(Page 2 of 3) Print Version
POWs and Aroostook County community members
After his internment at Camp Houlton, Vohn Micka returned to Germany, finding it devastated and poverty-stricken after the war. With an infant and wife to support, he wrote to the farmers he knew in Aroostook County during his imprisonment, who sent Micka supplies, food, and baby formula.
One of the POWs who picked potatoes at the farm of Mary Ellen (Rusty) and Herman Porter offered to paint a portrait of the Porters' daughter, Lois, who was about age eight here.
Many of the POWs were fathers and brothers, and missed being around children. Farmer Charles Long brought his four-year-old son to visit the POWs, and his wife Edith said she sat on her farm porch with her baby, so the POWs working the fields could see the child—evidence that farmers did not view the POWs as a threat.
Prisoners of War in the farm field, Houlton, 1945
Item Contributed by
Aroostook County Historical and Art Museum
In 2002, 82-year-old Catherine "Kay" Bell, who had POW prisoners on her farm, recounted, "My brothers were over there fighting. We just hoped they were being treated as well as we were treating these boys."
Before the POWs arrived at Camp Houlton, Catherine Bell’s brother, Louis Bell, who served as a tail gunner on a B-17, was listed as missing in action over Rostock, Germany. His body was not recovered. Even though the POWs were Germans soldiers—Nazis who their sons and brothers were fighting overseas—Houlton farmers viewed the POWs as good laborers rather than enemy soldiers. Sixty years later, former POW Rudi Richter accompanied Catherine Bell to the Baltic Sea in Germany, the site of her brother Louis's last known location.
In 2003, Bell, who worked as the Curator at the Aroostook County Historical and Art Museum, helped welcome back German POWs from Camp Houlton to the town. Former POW Heinz Feldt visited ACHAM in 2008 while traveling, and family members—including children and grandchildren— of the former POWs have made a point of visiting Houlton over the years.
In 2003, former Camp Houlton POWs Hans Krueger, Gerhardt Kleindt, Rudi Richter, and Hans-Georg Augustin returned to Houlton in response to an invitation from the town to all surviving Houlton POWs to return and be recognized as friends, and made honorary residents of the town.
The men, who were in their teens when they first arrived at Camp Houlton, saw the experience as life changing—ironically in positive ways. Hans-Georg Augustin stated, "This was a part of my youth, and I want to see it again."
During his 2003 visit, Hans Krueger said,
This POW time has changed my life and the outlook of my life and how to see people and judge people. I am glad that I had this experience, which has transformed me.
German prisoners picking potatoes, Houlton, 1945
Item Contributed by
Aroostook County Historical and Art Museum
A slogan of World War II was "Food Will Win the War and Write the Peace." Maine's Extension Service administered the National Farm Labor Program in Maine and placed workers on farms—including the German POWs—to fill the gap caused by Americans serving overseas. Even after the end of World War II in 1945, the lack of harvest laborers was dire. The Extension Service's 1945 report noted placing local day haul workers on farms, along with laborers from,
Maine, Quebec, Newfoundland, Jamaica, and Kentucky; and more than two thousand German prisoners of war from Europe's battlefields. Total number of individuals placed was 16,323, and the total number of placements was 41,864. Practically no crops were lost for lack of labor at harvest time.
The same report tallied POW laborers picked 4,471,059 bushels of potatoes, or about one-tenth of the total crop in 1945.
Painting by prisoner of war, Camp Houlton, 1945
Item Contributed by
Aroostook County Historical and Art Museum
German POW Artur Oberosler painted this vista of the Tyrolian Alps—complete with edelweiss flowers—during his internment at Camp Houlton. On the back he inscribed a note stating in German that this was an original painting, and that he was a portrait painter.
Communication between Americans and POWs could be frustrating since few prisoners spoke English and fewer Americans spoke German. Some prisoners spoke French, and Houlton locals—many descendants of the Acadians who settled in Northern Maine in the 1600s—helped to translate. In 2021, Betsy Mercer remembered,
My dad who spoke French was asked to talk with some of the German prisoners who spoke French. I remember him telling us about it. I also remember Dad telling us how young some of the German prisoners were, all very nice guys who wanted stamps for letters home, cigarettes and chocolate.
Sometimes POWs secretly passed coded information in their artwork, although there is no evidence of this happening in Houlton.
