September 1943, German prisoners of war were about to be shocked by their first sight of Canadian civilians. But first, they had to survive the fear of what they believed awaited them across the Atlantic Ocean. Verer Schultz pressed his back against the hot stone wall and tried to make himself small.
The 28-year-old corporal could hear boots running somewhere above him. Canadian voices shouted in English. Verer’s hands shook as he gripped his empty rifle. He had fired his last bullet 2 hours ago. The factory worker from Hamburgg had never imagined he would end up trapped in a basement in Sicily, waiting for the enemy to find him.
Next to Verer sat Klouse Hoffman, a 35-year-old sergeant and school teacher from Munich. Klouse had stopped sweating despite the September heat. His face looked gray. “They will kill us,” he whispered. “The SS officers told us. Canadians show no mercy to prisoners.” On Klouse’s other side, 22-year-old Yoan Vber started to cry.
The young private from Bavaria had joined the army only 8 months ago. His father grew wheat on a small farm in the countryside. Yoan had never traveled more than 50 mi from home before the war. Now he sat in the ruins of an Italian town, certain he would die before seeing his family again. Verer had heard the warnings just like Klouse and Johan.
Every German soldier knew what their officers said about the Canadians. They are British puppets, the commanders repeated during training. Backward colonials from the frozen wilderness. They have no culture, no honor. If they capture you, expect torture. Expect starvation. They will treat you worse than animals. The propaganda films showed even worse pictures.
Canadian soldiers depicted as savage brutes, wild men from an univilized land. These are inferior people, the SS officers explained. HalfIndian savages who scalp their enemies. They learned cruelty from the wilderness. Never surrender to them. Death in battle is better than capture by Canadians. Verer had believed every word. Why wouldn’t he? The officers seemed so certain. The films looked so real.
And now on September 10th, 1943, near the Italian town of Reio Decalabria, those warnings echoed in his mind as footsteps came closer to their hiding place. The Allied invasion of Sicily had crushed their units. Verer’s company of 140 men had been reduced to 37 in just 2 weeks of fighting. They had no ammunition left, no food for 3 days, no water since yesterday morning.
The Italian summer sun baked them inside their wool uniforms. Many men could barely stand from weakness and fear. The basement door exploded inward. Verer closed his eyes and waited for bullets. Instead, he heard a voice in broken German. Come out. Hands up. You are prisoners now. Verer, Klouse, and Yan stumbled into the sunlight with their hands raised.
Canadian soldiers surrounded them. Young men, some looking barely older than Yoan. They wore clean uniforms and carried plenty of ammunition. Their faces showed exhaustion, but not cruelty. One soldier offered Verer a canteen of water. Verer stared at the canteen like it might be poison. The Canadian soldier, he couldn’t have been more than 19, shook the canteen and smiled.
“Drink,” he said in simple German. “Water safe.” Verer drank. The water tasted cool and clean. He wanted to cry from relief, but stopped himself. “This kindness must be temporary,” he thought. a trick before the real treatment begins. Over the next 48 hours, more than 1,200 German soldiers surrendered in their sector alone.
The Canadians processed them through British Canadian facilities set up in abandoned Italian buildings. They checked for wounds. They gave them food, bread, soup, even some canned meat. They took their names and ranks, but did not beat them. Klouse kept a small diary hidden in his boot. That night, he wrote, “They have not heard us. I do not understand.
We were told they would torture us immediately. Instead, they gave us blankets.” Yoan ate his first full meal in a week and fell asleep sitting up. Wernern watched the Canadian guards talking and laughing with each other. They looked like normal men, farm boys and factory workers just like him. This confused Werner more than anything else.
Where were the savages from the propaganda films? 5 days later, the prisoners boarded ships in the Sicilian harbor. Nobody told them where they were going. Rumors spread through the lines of captured men. Some said they were going to prison camps in North Africa. Others whispered about labor camps in England.
A few men, braver or more foolish than the rest, suggested the unthinkable. Maybe they are taking us to Canada. Canada? The word itself sounded strange to Wernner. He knew almost nothing about the country except what the propaganda had taught him. A frozen wasteland at the edge of the world. poor, weak, filled with inferior people who could barely feed themselves.
And yet, these same people had defeated his unit in two weeks of fighting. They had ships, weapons, and supplies that seemed endless. How could such a backward nation produce so much? Wernern stood on the ship’s deck as Sicily disappeared behind them. The Mediterranean Sea stretched blue and calm in all directions.
Around him, 2800 German prisoners crowded the converted troop transport. They talked in low voices, sharing fears and rumors. Most believed they were sailing toward death or slavery. The propaganda had promised them that capture by Canadians meant suffering beyond imagination. But Wernern remembered the young soldier who had given him water.
He remembered the bread and soup. He remembered that none of the guards had hit him, even though they easily could have. A small seed of doubt planted itself in Wernern’s mind. What if the officers had lied? What if everything they had been told about the enemy was wrong? Klouse sat nearby, his diary open on his knee. He wrote carefully, trying to record everything.
Yoan leaned against the railing, staring at the water, probably thinking about his family’s farm in Bavaria. None of them knew what waited for them across the Atlantic. None of them could imagine that in just a few weeks they would see things that would shatter everything they believed about the world, about the enemy, and about themselves.
The Atlantic Ocean stretched gray and endless in every direction. Verer Schultz had never seen so much water in his entire life. The converted troop transport rolled and creaked as it pushed through the waves. Below deck, 2800 German prisoners squeezed into spaces meant for half that number. The air smelled like sweat, salt water, and diesel fuel.
Men sat shouldertosh shoulder on wooden benches. Others lay on thin mattresses stacked three high against the metal walls. Verer found a spot near a port hole where he could watch the water. Klouse Hoffman sat beside him, already writing in his hidden diary. Yoan Vber curled up nearby, his face looking green even in the dim light.
The young private from Bavaria had never been on a ship before. The constant motion made his stomach twist and turn. The first day passed in uncomfortable silence. Most prisoners expected the worst to begin at any moment. They had been told that Canadian captives would starve them, that they would be beaten, that the crossing would be torture.
