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Former German POW recalls his days at Gettysburg prisonBy PAUL HAALANDTimes Staff WriterMilitary history abounds in this area, from the well-known and chronicled, to the obscure; the World War II POW camp in Gettysburg falls somewhere in between.So any new information about Camp Sharpe is welcome, especially when it comes tolaUy out of the blue.A recent visitor, Erwin Ziess of Bad Bergzabern, Germany, made history as the first known German prisoner of war to return to Gettysburg.Ziess said in an interview Thursday at the National Park Service headquarters at the Eisenhower Farm that he never thought he would return here.Ziess does not remember much about his experience in Gettysburg, since he was only a boy soldier, ignorant of America, and thrust from the carnage of Europe, bouncing from various internment camps in the United States before landing here.‘The food was good, said Ziess.Historical records show that 396 German POWs lived at CampSharpe,# which was located in McMillan Woods, off Confederate Avenue oir the battlefield. Sixty-two American enlisted men served as guards, and there were five American officers who presided over the camp.Aiong with several other camps around the state. Camp Sharpe served as a satellite location for the Indiantown Gap Military Reservation. Only Germans were interned at Camp Sharpe.Andy Tarbet. a National Park Service official who provided the documents that provided much of the background for this story, said that “Camp Sharpe is part of the Gettysburg story.”The U.S. Army first interned POWs in Gettysburg at the National Guard Armory in the summer of 1944. Then the POWs were moved to a tent encampment enclosed by a fence at the present ‘'Home Sweet Home*’ site at Long Lane and Emmitsburg Road.The Army, which used POWs as a labor force, had planned to keep the Germans in Gettysburg only for the growing season, but it found work for them for the winter of 1944 to 1945, necessitating the construction of Camp Sharpe.The Army built Camp Sharpe on the abandoned CivilianConservation Corps camp inMcMillan Woods; Camp Sharpe was entirely dismantled after its closure, and no physical evidence exists today.Ziess came to the United States as part of his 45th wedding anniversary, and to visit American relatives, ft was his first trip to America since the war. Ziessvs family knew that he had been a POW, but did not know all the places in America he was interned. So when he said he would like to visit Gettysburg, the}' assumed he had just heard about the Civil War battlefield. No, he said, he was a prisoner of war there.Ziess served in the German Army for nine months before he was captured at the age of 18 and sent to America for the duration of the war. He arrived in New York City on November 10, 1944, and went to camps in North Carolina and Georgia before coming to Gettysburg in the spring of 1945.Ziess believes that he spentabout a year or a year and a half at Camp Sharpe: he knows that he weathered a winter here He returned to Germany on FebruaryERWIN ZEISS /_12, 1948 after some time if? England.Ziess and the other POWs worked for local farmers who contracted their labor from the U.S' government. The POWs were not*paid for their labor, but received coupons that they could exchange at the camp canteen for soap, cigarettes, and othei items ^
Newspaper Details
Gettysburg Times
Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, US
Sat, Jun 10, 1995
Page 3
Full Page
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USA 15 Jun 2019
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