German POWs in Oregon Thought They’d Been Sent to Heaven

On September 12th, 1944, Sergeant Josef Weber stepped off a train in Oregon expecting brutality. He was a German prisoner of war, captured in Tunisia, shipped across the Atlantic on a Liberty Ship. For six weeks, he'd been certain the Allies would execute him.
Instead, he got roast beef.

Three meals a day. Clean mattresses. Guards who didn't shout. And apple pie from a farmer who spoke German and offered him a job after the war.

Weber had grown up under Nazi propaganda that told him America was weak, decadent, destroyed by its own freedoms. But working in the pear orchards of the Rogue Valley, he saw something that changed everything: a country so powerful it could brutalize its enemies, choosing instead to feed them, pay them, and prepare them for productive lives.

When Germany surrendered in May 1945, American officers expected suicides in the camp. Instead, the German prisoners stood in silence. They had already learned what their own propaganda had hidden from them.

This is the story of a man who thought he'd been sent to heaven, only to discover it was something better - a place you could build while still alive. The story of an enemy soldier who learned what democracy meant by living under it as a prisoner, and who chose to return to the country that treated him better as an enemy than his own nation had treated him as a citizen.

Josef Weber came to America in chains. He stayed by choice. And what he built in Oregon lasted fifty years - just like the concrete garage he constructed as a prisoner in 1944, which is still standing today.

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⚠️ Note: This narrative is based on historical events and archival sources. Some details have been dramatized for storytelling. For academic research, consult professional historical archives.

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