P.O.W. Experiment

Visitors to the prisoner-of-war camp at Compiegne, France, were pleasantly surprised. Instead of standing sullenly at attention as the visitors passed, the German prisoners doffed their hats respectfully. Some were sitting in groups on the hard clay ground, placidly listening to lectures on biology, tolerance, arithmetic, democracy, religion. Others were playing football.

Ranging in age from twelve to 17, the 7,000-odd Germans in this unusual P.O.W. camp were segregated from older prisoners last spring. Major William A. MacGrath, then commandant of the camp, saw it as an opportunity. While higher-ranking minds bumbled over plans to re-educate the enemy, he began an experiment in deNazification.

Almost all the teaching is done by 144 selected non-Nazis, supervised by Pfc. Francis Tourtillot, a former German teacher at the University of Wisconsin. Books are supplied by the Red Cross and inter national Y.M.C.A. Besides formal instruction and informal sports, the camp's re-education program includes election of jurors to the prisoners' own disciplinary court, a once-a-week walk outside the compound, and showings of Nazi atrocity films.

When the prisoners were asked to vote whether English should be a "must" course, two out of three voted yes. But the camp's officials are never too sure that prisoners are not just currying favor. In one written examination, 82% of the prisoners named Hitler as history's greatest tyrant; Nero, Napoleon and Hirohito were way behind. Says the present camp commander, Captain Alfred C. Johnson: "We can be sure only that our experiment in education is doing no harm."

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