Instead, guards brought buckets of soup and loaves of dark bread. The soup tasted thin but hot. The bread was hard but filling. Verer ate slowly, making each bite last. On the second day, something impossible happened. Canadian soldiers carried wooden crates down into the holding areas.
They opened the crates and began handing out small packages wrapped in brown paper. Red crosses marked each package. Verer stared at the package placed in his hands. Inside he found a chocolate bar, a small tin of meat, a package of cigarettes, and a bar of soap. Wernern looked at Klouse with wide eyes. Klouse examined his own package like it might explode.
Around them, other prisoners whispered in shock and confusion. Real chocolate. Actual soap that smelled clean. Cigarettes from Switzerland. Wernern leaned close to Klouse and spoke quietly. This must be propaganda, a trick to make us cooperate. They want us to think they are kind before the real treatment begins. Klouse nodded, but said nothing.
He carefully wrapped his chocolate bar back up and tucked it into his pocket. He would save it. If this was the last good thing they received, he wanted it to last. The Canadian guards watched the prisoners with calm faces. Most of the guards looked young. Wernern studied them when he thought they were not looking. Some had the sunworn skin of farmers.
Others had soft hands like clerks or students. They spoke to each other in English and laughed at jokes Wernern could not understand. They did not look cruel. They did not look like the savage brutes from the propaganda films. They looked like tired young men doing an unpleasant job. The days blurred together. The ship rolled constantly.
Yoan spent most of his time being sick. He could not keep food down. His face turned pale and his hands shook. Wernern worried the young man might die before they reached land. On the fourth day, a Canadian guard noticed Yan suffering. The guard disappeared and returned 10 minutes later with a steaming cup. He knelt beside Yoan and held out the cup.
Yoan shrank back in fear. The guard smiled gently and mimed drinking. He said something in English and then in broken German. Ginger, good for stomach. Drink. Yoan took the cup with trembling hands. The tea smelled strange but not bad. He sipped carefully. The warm liquid settled his stomach almost immediately. For the first time in days, Yoan felt the sickness ease.
He looked up at the Canadian guard with tears in his eyes. The guard patted his shoulder and walked away. Wernern watched this happen and felt his certainty crack just a little bit more. Why would a guard help an enemy prisoner feel better? It made no sense. Unless everything they had been told was a lie. At night, prisoners huddled together and whispered theories.
“They are fattening us up,” one man insisted. making us healthy before they put us to work in mines. Dead slaves are useless slaves. No, another argued. This is for the Red Cross inspectors. They will treat us well until the inspection passes. Then the real treatment begins. Klouse wrote everything in his diary. He noted the food portions, the behavior of guards, the condition of the ship.
He wrote about Yan’s ginger tea and Wernern’s growing confusion. Klouse had taught history before the war. He understood that truth mattered. Someday, he thought, people might want to know what really happened. The food continued to surprise them. Bread every day, soup with actual vegetables. Twice they received portions of canned meat.
Wernern tried to calculate the calories. The prisoners were receiving more food than German units had eaten while retreating through Sicily, more than Wernern’s own family received with their ration cards back in Hamburgg. How could the enemy feed prisoners better than Germany fed its own soldiers and civilians? On September 28th, a shout went up from the men near the port holes. Land had been spotted.
Wernern pressed his face against the small window and saw gray shapes emerging from the morning fog. The coast of Canada appeared like a dark line against the lighter sky. Halifax Harbor waited somewhere ahead. The whispers grew louder. Fear returned to faces that had started to relax. This was it, the moment of truth.
Whatever kindness they had received on the ship was about to end. Now they would see the real Canada. Now they would face whatever fate awaited German prisoners in this strange distant land. Wernern gripped the edge of his port hole and watched the coastline grow closer. His heart pounded. Beside him, Klouse closed his diary and tucked it back into his boot.
Yoan stood on shaky legs, still pale, but no longer vomiting. The three men looked at each other without speaking. What came next would either confirm their worst fears or shatter everything they thought they knew about the enemy. Within hours, they would have their answer. The ship docked at Halifax on September 29th, 1943.
Wernern Schultz walked down the gangway on legs that still felt the oceans roll beneath them. The morning air tasted cold and clean after weeks of breathing the ship’s stale air. Around him, 2800 German prisoners filed onto Canadian soil for the first time. Guards directed them toward a large brick building near the waterfront.
Wernern recognized it as some kind of immigration station. The sign above the door read Pier 21 in English. Thousands of people must have passed through these same doors, seeking new lives in Canada. Now, enemy soldiers shuffled through in lines, wondering what would happen next. Inside, the building felt warm and well lit.
Electric lights hung from the ceiling, bright and steady. Wernern had not seen electric lights this good since leaving Germany. Guards separated the prisoners into groups of 50. Each group moved through different stations like an assembly line. First came medical examinations. A Canadian doctor in a clean white coat gestured for Wernern to sit.
The doctor looked at Wernner’s eyes, checked his teeth, listened to his heart and lungs. He examined an old wound on Wernern’s arm from Sicily. The doctor cleaned it carefully with alcohol that stung, then wrapped it in fresh white bandages. He wrote notes on a clipboard and moved to the next prisoner.
Wernern sat on the bench afterward, touching the clean bandage on his arm. The doctor had been gentle, professional. He had treated Wernern like a person, not an enemy or an animal. Wernern thought about the German army doctors he had seen during the war. Rushed, overwhelmed, running out of supplies. This Canadian doctor had unlimited bandages, good light to work by, and time to do the job properly.
Klouse came through the medical station looking confused. He sat beside Werner and whispered, “They are treating us better than our own army doctors did. How is this possible?” Yoan emerged last, still weak from the ocean crossing. The doctor had given him pills for his stomach and told him to rest. A guard brought Yoan a cup of water to take the medicine.
Yoan stared at the pills in his palm like they might be poison, but eventually swallowed them. After processing, the prisoners boarded trains, long passenger trains with seats, not cattle cars. Wernern found a window seat and watched as the train pulled away from Halifax. For the next 100 hours, Canada rolled past his window like a dream that made no sense.
Endless forests stretched in every direction. Trees so thick and tall that Wernern could not see through them. Rivers wide as German highways cut through the landscape. Farms appeared occasionally, but these were not small farms like Yoan’s family worked in Bavaria. These Canadian farms spread across the horizon, huge barns painted red, fields that seemed to go on forever.
