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Murder at Medicine Hat
Officers and gentlemen? Officers…maybe. But,
Gentlemen?…anything but. Four World War II German prisoners-of-war at Camp 132
- Medicine Hat, Alberta murdered two of their countrymen.
Victim No.1 was August Plaszec. Before the
war, he had a farm near Nordlunen-Germany. A Roman Catholic, he stood
only 5’5” and weighed just 150 pounds, but he sought some adventure and joined
the French Foreign Legion. In the 1930’s, Legionnaires, who returned to Germany
were ‘re-educated’ in Nazi ideology and inducted into the army. Because of his
experience with the Legion in Africa, he was assigned to Erwin Rommel’s “Afrika
Korps”. In 1943, at Tobruk, Rommel’s corps was almost wiped out and Plaszec was
captured by the British. He and several other ex-Legionnaires were eventually
sent to Camp 132, at Medicine Hat in Alberta.
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| Camp 132, Medicine Hat, Alberta |
Camp 132 was a very, very rough place. It was
huge… built to accommodate more than 12,000 prisoners. It was so huge that the
Canadian military only patrolled outside the wire. The prisoners themselves
controlled the inside. Inevitably, cliques were formed. There were hard core
Nazis. There were Communists. There were pacifists. You name it; they were all
there. And, they didn’t get along.
The ex-Legionnaires would meet near a soccer field
in the camp compound to reminisce about the past and speculate about their
future. That made them suspect in the eyes of leading Nazi elements. On July
22nd 1943, an angry mob grabbed Plaszec and dragged him outside, where he was
kicked and beaten with a rock, then, taken to an exercise hall, where he was
hanged.
Victim No.2 was Karl Lehmann. He was a stout, middle
aged man. Before the war, he had been a professor of languages at the
University of Erlangen. His ‘crime’? He spoke out against the Nazi regime
and he predicted that Germany would lose the war. On September 10th, 1943, he
was beaten by four men…one of them, a boxing instructor. After the beating,
Lehmann was hanged by the neck from a ceiling pipe.
It took a months to identify the killers in both of
these incidents. The investigations were stymied by a strict code of silence,
enforced by the highest-ranking officers in the camp. as the police
investigations dragged on, it was decided that some undercover work was required.
Among those brought in for the job, was Georges
Hamel. As a young lieutenant in World War I, he was captured and spent two
years as a prisoner in a Stalag. To pass the time in captivity, he learned to
speak German. Hamel learned well enough to eventually pass for a German. He was
considered too old to serve in World War II. Instead, the long-time railway
telegrapher was recruited by authorities to serve at the Camp X spy school,
near Whitby-Ontario, where he performed varied duties, including dressing up in
a Wehrmacht uniform and mingling with incoming German P.O.W. officers to gather
intelligence.
This is what he did at Medicine Hat. Hamel was
interned at Camp 132. There, he and other investigators finally identified the
killers.
Heinrich Busch, a pilot shot down over England…Willi
Mueller, a pilot who suffered a similar fate north of Glasgow…Bruno
Perzonowsky, a navigator who was captured in North Wales….and Walter Wolf, a
sergeant captured in Africa were tried and convicted. Under the terms of
article 45 of the Geneva Convention, they were subject to Canadian law. All
four were hanged on December 18th 1946.
To end on a more pleasant note….Some of the Camp 132
P.O.W.s were trusted to leave the compound and work in small businesses or as
farm labourers. Often they established a close bond with local families. Many
returned after the war….some to visit….others even to stay.
Richard Inwood - April
2016
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Image : Internet
