Re: Wisconsin POW Camp 1 of 39 in State

Date: February 24, 2004

"Rapids POW camp one of 39 in state

By ANTOINETTE RAHN Daily Tribune Staff

Wisconsin Rapids' connections to World War II extend beyond sending servicemen to locations around the world.

In 1945, Tri-City Airport which is now Alexander Field, was home to between 100 and 200 prisoners of war, many from Germany. The Wisconsin Rapids POW camp was one of 38 camps in Wisconsin. The state's main POW site was Camp McCoy, now Fort McCoy in Monroe County, according to "The Fat Memories" by Dave Engel, local historian and author.

The workers, many captured from German infantry corps in Europe and Africa, were brought to the United States to work at farms, canning, cranberry and lumber businesses, whose crews had been depleted with men leaving for the war, according to "Stalag Wisconsin: Inside WWII prisoner-of-war camps.," a book about the state's POW camps by Betty Cowley of Altoona.

"I was in high school at the time and I remember the area being fenced in and POWs staying in the cement hangar and barracks just east of the hangar," said airport commissioner and historian Marshall Buehler of Port Edwards.
The barracks were used in the late 1930s when the Air Force used the area as a training site, Buehler said.

Among the hangars there are remnants of the POW camp, said ultralight instructor Ken Snyder of Wisconsin Rapids.

"About 300 to 400 feet from my hangar is a pipe that was part of the camp's water tower," said Snyder, who grew up near the airport and remembers the POWs. "After the POWs were gone that same water tower kind of became my tree house."

About 20,000 POWs stayed in Wisconsin POW camps, which included central Wisconsin branch camps in Rhinelander, Antigo, Marshfield and Wisconsin Rapids.
Over the years nearly 5,000 former POWs immigrated to the United States, according to Cowley's book.

In 2003, Rudolf Kleinmanns of Goch, Germany revisited Wisconsin Rapids, the place where he was a 19-year old POW in 1945.

"We came here from Germany on convoy ships in April 1945 and were in the States for one year," said Kleinmanns, in a 2003 interview with the Daily Tribune. "It wasn't something I feel bad about. . . it was a very different time then, and at 19, it was something of an adventure." "