Equipment and machinery sitting in neat rows. Klouse pressed his face against the window and counted out loud. 10 tractors. I see 10 tractors on one farm. In Munich, the entire district shares three tractors. The train passed through industrial towns. Factory buildings stood intact, untouched by bombs. Smoke rose from chimneys, meaning the factories were working.
Cars and trucks moved on paved roads. Wernern had not seen this many working vehicles in months. In Germany, gasoline was so scarce that most civilian vehicles sat abandoned. Here, traffic moved freely like the war did not exist. Klouse pulled out his diary and wrote quickly. The wealth, the abundance, nothing like we were told.
We were taught Canada was a poor colony struggling to survive. But everything I see shows the opposite. On October 3rd, the train stopped at a small town called Bowmanville in Ontario. Guards marched the prisoners through clean streets to a facility surrounded by wire fences. Camp 30, someone said, home to approximately 600 German officers and non-commissioned officers.
The camp would be their home for the foreseeable future. Verer expected barracks like the army camps he had known. Rough wooden buildings, dirt floors, cold and damp. Instead, the buildings looked solid and well-built. Each barracks had real windows with glass. The guards led them inside, and Verer stopped walking from pure shock.
beds, not bunks stacked three high with thin straw mattresses. Real beds with actual mattresses. Each man would get his own bed. The barracks had heat coming from radiators along the walls. Running water flowed from taps in a bathroom. Flush toilets worked when someone tested them. Yoan, who had grown up in a Bavarian farmhouse with an outhouse and wellwater, stood in the bathroom and cried.
“This is better than my family’s house,” Johan whispered. “We never had indoor toilets. We never had running hot water.” That evening came the biggest shock of all, dinner. The prisoners filed into a dining hall with long tables and benches. Guards brought out trays of food, and Verer thought he might be dreaming.
Roast beef sliced thick, mashed potatoes with gravy, cooked vegetables, fresh bread with real butter, coffee that smelled rich and strong, dessert, actual cake with icing. Verer ate slowly, trying to make sense of what was happening. He mentally calculated the calories. easily 3,000 calories in this one meal. More than German civilians received in their rations for an entire day.
More than German soldiers in the field often ate. And this was just one meal. The guard said they would receive three meals like this every day. Around him, other prisoners ate in silence. Some cried while they chewed. Others ate mechanically, their faces blank with confusion. A few refused to eat at all, convinced the food must be drugged or poisoned.
Klouse leaned close to Verer. This cannot be real. They must be preparing us for a Red Cross inspection. Once the inspectors leave, the real treatment will begin. But Verer was not so sure anymore. Everything pointed in the same direction. The medical care, the train journey through a wealthy, untouched country, the comfortable barracks, the abundant food.
Either this was the most elaborate deception in history, or everything the German officers had told them about Canada was a complete lie. Verer finished his cake and looked around the warm, well-lit dining hall. He thought about his mother and sister back in Hamburg eating turnip soup and black bread in a city being bombed every night.
He thought about the propaganda films that showed Canadians as savage brutes living in poverty. Nothing made sense anymore. And that frightened Verer more than any torture could have. October settled over Camp 30 like a routine that Verer Schultz could not quite believe was real. Every morning began the same way. Guards called roll at 7:00.
Prisoners lined up in the cool morning air and answered when their names were called. Then came breakfast. Hot porridge, toast, jam, coffee, real eggs twice a week. Verer had stopped trying to understand why enemy prisoners ate better than German soldiers. After breakfast, prisoners could volunteer for work assignments. The Geneva Convention said officers could not be forced to work, but many chose to anyway.
Boredom was worse than labor. Verer signed up for the camp maintenance crew. He had worked in a Hamburg factory before the war. He knew how to fix things. The maintenance crew worked alongside Canadian guards. That was how Verer met Tom. Tom was a guard from Saskatchewan, a province Werner had never heard of before coming to Canada.
Tom looked about 30 years old with sundamaged skin and hands rough from outdoor work. He spoke some German learned from neighbors back home. One morning in late October, Warner and Tom painted the fence around the camp garden. Tom talked while they worked. He told stories about his family’s farm back in Saskatchewan.
He described wheat fields that stretched farther than the eye could see. He explained how his father and uncle worked 640 acres with just two tractors and a truck. Wernern stopped painting. 640 acres for one family. Tom nodded. Average size for our area. Some farms are bigger. Wernern did the math in his head.
His entire village in Hamburg sat on less land than Tom’s family farm. 20 German farms combined did not equal the size of one Saskatchewan wheat farm. And Tom said his farm was average, not even large. How much wheat do you grow? Wernern asked carefully. Tom thought for a moment. Goodyear maybe 30 bushels per acre. So about 19,000 bushels total.
Wernern translated bushels to metric tons. The number seemed impossible. One Canadian family farm produced more grain than hundreds of small German farms. He had been told Canada was agriculturally backward, poor soil, short growing season, primitive methods. But Tom described machinery and efficiency that made German farming look medieval.
That night, Warner could not sleep. He kept thinking about Tom’s farm, about the two tractors, about fields measured in hundreds of acres instead of tiny plots. Everything he had been taught was backwards. Canada was not poor. Canada was rich beyond German imagination. And if they lied about that, what else was a lie? Klouse Hoffman spent his days teaching.
The camp commander asked if anyone could teach English to the other prisoners. Klouse volunteered immediately. He had taught school in Munich before the war. Teaching felt normal in a world that felt increasingly strange. The camp provided Klouse with textbooks, paper, and pencils. He held classes in the recreation building. 30 prisoners attended regularly.
While teaching, Klouse read Canadian newspapers left behind by guards. The papers printed numbers that shook Klouse to his core. Canada had produced 800,000 military vehicles so far in the war. 16,000 aircraft, hundreds of ships. Klouse read these statistics over and over, certain they must be propaganda, but the numbers appeared in multiple newspapers.
They matched what he had seen during the train journey. Factories running at full capacity. unlimited resources. Industrial power on a scale Germany could not match. Klouse thought about the propaganda films shown in Germany. Films claiming Canada was industrially insignificant, a resource colony with no manufacturing base. But the evidence before his eyes told a different story.
