Jewish boys and German PoWs: the curious history of a WWII farm labor camp near Des Plaines

Camp Pine Woods is a part of the Forest Preserve District of Cook County (FPDCC), located north of Des Plaines. The entrance is on Lake Avenue just east of River Road. Its name comes from a Second World War prisoner of war camp that existed there from 1945 to 1946. But before the prisoners’ arrival the site had another name: Camp Avodah. Forgotten by history is the strange but true story of how Jewish teenagers-turned-farm-laborers from Chicago lost their jobs to German PoWs.

From the CCC to USDA, 1934 to 1945

On 16 August 1934, a single company of enrollees from the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), of around 250 men, pitched up tents at Dam No. 2 in the Cook County forest preserves. The campsite was in a clearing adjacent to the Des Plaines River. Their job was to improve the preserves by building parking spaces, shelters, trails, and other facilities.

Soon the CCC began the construction of semi-permanent buildings. Laid out in a triangular arrangement, whereas CCC camps were typically rectangular, were ‘a kitchen and mess building, bath house, headquarters building, six barracks buildings, first aid building, pump and power house, garage, forestry office and headquarters and warehouse’.¹ Camp Des Plaines, also known as Dam No. 2 camp, came into being.

Abandoned by 1942, the camp found renewed purpose during the Second World War. In June 1943 the FPDCC, for the symbolic sum of $1, and agreement to a list of conditions, leased two former CCC camps on its properties to the agricultural Extension Service– U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). Workers supplied to these two camps would assist local farmers faced with a manpower shortage. The former Camp Des Plaines serviced the north end of Cook County, while Camp Thornton, near Thornton, serviced the south.

Two distinct groups of farm workers arrived. Living at the camp during their summer vacations, July to September, in 1943 and 1944, were male youths belonging to the Victory Farm Volunteers (VFVs). Then for the remainder of the school year came Jamaican laborers recruited from the British West Indies. This second group likely stayed at the camp into early 1945 but documentation is lacking.²

The VFV camp dwellers, on the other hand, left behind much documentary evidence. As members of a unique experiment in education, they caught the attention of local media and were the talk of one of Chicago’s largest religious communities. Who exactly were the youths?

The Jewish boys of Camp Avodah

Although the Extension Service had leased camps Des Plaines and Thornton, the farm advisor for Cook County- C.A. Hughes, could not manage them by himself. Instead, he relied upon the assistance of patriotic organizations willing to volunteer their resources.

Stepping up to the task of organizing the work program at Camp Des Plaines for the summer of 1943 was Chicago’s Jewish community. Specifically, it was a joint collaboration between the organizations B’nai B’rith, and Aleph Zadik Aleph, along with the Chicago Board of Jewish Education, the last of which supplied camp director Israel B. Rappoport. The sponsors had several other objectives besides assisting farmers. Equally important was teaching the youths about food production, developing political awareness, and promoting physical growth.

Indeed, it was a difficult yet rewarding experience for the Jewish boys at Camp Avodah- the Hebrew word for labor. They were recruited from Chicago, aged between 14 and 18, with most having never stepped foot on a farm in their lives, and expected to perform up to forty hours of fieldwork per week. Their daily routine was rigid: wake up at 6:15 a.m., have breakfast at 7, be ready for pickup by farmers within half an hour, and bedtime at 9:45 p.m. The boys received no furlough and had to remain within the camp limits at all times, unless the camp authorities granted permission. Still, families could visit their campers on Sundays.

For the first week the boys received 40 cents an hour. The pay then increased to 45 cents the second week and in succeeding weeks, to 50 cents. A mandatory weekly camp fee of $10 covered room, board, laundry, and box lunches while at work.⁴

The boys additionally had to contend with initial misgivings about their abilities. Being city boys was bad enough but also Jewish? Long established, the farming community in the vicinity of Camp Avodah, predominantly of German heritage, was successful and thrifty. These farmers did not want to waste their time and resources on boys who they thought would go home after a few days of hard and dirty work.

