[国际新闻] 【历史现场】1142邮箱：改造纳粹学者的美国集中营

在美国华盛顿南部18公里有一个国家公园，这里有美国开国总统乔治·华盛顿的府邸，但是六十年前这里有一个很大的集中营——福特亨特，代号是 1142邮箱。从1942年至1946年间，美国军人在福特亨特营地里对关在这里的德国军官和科学家进行审讯，从他们那里获取情报，特别是有关纳粹德国科技发展状况的情报，包括原子弹研发的机密。! W$ ]# P1 D) u
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　　在第二次世界大战期间，从华盛顿机场开来的一辆辆无窗军用货车几乎每天夜里穿过森林驶向芒特弗农。到达营地后，有人从车上下来。是一些德国俘虏：潜艇艇长、非洲军团军官或科学家……在1942年至1946年间，近3400名犯人被关押在福特亨特。
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　　当年参与执行秘密任务的实习工程师弗雷德里克·米歇尔是少数知道内情的人之一。弗雷德里克曾经是审讯者，他和后来的妻子露西尔是在快餐馆里相识。漂亮的女友当时是餐馆的女招待，常常问他兵营的名称，弗雷德里克却只能作出让人不知所云的回答：“1142邮箱”。

　　1142邮箱是福特亨特的代码。
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　　参与执行秘密任务的年轻的士兵大多数人来自上世纪三十年代的德国犹太移民，因为会德语和受过高等教育而被招募到东海岸兵营，他们在黎明时分被叫醒，被粗暴地命令上车。弗雷德里克·米歇尔和他的同伴乔治·曼德尔一样，以为要去欧洲。
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　　然而，汽车却驶入弗吉尼亚州森林。很快就到了福特亨特林中空地附近。这个地方很有名：这是乔治·华盛顿从前的府邸，1933年被改建为国家公园。这里已被改成军事营地，周边围有铁丝网，还有高高的观察哨所。一排排木板搭成的营房。甚至还有几个看上去不错的楼阁。他们的任务是监视和审讯俘虏。# {( R$ Q- l, G& S2 T+ A; ?
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　　福特亨特的另一名老兵鲁迪·平斯讲述说：“这里简直就成了科学院。在我原来的兵营里，我的硕士学位让我觉得自己就是优等生。而到了这里，我成了农村来的傻瓜，身边都是数学和各学科的博士！” 7 \( y. x$ y  M- P# J4 `
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　　在福特亨特那种只有当事人在场的情况下，骗取他人秘密进展得十分顺利。间谍工作也同样顺利，甚至将假冒犯人安插到俘虏当中。为了掌握谈话的一切内容，房间都装上了窃听器。 ; X5 e1 D; x' b" }
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年轻士兵在工作中掌握了审讯技巧，他们在与刻板的纳粹军官面对面谈话时也学会了即兴发挥。例如，他们知道，这些德国军官在国内被准许去妓院，都有和他们接触过的妓女给的纪念卡，而他们常常会把这样的卡片遗忘在军装里。只要问他们一句“没有乌尔苏拉（妓女的名字）的消息吗？”，就可看到态度生硬的上尉们一下子就失去了常态，然后任由自己说出一些秘密。
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　　福特亨特的俘虏有权享受最好的待遇，但必须承诺永远不透露任何消息。战争越是临近结束，大家越是有话可说，特别是在1944年6月的诺曼底登陆之后，福特亨特很快就被情报压得透不过气来了。因为在新来的犯人中有正在没落中的纳粹帝国的大学者和科学精英。

　　乔治·曼德尔回忆说：“我们后来发现，我们就是孩子、新手，尽管有文凭，却无法理解我们所听到的事情的意义。但是，通过审讯，我们学到了不少东西，最终明白，我们险些战败”。9 u7 A$ |  S/ q

　　为了证实这一点，这位知名学者拿了一个厚厚的棕色本子，这是一个小词典，上面有在弗雷德里克·米歇尔的帮助下从一些犯人那里搜集到的技术词汇。微波、红外线、雷管、喷气式发动机……几乎所有的概念当时在盟国都没有相对应的词。即便是曼德尔这个已在物理课上学过核知识的人，都承认对德国科学家说的话一点儿都不明白，只能把他们说的翻译给前来参加审讯的五角大楼官员。他只是在广岛原子弹爆炸后，才知道自己无疑参加了曼哈顿计划（美国核计划）重要人物会议，与会者还有来自纳粹技术中心佩讷明德试验室的学者。

　　他们的领头人叫韦恩赫尔·冯·布劳恩，他是德国V2火箭之父，后来成为美国阿波罗计划的老板。乔治·曼德尔承认：“这个人在吹嘘喷气式发动机的优势时很能打动人。不过，我当时被他的傲慢惹怒了，他在面对他的导弹给英国造成的毁灭时没有表现出丝毫的内疚”。人在德国社区5 {3 l* N" I. {