Canada was an industrial giant. And if Canada was this powerful, what about the United States? What about Britain? How could Germany possibly win a war against such combined might? Klouse wrote in his diary, “We were told Canada was industrially insignificant, but a nation that produces 16,000 aircraft is not insignificant.
We were told lies, dangerous lies that cost German lives.” Yoan Veber worked in the camp garden. The young farmer from Bavaria felt most comfortable with his hands in soil. The garden crew grew vegetables for the camp kitchen. Tomatoes, carrots, potatoes, lettuce. The work reminded Yan of home, though the Canadian soil felt different than Bavarian earth.
Civilian workers from Bowmanville sometimes came to the camp to deliver supplies or perform specialized work. Yoan watched them carefully. The civilians dressed better than most Germans he knew. Clean clothes, good shoes, healthy faces. One civilian worker drove a personal automobile to the camp each week. A car for a working man.
In Germany, only wealthy people owned cars. In early November, a local woman named Mrs. Henderson started visiting the camp. She brought baked goods for the prisoners, cookies, small cakes, bread still warm from her oven. Mrs. Henderson was about 50 years old with gray hair and kind eyes. She spoke no German, but communicated through smiles and gestures.
Yan learned through a translator that Mrs. Henderson’s son was fighting with the Canadian army somewhere in Europe, fighting against Germans. Yet this woman, whose son might be killed by German soldiers, brought cookies to German prisoners every week. Yoan could not understand this kindness. It broke something in his mind that propaganda had built.
The prisoners were allowed to write letters home. Sensors read every word and blocked anything about camp locations or conditions, but the letters still got through. Verer wrote to his mother and sister in Hamburg. He described his health as good. He mentioned adequate food and shelter. He could not say more, but he hoped his family would understand he was safe.
Klouse tried to write warnings in code. He described the weather as surprisingly warm, hoping his wife would understand he meant the treatment was surprisingly good. He wrote about unexpected agriculture and industrial rain, trying to communicate the wealth he witnessed. Most of his coded messages got censored, but he kept trying.
Some prisoners received letters back from Germany. The news was grim. Allied bombing had intensified. Food shortages were severe. Civilians struggled to survive. Yoan received a letter from his mother in Bavaria. She described eating turnip soup and black bread every day. She asked if he was getting enough to eat. Yan held that letter and cried.
He ate three full meals daily while his mother starved. The camp offered other activities beyond work. A library held 3,000 books in German and English. Prisoners organized a theater group and performed plays on weekend evenings. Musicians formed an orchestra with instruments provided by the camp. There was a soccer field, volleyball courts, and a boxing ring.
Men who had been near starvation in Sicily now exercised for recreation. Educational courses started in November. Prisoners could study accounting, learn new languages, or take classes in modern agriculture. Verer signed up for a mechanical engineering course. Klouse studied advanced English. Johan learned about Canadian farming methods, taking careful notes about crop rotation and soil management. Hey, quick pause here.
A few years ago, my dad started having serious back problems from just sitting and watching TV. He’s a history buff, too. Probably where I got it from. I wished I’d known about something like the Relax Cushion back then. It’s designed specifically for long periods of sitting and helps with back, hip, and tailbone pain.
So, if you or someone you care about deals with that kind of discomfort, check it out via the first link in the description. Take care of yourself. Now, back to the video. By the end of November, many prisoners looked healthier than they had during active service. Regular meals, medical care, and lack of combat stress showed in their faces. Some men gained weight.
Others slept properly for the first time in years. The camp even had a dentist who fixed teeth for free. Verer sat in the library one evening reading a book about Canadian history. Tom the guard walked by and waved. Klouse sat nearby preparing his next English lesson. Johan dozed in a comfortable chair after a day of garden work.
The warm room smelled like coffee and old books. Outside, snow had started to fall. Verer closed his book and looked around. 6 months ago, he had been fighting for his life in Sicily. The officers had warned him that capture meant torture and death. Instead, he sat in a heated library reading books while his mother and sister shivered in a bombed German city, eating rationed bread.
The disconnect between what he had been told and what he experienced grew larger every day. Something was very wrong. Either the Canadians were playing the longest deception in history, or everything Verer thought he knew about the world was a lie. December cold settled over Camp 30 as Christmas approached. Verer Schultz had spent three Christmases at war.
Each one had been worse than the last. In 1941, his unit had celebrated with extra rations and a few songs. In 1942, they huddled in frozen trenches, eating hard bread. Last year in Sicily, there had been no celebration at all, just heat and dust and waiting for the next battle. Wernern expected nothing this year. He was a prisoner in an enemy country.
Why would Christmas matter? But on December 23rd, guards started bringing evergreen trees into the barracks. real trees that smelled like the forests Wernern had seen from the train. The guards set up the trees and left boxes of decorations. Paper chains, tin stars, small candles. Klouse Hoffman watched the guards work with suspicious eyes.
This is for show, he muttered to Werner. Red Cross inspectors must be coming. They want us to look happy for photographs. But no inspectors came. The prisoners decorated the trees themselves, handling the ornaments carefully. Some men started singing carols quietly. Others sat on their beds and stared at the trees with tears running down their faces.
These men had not seen Christmas trees in years. The simple sight of evergreen branches broke something inside them. Christmas morning arrived cold and clear. Wernern woke before dawn and lay in his warm bed listening to other prisoners sleep. He thought about his mother and sister in Hamburg. What kind of Christmas were they having? Was their apartment still standing? Did they have food? He pushed the thoughts away.
Thinking about home hurt too much. Guards called everyone to breakfast at 7:00. Wernern walked into the dining hall and stopped moving. The room had been transformed. Evergreen branches decorated the walls. Red ribbons hung from the ceiling. Each table had a small decorated tree in the center.
The smell of coffee filled the warm air. Then Wernern saw the food. Eggs. Real eggs, not the powdered kind. Bacon sizzling on hot plates. Fresh bread with butter. real coffee that smelled rich and dark. And on each table sat bowls of oranges, bright orange spheres that looked like small suns. Wernern picked up an orange and held it carefully.
