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Keewatin, Kenora, Ontario

“Catch 9 of 28 Fugitives Nazis, Warn Citizens To ‘Use Force’,” Toronto Star. April 19, 1941. Pages 01 & 02. ---- SUSPECT ESCAPED FLIER IN U.S. ORGANIZED FIFTH COLUMN AID FOR PALS IN ONTARIO CAMP ---- Food and Civilian Clothing Were in Readiness for ‘Troublesome’ Prisoners When They Tunnelled Under Barricade in Nation’s First Mass Break ---- SUGGEST RECENT MYSTERIOUS FIRE SET TO SCREEN THEIR ACTIVITIES ---- Nine of 28 Nazi Airmen who tunnelled out of a Northern Ontario internment camp last night have been recaptured, Col. Hubert Stethem, director of internment camps, said in Toronto at noon. Two are already back in the camp.

Col. Stethem is awaiting arrival of an R.C.A.F. bomber from Ottawa to take him to the scene of the hunt in what a provincial policeman at Port Arthur calls the ‘rock and Christmas tree’ bush country north of Lake Superior and east of Schreiber.

The airmen, captured in England when their planes were shot out from under them, escaped through a tunnel under barbed wire. The first five recaptured were caught by veterans of the camp guard.

The prisoners apparently had scattered after the break. Col. Stethem said that some of the Germans had been captured west of the camp and others east. Patrols are out at points farther from the camp than the spots where the men were captured, he added.

None of those recaptured, offered any resistance, Col. Sthem added.

As yet Col. Stethen has not been able to learn in which direction from the camp the five were captured.

‘We’ll have to find that out in a hurry if we are going to map any organized plan of search,’ he said.

The break was carefully planned, and there is strong probability that it was aided by fifth column activity from outside the camp.

The airmen, when they crept out through the tunnel left dummies stuffed under their blankets to deceive the night sentries. Once outside, they stole to a rock cut near the camp, and changed from the distinctive cap dress into civilian clothes.

It is suggested that Baron Franz von Wera, a former member of the same group of captured airmen, who escaped across the St. Lawrence to Ogdensburg, N.Y., while the party was being escorted to the camp, might have arranged among U.S. Nazi sympathizers for the supply of this civilian clothing to the prisoners.

In addition to the clothing, the prisoners possessed chocolate and canned food when they were caught. The fact they had food was also thought to suggest outside help.

The prisoners are believed to have escaped in groups of two and three men each. Guards who caught the first five found two men together in one spot, three in another. None resisted.

Meantime, crack troops, flying squads of Ontario provincial police, and armed posses of bushworkers were on the trail. It is a manhunt greater than any that the lake country has seen before, across lakes and streams swollen by spring floods, under a drizzling low mist.

The camp is closest to the railway points of Rossport, Dublin, Ozone, Jackfish, Heron Bay, Struther, and White River. Except for scattered lumber and mining camps, there are no settlements and no roads but the C.P.R. right-of-way.

Inspector Ingraham of the O.P.P. at Port Arthur, in charge of police units in the territory, said ‘The prisoners could only escape along the railroad or by airplane.’

First Mass Escape It was the first mass escape since Canada entered the war. The men, all prisoners of war, burrowed a tunnel under the barricade and vanished without raising an alarm.

The roads are either non-existent or badly damaged by the winter.

The camp from which the men escaped is the same one in which a fire broke out, mysteriously, a few days ago. There is a possibility that the Nazis set the fire to screen their activity in digging the tunnel.

The camp is located near a pulp and paper plans and two logging camps which employ about 75 men. Most of the bush workers in the areas are Finns, and they are joining in the search.

Officials at Ottawa say the prisoners will be handicapped by lack of knowledge of the rough country, through which only men skilled in bushcraft would attempt to travel any distance. Hunger will be the greatest factor in driving the men back into the arms of internment authorities, it is suggested.

Fled in Storm The break was made under the cover off a wet, stormy night, and a continuing heavy rain, sluicing down over the rock, pine and berry bushes of the Lake Superior shore., makes it easy for the escaped men to conceal themselves.