　　盟军1945年5月攻占柏林，纳粹德国崩溃，二战接近尾声了。但1142邮箱并没有停止运作，反而更忙碌了。因为苏联也很想网罗纳粹德国的学者。为了让那些不肯透露情报的人开口，1142邮箱的审讯者想尽了招术，弗雷德里克·米歇尔回忆说：“我们向他们宣布，我们的苏联同志想要得到他们的胳膊和大脑来重建受到伤害的国家。而且有一架飞机正在等他们”。rs238848.rs.hosteurope.de7 b% Y1 J: R5 L8 N- \# M1 _

　　当年在1142邮箱执行任务的那些老兵们后来恢复了正常的生活，只是被要求保守秘密，他们从1946年起大多被中央情报局所雇用，却相互间从未见面，把沉默当成他们这一伙如鬼魂般的人的标志。那个时候，为了确保他们守口如瓶，美军参谋部在任何表现面前都不让步。
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　　如今的福特亨特什么都没有了，剩下的只是干净的草地。国家公园的雇员布兰登·比斯说：“这里再也没有1142邮箱的痕迹了。出于保守秘密的需要，推土机1946年11月摧毁了一切”。

WWII secret interrogators break their silence3 q  P% d; s0 w% q) W" h
Fort Hunt veterans questioned Nazi scientists, U-boat crews
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For more than 60 years, they kept their military secrets locked deep inside and lived quiet lives as account executives, college professors, business consultants and the like.rs238848.rs.hosteurope.de. v" T7 F, z. ^( Y; W) v8 M" D
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The brotherhood of P.O. Box 1142 enjoyed no homecoming parades, no VFW reunions, no embroidered ball caps and no regaling of wartime stories to grandchildren sitting on their knees.

Almost no one, not even their wives, in many cases, knew the place in history held by the men of Fort Hunt, alluded to during World War II only by a mailing address that was its code name.rs238848.rs.hosteurope.de2 w: v  |( t1 ^/ T! t4 O

But the declassification of thousands of military documents and the dogged persistence of Brandon Bies, a bookish park ranger determined to record this furtive piece of history, is bringing the men of P.O. Box 1142 out of the shadows.rs238848.rs.hosteurope.de7 f* K  y9 [8 k1 Q

One by one, some of the surviving 100 or so military intelligence interrogators who questioned Third Reich scientists, submariners and soldiers at one of the United States's most secretive prisoner camps are, in the twilight of their lives, spilling tales they had dared not whisper before.
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• More national coverage
"It's good. Very good to talk about all this, at last," Fred Michel said last week, steadying himself on his cane as he looked over the rolling, green land along the Potomac River in Fairfax County that once was home to prison cells and interrogation rooms embedded with hidden microphones.
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Michel, 85, slowly lowered himself onto a picnic table bench next to his old friend, H. George Mandel, 82. Although they have lived just a few miles apart for most of six decades, they had not spoken since their discharge Dec. 13, 1945. So hush-hush was their work for P.O. Box 1142 that the men recruited for it were ordered to never mention it. To this day, some have refused to speak to the park ranger gathering their oral histories, believing that the oath they took more than 60 years ago can never be broken.人在德国社区7 S2 g5 M) i3 w
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For others, the taboo has eroded as documents have been declassified in waves, starting in 1977 and continuing into the 1990s. Nevertheless, many of the activities of P.O. Box 1142 remain shrouded in mystery.& U' }( \% G0 }0 v1 v& ^" F6 Q! N
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German scientists targeted
According to a history cobbled together by the National Park Service, the unit was conceived as an Army/Navy installation to gather information from prisoners who had been captured or surrendered and were brought to the United States for questioning. Germany had superior technology, particularly in rocketry and submarines, and the information that was gleaned from interrogations gave the United States an advantage going into the Cold War and the space age.& q/ d5 h- \; z4 W! v
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In the beginning, the prisoners were mostly U-boat crew members who had survived the sinking of their submarines in the Atlantic Ocean. As the war progressed, P.O. Box 1142 shifted its attention to some of the most prominent scientists in Germany, many of whom surrendered and gave up information willingly, hoping to be allowed to stay in the United States.rs238848.rs.hosteurope.de2 i4 {1 ^! h$ J$ q$ j
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The prisoners stayed at Fort Hunt for as little as two or three weeks and as long as nine months. They were held incommunicado; when they had told everything they knew, they were transferred to regular POW camps elsewhere in the United States, and the Red Cross was then notified of their capture. After the war, some returned to Germany, and some stayed in the United States, slipping into the fabric of American life.  Q! _1 q8 B" P8 n1 A1 `8 @

Michel and Mandel were German Jews who had immigrated to the United States before the war and were recruited to the unit. They and other interrogators said they obtained information about discoveries in microwaves, atomic and molecular studies, jets used in German planes and submarine technology, including a snorkel that allowed U-boats to stay underwater for long stretches. All they learned was put into top-secret reports that went straight to the Pentagon.
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But at night, Michel and Mandel maintained an air of mystery with the dance-card girls, snapping back the reply of "P.O. Box 1142, ma'am" when asked where they were stationed, they recalled.rs238848.rs.hosteurope.de- A4 h; h& v. @

Further explanation was forbidden. The more than 3,400 prisoners who stayed there were off the books, too, partly because operations at Fort Hunt were "not exactly legal" according to the Geneva Conventions, the National Park Service said.rs238848.rs.hosteurope.de$ u& |. v* W8 \' D" g
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When it all ended, Michel and Mandel went their separate ways, kept apart by the code of silence. They raised families and had long careers, Mandel as a chemist in Bethesda, Michel as a mechanical engineer in Alexandria.! P: h" z7 o+ I- N( ?4 s

They met again last week at a Fort Hunt they barely recognized. A family reunion was underway nearby, and a moonbounce wiggled under the weight of children as Beach Boy tunes wafted in the air. It was a far cry from their recollections of roaring Jeeps, the German prisoners and high-ranking officers storming by.

