This week on The Historians Podcast, Army veteran and Utica College student David Cooney discusses his research on upstate New York prisoner of war camps where German soldiers were housed during the Second World War. One such camp was near today’s Fort Drum and another was in Utica.
You can listen to the podcast here.
You can find more podcasts and stories at bobcudmore.com.
“The Historians” podcast is heard on RISE, WMHT’s radio information service for the blind and print disabled in New York’s Capital Region and Hudson Valley. The podcast is broadcast Saturdays at 12:05 pm on WCSS 1490 AM and 106.9 FM in Amsterdam and Sundays at 4:30 pm on WBDY-FM-LP (99.5) in Binghamton.
I was told that Fairhaven Beach Park housed refugees, True? Or False?
The camp was originally built by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the early 1930s and later by German POWs during its days as the Prison Camp at Fair Haven.[4]
The Safe Haven or refugee camp was in Oswego
I believe that there were Japanese America
n internment camps as well
There was one on Howland Island, just north of Port Byron. They brought in the German POW to work the farms since all the local guys were over there fighting Germans. In the 30’s it was a CCC camp and after the war, it was a Boy Scout camp.
German POWs were also housed at Green Lakes Park outside of Syracuse and were made to farm victory gardens in Syracuse.
My mother remembers them in Binghamton when she was a child under 10. The local neighborhood kids would talk to the prisoners through the fence.