Link to 'Opinion Matters' column in the November 26 Janesville Gazette.
Link to Greg Peck's 'Opinion Matters' archive.
Recently the Gazette ran a brief stating that Joel Van Haaften, director of the Rock County Historical Society, was going to speak Nov. 9 about German prisoners of war held in Watertown during World War II.
Hey, a couple of Sound Off callers suggested, weren’t Germans also imprisoned here in Janesville during WWII? It’s true. I remember now-retired Gazette reporter Jim Dowd sharing his boyhood memories of the Germans held here.
In response to those Sound Offs, the folks at Hedberg Public Library have posted, on the library's history blog, information about the German POWs in Janesville. The Germans lived here in the summer of 1944.
The blog notes that, “‘Camp Janesville’ opened at the corner of Western Avenue (Rockport Road) and Crosby when 250 German prisoners were brought here to help with the canning industry. Assisting them were ‘high school students, Jamaicans, Barbadians, Mexicans, soldiers from Truax Field and full-time war workers who work short shifts in order to help with the harvest.’”
It’s just another great way the folks of Hedberg library are able to educate residents and alert people to literature in the library’s archives that relates to such historical events.
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