german-pow

When my dad was living in an assisted living facility in Auburn, California, I heard through the grapevine that another World War II veteran lived right across the hall from him. Not unusual, there were a few WW2 vets living there. But this Vet was just a year younger than my dad at the time – Gerhard just turned 100 and my dad was about to turn 101.

One day, I spotted him sitting quietly in the lobby. I walked over to introduce myself and said, “Hi… I hear you are a World War II veteran.”

He looked up at me and replied without missing a beat: “Yes, I was one of the bad guys.”

That was how I met Gerhard G. Hennes—my dad’s across-the-hall neighbor.

Gerhard was born in Germany in 1922. During World War II, Gerhardt served as a first lieutenant and signal corps officer in the German Army (Wehrmacht). He fought in Poland, France, and eventually the North African Campaign. On May 13, 1943, when the final Axis forces surrendered in Tunisia, Gerhardt was taken prisoner by Allied forces and marched onto a ship bound for a prisoner-of-war camp in the United States.

Here is the part that still gives me chills when I think about the odds of history.

On May 10, 1943—just three days before Gerhard was captured—my dad landed in Casablanca, North Africa, with the 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment of the 82nd Airborne Division. My dad always talked about arriving on the docks in North Africa and watching lines of German prisoners being marched aboard transport ships just as he was stepping off one.

Eighty years later, two young men who had crossed paths on opposite sides of a war halfway around the world ended up living directly across the hall from each other at an assisted living facility in Auburn California.

As much as I wanted my dad to actually meet Gerhard, it never happened. At almost 101 years old, my dad was very feeble and had little desire to leave his room and converse with anyone new. I remember asking him, “Daddy, did you know there’s a World War II German soldier living across the hall from you?” He quietly replied that he had heard about it, and left it at that. I didn’t push the issue.

Sitting in the lobby in Auburn, I had the privilege of talking with Gerhard myself and hearing his story firsthand. Although he was showing signs of dementia, his memories of the distant past remained vivid. He never hid from his history or made excuses for it. After his capture in 1943, he was sent to the United States and spent two years interned at Camp Crossville in Tennessee, a high-security camp for German officers. Like many prisoners there, his worldview was shattered in the spring of 1945 when U.S. authorities showed them film footage of the Nazi concentration camps.

After the war ended and he returned to Europe, Gerhard dedicated his life to making amends of the horrible deeds of Hitler and his regime. He spent years working with Church World Service to help refugees and rebuild war-torn communities. Eventually, he emigrated to the United States in 1953, became a U.S. citizen, and wrote books about his experiences—including The Barbed Wire: POW in the U.S.A. and his 2008 memoir, Under the Crooked Cross, which explores the tragedy of Hitler’s regime and the possibility of redemption and reconciliation.

During one of our visits in the lobby, he generously signed a copy of Under the Crooked Cross for me.

Gerhard passed away in Auburn in April 2023 at the remarkable age of 101. When I went looking online later on, I was surprised to find that no public obituary had ever been published for him. For a man who lived through so much history, wrote books, spoke to students, and spent decades working for peace, it felt strange that his passing went largely unrecorded. I was able to find his death record on Ancestry.com.

So, in the spirit of keeping proof of life and remembering the extraordinary people whose paths cross ours, I wanted to share his story here. History isn’t just dates in a textbook—sometimes it’s two centenarians from opposite sides of a world war living right across the hall from one another in California, eighty years after passing each other on the docks of North Africa.