News-Info-Alerts

Re: Former German POW Camp to be Preserved

From: POW-MIA InterNetwork

Date: August 23, 2003

"Resort once hosted German PoWs
Internees have mixed memories of Gravenhurst
Town wants to preserve slice of Canadian history


SCOTT SIMMIE FEATURE WRITER
Gravenhurst, Ont.—Imagine, on these blistering and blissful dog days of summer, the following scenario:

You're sunbathing on a popular stretch of Lake Muskoka shoreline where visitors and Gravenhurst locals are relaxing. You swat a mosquito or two and lazily dream of home.

On the rock above, an armed member of the Veterans' Guard of Canada keeps a watchful eye lest you try to leave without permission. He's willing to shoot, should you attempt to climb or otherwise penetrate the formidable fence so securely anchored to the lake bottom.

Yet part of you feels duty-bound to attempt your Great Escape. You are, after all, a German. And not just a German civilian, but a prisoner of war.

It's a chapter in Canadian history of which the teens climbing over the edge of the idling yellow speedboat might well be unaware, but the cove they've chosen to leap into was once part of an important PoW camp during World War II.

"When I think of the whole history of the German internment system across the country, I wonder how many people know that went on," says Cecil Porter, author of The Gilded Cage—Gravenhurst German Prisoner-of-War Camp 20, 1940-1946.


Porter, along with members of the book committee of the Gravenhurst Archives, is determined that this piece of Canadian history not be forgotten. Hence the book, the proceeds of which go to help support the archives, which otherwise subsist on annual funding of $500.

The archives are the repository for photos, documents, correspondence, even a meticulously carved scale model of a German cruiser. The material is locked up inside the archives room at the town's public library.

"Any local history is important to preserve. And we happen to have more than most municipalities," said Marion Fry, chair of the archives committee.

The massive point, at the southeastern end of Lake Muskoka, was the setting when the Minnewaska resort hotel opened its doors in 1897. It played host again in 1916, when the Calydor Sanatorium was built for the growing number of tuberculosis patients.

But it was when World War II arrived that this Precambrian rock would serve perhaps its most intriguing purpose.

The British urgently needed facilities to house their growing number of prisoners of war, outside the U.K.


The move was due to both scarce resources and sound military strategy. Should Germany succeed in an invasion, the last thing the U.K wanted was to have liberated PoWs in its midst. It asked then-colonies Canada and Australia to house captured Germans.

Canada answered the call, eventually establishing a network of some 25 main POW camps, along with scores of branch camps and detention centres. One of the sites chosen was the Calydor Tuberculosis Sanatorium, which was hastily converted to a PoW camp, as there was then little to escape to but the bush.

But it wasn't quite so simple.


While the Geneva Convention provides a legal framework for treatment of PoWs, Canada had no practical domestic experience in this matter.


But we learned fast. A high chain-link perimeter fence went up, mounted securely in a thick line of concrete that would demarcate the camp boundary. Guard towers and a lock-up were constructed. A boom fence that was semi-submerged, snaked through the Muskoka waters to prevent any aquatic hijinx. Veterans of World War I were assigned guard duties.

On June 30, 1940, the first 476 "guests" arrived at Internment Camp 20. The Germans were taken from the train, marched across town, and into Canadian history. (Though PoWs would later routinely be transferred to and from other camps during the war, Camp 20 would average close to 500 internees at any given time.)

Officially, the camp was clandestine. But the many locals and cottagers would often see paroled prisoners out on work duty, dressed in uniforms that included a bright red circle on the back of every shirt.It was not quite the incarceration one might today imagine. Canada took the Geneva Convention very seriously, and the PoWs were granted freedoms and a quality of life that might surprise some.

Yes, there were daily roll calls and chores. But there was also a tremendous range of recreational activities. Certain prisoners were permitted to leave the camp proper for escorted paroles that allowed them afternoons of swimming and sunbathing. Others constructed a small menagerie within the camp's boundary, a cage within a cage that housed an assortment of creatures, including a monkey and even a bear they sometimes wrestled with. PoWs who were granted escorted parole could work on a farm. In addition to growing plenty of vegetables and fruit, they made their own sausage, smoked their own meat and constructed their own buildings. "Over its six-year history," writes Porter, "the German community included scientists, teachers, doctors, landscape artists, farmers, clergymen, electricians, carpenters, cooks, tailors, shoe repairmen, barbers, and even a watchmaker. In many essential services, the captives were self-sufficient."

In fact, for some German prisoners, being in Canada's PoW system brought relatively little hardship. "I spent six years behind barbed wire. I never had a minute of boredom," says Volkmar "King" Koenig, speaking from his home in Kiel, Germany.

Koenig served three years at Bowmanville's Internment Camp 30 before being transferred to Gravenhurst in the closing days of the war. He would remain there just over a year before being repatriated.

Though he preferred Bowmanville to Muskoka, he made the most of his time in Gravenhurst. Koenig read daily news clippings and edited a camp newspaper for the other PoWs. He also took advantage of the showing of films to practise his now impeccable English.

"We would have two performances, one in German and one in English. I would sit in the front row and take notes."

Despite the fact they were prisoners, it was not a particularly gruelling incarceration."I could lie in the sun there, and read or study."

Koenig, along with many other Germans, has mixed memories of Internment Camp 20. Despite the surroundings, they were still prisoners. And over the years, many attempted to escape. They tried tunnelling, swimming, even faking psychosis to win their freedom. "It was a credit to how Camp 20 was run that in six years, there was only one successful escape," says Porter.

Koenig also thought himself fortunate. "If I had been in the navy later on I could well have been killed, or perhaps at least would not have had such a wonderful life," he said.

On July 1, 1949, in another incarnation, Camp 20 reopened its doors as the new and substantially renovated Gateway Hotel, a resort that catered largely to Jewish clientele. During the decade or so that the hotel operated, there were many summers when former German PoWs visited, cordially sharing the same halls and dining rooms with other guests.

In 1991, a group of German veterans returned to visit the remains of the site and share wartime Muskoka memories. And later this month, Koenig will be here to attend the launch of a new book on the Bowmanville's Camp 30. Later this year, he'll oversee a reunion of the approximately 140 men still living who were once confined at this camp.

"We always called ourselves `Canadians.' And at our next reunion we'll start with a roll call," he says.

Today, all of the buildings, like many of the former prisoners, are gone. Small sections of the perimeter fence can still be found if you know where to look, and the large concrete base that once held the flagpole at Internment Camp 20 now stands as a quiet sentinel.

Just a few paces away, and under the guard of no one, young teens dive from the ageless rock.

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