He had not seen fresh citrus fruit in more than 3 years. Oranges disappeared from Germany early in the war. Only the very wealthy could get them on the black market. Warner peeled the orange slowly, savoring the spray of juice. The smell transported him back to childhood Christmases before the war. When Germany was different, when the world made sense, Johan Weber bit into an orange and started crying.
He did not try to hide it. Around the dining hall, other men cried, too. The simple gift of fruit on Christmas morning broke through walls built by years of war and propaganda. Afternoon brought the main Christmas dinner. Wernern had thought breakfast was generous, but dinner was beyond belief. Guards carried in platters of roast turkey and ham, bowls of mashed potatoes, dressing, cranberry sauce, multiple kinds of vegetables, fresh rolls, and for dessert, three different types of pie, plus chocolates wrapped in colored foil. Wernern ate until his
stomach hurt. He tried to calculate the calories, but gave up. easily 5,000 calories, maybe more. Better than any Christmas dinner he remembered from before the war. Better than anything he had eaten in Germany since 1938. Klouse sat across from Wernern, eating slowly and writing notes in his mind. Later, he would record everything in his diary, every detail, every dish.
the proof that enemy prisoners ate better than German civilians. Before dessert, the Canadian camp commander stood to speak. He was an older man with gray hair and a quiet voice. He spoke in English first, then a translator repeated his words in German. You are soldiers, not criminals, the commander said.
We treat you as we would want our own men treated if they were prisoners. Today is Christmas, a day of peace and goodwill. Whatever our nations do to each other, today we remember our shared humanity. The room fell silent. Some prisoners looked at their plates. Others stared at the commander with confusion. This was not how enemies were supposed to speak to each other.
Where was the hatred? Where was the cruelty they had been promised? Evening brought the most unexpected event. The guards invited prisoners to a combined Christmas carol service. Protestant chaplain and Catholic priest both stood at the front of the recreation hall. Prisoners and guards sat together.
No separation, no weapons visible, just men gathering to mark Christmas together. The singing started quietly. Silent night in English first, then someone began singing in German. More voices joined. Both languages mixing together in the warm room. Verer sang and felt someone step close beside him. He looked over and saw Tom, the Saskatchewan farmer who had become his friend over months of working together.
Tom was singing Silent Night in German. His pronunciation was rough but clear. Tears ran down Tom’s weathered face. Verer stopped singing. He stared at Tom crying while singing a German Christmas carol. And suddenly Verer understood. Tom had told him weeks ago. Tom’s younger brother had died at DEP in August 1942.
Killed during the disastrous Canadian raid on the French coast. killed fighting Germans. Tom had lost his brother to German soldiers. Yet here Tom stood singing German carols with German prisoners, treating them with kindness and dignity, working beside them, sharing stories about his farm, never showing hatred even though he had every reason to hate.
Verer’s carefully built world collapsed in that moment. The propaganda had called Canadians barbarians, savage colonials without culture or compassion. But Tom was not a barbarian. Tom was a farmer who loved his family and mourned his dead brother and still chose kindness over revenge. Verer’s voice cracked.
He stopped singing entirely. His hands shook. Everything the SS officers had taught him was a lie. The propaganda films were lies. The warnings about torture and starvation were lies. These people, these Canadians, his officers had called inferior. They had souls. They had families. They chose mercy when they could have chosen cruelty.
“We were taught you were barbarians,” Wernern whispered in German, not sure if Tom could hear him. We were taught wrong about everything. Tom looked at Warner. Tom did not speak German well enough to understand all the words, but he seemed to understand the emotion. He put his hand on Warner’s shoulder. They stood together as the carol continued around them.
A Canadian guard and a German prisoner. Former enemies connected by something deeper than war. That night, prisoners wrote letters home. The sensors worked overtime, reading through hundreds of pages. Most letters got heavily edited or rejected, but the prisoners tried anyway. They needed to communicate what they had experienced.
Yoan wrote to his mother in Bavaria. Mother, father, the world is not what they told us. These people have souls like us. They celebrate Christmas like us. They cry and laugh and love like us. I do not understand how we came to fight them. Klouse wrote in his diary, uncensored and hidden. Today I stopped being a national socialist.
How can I believe leaders who lied about everything? Who told us these people were subhuman when they are more human than our own commanders. The ideology cannot survive contact with truth. Today the truth won. Wernern lay in his bed, unable to sleep. The taste of turkey and pie still lingered in his mouth.
Tom’s tears still haunted his mind. Wernern had spent years believing in German superiority, believing the enemy was inferior and cruel, believing the war was justified and necessary. But if the Canadians were not barbarians, if they were not inferior, if they treated prisoners with more compassion than Germany treated its own people, then what did that say about everything else? What did it say about the war? About the leaders? About the cause Wernern had risked his life for? Outside, snow fell silently over Camp 30. Inside, hundreds of German prisoners
lay awake, their minds churning with questions they had never dared to ask before. Christmas Day 1943 had changed something fundamental. The seed of doubt planted months ago had finally cracked open and started to grow. Nothing would be the same after this. The men who woke up tomorrow would not be the same men who had celebrated Christmas today.
The turning point had come and there was no going back. January 1944 brought bitter cold to Camp 30, but the real chill came from inside the barracks. The camp had divided into three groups that barely spoke to each other. Verer Schultz could feel the tension every time he walked through a room. Eyes followed him.
Whispers stopped when he passed. The Christmas celebration had forced every prisoner to make a choice about what they believed. Verer belonged to what some men called the transformed. About 40% of the prisoners had openly started questioning everything they had been taught. They stopped giving the Nazi salute.
They refused to sing party songs. They talked openly about propaganda and lies. Verer was one of them. He could not pretend anymore. Not after Tom’s tears. Not after that Christmas dinner. Not after 3 months of evidence that contradicted everything the SS officers had promised. Klaus Hoffman started an informal discussion group in the library.
He called it what we were taught versus what we see. 20 prisoners came to the first meeting. 30 came to the second. By the third week, 50 men crowded into the library every Tuesday evening. They talked carefully at first, testing whether it was safe to speak the truth out loud. We were taught Canadians were poor, one prisoner said quietly.
