On this day 29th June 1945.

At Fort Dix, New Jersey, United States, 157 Soviet prisoners of war, wielding clubs and other crude weapons, threatened suicide or asked for their American guards to shoot them. They had been captured by American troops in Europe, some of whom were in German uniforms, some as prisoners of war. They were slated to be repatriated to the Soviet Union, and they knew they faced execution or imprisonment upon return. During the brief melee, 3 American guards suffered light wounds from stabbing or clubbing, several Soviets suffered gunfire wounds, and 3 Soviets committed suicide by hanging.

On June 28, the White House told the Soviet ambassador to expect the POWs to be transported the very next morning.

It was supposed to be a secret, silent and swift operation. But the POWs found out about it, and resolved to spoil things, even if it cost them their lives.

They dismantled their cots and wielded the legs as clubs. They sharpened their mess knives and concealed them in their uniforms. At 9 a.m., their executive officer, Richard Riewarts, ordered them in German to fall out. "Nein!" they shouted.

Tear gas canisters were thrown through the barracks window to force the men out. Shouting, crying, they came out -- swinging their homemade weapons and trying to provoke a mass shooting.

"They didn't appear to care for their lives at all," Riewarts later told Army investigators. "They pointed to their hearts and said, 'Shoot at it.' "

Three Dix guards were stabbed or clubbed, none seriously. In the melee, seven Russians were also hit by gunfire, but the Americans fired low so as not to kill anyone.

After the uprising was over, however, MPs discovered three Russian soldiers hanging from the beams above their cots. Fifteen other nooses were strung up but unused.

The riot at Dix made headlines across the country the next day and prompted Harry S. Truman to give the men a presidential reprieve. He asked Army investigators to study whether the men really wanted to go back to Russia, and whether all of them really were Soviet citizens.

The State Department's legal counsel, R.W. Flournoy, insisted that the U.S. had an obligation under the Geneva Convention to shield the POWs. "I find nothing in the Convention which either requires or justifies ... sending the unfortunate Soviet nationals in question to Russia, where they will almost certainly be liquidated," he wrote.

And from Moscow, Ambassador Averell Harriman was reporting that trainloads of Russian POWs returned every day from Europe -- and every deserter was summarily shot.

Still, Acting Secretary of State Joseph Grew on July 11 signed the order to send the Russians back. Soviet cooperation, it was believed, would prove necessary to remake the face of postwar Europe.

Besides, the Soviets would shortly invade Manchuria and take possession of American POWs held by the Japanese. Reprisals were best avoided.

The remaining Russian POWs were kept under 24-hour suicide watch at Dix, They lost their shoelaces, knives, forks, bed frames, belts and suspenders. They stayed on through July and August, unaware what their fate might be.

There were 153 of them now, since three had died and nine were added to their ranks from other POW camps. Seven lucky prisoners were able to prove they were not, in fact, Soviet citizens, and avoided repatriation.

The POWs' final departure was kept top secret and never reported in any newspaper. Declassified documents show that they shipped out on Aug, 31, acting "docile," and were turned over to Soviet authorities at Hof in Eastern Germany.

From there, the 153 POWs of Fort Dix disappeared into a void.

Their ultimate fate is unknown. Perhaps the answer still lies somewhere in the archives of the Soviet prison system, along with the names of millions other vanished victims of the Stalin terror.