Matthew Zigmund Ziemak 

April 20, 1924 - June 30, 2016

Reaching out to his Fellow POWs

In the July 2000 edition of the Ex-POW Bulletin, Matthew wrote:

"I would like to hear from any of the 20 ex-POWs from VIIA who were sent to work in the small village of Nussdorf am Inn in March-April 1945.  Several names are:  Dwayne, 45th Div; Cy, 101st Airborne; Bob, from Massachusetts; Carl, from Chicago.  We were liberated on May 2nd by the 12th Armored Div. We followed a gasoline truck convoy to Garmisch [Garmisch-Partenkirchen].  From there I was taken to hospital."[1]

Matthew was only able to locate and communicate with one of his fellow POWs, Aubrey Temples. They carried on an email correspondence in early 2001, and sadly were unable to locate other surviving Nussdorf POWs.

It took the author of this study several months of newspaper and Ancestry.com searches to figure out that “Dwayne” is Dwane Hunt, “Cy” is Clyde Dale Vineyard, “Bob from Massachusetts” is Bob Kenney, but “Carl, from Chicago” remains a mystery. Four of the POWs hailed from Chicago; none were named Carl. Perhaps Carl was a nickname.

Interview with Alice Ziemak and Julia Ziemak-Hilger

Matthew’s wife, Alice, and daughter, Julia, graciously consented to a sit-down at their home in New Jersey. The interview [2] revealed that Matthew was a hard working, quiet, family man of deep faith.

His parents [3] immigrated to the US from Poland and he was born an raised in a Philadelphia neighborhood where most people were of Polish heritage. Consequently, Matthew spoke Polish fairly well.

When he entered the US Army in August, 1943, he was trained as a light machine gunner [4] before arriving in Wales in May, 1944. In the lead up to the Allied invasion of Normandy, Matt was  assigned to US Army 83rd Division, 331st Battalion, and trained in Southern England.

In mid-July 1944, his unit was near the Taute River in France. Their mission was to relieve the 3rd Battalion which had been cut off by a German counterattack. Unfortunately, his unit got trapped behind enemy lines, encircled, and was captured by the Waffen-SS.

They were forced to march deep into occupied France. Eventually they were loaded into trucks which took them to the railway hub in Paris, where they boarded unmarked boxcars. The railway journey to Stalag 7A, Moosburg, took ten days, and arrived on 15 September, 1944.

Matt’s imprisonment at Moosburg was horrendous. He was starving, and the winter of 1944-45 was the coldest he’d ever experienced. By December, he was assigned to daywork squads outside the camp in the city of Munich. They cleaned up the rubble caused by American bombing of Munich.

Then, on March 16, 1945, he and a bunch of other American soldiers from Stalag 7-A were sent by train to southern Bavaria. He was happy to leave Moosburg and was surprised by the unusual nature of the small POW camp in Nussdorf am Inn. The building had no windows, the prisoners wore their own uniforms but their backpacks were taken and stored in another place, and only one regular guard who they dubbed "Cherry Nose" due to “a facial wound he had received fighting on the Russian front”.

Matt described “Cherry Nose” to his family as “A harmless, likeable man”, and recalled that he “carried a rifle that everyone knew was unloaded”. After the strictness of Mossburg, it a welcome reprieve that the guard “came only once or twice a day to check on the men". 

Each soldier was assigned to a local farm by Herr Martin Auer, the the Mayor of Nussdorf. Matt recalled that, “Sometimes they worked in pairs around town, doing clean up, minor road work, moving furniture, mixing cement, etc." At those times he encountered other Nussdorfers, who he described to his family as “kind and generous people.”

For example, he told his family about a bakery in Nussdorf and the nice family that lived and ran it. He never mentioned the name of this family or the bakery. [5] Matt also fondly talked about “a boy who spoke English well”, who “lived in or close to the bakery” and “an artist who spoke English quite well, too and lived with his little boy”. [6]

Fellow POW, Aubrey Temples, also mentioned "a German boy who spoke fluent English",  who had been "born in America" and "lived on the third floor above the bakery in Nussdorf". He couldn't recall who owned the bakery, but based on phone and address books from the 1930s and 40s, it may have been Gallus Huber. An even stronger candidate is the three story home currently owned  by the Herbert Stangl family, which has a bakery on the ground floor (Mühlenbäckerei Stangl). This This building was owned by the Schneider family who had a restaurant and guest house directly next door. The baker was Johann “Hans” Schneider, whose father was proprietor in those days of what is known as "Schneiderwirt" today.

This boy was William "Willi" Knippschild (pictured, below, as an adult). His family had moved to the United States from Germany in the post-WWI era.  Willi  was born in Philadelphia, but his family moved back to Germany after his father, Wilhelm, inherited a substantial estate. 

The Knippschilds had family and friends in Nussdorf am Inn, and Willi was sent there when American and British bombing of civilian/residential Germany became regular in 1944.

Willi lived on the third floor of the bakery, with a bunch of other children who also had been sent to Nussdorf to escape the horrors of carpet bombing.  

His father died fighting in Holland. His mother was killed on her way to join Willi in Nussdorf when the civilian train she was aboard was hit by Allied bombers.

Since Willi was a natural born US citizen he was granted the right to return to the US in 1948, when he was 17 years old. In America he made a new life and was known as "William" and "Bill". The picture of Bill (at left) is the last one taken prior to his passing.  

Bill's memoirs, Footprints in the Sand (2016), are interesting, insightful, and informative.  

