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Transcription: [00:35:53]
{SPEAKER name="WERNER KARL DAHM"}
We didn't give that very much thought to it. We knew it was lost, but we did our work as required.

[00:36:07]
{SPEAKER name="MICHAEL NEUFELD"}
Did you give it much thought to going to the United States or anything like that?

{SPEAKER name="WERNER KARL DAHM"}
Not at that time.

[00:36:13]
{SPEAKER name="MICHAEL NEUFELD"}
So, and what happened then with the evacuation? Did you evacuate again from middle Germany or did you stay?

{SPEAKER name="WERNER KARL DAHM"}
Yes -

[00:36:23]
- about a week, at the most, after I came back from Peenemünde that second time - we were packed again into a train, some of us, and we were brought to Garmisch-Partenkirchen. Or rather, not Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Oberammergau.

[00:36:42]
And we were stationed there for a while, in, some say, must have been part of a Messerschmitt plant. Except it did not look to me like a plant.

[00:36:52]
{SPEAKER name="MICHAEL NEUFELD"}
Hmm, hmm. Yeah, I know there was a Messerschmitt plant, or they had started one.

{SPEAKER name="WERNER KARL DAHM"}
Yes, and I had friends in Ettal, so I went there for a while.

[00:37:04]
Until I heard that our people--

{SPEAKER name="MICHAEL NEUFELD"}
In where? Just for the record.

{SPEAKER name="WERNER KARL DAHM"}
Ettal - Ettal - It's a monastery -

[00:37:12]
- to the east, to the east of Oberammergau - [[cross]] - in the mountains.

{SPEAKER name="MICHAEL NEUFELD"}
How do you spell it?

{SPEAKER name="WERNER KARL DAHM"}
E T T A L

{SPEAKER name="MICHAEL NEUFELD"}
OK - Ettal

{SPEAKER name="WERNER KARL DAHM"}
Ettal.

[00:37:29]
Then I heard that our people were being shifted to some villages further north.

[00:37:37]
And, I went there. And a day or two later, the American front rolled through.

[00:37:47]
{SPEAKER name="MICHAEL NEUFELD"}
Yeah, so, that you had contact with them, with the US forces after they overran your--

{SPEAKER name="WERNER KARL DAHM"}
Yes.

{SPEAKER name="MICHAEL NEUFELD"}
-- your area where you were?

[00:37:57]
Which group did you stay with? Did you stay with Project Office people --

{SPEAKER name="WERNER KARL DAHM"}
Yes.

{SPEAKER name="MICHAEL NEUFELD"}
-- at that time? With Roth and so forth, did you all stick together? Or?

[00:38:06]
{SPEAKER name="WERNER KARL DAHM"}
Some of us were together. I don't know where Roth was. It was pretty mixed up [[laughter]] at that time.

{SPEAKER name="MICHAEL NEUFELD"}
Yes, it was confusing.

[00:38:16]
Did you, eh, in Bavaria did you sort of feel like you were just passing the time there, indefinitely?

{SPEAKER name="WERNER KARL DAHM"}
Yes. Just passing time.

[00:38:24]
{SPEAKER name="MICHAEL NEUFELD"}
Did you feel under any threat from the SS there? Or were you--?

{SPEAKER name="WERNER KARL DAHM"}
No.

[00:38:29]
{SPEAKER name="MICHAEL NEUFELD"}
You weren't exposed to them, at all really.

{SPEAKER name="WERNER KARL DAHM"}
No. I learned about this only later.

[00:38:35]
{SPEAKER name="MICHAEL NEUFELD"}
Hmm, hmm. Yeah, I think that probably only the people who had contact with Kammler's people --

{SPEAKER name="WERNER KARL DAHM"}
Yes, von Braun, and so on, knew about it. I would perhaps not have been caught, because I was absent. [[laughter]]

[00:38:51]
And we were not that closely guarded, because I could walk out, or walk to Ettal.

[00:39:02]
{SPEAKER name="MICHAEL NEUFELD"}
There was no real security there, there just wasn't any point in going anywhere else --

{SPEAKER name="WERNER KARL DAHM"}
Yes. It was preferable to stay with my group.

[00:39:11]
{SPEAKER name="MICHAEL NEUFELD"}
Hmm, hmm. Yeah. OK. Well, eh, I guess just to finish up, I just --

[00:39:19]
-- your statement -- you came to the States in -- [[cross]] - with one of the initial groups?

{SPEAKER name="WERNER KARL DAHM"}
In 1947.

[00:39:24]
{SPEAKER name="MICHAEL NEUFELD"}
You came with a later, with some of the later shipments of people?

{SPEAKER name="WERNER KARL DAHM"}
After we had been interned in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, we were released in August and taken to Frankfurt.

[00:39:38]
And from there, by train, bypass the French zone - because the French, we were informed, the French would capture us -

{SPEAKER name="MICHAEL NEUFELD"}
[[laughter]]

{SPEAKER name="WERNER KARL DAHM"}
- as prisoners of war. And I went home. Did some work and, in um --