In POW exhibit, scars fading
On Veterans Day 1995, just a month after he immigrated to the United States, Jörg Meyer stood near the Boston Common and watched a parade of uniformed World War II veterans wave to a cheering crowd.
It was as if a thunderbolt clapped Meyer, who lives in Roxbury's Mission Hill, on the head. In his native Germany, World War II meant shame and guilt, not parades and smiles. When his country's history came up, it was dark and horrifying. For Meyer, who was then 27, the parade jarred loose a long-held tension and launched the young photographer on a quest that culminates in a remarkable exhibition at the National Heritage Museum in Lexington.
``Journey Out of Darkness: American Heroes in Hitler's POW Camps" (on display through Jan. 7, 2007) consists of portraits of 19 men who were held prisoners of war in Europe during World War II. The photographs are larger than life, black and white, emotional and elegant. Paired with short, evocative biographies penned by writer Hal LaCroix of Belmont, the effect carries the emotional impact of a stone launched from a slingshot that has been gathering velocity for 60 years.
For Meyer and his subjects, the exhibit closes a difficult circle.
``For them, they recognized that they don't have anything to be ashamed about," Meyer said, referring to the survivor's guilt that has dogged many of the men through their long lives. ``For me, they sort of let me know that I don't have to be guilty about what my blood had done, that I have learned from that and I can go on."
The 19 former POWs Meyer photographed are in their 80s now. Their faces are lined, their eyes reflective. Insets show them as they were when they went off to war -- young and earnest, with thick hair and easy smiles, unaware of the calamity that lay before them.
Alongside, terse passages portray sharp slivers of their capture and internment. ``These aren't the stories of action heroes or escapes," said LaCroix, who, at 6 feet 6, towers over the men he interviewed. ``These are stories of patience and faith."
In the two years since Meyer started photographing the veterans, three have passed away. Ten made it to the exhibit's opening on June 1. Of the 100,000 POWs who returned from the war, only about 20,000 are still alive. And, as LaCroix writes, each survivor has his own story of abuse and starvation, dysentery and overwork. Many survived despite having lost half of their body weight.
``When we came home, we were told to be quiet, not to say anything," said Bob Noble of Quincy, who was taken prisoner about the time the Battle of the Bulge began. ``We were told to get on with our lives."
So, the men went to work or to school. Noble studied engineering at Boston College. Sam Palter, 83, of West Roxbury, found a job with the Postal Service. They raised families and built careers.
The POWs who were too badly broken hid themselves in alcohol or committed suicide, LaCroix said. For 35 years, they soldiered on, largely alone. Back then, they weren't the Greatest Generation, they were just guys getting by. For the POWs especially, survivor's guilt was a burden each shouldered alone.
But that began to change around 1980, when the Veterans Affairs Administration recognized the need to counsel soldiers returning from Vietnam, said Charlie Walsh, a social worker at the VA hospital in Jamaica Plain. There was a spill-over effect. For the first time, World War II vets began to form their own support groups.
In 1981, a group that included Palter and Noble began meeting with counselors in Jamaica Plain. ``At first, we talked a lot about our experiences," Palter said. ``But over the years, we talked about everything."
Meanwhile, through the late 1990s, Meyer was mastering both the craft of photography and conversational English. When he believed himself to be ready, he began to look for veterans. Eventually, he made contact with Palter and Noble and decided to focus his work on POWs.
Over the next two years, he went into the men's homes in Reading and Waltham, Brockton and Jamaica Plain, all over Greater Boston. He spoke with them about their experiences and took their pictures. During those conversations, Meyer would tell the men about his grandfather and the guilt that has dogged him his entire life.
Like most Germans of his generation, Meyer had been schooled in the horrors of his country's past. At 12, he visited Dachau, a concentration camp north of Munich. His high school curriculum was steeped in history lessons from World War II.
But, in his own family, that past was largely unspoken. Meyer's grandfather had volunteered to be an SS soldier, a member of the elite Nazi death squads that epitomized the terror of the regime. After the war, he was taken prisoner by the Soviets and incarcerated for seven years. When he returned, he was treated like a victim, Meyer said. His past was never discussed. Soon after Meyer was born, his grandfather committed suicide.
``My father never talked about it," Meyer said. ``So you wonder what has happened, how my grandfather was such a brutal man.
In that silence, Meyer said, he never fully came to terms with his family's role in the war. Even today, neither his brother nor his sister willingly discuss German history or their family's role in it. Meyer has not told his grandmother, who is 84, about his project. ``I don't think she could deal with it," he said.
Spending time with the veterans helped him put his pain into perspective.
``These aren't the kind of guys who come over and give you a hug and say everything is going to be all right," Meyer said. ``But, at the same time, they let me know that I'm not responsible. . . . I would drive home at night in tears.
The POWs have had different experiences. In their dotage, they have grown into icons, imbued by the culture with a nearly mythical moral stature. As their hair has whitened and hands have begun to shake, they have evolved into powerful unifying symbols, emblems of patriotism and valor in deeply polarized times.
But that mantle is not one with which all are comfortable, and the exhibit turns this dissonance to its advantage. ``War does terrible things," Meyer said. ``In the end, nobody is a victor."
Douglas Belkin can be reached at dbelkin@globe.com. 
