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Camp 30 - A Prisoner's Paradise: Canadiana Series, Season 2
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Subject(s): Canadian History, Canadian Social Studies, History, Social Studies
Grade Level: 6 - 8, 9 - 12, Post Secondary, Adult
Grade Level: 6 - 8, 9 - 12, Post Secondary, Adult
Visit a long-abandoned POW camp where one of the strangest tales of the Second World War played out in quiet, rural Ontario. The story involves Nazis, thrown jars of jam, and a very Canadian way of treating prisoners of war. While the war raged in Europe, find out why some German soldiers fell in love with the land of their captors.
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Running Time: 10:47 Country of Origin: Canada Captions:  |
Producer: The Canadiana Project Inc. Copyright Date: 2018 Language: English |
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Camp 30 - A Prisoner's Paradise: Canadiana Series, Season 2 10:47
Visit a long-abandoned POW camp where one of the strangest tales...
TRANSCRIPT
Close- [MUSIC PLAYING]
- The Second World War, sometimes it feels like we must have heard about every heroic deed, every tragic defeat, every hard won battle on the Western Front. But this was a global war. And as it turns out, some of the strangest and most overlooked moments happened in Canada, like the tiny invasion of Newfoundland the Germans launched to set up a weather station which no one even found until 1977, or the 17 U-boats that prowled the waters of the St. Lawrence, or the Japanese bombs floating on weather balloons that fell on the prairies.
- We're here in unassuming Bowmanville, the site of the only clash between axis and allied powers to take place in rural Ontario. This is Canadiana.
- It's 1940, and things are not going very well for Britain. London is being devastated by German bombs. It seems entirely possible that England could be invaded and occupied. And that wouldn't just mean lost territory. Thousands of German infantry and officers are being held prisoner here. Occupation would mean all those soldiers back on the field, and worse, a contingent of high-ranking officers able to command again.
- So the allies decide to put an ocean in the way. It will be a year before the United States joins the war, so it falls on Canada to scramble together 26 POW camps, including one here, just outside Bowmanville, Ontario. It used to be a boys' reform school, but in 1941 it was frantically refitted into Camp 30, just in time for the first prisoners to arrive.
- [ORCHESTRAL MUSIC PLAYING]
- Its past life as a school gave it some decidedly un-prison-like amenities. In fact, life for German POWs in Canada was quite a bit more comfortable than you might expect. They had an indoor pool, full athletic facilities, including a basketball and tennis court that was flooded in the winter so they could play hockey. They formed a symphony orchestra, and a theater troupe which put on Shakespeare productions. Camp 30 had also been built on fertile farmland, and the prisoners took advantage of it. They brought in enormous harvests.
- Canadians in the surrounding areas living under war rations claimed the Germans were eating better than they were, and there was certainly a vast gulf between the treatment of these enemy soldiers and the thousands of Japanese Canadians rounded up into hellish internment camps. The POWs even continued to receive pay from Germany, not to mention Christmas bonuses from Hermann Goring, commander of the Luftwaffe, allowing them to buy from an expansive commissary. Even more incredible, they were allowed to spend their money on day trips.
- Ehrenwort is a German word for a culturally deep-seated sense of honesty and honor. The Germans took it very seriously, and the Canadians knew it, so they trusted the Germans to go shopping in nearby towns, swimming in Lake Ontario, or cross-country skiing, knowing they'd honestly and honorably come back to Camp 30 for a round of tennis and an evening swim before bed. In fact, the POWs had to be disciplined by their officers because their letters home were so glowing it bordered on treason.
- The guards, mostly Canadian veterans of the First World War, spoke fondly of the time they spent here. So deep was their sense of trust with their wards they'd lend the prisoners rifles to go hunting. It was like a strange fairy tale that they were all living. And then, thanks to a Canadian brigadier half a world away, it all came crashing down.
- [DRUM MACHINE PLAYING SPARE RHYTHM]
- Aug. 19th, 1942, 0500 hours, 6,000 Allied infantry men, mostly Canadians, pour onto the beach at the French town of Dieppe to take it back from the Nazis. One of them has made a fateful mistake. He's kept a copy of his operational orders with him.
- The assault is a disaster. One of the most notorious days in Canadian military history. 60% of the Allied forces killed, wounded, or captured, and among them our brigadier with his operational orders. The document is seized, and makes its way up the German ranks, all the way up. Buried deep within the document is a reference to the binding of Axis prisoners, and after the Battle of Dieppe and the British raid, the Nazis allegedly find German prisoners who had been bound and then shot.
- Hitler sees a propaganda opportunity. He falsely connects the dots. The Allies, he says, are butchers, on orders to tie up German soldiers and execute them. Soon he issues the infamous commando order declaring Allied special forces exempt from the Geneva Convention. They will be shot on sight, even if they surrender. But first, Berlin announces that more than 1,000 prisoners from the Battle of Dieppe will be shackled, most of them Canadian. It's up to Canada to respond, and they decide to retaliate in kind. Back at Camp 30, the Germans' relative paradise is about shattered.
- A Canadian guard approaches the ranking German officer, and asks that he volunteer 100 of his men to be shackled. The officer refuses. So to his subordinates, negotiations break down quickly. None of the POWs show up for the next roll call. When the order comes to shackle the prisoners by force, the Germans barricade themselves in the camp's buildings. The Battle of Bowmanville is about to begin.
- The largest concentration of prisoners is here in the mess hall, and the guards believe that if they can break through, the rest of the buildings will follow. All day, they're at a standoff.
- [FUNKY ACOUSTIC GUITAR MUSIC PLAYING]
- The Canadians arm themselves with baseball bats, the Germans with anything they can get their hands on-- hockey sticks, beer bottles, jam jars. The Germans are itching for a good fight. They're treating the whole situation like a sporting match. But the aging members of the Canadian Veteran's Guard have heard that 50 trainees are on their way from a nearby military camp, so they are content to wait. That evening, the young soldiers arrive, and the siege begins.
- [HARD ROCK MUSIC PLAYING]
- Over the next several hours of brawling, there are bruises and bloody noses, with the the worst injury suffered on the Canadian side, a fractured skull from a thrown jar of jam.
- [CRASH]
- [GLASS RATTLING]
- Finally the prisoners in the mess hall are subdued, and over the next two days, the other buildings follow, the siege aided by high-powered water hoses. At last, the POWs agree to lay down arms. In the aftermath, 126 prisoners are relocated to other camps. Those who remain must be shackled.
- But in a strange coincidence, the guards accidentally dropped the keys to the shackles every day, right after roll call.
- [ACOUSTIC GUITAR PLAYING PLAYING PLAINTIVE MINOR FIGURE]
- And then the war was over. 35,000 prisoners across Canada began the long process of returning to their homeland. Germany was a blasted-out shell, a crumbling ruin of its former glory, drenched in the blood of fascism, and with an uncertain future. For many returning prisoners, it was unrecognizable, and because of the kindness and trust they'd been shown here, the place that came closest to embodying that sense of home was now Canada.
- More than 6,000 prisoners asked to stay here permanently as soon as the war was over, and even more would immigrate back later, citing the hospitality they'd been shown as prisoners. As the wife of one such man put it, his greatest piece of luck was being sent to Canada as a prisoner of war.
- [POP SYNTHESIZER RIFF]
- [PIANO AND GLOCKENSPIEL PLAYING STIRRING THEME]
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