German Prisoner of War Camp, Hoopeston, Illinois

Last updated

The Prisoner of War Camp in Hoopeston, Illinois, was one of 21 such camps in Illinois created to house German prisoners of war in the United States during World War II. [1]

Contents

Industry

During the war, Hoopeston, Illinois had a thriving canning and agriculture business and as such, its industrial base depended on seasonal help, particularly during harvest and canning seasons. Prior to the war, the city relied on locals and youth labor, but after war was declared, many of those people joined the military, forcing industry to look elsewhere for workers.

The War Manpower Commission offered a solution: German prisoners of war in the United States were requisitioned by private businesses and the canning industry to alleviate the labor shortages. In March 1944, a group of 50 representatives met with the War Manpower Commission at Hubbard Trail Country Club near Rossville to discuss the "conditions under which war prisoner labor may be used." [1]

Housing

Hoopeston received its first complement of 75 prisoners on April 26, 1944. The men were housed in the Illinois Canning Company farm area (now the location of M&N Pallet). By July, more than 1,250 POWs were housed in Hoopeston. Housing for the Germans was in the storage area and mule barns at first until new buildings were moved in. A large barn on the back of the lot was converted into a tailor shop, laundry area, and general store for the prisoners to buy necessities.

Employment

The men were put to work by the Illinois Canning Company, Stokely Van Camp, Chanute Air Force Base in Rantoul, Illinois and by area farmers around Hoopeston, Rossville, Milford and other areas in Vermilion County. [2]

German prisoners of war were used in the Hoopeston labor force for two years, from April to November 1944 and 1945.

Escapes

Shortly after the Germans arrived, three prisoners escaped from the camp. Their plan was to make their way to South America via Florida in an attempt to return to Germany. [3] On June 7, 1944, according to a Hoopeston Chronicle article, "The men were first missed at the evening check-up at 6:30 o'clock last evening, but FBI agents said it had not been determined just when the men actually made their escape..." [1]

Rudi Scholz, one of the escapees, later stated that he, Julius Janisch and Herman Kuzel escaped by crawling under the back fence of the camp.

In an August 1993 Chronicle article by Mark Swincher, Kurt G. Pechman, a former prisoner who visited Hoopeston at that time, talked about the escape. "The prisoners were counted in rows five deep, and men had to stand shoulder-to-shoulder. There were three men missing," said Pechman. "After the first row was counted, the man in the back would stoop down and sneak over to the open spot. It worked every time, and, with that method, it took three days before the guards realized the men were missing." [1] During the escape, it was discovered that a local resident's car had been stolen, along with a variety of vegetables from his garden.

Two of the escapees, Rudi Scholz and Julius Janisch, were captured on June 11, at Carlisle, Indiana, about 100 miles southeast of Hoopeston, while Herman Kuzel remained at large until June 13. He was captured near Brazil, Clay County, Indiana. [3]

Other employees

German prisoners were not the only workers used during harvest in 1944 and 1945. According to a June 1944 Chronicle article, Mike Fish, personnel manager of the Hoopeston Canning Company said that the Illinois Canners Association also went through the War Manpower Commission to bring twenty Barbadians from Bridgetown, Barbados to work in asparagus and corn pack as well. [1]

In 1945, the Illinois Canning Company brought in 80 Jamaicans that were housed in the company's bunk house where the Barbadians were housed the previous year. The German prisoners were again in the portable barracks near the back of the camp.

Prisoners in other states

Approximately 359,100 German prisoners were housed across the United States. Only four states, Montana, Nevada, North Carolina, and Vermont, did not house any prisoners of war, according to records in Washington, D.C. and the U.S. Department of the Army. Japanese prisoners of war camps were located in Wisconsin and Iowa while Italian prisoners were kept in Utah, Texas, Nebraska, Missouri, Kansas, Iowa, Colorado, and California. [4] One escaped German prisoner of war was never captured. Georg Gärtner turned himself on September 11, 1985. He was the last of 2,000 escaped prisoners to be recaptured. [5]

Three base camps, Camp Ellis near Peoria, Camp Grant south of Rockford, and Fort Sheridan, supplied the manpower to temporary camps in Hoopeston, Milford, Arlington Heights, Des Plaines, Eureka, Gardiner General Hospital, Gibson City, Hampshire, Joliet, Lanark, Mayo General Hospital, Pomona, Pine Plaines, Skokie Valley, Sycamore, Thorton, and Washington. [4]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Auschwitz concentration camp</span> German network of concentration and extermination camps in occupied Poland during World War II

