Fight to save Nazi POW camp in Canada

BOWMANVILLE, Ontario, March 6 (UPI) -- Canadian historians are fighting to save a World War II German prisoner of war camp east of Toronto where the Allies kept high-ranking officers.

Camp 30 is in Bowmanville, 45 miles east of Toronto, and its 18 buildings sit on 100 acres of land owned by The Kaitlin Group of developers, the Toronto Star reported.

Some 880 German prisoners were housed at the facility during the war, one of them a top U-boat captain Adolf Hitler reportedly planned on rescuing by sending a submarine up the St. Lawrence River into Lake Ontario, the report said.

That never happened but there was a three-day uprising in October 1942 in which soldiers dropped their weapons and battled with prisoners with baseball bats to make it a fair fight, historians told the newspaper.

In 1943, an eight-month tunneling escape plan was foiled by gravity. The Germans had dug about 300 feet out of the compound 20 feet down, but were stashing the dirt in the attic of a building, whose ceiling finally collapsed, the report said.

Historian Lynn Philip Hodgson said the facility had an indoor swimming pool, theater and concert stage and only one complaint was ever filed with the Red Cross -- the urinals were too low.

The developers said unless funding to maintain the buildings comes along, they will bulldozed in two to three months, the report said.