They revisited the place of cloaked memories because Bies had found them.6 B3 }( K% L2 ~' w( a4 T3 N

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Bies, 27, is a cultural resource specialist with the National Park Service, schooled in archaeology and obsessed with military history. The wide-brimmed Smokey Bear hat and crisp uniform of the park service suit him all right, but he is more comfortable in piles of documents in a National Archives research room than in the hills of Virginia., F- N: N& Q5 ?( D" z! ?# l. V% f

He was working on a series of signs that the park service was planning to place throughout Fort Hunt. They would detail the fort's transformation from a picnic area in 1942 into a major military installation with more than 100 buildings, guard towers and a tangle of electric fences.rs238848.rs.hosteurope.de3 n" F1 T5 C, h; p
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Bies hopes to create a full archive of oral histories recorded from the interrogators. He envisions a visitors center that would display the stories, declassified reports and photos he has found. He even imagines installing World War II-era speakers like the ones that were planted in prison cells, piping in German conversations that intelligence officers translated and picked apart.5 q" S2 O, @3 o- W& v& V
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Then, early this year, a woman on a guided tour of Fort Hunt told a park ranger she thought that her neighbor used to work at Fort Hunt, which today is a park managed by the George Washington Memorial Parkway. The ranger passed Michel's name on to Bies, jump-starting a race against time and old age to find the veterans and record their histories.

"A lot them, unfortunately, have passed away," Bies said. "They're very frail, and this is really the last chance that many of them get to tell their stories. One of them even died since we interviewed him."
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He and other Park Service rangers have sifted through reams of documents in the National Archives and have come up with a few names. Almost all of the interrogators were Jewish immigrants from Germany; some lost entire families in the Holocaust. They were recruited to P.O. Box 1142 for their language skills and, in the cases of Michel and Mandel, their scientific background. But the full rosters were kept secret, and many of the declassified documents are missing.rs238848.rs.hosteurope.de0 }3 Y+ g# S$ X, I- ~
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Bies tracked down Michel in Kentucky, where he had moved from Alexandria to be near his family because of his failing health. The former interrogator, who had immigrated from Landau, Germany, before the war, was overjoyed to talk about his time at P.O. Box 1142.8 u2 }5 i* F# a1 v$ |" ~
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They spent hours talking about Nazi scientists who told Michel about microwave technology, U-boat engineering and other marvels that the young mechanical engineer coaxed out of them.) z' z% b/ W) Q. T0 L! \- D. |8 b

Michel also told Bies about his bunkmate, Mandel. One quick Google search turned up Mandel's smiling face. "He was right there, near us all along, teaching at George Washington University," Bies said of Mandel, who had immigrated from Berlin in 1937.

Run-in with former prisoner2 A8 F( U0 s* m9 ~8 ^+ V3 L& |: H1 o
Mandel had kept his own family in the dark about his wartime exploits.rs238848.rs.hosteurope.de' e0 t- d8 i0 d  m! x: E
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"I know my family wondered where the hell I was," he said. "I told them I was speaking to scientists, or something like that. They didn't know I was interrogating Nazis."

His past revisited him once, at a scientific conference in Paris. In passing, he locked eyes with another scientist, a man he had interrogated in a cramped cell years ago.rs238848.rs.hosteurope.de, m# O8 h, ^* r, ^& n/ x( e, |9 y

"He looked at me, and I heard him say to someone in German: 'That was my prison warden,' " Mandel said. The two men shook hands. The exchange was respectful and friendly, he said.  `/ }$ z" I7 U

Not everyone at Fort Hunt was an interrogator. Some, such as Wayne Spivey, 86, of Marietta, Ga., were brought in to manage the massive flow of information that interrogators such as Michel and Mandel were getting.3 ^" T, c4 k& E6 t" w; m# B
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"My mouth was always dropping open when we heard them talking and when we saw the information they got and the sketches of atoms and molecules and whatnot," Spivey said. "I was just one of three Southern boys there, walking around hearing German and Russian and Japanese."
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So far, Bies has contacted about 15 veterans, and he tries to rush to their sides to capture their fading memories.
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Bies hopes to stage a large reunion next year, with all of the veterans he can find. Then they can stand on the green fields of Fort Hunt, shake hands and embrace, as Michel and Mandel did last week and, at long last, talk.; ?( t; ^( m/ w
© 2007 The Washington Post Company

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