Auschwitz concentration camp was a complex of over 40 concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland during World War II and the Holocaust. It consisted of Auschwitz I, the main camp (Stammlager) in Oświęcim; Auschwitz II-Birkenau, a concentration and extermination camp with gas chambers; Auschwitz III-Monowitz, a labor camp for the chemical conglomerate IG Farben; and dozens of subcamps. The camps became a major site of the Nazis' final solution to the Jewish question.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hoopeston, Illinois</span> City in Illinois, United States

Hoopeston is a city in Grant Township, Vermilion County, Illinois, United States. As of the 2020 census, the city population was 4,915.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Majdanek concentration camp</span> Nazi concentration camp

Majdanek was a Nazi concentration and extermination camp built and operated by the SS on the outskirts of the city of Lublin during the German occupation of Poland in World War II. It had seven gas chambers, two wooden gallows, and some 227 structures in all, placing it among the largest of Nazi concentration camps. Although initially intended for forced labor rather than extermination, the camp was used to murder people on an industrial scale during Operation Reinhard, the German plan to murder all Polish Jews within their own occupied homeland. The camp, which operated from 1 October 1941 to 22 July 1944, was captured nearly intact. The rapid advance of the Soviet Red Army during Operation Bagration prevented the SS from destroying most of the camp's infrastructure, and Deputy Camp Commandant Anton Thernes failed to remove most incriminating evidence of war crimes.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Flossenbürg concentration camp</span> Nazi concentration camp in the Upper Palatinate, Bavaria, Germany

Flossenbürg was a Nazi concentration camp built in May 1938 by the SS Main Economic and Administrative Office. Unlike other concentration camps, it was located in a remote area, in the Fichtel Mountains of Bavaria, adjacent to the town of Flossenbürg and near the German border with Czechoslovakia. The camp's initial purpose was to exploit the forced labor of prisoners for the production of granite for Nazi architecture. In 1943, the bulk of prisoners switched to producing Messerschmitt Bf 109 fighter planes and other armaments for Germany's war effort. Although originally intended for "criminal" and "asocial" prisoners, after Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union, the camp's numbers swelled with political prisoners from outside Germany. It also developed an extensive subcamp system that eventually outgrew the main camp.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Stalag Luft III</span> World War II Luftwaffe-run prisoner of war camp

Stalag Luft III was a Luftwaffe-run prisoner-of-war (POW) camp during the Second World War, which held captured Western Allied air force personnel.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Island Farm</span> Prisoner of war camp

Island Farm, also called Camp 198, was a prisoner of war camp on the outskirts of the town of Bridgend, South Wales. It hosted a number of Axis prisoners, mainly German, and was the scene of the largest escape attempt by German POWs in Britain during World War II. Near the end of the war it was renamed Special Camp XI and used to detain many senior SS military leaders who were awaiting extradition to the Nuremberg trials.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cowra breakout</span> 1944 escape in Cowra, New South Wales

The Cowra breakout occurred on 5 August 1944, when 1,104 Japanese prisoners of war attempted to escape from a prisoner of war camp near Cowra, in New South Wales, Australia. It was the largest prison escape of World War II, as well as one of the bloodiest. During the escape and ensuing manhunt, four Australian soldiers and 231 Japanese soldiers were killed or committed suicide. The remaining escapees were re-captured and imprisoned.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Escapees' Medal</span> Award

The Escapees' Medal is a military award bestowed by the government of France to individuals who were prisoners of war and who successfully escaped internment or died as a result of their escape attempt. The "Escapees' Medal" was established by a 1926 law, intended to honour combatants not only of the First World War, but also of the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. Its statute was later amended to include combatants of the Second World War and later conflicts.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mikhail Devyataev</span> Soviet fighter pilot during World War II and POW of Nazi Germany

Mikhail Petrovich Devyataev was a Soviet fighter pilot known for his incredible escape from a Nazi concentration camp on the island of Usedom, in the Baltic Sea.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Monowitz concentration camp</span> One of the three main camps in the Auschwitz concentration camp system

Monowitz was a Nazi concentration camp and labor camp (Arbeitslager) run by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland from 1942–1945, during World War II and the Holocaust. For most of its existence, Monowitz was a subcamp of the Auschwitz concentration camp; from November 1943 it and other Nazi subcamps in the area were jointly known as "Auschwitz III-subcamps". In November 1944 the Germans renamed it Monowitz concentration camp, after the village of Monowice where it was built, in the annexed portion of Poland. SS Hauptsturmführer (Captain) Heinrich Schwarz was commandant from November 1943 to January 1945.