Thus, it came to the farmers’ great surprise that the boys of Camp Avodah stuck it out for eight weeks. Sharing this sentiment was farm advisor C.A. Hughes who publicly acknowledged in a letter to the Wisconsin Jewish Chronicle his change of heart:

the farmers of the vicinity- and for that matter, the writer of these lines too- were under the impression that Jewish boys will not take to farm work and would drop out… it is, therefore, nothing short of amazing that Camp Avodah, which housed 80 Jewish boys from Chicago, had during a period of eight weeks a turnover of no more than 5 percent.

C.A. Hughes, Cook County Farm Advisor, 26 November 1943⁵

In reality the number of boys who attended and the turnover rate was higher than Hughes’ figures. Shortly after their arrival to the camp, the Des Plaines Journal reported that a total of 105 boys were present, selected from over 1,000 applicants. If the newspaper’s figures are accurate the turnover rate would actually be over 20 percent.⁶ Regardless how many boys dropped out from the camp, the remainder who stuck it out for the entire duration impressed farmers and Chicago’s Jewish community alike.

A dinner at the Covenant Club in Chicago on 12 October honored Camp Avodah’s full-summer attendees. Besides the honorees and their families, invited were several of the farmers who cooperated with the program, along with officials of the U.S. Employment Service and Illinois Extension Service. In addition to the dinner each boy received a U.S. Crop Corps Certificate of Service.⁷ A few campers even returned to the same work the following summer.

Camp Avodah went on to have a second season in the same location in 1944. Again, the Jewish boys arrived in July and departed in September. Farmers still felt the effects of the manpower shortage and made good use of the boys. As for a third season the camp relocated to Winfield, Illinois, in 1945, and a year later to Michigan.⁸ In a twist of irony, the Jewish-American boys lost their jobs to soldiers of Nazi Germany.

Replaced by the enemy

On 25 April 1945, a convoy of trucks from nearby Fort Sheridan pulled into the old Dam No. 2 camp. Armed guards then dismounted and began to give orders to the men still onboard. One by one, young and old alike climbed down and formed ranks, standing at attention. They wore a mixture of different work clothes but stenciled in white lettering on all, were the letters P and W: Prisoners of War (PoWs).

The motivation behind the transfer of German PoWs to Camp Pine, the Army’s name for the installation, a Camp Des Plaines already existed near Joliet, was a couple of factors. Serving as the underlying impetus for the change was a lack of laborers in the civilian market, the shortage more severe than in the previous year. Private enterprises could use PoW labor along as the War Manpower Commission certified a shortage. Another driving force was the quality of workers. Before bringing in PoWs, C.A. Hughes first asked the leading citizens of Wheeling, Park Ridge, Des Plaines, and Arlington Heights, if anyone opposed the idea:

As a matter of fact a good many of the businessmen state that prisoners would be preferable because they will not make free use of their stores and merchandise as the Jamaicans have in the past. It is our opinion that these men will be under supervision of the Army and will be carefully disciplined and the farmers prefer this kind of labor.

C.A. Hughes in a letter to the FPDCC, 11 April 1945⁹

Upon initial arrival the Germans numbered only 81 in total. More came in the following months as summer approached. Responsible for drawing work assignments, in an area approximately 20 miles north, west, and southwest of Des Plaines, was the North Cook Farm Labor Association. They hoped to get up to 250 men, but it is unlikely that the camp ever reached its maximum capacity.

Working nine hours a day, the prisoners were first employed in greenhouses and nurseries until shifting to truck farm labor in mid-May. Employers paid the prevailing wage in the area, 60 cents per hour, with payment sent directly to the Treasury Department. The arrangement proved to be a lucrative venture for the government. Prisoners received 80 cents in canteen coupons for every work day, with the government pocketing the difference.¹⁰ Nonetheless, the earnings were enough to keep the prisoners happy with cigarettes and other luxury goods.

