Read an interesting story about a German POW in Canada

He was taken captive in 1940 and sent to Canada. Canada is a very big place and he wound up at a POW near Lethbridge Alberta. He spent some months in the camp and was shown to be not one likely to run away so he was hired by a local farmer to work on the farm. Canada's farmhands were all overseas so the farmer and his family really needed the help. Imagine the surprise of the German when he got to the farm. The farmer promptly handed the German a rifle and some bullets and told to go shoot some gophers. A POW given a rifle and bullets???? So he went out and shot as many gophers as he could. Soon he was able to stay at the farmers house instead of going back to camp every night. At the end of the war he applied to become a Canadian.

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ArishMell · 70-79, M

A lovely, thought-provoking story.

Perhaps the man realised he was being trusted, beyond knowing that shooting any person would get him nowhere; maybe even trusted more than in his past.

There were a sizeable number of POWs, both German and Italian, who stayed in Britain after the War and became straightforward parts of their communities. Some of the Germans likely had no homes to go back to - or did but in East Germany.

Italian POWs in one camp I think on the Shetland Isles, built their own chapel in a spare hut; using whatever materials they could find. I believe their chapel is still there, still consecrated.

hippyjoe1955 · 70-79, M

@ArishMell We had a lot of German POWs stay after the war. Funny story but the lady next door and her family came to Canada after the war. She and her husband were Dutch and they survived by eating tulip bulbs. Across the back lane another fellow and his wife moved in. He had been a German POW. The Dutch lady never did like the German. Fortunately there was a Polish gent who lived beside them. He had escaped Poland and got to the UK. After the war he and his English bride moved to Canada. He was the senior survivor and out lived the other two by almost a decade.

JollyRoger · 70-79, M

My grandfather was a guard at a POW camp near Amherst, Nova Scotia. He brought a young German soldier home several times to help with work on the farm - After all.... my grandfather was doing his best to serve the War Effort - his wife and daughters were otherwise left to do the farm work alone!

fanuc2013 · 51-55, F

There were prisoners at Camp Perry Ohio, that had similar stories! Many of them made friends here and visited each other after the war.

Thinkerbell · 41-45, F

He was probably very happy not to be fighting, especially after Operation Barbarossa began. He might have ended up in Stalingrad, and then Siberia.

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hippyjoe1955 · 70-79, M

@Thinkerbell From what I could glean that camp was for the most Nazi of the prisoners. Very remote and impossible to really escape from. It must have been a real humbling experience for such a Nazi to come back asking for some bed and a bunk. lol

Thinkerbell · 41-45, F

@hippyjoe1955

Yes, if he was from the Waffen-SS, he would have been a true Nazi believer, and having to crawl back to camp would have been a blow to his ego.

ArishMell · 70-79, M

@Thinkerbell The crawling back to camp was likely more practical than anything. Until "adopted" by the farming family, where else could he go? Nevertheless I like to think that his experience opened his mind to life above and beyond Mein Kampf.

beckyromero · 36-40, F

A big difference compared to how the Germans treated Allied POWs.

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