<i>The Seventh Cross</i> (film) 1944 film by Fred Zinnemann, Andrew Marton

The Seventh Cross is a 1944 American drama film, set in Nazi Germany, starring Spencer Tracy as a prisoner who escaped from a concentration camp. The story chronicles how he interacts with ordinary Germans, and gradually sheds his cynical view of humanity.

On May 21, 1945, a unit of the Polish Home Army, led by Colonel Edward Wasilewski, attacked a Soviet NKVD camp located in Rembertów in the eastern outskirts of Warsaw. Hundreds of Polish citizens had been imprisoned there, including members of the Home Army and other members of the underground resistance. Prisoners at the camp were being systematically deported to Siberia. As a result of the attack, all of the Polish political prisoners were freed from the camp by the pro-independence resistance.

The Raid at Ožbalt was the most successful known prison break of the Second World War. It was an operation on 31 August 1944 in which 105 Allied prisoners of war (POWs) were rescued by Slovene Partisans, Special Operations Executive (SOE), and MI9. The majority were liberated from a work site at the village of Ožbalt about 25 kilometres (16 mi) west of Maribor on the railway line to Dravograd in the German Reichsgau Steiermark (Styria), now part of modern-day northern Slovenia. Six of the liberated POWs were separated from the group during an engagement with the Germans a few days after their liberation. One later reunited with the escape group. Following a 14-day trek across 250 kilometres (160 mi) they were flown out of a Partisan airfield at Semič to Bari, Italy. The successful escapees consisted of twenty Frenchmen, nine New Zealanders, twelve Australians, and fifty-nine British POWs.

Camp Papago Park was a prisoner of war (POW) facility located in Papago Park in the eastern part of Phoenix, Arizona, United States. It consisted of five compounds, four for enlisted men and one for officers. The property now is divided between the Papago Park Military Reservation, belonging to the Arizona National Guard, a city park, residential neighborhoods and a car dealer's lot.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Leon Felhendler</span>

Leon Felhendler was a Polish resistance fighter known for his role in organizing the 1943 prisoner uprising at Sobibor extermination camp together with Alexander Pechersky.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Forced labor of Germans after World War II</span> Post-war punishment of Germany

In the years following World War II, large numbers of German civilians and captured soldiers were forced into labor by the Allied forces. The topic of using Germans as forced labor for reparations was first broached at the Tehran conference in 1943, where Soviet premier Joseph Stalin demanded 4,000,000 German workers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Stalag Luft III murders</span> War crimes perpetrated by members of the Nazi Gestapo

The Stalag Luft III murders were war crimes perpetrated by members of the Gestapo following the "Great Escape" of Allied prisoners of war from the German Air Force prison camp known as Stalag Luft III on March 25, 1944. Of the 76 successful escapees, 73 were recaptured, most within several days of the breakout, 50 of whom were executed on the personal orders of Adolf Hitler. These summary executions were conducted within a short period following recapture.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">German prisoners of war in the United States</span> Prisoners of War

Members of the German military were interned as prisoners of war in the United States during World War I and World War II. In all, 425,000 German prisoners lived in 700 camps throughout the United States during World War II.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Great Papago Escape</span> WWII Axis prisoner-of-war escape in Arizona

The Great Papago Escape was the largest Axis prisoner-of-war escape to occur from an American facility during World War II. On the night of December 23, 1944, twenty-five Germans tunneled out of Camp Papago Park, near Phoenix, Arizona, and fled into the surrounding desert.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 Hoopeston, Illinois Chronicle newspaper, March 10, June 7,19,22,23,27, July 3,28,31, September 7,11, October 19, 1944 and March 20, April 10,26, 1945.
  2. ↑ War Department, Bureau of Public Relations, Press Branch, Prisoner of War fact sheet
  3. 1 2 United States Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Washington, D. C.20535
  4. 1 2 General Services Administration, National Archives and Records Service, Washington, D.C. 20409
  5. ↑ Hitler's Last Soldier In America by George Gaertner with Arnold Krammer 1985
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.