But look at the civilian workers who come to the camp. They dress better than German officers. They own cars, multiple cars per family sometimes. Klouse kept notes. He counted the vehicles that civilian workers parked outside the camp each day. 15 to 20 automobiles, workingclass Canadians, delivery drivers, maintenance workers, ordinary people who owned personal vehicles.
In Germany, only the wealthy or powerful had cars. Here, a man who delivered bread owned a truck. Another prisoner spoke up. I work in the camp office. Sometimes I see the guard’s pay records. A Canadian factory worker earns enough to buy a house to support a family. In Germany, factory workers rent rooms and share kitchens.
The evidence kept piling up. Verer talked more with Tom during their work shifts. Tom described his family’s life in Saskatchewan. 640 acres of farmland, two tractors, a truck, a car, electricity in the house, a telephone, running water. Tom’s family were farmers, not aristocrats. Yet they lived better than German factory managers.
My father has a radio, Tom said one day while they repaired a fence. We get news from all over. We have a refrigerator for food. My mother has a washing machine. Verer tried to imagine his mother with a washing machine. She washed clothes by hand in a metal tub the same way her mother had. She considered herself lucky to have an indoor pump for water.
Tom’s mother, a farmer’s wife in the Canadian wilderness, had machines to make life easier. But not everyone accepted the truth. Roughly 30% of prisoners formed a group that Klouse called the true believers. These men insisted that everything they witnessed was an elaborate trick, propaganda designed to break their spirits.
They maintained Nazi salutes in the barracks. They sang party songs loudly. They organized themselves into committees to watch for traitors. The true believers terrified Yan Vber. These hardline Nazis threatened anyone who questioned the party. They formed what they called camp loyalty courts where they interrogated prisoners about their beliefs.
Yan stayed quiet and tried to avoid them. But staying neutral was becoming impossible. The remaining 30% were the conflicted men who saw the evidence but could not accept it, who heard Klaus’s arguments but feared what those arguments meant. These prisoners kept their heads down and waited for someone else to decide the truth for them.
Tension exploded one evening in late January. Verer walked into his barracks and saw a large portrait of Hitler hanging on the wall. Someone had put it up while he was at work. Verer stared at that portrait and thought about Tom crying while singing Silent Night. He thought about the lies he had believed, the friends who had died for those lies.
Verer took the portrait down. Three true believers rushed at him immediately. What are you doing, traitor? I will not sleep under the picture of a liar, Verer said quietly. The first punch hit Verer in the stomach. He doubled over. More fists came. Verer fought back, but three against one was too many.
Klouse and Johan pulled the attackers away. Other prisoners shouted. Guards rushed in and separated everyone. The camp commander called Verer and the three true believers to his office the next morning. He spoke through a translator. I cannot have prisoners fighting, but I also cannot force you to display political symbols.
The portrait stays down. The true believers left muttering threats. Over the next weeks, they formed secret meetings. They kept lists of traitors to be punished after Germany won the war. They promised that men like Verer and Klouse would face justice when they returned home. The Canadian administration finally separated the most extreme Nazis.
25 prisoners who intimidated others or caused violence were transferred to a different facility. The camp became quieter after they left, but the divisions remained. Mrs. Henderson continued her weekly visits despite the tensions. She brought books for the library. She helped prisoners write letters to their families.
She spent hours teaching basic English to anyone interested. Yoan attended her English classes every week. He learned slowly, but Mrs. Henderson never lost patience. One day, Yan worked up the courage to ask through a translator, “Why do you help us? We are the enemy. German soldiers might have killed your son.” Mrs. Henderson’s eyes filled with tears.
She spoke slowly so the translator could keep up. My son fights because he must, because evil must be stopped. But you are not evil. You are boys far from home, just like my son. If my son is captured, I pray someone shows him the same kindness I show you. Her words affected even the true believers who remained. How could you call these people inferior when they showed such humanity? How could you believe propaganda about savage enemies when a grieving mother brought you cookies and helped you write letters home? In March, Yan received a letter
from his mother in Bavaria. The envelope looked thin and dirty. The paper inside was rough and poor quality. His mother’s handwriting shook. “Dearest Johan,” she wrote. “Allied bombing destroyed most of our town. We live now with your aunt in one room. Food is scarce. We eat turnup soup and black bread most days.
Your father’s friend died last week from illness. No medicine available. We pray you are alive and safe wherever you are. Yoan read the letter three times. Then he looked around the camp at the warm barracks, the full dining hall, the library and recreation building, the medical clinic where a doctor treated his cold last week.
He thought about his breakfast that morning. Hot porridge, toast, real butter, coffee. more calories in one meal than his mother ate in a day. Yoan felt sick with guilt. He was safer as a prisoner in an enemy country than his family was in the homeland he had fought to defend. He ate better, slept better, had access to education and health care.
The Allied bombing his mother described came from the countries now treating him with dignity and mercy. That night, Yoan could not eat dinner. He sat in the dining hall staring at food he could not touch. Verer sat beside him. What is wrong? Yoan showed him the letter. Verer read it and said nothing. What could he say? They both understood.
The world had turned upside down. The enemy treated them better than their own country treated its citizens. Klouse wrote in his diary that night, “The prisoners now understand what the guards and civilians knew all along that Germany is losing not just the war, but the moral high ground. We fight for a regime that lies to its people, starves its children and sends its sons to die for nothing.
Meanwhile, the inferior enemies feed us, educate us, and treat us like human beings. How can any thinking person continue to support the Reich after witnessing this? By the end of March, more prisoners volunteered for farmwork placements. This meant leaving the camp to work on Canadian farms during planting season.
The pay was small, but the opportunity was huge. a chance to see more of Canada, to work alongside Canadian families, to learn farming methods and see how ordinary Canadians lived. Verer signed up immediately. So did Klouse and Johan. They wanted to see more, to understand more. The truth had set them free from propaganda, but it had also created new questions.
Who were these people who showed such mercy to their enemies? What kind of society produced such wealth and such kindness? And what did it mean that Germany had chosen to fight them? The answers would come during the warm months ahead, working on Canadian farms, living with Canadian families, and discovering that the real shock was not Canadian cruelty, but Canadian humanity. May 8th, 1945.
