Volume 8 , Issue 7

WWII - Alva POW Camp Escapees...

The Geneva Convention on escaping POW's was accepted as the duty of POW's to escape and was not a crime. The only punishment was slight unless some real crime was committed during the escape. Maximum penalty was 30 days in solitary confinement, bread and water, but at Alva it was 8 days. Recaptured POW's were confined in the guard house that stood between the POW compounds and the hospital. For committing a real crime, POW's were sentence to the federal prison. At the end of WWII there were 162 POW's in those establishments. It was unknown if any came from the Alva POW camp. Some crimes warranted execution and some were executed. Mainly those POW's from the Tonkawa Camp.

POW's not recaptured until after the war and other POW repatriated could only look forward to being deported as undocumented aliens. Oklahoma Newspapers accounted for approximately 21 escapes from the Alva Camp and there were probably more. None were free for long. Some got as far as New Mexico, Kansas City and at the US border patrol at the Rio Grande.

The first escape was by Karl Heinz Zigann and Heinz Aulenbacher, April 1944. They were recaptured three days later in Emporia, Kansas. Max Wolff and Franz Holm escaped that Spring and were recaptured in New Mexico. Three more escaped a week later and were caught in Wellington, Kansas. Werner Wolf and Heinz Roth escaped May 20, 1944 and were recaptured in Kansas City.

Five POW's escaped on July 4, 1944. Burgmann von Schwinicher, Heinz Homme, Eberhard Wilms, Karl Heinz Zigann (2nd time), and Max Wolff (2nd time). Escapes by POW's continued later that Summer with Paul Jahn and Heinz Schutz. On January 20, 1945, Georg Hornauf, Otto Kanich, Anton Sheffer, Fritz Pueschel, and Erich Wolf escaped.

Usually, the fence was cut, climbed over, or the POW's just walked away from work detail. A long tunnel that led under the fence was discovered before it was used. The POW's scurried out of it when the tunnel was threatened with flooding by the guards. There were no theatrical type escapes like in the movies at the Alva camp.

Jack Martin is quoted as saying, "A POW dug a hole under the building and equipped it with comforts of home, including a supply of homebrewed applejack. He would mingle with the other POW's during the day and hide in the hole at night. When he missed roll call, a search was made. No sign of him could be found outside of camp. It was decided that he was hiding somewhere in the compound. The guards found a POW who agreed to point him out to them, if he could do it from a guard tower while wearing an America uniform and be transferred away immediately."

The son (Michael Wolf - Email: MichaelWolf5@gmx.de) of Werner Wolf Adds This Message... "I just would like to correct one or two little details. My father Werner Wolf was POW in Camp Alva after having surrendered as officer of the Afrika Korps (10. Panzer division) in Tunesia 1943. Indeed he managed to escape, as is mentioned in your article, but he was not recaptured in Kansas City but in a little town just before he attempted to cross the border towards Mexico (he had the idea to reach Argentine in order to search for a possibility to get back to Germany). My father re-entered the german army in postwar 1955 as Major and ended his military career as Colonel at the NATO Headquarter in Brussels 1971 (where I used to go to school). Werner Wolf died in 1973. I would like to add that as far as I know the POWs of Camp Alva, weren't all Nazi's and hard core sympathizers. Instead, it might be true that the camp exclusively contained officers of the Wehrmacht."

A small cemetery at the camp for the dead POW's was located on the westside of Washington Avenue and south of the last fence of compounds. After the war the dead were permanently buried in the Post Cemetery at Ft. Reno. It holds 66 POW's (German and Italian) as well as two German aliens who died in one of the Oklahoma alien interment camps. Not all buried at Ft. Reno died in Oklahoma camps, but were moved from POW camps in nearby states.

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