Medicine Hat's Wartime POW Murders
Over 30,000 German POWs Were Held in Canada During Second World War
The old drill hall on the fairgrounds at Medicine Hat, Alberta is one of the few buildings left from the Second World War prison camps for captured Germans.
Second World War German Prisoners of War in Canada
As the Second World War progressed, Britain realized there were too many German prisoners to be held in the United Kingdom. If Hitler ever crossed the English Channel, the German POWs would be a ready army for him.
The British asked Canada to help by taking POWs and holding them in Canada.
Estimates vary, but somewhere around 30,000 German POWs spent part of the Second World War in Canada. After the war, many Germans, some of them former prisoners of war, immigrated to Canada.
Medicine Hat Camp 132
In the province of Alberta, the towns of Medicine Hat and Lethbridge were selected as sites for the two largest Canadian POW camps. Built specifically to house the German prisoners, each camp was designed to hold 12,500 men. Camp 132 at Medicine Hat opened on July 1, 1943.
Trouble Inside the POW Camp
The German POWs at Medicine Hat included some Nazi Party supporters, and others who were not Party members. Conflicts over politics and power led to two brutal murders of German prisoners by their fellow Germans.
The RCMP investigated the murders. It took three years to complete the second murder investigation. There were also some important legal issues about whether the POWs could go to trial in a Canadian court. In the end, four men were convicted and hanged at Lethbridge Jail in 1946 for the 1944 murder of Dr. Karl Lehmann.
The Historic Site at Medicine Hat
There is very little at Medicine Hat to show that a prison camp ever existed there. Even though the prisoners outnumbered the townspeople at the time, it is a part of history that is fast fading from memory.
The Medicine Hat fairgrounds still have one building from the POW camp. It is the former drill hall, a fairly large building near the grandstand. There is a commemorative plaque on the building, placed there in 2004.
To find the fairgrounds, follow the signs to the Medicine Hat Exhibition and Stampede, or to the fairgrounds, as they are the same location. The address is 2055 - 21 Avenue SE, Medicine Hat, Alberta.
