Date Opened: May 1945
Date Closed: April 1946
Capacity: 230
Type of POW: Combatant Officers and Other Ranks
Description:
By early 1945, the war in Europe was coming to an apparent end and the Allied nations were faced with the question of what to do with the thousands of pro-Nazi POWs in their custody. Could these prisoners become allies in a post-war world? Could they be re-educated? And how could this be done?
In an April 1945 meeting, the Canadian Psychological Warfare committee proposed a new internment camp with one specific purpose: to serve as a re-education centre for “White” – or anti-Nazi – POWs who would produce material to help de-Nazify and re-educate others prisoners interned across Canada. The new camp, Camp 45, was to be located on the former grounds of the No. 45 Canadian Army Training Centre in Sorel, Quebec.
With army facilities already in place, the site required very little work to convert it into a POW camp and, unlike other internment camps in Canada, Camp 45 was to be a minimal security camp due to the prisoners’ anti-Nazi status. The “enclosure” was a simple fence around the prisoners’ quarters and working area and only two guards manned the gates.
Anti-Nazi officers and other rank POWs were transferred from internment and work camps across Canada in May 1945. Intelligence officers sought to assemble a diverse group of prisoners, with different points of view and from different backgrounds, and they included merchants, teachers, leather workers, engineers, factory workers, lawyers, government officials, and tailors. All had been hand-picked due to their anti-Nazi beliefs and activities during their internment.
The prisoners quickly began their work producing re-educational material. Various committees were formed that used prisoners’ backgrounds to tackle specific subjects like history, religion, agriculture, and medicine while the camp’s Counter Propaganda Committee focused its attention on dismantling Nazi ideologies, myths, and distorted history. These prisoners produced a newspaper, a weekly periodical, historical newsletters, and pamphlets for prisoners in other camps while a radio section provided scripts for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s (CBC) International Service.
Due to the camps’ relatively small size and the nature of its work, recreation facilities were more limited than other camps. The prisoners renovated a hut into a recreation hall with a stage, where they hosted a string quartet and choir as well as lectures from fellow POWs and visiting lecturers. The War Prisoners’ Aid provided sporting equipment – including boxing gloves, footballs (soccer balls), volleyballs, and hockey equipment – as well as drawing supplies, and instruments. Prisoners were permitted parole walks and many chose to walk in a nearby forest where they could a brief period of relative freedom.
The anti-Nazis at Sorel were among the first prisoners to be transferred to the United Kingdom in early 1946 in the hopes that they would soon be repatriated to Germany to continue their work. The last prisoners left Camp 45 in March 1946 and the camp closed the following month.
Although Canadian authorities had hoped the prisoners would stay together once transferred to the United Kingdom or be incorporated in similar British re-education programs, this was not to be the case. Officers were transferred to officers’ camps and the other ranks to work projects across the country.
Today, nothing remains of the former camp. The site is now occupied by apartments, houses, a city park, and a secondary school.
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POWs in Canada 