Although authorities were inclined to believe that the escaped men were heading east from the camp, along the C.P.R. tracks, it is possible that German sympathizers or fifth columnists across the lake, in Wisconsin, may have made some effort to get them across to the United States by boat.

All provincial policemen in the northern part of the province have been mobilized on the search. Thirty-five O.P.P. constables were assigned to the job through headquarters at Port Arthur and Sudbury, and between ‘50 and 100′ crack troops were ordered out on the search from Port Arthur.

Flight-Lieut. H. C. Johnson, commander of the R.C.A.F. elementary training school,at Fort William, said the school had no planes with sufficient range to aid in the search for the prisoners. ‘We have only training planes and the nearest field with craft of sufficient size is Winnipeg. or the east,’ he said.

Civilian posses of sharp-eyed, straight-shooting northern trappers and railwaymen, have been organized at key points along the rail line, to add to the provincial police and guards in the search.

‘The only chance for those fellows to make good their escape that I can see is to be picked up by airplanes and it would have to be a number of them or a big transport plane from the United States flying across the 200 miles of Lake Superior,’ said Inspector Ingram.

‘Even before getting aboard the plans, which themselves would have to contend with rough weather and open lake, they would have to make their way through 25 miles, of bush to the shore of the lake and the planes would have to be ready to take them off immediately. That would mean outside collaboration, which I do not think is possible. It s raining and it would be wet and cold, to say nothing of the need of food and shelter. If they get away they will be pretty clever, and I don’t think they can do it.’

The prisoners are among the most troublesome Nazis who have been brought captive to Canada. Landed at an eastern Canadian port a few weeks ago, they have made constant efforts to escape and have given troubles from the moment they reached the internment camp.

The country in which the camp is located is heavily treed and studded with tiny lakes and streams. The district is thinly populated.

‘Most Isolated in Canada’ A secretary of state department spokesman, at Ottawa, said all prisoners in the camp had been accounted for at 8 p.m. when the usual nightly check-up was made. It was 1 a.m. when the escapes were discovered, he said.

‘The camp is the most isolated camp in Canada,’ said the spokesman. ‘The bush is thick and extends on all sides of the camp for miles and miles. There are no roads to speak of and the only quick means of moving through the densely wooded country is on a railway right-of-way.’

The spokesman said there was no settlement in the area from which the fugitives could obtain food or other aid.

‘If they are heading for the United States border as other prisoners have done they will have to travel some 500 or 600 miles around Lake Superior,’ he added. ‘If a wholesale break had to come it could not come in a better place from the standpoint of placing the men in country that is difficult to travel through.’

The prisoners early established records as ‘bad actors.’ The day after reaching port, two attempted to escape but were recaptured almost immediately near Moncton, N.B.

A young Nazi air lieutenant dived through an internment train window during a brief stop at Smith Falls, Ont. After short minutes of liberty military police caught him. But not before the German officer had enunciated the attitude of the whole shipment of these prisoners: ‘It is the duty of a German officer to escape if he cane,’ he told guards.

The spokesman said there was no settlement in the area from which the fugitives could obtain food or other aid.

The prisoners early established records as ‘bad actors.’ The day after reaching port, two attempted to escape but were recaptured almost immediately near Moncton, N.B.

Mobilize Provincial Police Mobilization of all provincial police in the northern part of the province was organized immediately after the news of the escape.

Police dogs used in earlier hunts for escaped Germans would likely be sent in from Winnipeg headquarters, the R.C.M.P. here stated.

The men are believed to have made their break about 1 a.m. Toronto police got word of the escape from provincial police at 7.50 a.m. but neither had any general description of what the prisoners were wearing.

Major C. B. Lindsey of Toronto is commandant of the camp. He was formerly attached to the Veterans’ Guard of Canada and he was in charge of A Company of the Veterans’ Guard of Canada which was sent from Toronto to escort the prisoners.

Last night’s wholesale break brought to 61 the number of prisoners who have escaped in Canada since the start of the war.

Four was the largest number of prisoners to make a break in the past, and all previous fugitives have been recaptured except Baron von Werra, who managed to reach the U.S. soil at Ogdensburg, N.Y.

