"The train trip to Hull was long and tiresome. The older of the two officers wondered if we should be handcuffed during the station stops along the way, but the idea was abandoned. At one point during the trip I shared a seat with an RAF officer who had been in training in the west and was returning to England. After I'd made a couple of trips to the washroom at the end of the car, he asked me if I was aware that one of the Mounties always followed me. I told him that I was and explained the situation. He was deeply shocked and said that in his country people like us were either in the armed forces or working in production. He could not, for the life of him, understand what was wrong with Canada where people like us were locked up and denied a chance to serve their country.
We arrived at Hull jail some time near midnight. We were brought to the office of the camp commandant, who was waiting for us. He looked the typical officer of the British Imperial Army, in which he had served at one time. His uniform was impeccable, riding boots polished to a fault. He could have been a movie stereotype. He paced up and down for a moment as Tom and I watched in silence.
Finally he picked up the detention papers on his desk and asked Tom McEwen his name. When Tom told him, the commandant looked annoyed and asked for his real, Russian name. He found it hard to accept the fact that a Communist had a Scottish name. After Tom repeated his name a few times, the commandant told him that it really didn't matter since he would henceforth be known and addressed as H4.
After giving the commandant my name (its foreign sound vindicated his backward theories), he advised that I would be known as H5. I was numb with fatigue and my first impulse was to tell him to shove it. Instead I told him I had a name and would continue to answer to it. He replied that I would behave according to the rules, or else. It was obvious that we were not going to see eye to eye on this, or any other, issue.
We were then escorted down the corridor to the heavy metal door of the prison inside. We heard voices lifted in song on the other side of the steel door. It was a song I had never heard before, and it moved me to tears. These were our friends and colleagues singing the Kananaskis song, a Canadian adaptation of the stirring song of the German prisoners of fascism-"The Peat Bog Soldiers." The commandant had given our boys permission to stay up and greet us upon our arrival. I remember the crowd of fellows gathered at the door as we entered, the greetings, hugs and handshakes, And I recall one of the boys shouting over the bedlam, "Geez, what took you so long?" It was an unforgettable moment.
The prison camp was a whole new world, gray and claustrophobic. Time was two-dimensional: inside and outside. Inside, each day was confined by stone and steel, barbed wire and bayonets. There was a sense of waste, of suspended animation. Outside, humanity fought for it's life and its future. All of us were garbed in POW uniforms with the red circle on the back of the jackets as insignia and target. We were marked men, prisoners of war, in uniforms decreed by international law. We had consistently opposed the enemies of our country, in return for which we had been imprisoned behind stone and barbed wire.
One of the great burdens of doing time in a concentration camp, in addition to the deep sense of injustice, was the indeterminate nature of the sentence. The question of "how long" had no answer. There was always hope that public opinion and protest would give that answer or that the war would end soon in victory for the allied cause. These were our only two doors to freedom.
Our overriding concern was with the war and the smashing of fascism. This was inseparable from our concern for freedom and our own participation in that struggle. We suffered with news of every setback and cheered with every victory on the battlefields of Europe, Asia and Africa. We urged our countless friends and supportive groups on the outside, by whatever means were open to us, to do all in their power to strengthen the war effort at home and abroad.
This spirit pervaded life in the prison camp. It was expressed in many ways, and in a variety of modest creative ventures. There were the beautiful poems by J.S. Wallace. Joe was already widely known as a great and talented labor poet. A number of his poems on the war against fascism were set to music by Ben Swankey and myself. While in prison he Wrote many others on the theme of man's inhumanity to man and on life in prison. Joe and I became close friends in Hull, and upon my release I took copies of most of his poems to try to arrange for their publication. I arranged for his first book, Night is Ended, to be published by Contemporary Publishers in Winnipeg. It was published in the fall of 1942, with a foreward by Margaret Fairley and an introduction by the poet E.J. Pratt.
The Flame of the Future
Our country's young and our army's young.
But we hurl at our foes defiance!
For we march as heirs of heroic years,
And we march in a world alliance.
For we march as heirs of heroic years,
And we march in a world alliance.
Our hopes are high and our hearts are high,
As we march to the final battles!
But if die we must, better deathless dust-
Then the life-long death of chattels.
A people in arms, we fight on as one,
The flame of future inside us!
While the glorious dead march on ahead,
And the women we love beside us.
While the glorious dead march on ahead,
And the women we love beside us.