The day started like any other day at Camp 30. Verer Schultz woke to morning roll call. Breakfast in the dining hall. Work assignment with Tom repairing equipment. Then at noon, the camp commander called everyone to the recreation hall. His face looked serious but not angry. “The war in Europe is over,” the commander announced through the translator.
“Gy has surrendered unconditionally. The fighting has stopped. The room erupted in noise. Some prisoners cheered, others cried. Many sat in stunned silence. Verer felt nothing at first. The war was over. Germany had lost. He had known this was coming for months. The news from Europe had grown worse and worse. But knowing something and hearing it confirmed were different things.
Relief came first. No more killing. No more bombing. His mother and sister might survive now. But relief quickly mixed with dread. What kind of Germany would he return to? What waited for him at home? Over the following weeks, the camp showed news reels and photographs from Europe. Verer watched screen after screen of devastation.
German cities reduced to rubble. Berlin, a wasteland of broken buildings and starving people. Hamburg, his home, 75% destroyed. Entire neighborhoods gone, factories crushed, churches collapsed. Then came worse images, concentration camps liberated by Allied forces, piles of bodies, living skeletons behind wire, gas chambers and crematoriums.
evidence of systematic murder on a scale Verer’s mind could not process. Klouse Hoffman sat in the dark theater and watched footage from Achvitz. His hands gripped the armrests until his knuckles turned white. That night he wrote in his diary with shaking hands, “What have we done? What did we allow to be done in our names? I taught children to love the fatherland.
I wore the uniform proudly, but what was I really serving? I cannot claim ignorance anymore. The evidence stares at me from these screens. We fought for monsters. The repatriation process began slowly in June 1946, over a year after the war ended. Some prisoners requested permission to stay in Canada. They had nothing to return to. Families dead, cities destroyed.
They wanted to start over in this country that had shown them mercy. Most applications were denied. Canada was not ready to accept former enemy soldiers as immigrants. Not yet. Maybe someday, but not now. A few exceptions were made for men with special skills or unusual circumstances, but for most prisoners, return to Germany was their only option.
Verer, Klaus, and Johan received their repatriation orders in September. They would leave in November. Two months to prepare for a return to a homeland they barely recognized anymore. The final weeks felt strange. Verer worked alongside Tom every day, knowing their friendship would end soon. Tom gave Verer his farm address written carefully on a piece of paper.
After things settle down, Tom said in his rough German, “Write me. Maybe someday you can visit. My door is always open.” Verer folded the paper and put it in his pocket like a precious treasure. He had come to Canada expecting torture. He was leaving with a friend who offered him a home if he ever needed one. Mrs.
Henderson visited the camp one last time to say goodbye. She found Yan working in the garden and called him over. Through the translator, she spoke with tears in her eyes. You remind me of my son. He came home safe from the war. Thank God. But I think of you boys often. I pray you find peace in whatever life brings you next. Yoan could not speak.
He just nodded and wiped his eyes. This woman, whose son had fought against Germans, had shown him more kindness than most people in his own country. He would never forget her. November 20th, 1946. Verer stood on the train platform with his small bag of belongings. Around him, other prisoners prepared to leave.
The train would take them back to Halifax, the same route they had traveled 3 years ago, but everything felt different now. Klouse stood nearby, looking at the camp one last time. “We came here as enemies,” he said quietly. We leave as what? Changed men certainly, but changed into what? The train journey reversed their arrival.
They passed through the same towns, the same forests, the same farmland. But Wernern saw it all through different eyes. Now, 3 years ago, he had stared at Canada’s wealth with confusion and suspicion. Now, he looked at it with understanding and sadness. This country had so much. His homeland had so little left. In early December, they boarded a ship in Halifax Harbor.
Former prisoners of war crowded onto the vessel. The mood was somber. Men shared stories and fears. Some talked about families they had not seen in years. Others worried about finding work in a destroyed economy. A few spoke about the friends they had made in Canada and the lives they were leaving behind.
The crossing took 10 days. Cold Atlantic waves and gray skies. Wernern spent hours on deck watching the water. He thought about Tom’s farm, about Mrs. Henderson’s cookies, about Klouse’s discussion groups and Johan’s garden work. About 3 years of evidence that had shattered everything he once believed. December 18th, 1946.
The ship entered Hamburg Harbor. Wernern pressed against the railing and stared at his city. Rubble. That was the first word that came to mind. Mountains of rubble where buildings once stood. Twisted metal, broken concrete, entire streets erased from existence. Wernern found his mother and sister living in a refugee shelter in a partially destroyed school building.
His father had died in a bombing raid in 1945. His mother looked 20 years older than Wernern remembered. Her hair had gone completely gray. Her face was thin and lined with hunger. His sister, once plump and cheerful, was a skeleton in loose clothing. They cried when they saw him. They touched his face to make sure he was real. Verer looked healthy, wellfed.
His teeth were good. A Canadian dentist had fixed his cavities. His mother kept asking if he had been starved or beaten. Verer could not find words to explain that he had eaten better as a prisoner than she had as a civilian. Klouse traveled to Munich and found his school completely destroyed.
Just a pile of bricks where he had taught for 10 years. His wife and children had survived by fleeing to the countryside. They lived in a single room in a farmhouse, sharing space with three other families. Klaus’s son was 9 years old now. The boy barely remembered his father. Yoan returned to Bavaria to find his family’s farm intact.
The Americans had not bombed rural areas as heavily, but his father had been killed on the Eastern Front in 1944. His mother had run the farm alone for 2 years. She looked exhausted and broken. All three men experienced the same reversed culture shock. In Canada, they had been shocked by abundance. Now they were shocked by devastation.
The psychological whiplash was almost unbearable. They had spent 3 years in warmth, safety, and plenty. Now they stood in the ruins of their homeland, watching people dig through rubble for food. Verer lay on a thin mattress in the refugee shelter that first night. Around him, dozens of people snored and coughed.
The room was cold. His stomach felt empty despite the thin soup they had for dinner. He pulled out Tom’s address and read it by candle light. 3 years ago, Verer had feared Canadian civilians. Now he mourned leaving them behind. The world had turned completely upside down. And Verer was not sure he would ever feel right side up again.
