True War Stories

Mystery Man of Stalag XVII-B

By E.D McKenzie

        Author of  Boys at War, Men at Peace,  and past Historian of Stalag XVII-B Association.

 Forward By Roy Livingstone, Editor. 
   Having escaped from the Gestapo, he masqueraded as a captured American airman for many months in a German prison Camp. After a time, some German guards were becoming suspicious. Then some American prisoners believed that he might be a German spy.  He was trapped in the middle. Either way, it could mean his death. Only one man knew his deadly secret, Sergeant Kurtenbach, the American camp leader, and he was sworn to secrecy. 

Harry Vosic, Mystery Man of Stalag XVII-B

    To both the Germans and the Americans he was a U.S. Air Corps Staff Sergeant, serial number 11305709. He had convinced the Germans and Americans both that he was a shot-down B-17 crewman. Only Camp Leader, K. J. Kurtenbach, knew that he was not. When the flyers were moved from Moosberg to the flea-ridden barracks of a Russian labor camp in Austria, labeled Stalag XVII-B, Harry Vozic approached Sergeant Kurt Kurtenbach to tell him about his particular skills and how he might be useful some day. Kurt would remember the abilities with languages that Vozic exhibited, also the claim of medical experience. He might, indeed have need of both.

    No one would know his real name while he was a war prisoner. Only after he was back in allied hands was the name Reuben Rabinovitch revealed. He was a Canadian in France for studies in neuro-surgery when tile Nazis marched in. Being from an enemy country and a Jew he was sent to jail.  A year later Dr. Rabinovitch faked a disabling back injury and was certified to be permanently crippled. Upon release he quickly moved his wife and two young sons into hiding in southern France, then began an active role with an underground group, taking great risks while helping downed Allied airmen to avoid capture.

    The Gestapo picked up Rabinovitch and the American flyers with him, and he decided it best to become one of them. Like the others he provided the Germans with only name, rank and serial number. Thus. Harry Vozic was created. He never would be closer to facing a firing squad or to the slower but certain death at Dachau or Buchenwald.

    After surviving the Dulag Luft interrogation he was shipped off to Stalag 7-A at Moosberg. There   he learned that the Americans had elected Sgt. Kurtenbach their leader, and that they seemed to   have a solid faith in him. He decided to level with him, confessing to being an imposter, but also producing two POWs who verified he was with them when captured by Germans.

    I need help to evade the Gestapo, he told Kurt. They are looking for me.
___________ 

    During and after the move to Austria by crowded boxcars, the dire need for medical help became obvious. Harry Vozic was put to work right away helping to sanitize the crude and flea-ridden barracks where Russian laborers had lived. With his advice and willing hands of all the men, an outbreak of disease amongst the Americans was avoided. Later, Kurt assigned Vozic to the infirmary not only to utilize his abilities there,  but to reduce the risk of his exposure out in the barracks where doubts had already risen about his identity. American prisoners were always alert for German informers that might be placed amongst them.

    In spite of occasional lapses when he taunted guards or played practical jokes on his new found friends, he reigned in relative safety as Sgt. Harry Vozic,  shot-down  American airman.

    However, by March 1944, both Kurt and Vozic sensed growing suspicions amongst the  POWs and some of the German staff  about this  "older man with language skills and medical knowledge”.  In top secrecy Harry laid plans to bring about a repeat performance of a near death condition. Kurt told him of a German plan for medical evaluations of badly wounded and the gravely ill, to prepare for a prisoner exchange. As time passed, even Sgt. Kurtenbach became convinced that Vozic was actually dying, perhaps influenced by an x-ray bearing his name but which had been stolen from the file of a man who had died of pneumonia.

    In August after a performance for the reviewing doctors that Hollywood would have envied, Harry Vozic was carried down to Krems  with seventy other totally incapacitated men. Kurt was allowed to go to the station to see them off to a port where they would  board a Swedish hospital ship bound for England. Records show that while on the S. S. Grip should all on board were awarded the Purple Heart, S/Sgt. Harry Vozic among them.

    Unlike the others, however, while docked at Liverpool Harry Vozic was subjected to lengthy questioning then was taken off the ship. It was observed that he was escorted to a waiting black limousine and taken away. It was later revealed lie was driven to allied headquarters where an old acquaintance wanted to see him. Long after, when Kurt heard about this he said, Harry told me that he had friends in high places, but my God Ike himself?    With a special pass, Vozic was given transportation into southern France to find his wife and two sons and to take back the identity of Dr. Reuben Rabinovitch. A third son, Albert, was born after the war.  Now, half a century later it is Dr. Albert Rabinovitch, son of Harry Vozic who attends Stalag XVII-B reunions to talk with those who knew his father.

    Some time after the war ended. Staff Sergeant Kurtenbach was ordered to report to Allied Headquarters offices in Paris for detailed debriefings. One day I was told by a general, said Kurt, that an old friend had been invited to dine with us that night; a doctor named Reuben Rabinovitch. I drew a blank, knowing no one by that name.

 Ah, you might recognize him as Harry Vozic, observed the general.

     Now, him I know! Said Kurt.  After a wild and emotional greeting, the two were soon off on a whirlwind tour of Paris, a city well known to Doctor Rabinovitch.

   In 1947, the American Consul in Montreal awarded a U.S. Medal of freedom with silver palm to this Canadian citizen. An accompanying certificate read in part, his great courage and exemplary devotion to the allied cause merit the highest praise and recognition of the United States.
______________ 

As we learned from his son, Dr. Albert Robinovitch, now a Doctor in California, the name Vozic somehow connected  by marriage with the Robinovitch name. 

Editors Note: The above was condensed from the full story of Harry Vozic in the book Boys at War, Men at Peace, by Ed McKenzie, written with collaboration with K.J. Kurtenbach, published in 1998 by Vantage Press, Inc. NY. Available at most book  stores and via internet. Personalized copies are available at $24.00 postpaid, direct from author, Ed McKenzie, P.O. Box 2237, Conway, NH 03818

I must also note that Harry Vosic actually found a way to escape from Stalag XVII-B by way of a very clever piece of deception. With the assistance of some Surb prisoners who worked in the make-shift Hospital in the camp, the good Doctor was able to convince the German Doctor that he was suffering from a serious lung disease (he had obtained an x-ray of the lungs of a dead German soldier) - so he was repatriated. (No one else had ever escaped from Stalag XVII-B)