled out some cigarettes and gave them to him, and he waved me on." Shortly afterward, the Germans abandoned the camp, and the Russians liberated the POWs.
After the war, SpinelIi settled in Yonkers for 38 years and operated a jewelry business with his brother in New York City. He is now 84 years old and lives in Hallandale, Fla.
NOTE: His photographs are featured in the AXPOW 2002 Calendar "Behind The Wire", which is due out later this month.
