The former Niles resident along with Werner Juretzko, of the Northwest suburbs, shared their experiences with an attentive audience May 20 at Niles Public Library.
Rogala was a storekeeper aboard the USS Pueblo and remained a prisoner for 11 months. Juretzko was imprisoned in East Germany for six years.
The Cold War was a state of military and political tension between the United States and the Soviet Union in the decades following World War II. The war never blossomed into full-scale military action, but was marked by espionage, lasting from 1945 to 1991...
Juretzko worked as a G-2 undercover U.S. Army political operative. In 1955, he was captured by the East German secret police, called the Stasi. Juretzko is the author of “Years Without Hope,” which tells the stories of his espionage work during the Cold War. He showed audience members images of a prison cell and Guillotine that was used to kill Western prisoners. He said everyone left prison either in a horizontal or vertical position.
“I was fortunate I left in a vertical position,” Juretzko said. (more) Thank you, Sirs.