THESE ARE GERMAN PRISONERS BROUGHT TO CANADA - MANY OF THEM ARE LOOSE --- ‘SUB’ OFFICER Carl Rabe, officer from a German submarine, escaped while receiving treatment in Christie Street hospital, Toronto. He was captured on the lake shore after an attempt to row to the United States.

TRIED IT IN HALIFAX Peter Schierning made his break for freedom right after the ship which brought him to Canada reached an east coast port. Schierning was quickly captured before he had gone far.

ROWED ST. LAWRENCE Baron Franz von Wera made a dramatic bid for freedom when he escaped from a prison train at Mount Laurier, Que., hitch-hiked to the St. Lawrence near Prescott, and rowed to Ogdensburg, N.Y. He was caught there.

HE TRIED, TO Hals Kibert tried to doge detention in an Ontario prison camp in August, 1940. But e was no more successful than other Germans who have tried to make good their escape. All get caught.

SEARCHED Guards take no chances with prisoners, all are carefully searched on arrival, like this one. But when large numbers are held in camps, as is necessary in wartime, some escapes are said inevitable.

ESCAPE IS CALLED BIRTHDAY GIFT FOR ADOLF HITLER ---- Ottawa, April 19 - (CP) - The fact that Hitler’s birthday is tomorrow may be back of the wholesale escape of prisoners from an internment camp in northwestern Ontario, it was believed here today. It was learned authoritatively that officials had laid plans for a super-watch Sunday on all internment camps in the country as a precaution against breaks engineered as a Nazi gesture for Hitler’s birthday.

‘USE ANY FORCE’ TO RE-TAKE NAZIS RESIDENTS TOLD --- Authorities Advise Chapleau and White River Area To Be on Alert ---- ‘LIKELY MOVE EAST’ ---- ‘Use any force necessary.’ This was the warning issued in Toronto today by Col. Robert Stethen, director of internment, addressed to residents of the Lake Superior bush country around Chapleau and White Rover. He spike because 28 German prisoners escaped through a tunnel from a Lake Superior internment camp last midnight. Five have since been recaptured.

‘The men are all non-commissioned men of the German air force, mostly crews of planes that were brought down raiding London. Since they came from the east. I feel they will head back to the east, and I strongly advise residents of the country around Chapleau and White River to be on the watch.

‘They should, if they spot any of these man, use any force necessary to hold them until military aid can arrive.’

‘I’d Have Stayed in Prison Camp’ Says Man Who Knows Bushland --- By TOM JONSON --- Kenora, April 19 - ‘I was at the prison camp from which 30 Nazis escaped this week. If I were they - and I’ve had a lot of experience in the Ontario bush - I would have stayed there.

‘It’s in the middle of the most desolate country in Ontario. It’s surrounded by the toughest kind of bush country.

The camp itself is one of the best known in Canada since it is near the main line of a transcontinental railway.

From what I heard from the people in the little settlement this week, the captain of the ‘hell ship’ Altmark, who was captured in Norway when his prison ship tried to run home with British sailors taken from boats sunk by the Graf Spee, is there. His only hobby, they told me, is making little boats inside bottles

ACTUAL PICTURES OF CAMPSITE FROM WHICH 28 GERMAN PRISONERS BROKE FREE --- FUGITIVE GERMAN FLIERS MUST FLEE THROUGH ROCKY, BUSH COVERED HILL COUNTRY THROUGH WHICH NO ROADS RUN Barbed wire fences surround the camp on the north shore off Lake Superior fro which 28 Germans escaped shortly after midnight last night, as can be seen in the picture taken of the camp clearing before the buildings were raised, LEFT. Heavy rain sluiced down over the rocky, bush-covered countryside, which can be seen about the camp, when the break was made. There are few inhabitants in the area, except Indian families, living in tiny shacks, CENTRE, and trappers, many of whom are even now organized in posses hunting the escaped men. It is thought the Nazis, all fliers, may have headed east along the main line of the C.P.R. which, near the camp, cuts through red granite hills, RIGHT. Thirty-five Ontario provincial police constables have been dispatched from Port Arthur, and ‘50 to 100′ troops are said to have joined the search. The camp is the most isolated in Canada, an Ottawa spokesman said. There are no roads to speka of in the district, and those few are nearly impassable.

- All photo copyright, 1941, The Toronto Star

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