Volume 16 , Issue 8

German POW Camp In Jerome, Arkansas (1945)

During WWII over 425,000 captured Axis soldiers were transported to the United States and interned for the duration in stockades and compounds scattered across the country. Arkansas eventually received about 23,000 of these enemy troops, most of them members of Germany's most famous military unit: Erwin Romnel's Afrika Korps.

Significant numbers of Axis prisoners of war began arriving in the United States in early 1943 soon after the successful, conclusion of Allied cooperations in North Africa. Jerome, Arkansas operated from November 1944 until January 1945. It held over 4600 German POWs. Camp Dermott, one of the largest, and most unusual German POW camps in the U.S., was the third Arkansas facility. The camp occupied 960 acres of flat delta land just outside the hamlet of Jerome on US 165 about eight miles south of Dermott. It originally was the Jerome Relocation Center, one of two such complexes in the state.

Between 1942 and 1944 thousands of Americans of Japanese ancestry endured a dreary, humiliating existence in the huge but spartan military style installation. By June 1944 the last American internees had been removed from Jerome and transported to the other Arkansas camp at Rohwer or to camps on the West coast. The deserted barracks city was striped bare, only the dark shells of the trapper covered buildings remained.

Other Links - POW Camps In Arkansas
The Afrika Korps In Arkansas 1943-46)
Hitler's Generals in America: Nazi POWs and Allied Military intelligent by Derek R. Mallett
List of Detention camps, temporary detention centers and department of justice internment camps   |  View or Add Comments (0 Comments)   |   Receive updates ( subscribers)  |   Unsubscribe

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