There is an almost unbelievable irony in the World War II story of Uriah George Hartman. A native of Brodhead who would spend more than 50 years in New Glarus — America’s Little Switzerland — Hartman survived a perilous bombing mission over Germany and escaped destruction by nursing his crippled B-24 into neutral Switzerland. What awaited him there was not freedom, but internment — and eventually one of Switzerland’s most notorious prison camps. 

And not in some idyllic Alpine hotel surrounded by alphorns and edelweiss.

Hartman became one of the American airmen held at Wauwilermoos, a Swiss disciplinary prison camp whose conditions were later compared with those in German prisoner-of-war camps. Its commandant, Capt. André Béguin, was an avowed Nazi sympathizer. Prisoners described inadequate food, little medical care, lice, rats, filthy sanitation, straw bedding and punishment that could include prolonged confinement. Years later, Switzerland would formally express regret over the treatment endured there.

Hartman, who would later become part owner of New Glarus’ Disch Hardware, knew those conditions firsthand. In an account preserved by the New Glarus Public Library, he recalled being given “a little pile of straw” on the barracks floor, one blanket and inadequate food after he was sent to Wauwilermoos. Medical care, he said, was effectively nonexistent. But that only scratches the surface of a harrowing tale.