Gitmo and WWII POWS
I had forgotten that when I was a kid in grade school the town I lived in had German POWs confined in the city limits. The were housed in a building on fair grounds and during the summer my buds and I would sneak over to get a look at the POWs. Sometimes they would be outside behind the fence and when they saw us they would wave and smile at us. We weren’t scared as we didn’t really know what they had done except that they were German soldiers. Sometimes you would see them around town working on various city projects while under guard.
What brought this to mind was all the brouhaha over what to do with the prisoners at Gito if they get around to closing it. I don’t think for one minute that the Gito detainees would act like the German POWs as they are from two different cuts of cloth.
Most of the German soldiers were not Nazis just German volunteers or draftees who got caught up in A. Hitlers madness as where the Gitmo detainees acted on religious beliefs. They would still want to kill all infidels or unbelievers as preached by their Imams.
WEWOKA — Located in the NYA Building on the fairgrounds on the east side of Wewoka, and also a branch of McAlester, it opened Oct. 11. 1943. About 40 POWs were confined here. Closing date is unknown. There were 3 reported escapes from these camps.
WWII German POW camps in Oklahoma
May 31, 2009
Posted in: Long Ago
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