The author of this work had the privilege of interviewing Bill. He had fond recollections of the American POWs in Nussdorf, particularly "Tex" (Aubrey Temples) and "the friendly guy from New Jersey whose last name started with a Z" and who "often bragged to me about his pretty girlfriend" and, "of course, American sports." There's no doubt that this "friendly guy" was Matt Ziemak. [bk]

The little boy who lived with the artist is living near Bordeaux, France, today. His name is Adrian Neven du Mont.  Like his father, Adrian is an artist and has lived quite an interesting life. Unfortunately, he recently had a minor stroke which has slowed him down a bit.

Adrian shared some recollections of the US POWs in Nussdorf at the end of the war with the author of this work by way of Facebook messenger. [n] Since he was a little boy at the time, he only has vague memories of the 20 POWs.  He interacted with all of them but two, "Tex" and "Matt", stand out because they had daily conversations with his father, C.A. Neven du Mont.  Adrian's father was proficient in English and found endless amusement in the linguistic interplay of the "Texas twang" ,"Jersey accent", and "Oxford English". 

Matt sometimes "ate at a restaurant where the food was sparse and plain, but certainly much better than at the Stalag." He never mentioned the name of this restaurant to his family.  

Because of Matt’s Polish heritage, he struck up a friendship with a fellow whose family lived in the nearby village of Milbing and ran a construction business. [7] Due to this connection, Matt was assigned to Mayor Martin Auer’s [8] farm. The mayor and his family treated Matthew very well, like family. He regularly ate lunch and dinner with them.

Matt recalled that his Polish friend’s name was “Waltzi or something like that”. He said, “Everyone called him Walter” and that Walter lived with 6 or 7 other French and Polish laborers in a small building attached to the mayor’s property.[9]

According to Anneliese Wagner (neé Auer), who lived in Mayor Auer residence as a little girl, Walter’s last name was Watzlowik, and the mayor’s family called him “Wazi”. [10]

Though Matt never mentioned their names to his family, he did recall that Mayor Auer had daughters and that another family lived in the mayor’s house also had small children.

Of course, the most precious memory Matt had of his time as a POW was the day of his liberation [11] by elements of the 12th Armored Division. The freed American soldiers “commandeered several small cars” in Nussdorf and Brannenburg and “followed a gasoline truck convoy to a large MP outfit in Garmisch”.

At Garmisch a doctor diagnosed Matthew with seriously infected leg wounds. Though he had been treated in Moosburg and in Nussdorf, the Germans didn’t have penicillin, so his wound would get better for while only for the infection to return again—worse than before. Matthew was placed on a gurney and taken aboard a hospital train. It took a few days to get to the Army Field Hospital in Dieppe, France, where he was given 24 doses of Penicillin over many days. This treatment came in the nick of time as those who treated him said the penicillin probably saved his leg from amputation.

He returned to the US unannounced, so his family was taken by surprise. Of course, the first thing he did was find the girl he loved and wanted to marry—Alice Mientus (pictured, below).

Alice said “yes” and it wasn’t long before he started filling up their loving home with children: two sons and three daughters. He went on to earn a degree in mechanical engineering at Villanova University.

 For his service in the US Army, Matthew was awarded the Combat Infantry Badge, the Bronze Star, the Purple Heart, and the POW Medal.

“After his battle with dementia and 91 years of hard work, colon and bladder cancer, parenting and a remarkable military record, Matthew passed away peacefully in his home, with his family by his side.

Matthew Zigmund Ziemak was given his final and most valuable medal of honor Thursday, June 30, 2016, when the Lord brought Matthew home to paradise.” [12]

[1] "Looking For" Section in Ex-POW Bulletin: American Ex-Prisoners of War, Vol. 57, No. 7, (July 2000) www.axpow.org

[2] Peter David Orr’s Interview, re: Matthew Z. Ziemak, of wife Alice and daughter Julia Ziemak-Hilger at their home in New Jersey on Saturday, August 6, 2022, (1:00-3:00 PM).

[3] Kornelia and Frank Ziemak.

[4] His initial assignment was the 63rd Infantry Division.

[5] The bakery was part of Gasthaus Schneiderwirt. 

[6] Boy = Bill “Willi” Knippschild; Artist = C.A. Neven Du Mont and his son Adrian Neven Du Mont lived next door.

[bk] According to the passenger manifest of the USS Marine Flasher, William Knippschild (then 17 years old) sailed from Bremen, Allied Occupied Germany, to NYC, arriving March 3, 1948. US National Archives, Microfilm Serial: T715, 1897-1957; Microfilm Roll: Roll 7555; Line: 13; Page Number: 198.  

[n] FB messenger correspondence of July 11, 17 & 19, 2024, between Peter David Orr and Adrian Neven du Mont.

[7] The Martin Watzlowik family lived in Milbing Hs. Nr. 4 1/2, which is just southwest of Brannenburg and Degerndorf. Telephone books and address books of the era show that the family lived there from the early 1930’s, so, Walter was not a Polish laborer in the sense that he was a POW from the war in Poland. The Watzlowik family was of Polish heritage, but they lived in Germany. Walter lived on the Auer farm rather than walking an hour in each direction from Milbing to Nussdorf every day.

[8] Matt did not remember the mayor’s last name, but the mayor at that time was Martin Auer.

[9] Matt Ziemak email to Aubrey Temples of Feb 6, 2001.

[10] Interview on 15.04.2024, D - 83131 Nußdorf am Inn with Anneliese Wagner by Michaela Firmkäs.

[11] May 2, 1945.

[12] Matthew Ziegmund Ziemak Obituary in the Burlington County Times: July 3, 2016.