It was not a bad life!Ĭamp New Ulm closed in December 1945 and all of the internees were eventually repatriated to Germany. Some musical instruments were gathered, and locals came to listen and sing along to Sunday afternoon concerts.
#ARMINIUS HERMANN THE GERMAN MOVIE#
Further entertainment included newspapers, radios, and weekly movie screenings. They were allowed to swim and fish in part of Cottonwood Lake.
This became the camp’s one and only documented escape incident.įor recreation, the POWs enjoyed a clubhouse with a fireplace and library, a camp store, a sports field, and a workshop where they made their own furniture and sporting equipment. Their testimony indicated that other prisoners undertook such forays, but they were not charged. Lichtenberg was punished with solitary confinement the Americans were ultimately fined $300 each and lectured by the judge. Mindless of the severity of the infraction, the farmer and his mother-in-law drove Lichtenberg into camp Sunday afternoon, where they were stopped by guards. Prisoner Helmut Lichtenberg, who had become friendly with a farm family he’d worked for, arranged to slip out of camp and spend much of a weekend with them. POWs out on weeklong farm details fared best of all, often partaking of home-cooked meals at the family dinner table. Although the guards warned civilians that they were not to have contact with the POWs, food was slipped over the fence, cannery workers shared ice cream and beer, and more than one young woman waded across the river at night to flirt at the camp. German-speaking church officials held Lutheran and Catholic services in the camp and handed out donated reading material. Many locals still spoke German and were sympathetic toward the prisoners (and hoping in many cases for news of relatives and the old country). The location of Camp New Ulm outside a town with a strong German heritage was a lucky break for the POWs. Small groups were hired out to local farms, unguarded, as short-term farmworkers.
The POWs primarily worked in the nearby town of Sleepy Eye at a cannery, which paid the rent on the camp. After the harvest season, prisoners worked at a poultry processing plant and brick and tile factories. Mostly members of the Luftwaffe, they ranged in age from 18-25.
Ironically, the WPA barracks were reused during World War II as Camp New Ulm, one of the nine Minnesota camps housing German prisoners of war.Ībout 160 German POWs arrived at Camp New Ulm in June of 1944. The WPA (Works Progress Administration) built several structures in a rustic styles designed to reflect the ethnic German heritage of New Ulm. The park was originally developed in the 1930s as a job creation project to provide a recreational reservoir. Nearby Flandrau State Park, on the Cottonwood River, had yet another story to tell. After enduring a century of harsh Minnesota winters, a freak windstorm that sheared off one of his helmet wings, and sharpshooting by pre-teens during World War II who, with their older brothers off to war, wanted to “shoot a German,” Hermann was suffering from battle fatigue. He’s been refurbished and protected, but that’s another story. We walked around the ironwork surrounding Hermann. A spiral staircase winds around a 70-foot-tall center iron column up into the cupola. The monument features Hermann atop a pedestal above a cupola supported by ten columns. New Ulm’s 32-foot-tall rendition of the warrior is the third largest copper statue in the United States (after the Statue of Liberty and Portlandia in Portland, Oregon). Hermann the German Monument, New Ulm, Minnesota
0 kommentar(er)
