(22 Oct 2024)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Pragser Wildsee, Italy – 17 October 2024
1. Drone shot of Pragser Wildsee hotel and lake ++MUTE++
2. SOUNDBITE (German) Carl Goerdeler, son of hostage:
++SOUNDBITE STARTS ON PREVIOUS SHOT AND IS OVERLAID BY SHOT3-4++
“My parents did tell me these things. When my mother died in 1993 all the family sat at a round table to recall what had happened in the past. Everyone explained what they experienced, on how they got here. Caroline’s (Heiss) grandmother told them they could come here and feel free at home until the Americans came and the next step would be decided.”
3. Pragser Wildsee hotel
4. Boats with tourists on Prags lake
5. Tilt down of pamphlet about conference concerning prisoners taken to Pragser Wildsee hotel in 1945
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Pragser Wildsee, Italy – 17 October 2024
6. SOUNDBITE (English) Caroline Heiss, owner of Pragser Wildsee hotel:
++SOUNDBITE IS OVERLAID BY SHOT 7-8++
“I have still something written from my grandmother and she said of course when the Americans came they had luxury, they had food, they had things to wear, they had showers, they installed showers on the frozen lake with heating, they could have their first shower, they could actually see a film here in the hotel called ‘America’."
7. Zoom of front page of “Stars and Stripes”, a U.S. military newspaper, dated Tuesday, May 8th, 1945 with the headline announcing the liberation of the hostages held at Pragser Wildsee hotel
8. Drone shot of lake and church ++MUTE++
STORYLINE:
An idyllic spot, nestled in a valley in the Italian Dolomites.
But this beautiful location was once a place of sanctuary and freedom.
In a little-known chapter in the waning hours of WWII, the Pragser Wildsee hotel on the edge of the lake welcomed Nazi prisoners.
One hundred and thirty-nine in total were rescued from what Hitler’s hierarchy viewed as a last stand in the conflict.
The hostages included the former chancellor of Austria, Kurt von Schuschnigg, the former prime minister of France, Leon Blum, British high-ranking army officers, important German industrialists and the family of the German nobleman, Claus von Stauffenberg, who tried to kill Hitler by planting a bomb hidden in the dictator’s headquarters in East Prussia.
Relatives of the survivors, WWII historians and Germans anxious to remind the world that there was a German resistance, have come to the Pragser Wildsee hotel for a conference on this period of history.
Carl Goerdeler’s mother was among the captives.
“My parents did tell me these things. When my mother died in 1993 all the family sat at a round table to recall what had happened in the past. Everyone explained what they experienced, on how they got here. Caroline’s (Heiss) grandmother told them they could come here and feel free at home until the American’s came and the next step would be decided,” he says.
The Nazis intended to use the hostages from 17 European countries as bartering tools to obtain free passage after the war.
But the combination of American troops, pliant German soldiers and a courageous hotel owner led to their liberation.
Many of the hostages had spent years in Buchenwald and other concentration camps before, in the spring of 1945, the SS military wing of the Nazi party put them on buses and drove them to South Tyrol in Italy.
As the buses arrived, however, regular army troops apparently not wanting to end up as criminals of war wrested the hostages from the SS and took them to the hotel, whose owner agreed to put them up at risk to her own life.
Find out more about AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/HowWeWork
Twitter: https://twitter.com/AP_Archive
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/APArchives
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/APNews/
You can license this story through AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/metadata/youtube/3bbeba49df0a45568e34c102f4fac17f
Author: AP Archive
Go to Source
News post in October 27, 2024, 3:04 am.
Visit Our Sponsor’s:
News Post In – News
