SUMMER READING: ‘CAMP C’ HISTORY FULL OF JUICY DETAILS ABOUT GRAVENHURST’S GERMAN POW WAR HISTORY
Bob Pomerantz — Special to MuskokaTODAY.com
GRAVENHURST — It’s fascinating to know Gravenhurst was home to a Prisoner of War camp during the Second World War.
But the real delight is in the details and local archivist and historian Judy Humphries presented some juicy ones during her talk last Wednesday at Gravenhurst Library on the legendary “Camp C.”
Start with the camp’s creation. In June1940, Canadian war authorities were given fewer than 20 days to transform a quarter-century-old, abandoned TB sanatorium in the north-end of Gravenhurst into a POW camp for 400 men.
Under 20 days. To retrofit a 1915 tuberculosis hospital to shelter, feed and guard hundreds of German officers under the strict guidelines of the Geneva Convention.
Britain was in an existential battle with the Nazis and didn’t have the resources to care for a growing number of captured airmen and naval crews who, Prime Minister Winston Churchill feared, would serve as an enemy within — a “Fifth Column” should Hitler successfully invade the U.K.
Thousands of prisoners were shipped off to some 27 hastily built camps across Canada.
But, as Humphries told her library audience of about 20 (and 10 on Zoom), Camp C, which was also known as Camp Calydor (the name of the sanatorium it replaced), a.k.a. Camp 20, had to be among the most interesting:
- When the train pulled into Gravenhurst on June 30th, 1940, not the expected 400 but 476 POWs emerged, and were marched up Muskoka Road to their new home at the north end of town;
- During the six years the camp operated, there were many escape attempts, including an escape by mattress cover, escape by attic, escape by staged drowning, escape by pillowcase, escape by packing case, and, of course, escape by tunnel. Nearly all the escapees were re-captured, and sent to the “cooler” for 28 days to do their punishment;
- In August, 1944, Luftwaffe Lieutenant Walter Manhard escaped from the Gravenhurst camp. He somehow managed to cross the border into the United States, and successfully lived undercover until 1952, when he turned himself in to U.S. authorities.
- As Canadian POW camps went, Camp C was one of the most comfortable. Swimming in Lake Muskoka Bay. Correspondence and live-taught courses from the University of Toronto. Movies, musical instruments and a multitude of sports courtesy of YMCA International;
- The prisoners — mostly officers with some enlisted men to serve them—created their own zoo, featuring a bear, several monkeys, rabbits and a fish tank.
- The captured officers, who, during the early years of the war, continued receiving their military pay from Germany, rented a nearby farm and grew much of their own food. They also ordered beer and other luxuries, often using the Eaton’s mail-order catalogue.
- For the last two years of the camp’s life, it housed only hard-core Nazi prisoners. They were separated from the others because they would often beat up or kill German officers not as committed as them to Nazism.
Humphries, who recently published “Remembering the Fallen” a book about First World War locals who went to war, ended her talk by mentioning what is perhaps the most fascinating, and ironic, fact of all.
Three years after the camp closed, the site was purchased by the Ungerman brothers, three Toronto Jewish businessmen and transformed into a popular Jewish summer resort called the Gateway Resort.
And, irony heaped on irony, a few of the former German POWs visited Gateway Resort after the war to enjoy kosher-style food and show their wives and children where they lived during the war.
Ungerman Park, where the camp was located, has an interesting walking trail with information on the wartime history site.
Bob Pomerantz is a retired Toronto daily newspaper writer and videographer who summers across Lake Muskoka from Camp C.
