In Bowmanville, where the shell of what was once a major prisoner of war camp languishes among the trees and country roads, the Germans have long ceased being the enemy.
Now, the threat is much more difficult to pin down: anonymous vandals and scavengers, who over the past few years have chipped away at a key part of the area’s history.
The situation has become so dire that Camp 30, which housed over 800 German POWs during the Second World War, including high-ranking Nazis, was recently declared one of the top 10 most endangered historic sites in the country by Heritage Canada.
The designation came just months after then environment minister Peter Kent approved the parcel of land as a national historic site.
“You come by here all the time and you get disheartened, and so are a lot of people, and they’re starting to believe it’s not worth saving anymore, that it’s gone, forget it,” said resident Bernice Norton, a member of the Clarington branch of the Architectural Conservancy of Ontario.
At first glance, the site on Lambs Rd., about 45 minutes east of Toronto, certainly doesn’t inspire much hope. What is left are about a dozen buildings covered in graffiti, their windows smashed and the siding and copper wiring long gone.
At the western edge of the property, a white pole is all that remains of the administration building, demolished following a suspicious fire in 2009.
But Norton, who spoke as she walked along the perimeter of the site with ACO Clarington president Tracey Ali, is confident Camp 30 can still be saved.
The group wants a foundation established to manage the property. In time, they would like to see the buildings reused.
“We understand that a big museum is not possible financially, but there are other ideas out there,” said Ali. “It could be a seniors’ residence, or maybe an urban park, where one of the buildings could serve as a community centre.”
Before the war, the property was a training school for boys “removed from a bad setting,” said Charles Taws, archivist at Clarington Museums and Archives.
Its current owner, the Kaitlin Corporation, is hoping to build a subdivision on a large portion of the site, but is in talks with the municipality to have the four to six hectares on which the more historically significant structures stand designated as parkland.
Camp 30 is considered the last intact POW camp in Canada. It housed the likes of Otto Kretschmer, the skilled but dangerous German U-boat commander and main focus of one of the most daring escape attempts organized by the German command during the conflict.
Operation Kiebitz was supposed to help Kretschmer and three comrades escape through carefully dug tunnels, to make their way to the east coast, where German rescuers would be waiting. The plan was intercepted by the guards, who then collapsed the tunnels.
While historians agree that the conditions at Camp 30 were quite nice — prisoners had access to a gym, a swimming pool, and were even allowed to stage plays — that didn’t deter some from trying to make a run for it throughout the war years.
Most attempts failed. Some prisoners got as far as the U.S. — one made it to Texas — before being apprehended. Many escape operations were given front-page coverage in the Toronto Daily Star.
There was the mass attempt in 1942 foiled by Oshawa laundry truck driver William Ranstead, 23, “a red-headed six-footer whose ambition is to be a provincial policeman.”
The Daily Starreported that Ranstead alerted the commanders when he noticed that many of the prisoners’ overalls sent for cleaning were covered in clay. The guards decided to investigate.
“Running under the floor of one of the buildings, they found a 30-foot tunnel constructed with typical German ingenuity,” read the Daily Star article. “Empty pork and bean tins were telescoped together to make a ventilating pipe for the 30 men who took turns digging with table knives. The earth they dug out was packed out of sight in a ventilator of their hut.”
Stories like these are all the more reason to preserve the buildings, says ACO Clarington. The group’s idea for a foundation is shared by the municipality. Kaitlin is also supportive of preservation, and played a role in preparing Camp 30’s application for national historic site designation.
That recognition will ultimately lead to a plaque being placed on the property, and could open the doors to federal grants.
It all needs to happen soon, says Bernice Norton, before the condition of the site deteriorates further.
“This really is a jewel, a diamond in the rough,” she said. “As a Canadian, I don’t want to go to some place that is a national historic site and nothing’s there.”
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