Verer Schultz spent his first year back in Germany working reconstruction in Hamburg. His hands, strengthened by three years of maintenance work at Camp 30, proved useful in the massive rebuilding effort. He cleared rubble. He salvaged bricks. He helped rebuild walls and roofs. The work was hard, and the pay was almost nothing.
But Germany needed every able body. In the evenings, Verer sat in the crowded refugee shelter and wrote letters. He wrote to Tom in Saskatchewan, carefully choosing words that would pass the sensors. He described his mother’s survival, the state of Hamburg, the slow process of rebuilding. Tom wrote back with news from the farm, stories about wheat harvests and winter weather, small pieces of normal life from a world that still made sense.
The correspondence became Verer’s anchor. Each letter from Canada reminded him that kindness existed somewhere, that not everything was rubble and hunger and grief. Klaus Hoffman found work teaching again in 1948 when Munich opened new schools in temporary buildings. At first, he refused to discuss the Nazi period with his students. The shame felt too heavy.
How could he explain that he had believed that he had taught children to love a regime that committed unspeakable crimes? But silence felt worse than honesty. In 1949, Klouse started carefully teaching his students what he had learned. Not politics, just truth. He showed them how propaganda works, how lies can sound believable, how ordinary people can be deceived into supporting evil.
He used his own story as a warning. Some parents complained, but Klouse kept teaching. The truth mattered more than comfort. Yoanveber rebuilt his family’s farm in Bavaria. His mother was too tired to do much anymore, so Yoan took over completely. He applied every technique he had learned from listening to Tom’s stories and studying Canadian agriculture.
He rotated crops differently. He managed soil better. He planned with precision instead of tradition. Within 3 years, the farm’s productivity increased by 300%. Neighbors noticed. They asked Yan’s advice. He shared everything he knew, never mentioning where he learned it. Some things were better left unsaid in postwar Germany.
In 1952, Canada announced a new German immigration program. The country needed workers for its growing economy. Former prisoners of war could apply if they had Canadian sponsors and clean records. Verer saw the announcement in a newspaper and could not sleep that night. He wrote to Tom asking if sponsorship was possible.
Tom’s response came six weeks later. Of course, I will sponsor you. I told you my door is always open. Come home, friend. Come home. Tom called Canada home for Verer. The words made Verer cry. In April 1953, Verer Schultz boarded a ship for Canada. This time as a free man, not a prisoner. This time traveling toward a future he chose, not a fate forced upon him.
His mother and sister said goodbye on the Hamburg docks. His mother held his face in her thin hands. “Be happy,” she whispered. “One of us should be happy.” Verer worked on Tom’s farm in Saskatchewan for 5 years. He learned farming from the ground up. He saved money. In 1958, he bought his own land 40 miles from Tom’s place.
That same year, he became a Canadian citizen. Verer Schultz stood in a government office and swore allegiance to the country that had once held him prisoner. The oath felt right, like coming home after a long journey. Klouse published a memoir in 1967 titled From Believer to Witness: A German P’s Canadian Transformation.
The book became a small sensation in Germany. Young people read it to understand how their parents and grandparents had fallen for Nazi propaganda. Klouse gave interviews. He spoke at schools. He told the same story over and over. How ordinary kindness had destroyed his belief in hate. Yoan never left Bavaria, but he maintained correspondence with Mrs.
Henderson until her death in 1971. When his daughter was born in 1955, he named her Helen after the Canadian woman who had shown him unexpected mercy. His daughter grew up hearing stories about a kind lady far away who brought cookies to enemy soldiers because she believed in treating all people with dignity. 1983 marked the 40th anniversary of the prisoner’s arrival at Camp 30.
Someone organized a reunion at the now abandoned camp. Letters went out to former prisoners and guards all over the world. 47 former prisoners attended. Wernern flew in from Saskatchewan at age 68. Klouse traveled from Munich at 70. Yoan was too ill to make the journey, but he sent a letter that was read aloud during the ceremony.
Tom came too, now 73 years old. Wernern saw him across the campyard and started walking faster, then running. The two old men embraced in the middle of what used to be the exercise field. They held each other and cried. 40 years of friendship. 40 years of letters. Former guard and former prisoner. Now just two old friends reunited.
A local newspaper covered the event. The headline read, “Former enemies became friends. Photographers took pictures of old men standing in front of barracks that were falling apart. The men pointed at buildings and told stories. This is where we had Christmas dinner. This is where I learned English. This is where my whole world changed.
Klouse gave a speech during the formal ceremony. His voice shook, but his words came clear. We came to Canada expecting barbarians. We found humanity. The lesson. Propaganda dies when it meets truth. Fear dies when it meets kindness. Hate dies when it meets dignity. We were Germany’s soldiers. Canada made us better men.
Wernern died in 1991 in Saskatchewan. Tom had passed away 4 years earlier. They were buried in the same cemetery. Two men who should have been enemies but became brothers instead. Wernern’s headstone read Wernern Schultz 1915 to 1991. German by birth, Canadian by choice, human by the grace of those who showed mercy. Klaus’s memoir continued to be taught in German schools long after his death.
In 1995, a journalist interviewed the 80-year-old Klouse one final time. “What did you really learn from your time as a prisoner?” the journalist asked. Klouse thought for a long moment before answering. “Those Canadian civilians,” we feared. “They taught us what our own leaders couldn’t.
That strength lies not in conquest, but in compassion. That true power isn’t dominating others, but treating them with dignity.” We were shocked by our first sight of Canadian civilians because we saw ourselves reflected back, not as propaganda caricatures, but as human beings. That shock saved our souls. He paused and looked directly at the camera.
The greatest weapon against hatred isn’t violence. It’s unexpected kindness that forces people to see their enemy as human. The Canadians could have brutalized us. They had every reason to. Instead, they fed us, educated us, treated us with respect, and in doing so, they defeated our ideology more completely than any army ever could.
They won the war by showing us we were wrong to fight in the first place. Klouse died 3 months later. His memoir remained in print. His message lived on and thousands of students learned the lesson he had bought with years of transformation that human dignity is stronger than any propaganda and mercy is the most powerful force in the world.