Hull jail, 1942
A representative of the International Red Cross came to check conditions and to list materials and equipment we could use for recreational and cultural activities. There were many requests by our committee and individuals. I asked for an easel, paints, brushes, paper and canvas for art work, and for a supply of plaster of Paris for a project I had in mind. The commandant assigned the cells on the main deck as studios or workshops for those who needed space. I was one of four or five who accepted the offer.
My first project was to paint a number of posters for the war effort. I had no idea if they would ever be used or even see daylight, but I went ahead anyway. When the commandant saw me working on the first poster, "The Nutcracker," he became excited and asked if he could take it to Ottawa for the consideration of the wartime information people. I told him I would be happy to see it used, or even if it suggested an idea to one of their artists.
The work was slow. After I had completed two more posters and they were sent to Ottawa, I asked Major Greene. the commandant, if I could get photocopies of my work as keepsakes, regardless of what ultimately happened to the posters. He promised to try to arrange it, but nothing came of it. Only after I was released did I find out that two of the I also made poster-size sketches of my family from photographs and mailed them home. I made quite a few for my colleagues from their photos. After many weeks at the easel, I turned my attention to a project with plaster of Paris that became quite popular. I set out to make ash trays modelled on a caricature of Hitler's face. First I made a master copy, which had an elongated open mouth for ashes and cigarette butts; "Butts Here" was lettered on the chin. Ben Swankey and I devised a system of mass production and manufactured hundreds of the Hitler ash trays. Not only did my colleagues take a few to send outside, but hundreds were taken by officers and guards-even by a representative of the Red Cross.
There were two other projects in plaster of Paris that gave me many hours of pleasure, and also many headaches, and which helped occupy the time. I decided to make bookends from a reproduction of two hands that would give the impression of holding a row of books together. I selected a model with hands best suited for the purpose, and from which a plaster mold would be made. On the first attempt, we couldn't remove his hand, which was encased in a box of plaster. As we wrestled with the problem, dinner was announced. The model walked into the dining room with this clumsy box at the end of his arm. There were many good-natured jibes by those seated at the tables. When we got back to the problem at hand, some twelve sets had been made before the forms finally chipped and broke. We added a base and gilded the hands to complete the bookends. They looked attractive and we had many requests for more, but the one-armed diner incident discouraged other models.
The last plaster project was a bas relief mask of a facial profile. I decided to experiment on my own. I used highly refined sand as the base for the mould, and it worked. I mounted the copy on a polished wooden plaque and sent it home. I found out later that it was never displayed at home because my mother saw it as a death mask. I made another bas relief profile of John Navizivsky. He was good-humored about the whole thing, and quite cooperative. He also sent the finished product home to his wife. The detail was remarkable. Some years later, when I met the sculptor in Kiev who was preparing a bust to John's memory, I remember thinking how useful that bas relief might have been.
During this period, when arts and crafts were a feature of life in the prison, a number of fellows turned to woodcraft with surprising results. Painstaking weeks of work went into the production of tea trays and jewellery boxes, with intricate inlays of specially selected pieces of wood. Then came the stains, lacquers, and a high polish that gleamed like glass. Some of the army officers asked if they could buy the finished articles, with offers of $100 to $150 for a beautiful tray or jewellery box. My wife still has the jewellery box that Tom McEwen sent her as a gift.
The climate inside and outside the prison camp changed as time and the war moved forward. Not only did we feel that our release would soon be ordered, but so did the military officers and guards at Hull. Attitudes were changing. This could be seen in the way the guards on duty outside the small compound where prisoners could enjoy the sun would peacefully snooze with their rifles stuck in the ground on their bayonets. We'd wake them up when we saw an officer approaching. Public pressure was mounting for our release. People from every walk of life were demanding an end to the injustice. The first to be released, beginning in the early summer of 1942, were the critically ill. The authorities did not want any of the prisoners dying on their hands. But a number of the sick who were released died shortly after their return home.
A judicial commission was set up to effect the release of anti-fascist internees. The government had already made the political decision to free us. The commission would make it appear that we were released by due process of law. Our legal counsel, J.L. Cohen, advised us to appear before the commission and go through the motions of a formal hearing. This would be a different exercise from the one in Winnipeg a year earlier. That one was a whitewash to justify our internment; this was a formality that would authorize our release."
- William Repka & Kathleen Repka, Dangerous Patriots: Canada's Unknown Prisoners of War. Vancouver: New Star Books, 1982. p. 189-194