During their stay near Des Plaines the PoWs formed countless relationships with local families. Many residents were of German descent and some still spoke the language. One wartime friendship was struck between prisoner Hans Reinhold and Arthur G. Schroeder for whom he, and eight other men, picked onions and carrots in August 1945. Hans wrote to Mr. Schroeder upon his return to Germany in July 1947, thanking the farmer for the kindness he showed and informing him of Germany’s abysmal postwar living conditions.

Unexpectedly Hans received a care package from his former employer, greatly appreciated by a starving German family. Unfortunately ten days after receiving the parcel, in June 1948, Hans’ 63 year-old mother died from an apoplectic fit. On her death bed, one of the mother’s last requests to her son was ‘don’t forget to write our thanks to Mr. Schroeder’.¹¹

Overall the experience of the PoWs at Camp Pine was overwhelmingly positive. The men considered themselves fortunate to be in the hands of the Americans and not the Soviets, their fates could having been much different. Moments of tension did occur but were few and far between. On the night of 29 March 1946, for instance, three PoWs were reported to have escaped from the camp.¹³

Ultimately the camp closed down at the end of March 1946. That year saw the return of the remaining German PoWs in the US to Europe, but reparation did not immediately occur. The governments of Great Britain and France forced PoWs formerly under American control to perform additional labor. Notable exceptions include successful escapees Georg Gaertner and Reinhold Pabel. Both men established false identities and reinvented themselves as Americans, with Pabel operating a used book store in Chicago at the time of his arrest in 1953.

Physical traces of the former camp

A couple years after the PoWs had left, the abandoned confines of old CCC Camp Des Plaines were occupied once more. In June 1948, a group of fathers prepared the camp for the arrival of their Girl Scout daughters. Former barracks buildings, measuring 20 by 120 feet, became camping quarters with the interiors partitioned, new screens added, and kitchen areas built. A new paint job gave the drab buildings a fresh new look. Photos showing the work in progress appeared in the Chicago Daily Tribune.¹⁴

At some point the scouts left and in time the buildings were razed. Today the most visible traces of the camp are its foundations and plumbing. The outline of its peculiar triangular perimeter is still visible. A wood pole stands at the north-west corner of the site, but its age is uncertain. Off in the nearby woods are middens, full of building debris, and contemporary artifacts, including broken military issued dishware from the 1930s and 1940s. Employees from the Illinois State Archaeological Survey (ISAS)– Northern Illinois Field Station, carried out a survey of several of the middens in May 2019.

Accessing the former campsite is straightforward. It lies adjacent to the Des Plaines River Trail, open to foot traffic, bicycles, and horses. The quickest way to reach the site is from the south end of the Camp Pine Woods parking lot. From there it is about 300 meters to the flagpole once marking the entrance to the camp. Visitors should be aware that the grass clearing is not cut often, making it difficult to view the archaeological remnants.

A conflicting narrative and proper recognition

The camp’s memory has shared a different fate from the buildings. It lives on in the public consciousness, written about in newspaper articles, blogs, and other websites. The popular narrative of the camp, that once the CCC left, the PoWs moved in, followed by the Girl Scouts, however, does not include civilian farm laborers.

Since as early as 1948, the USDA chapter in the history of the camp has been overlooked. In the afore mentioned Chicago Daily Tribune article describing the postwar conversion of Camp Pine, there is no mention of wartime civilian laborers. Over the next decade the site became increasingly associated with its PoW usage. By the 1960s the forest preserve property was unofficially named Camp Pine.¹⁵ How could this be?

Arguably it is a matter of attention. Locals in the 1940s found the civilian farm laborers unextraordinary.

When it comes to the boys of Camp Avodah, by no means were they the only VFVs available in the area. In 1943, there were almost 904,000 volunteers, boys and girls, all throughout the country. Job placement was carried out by three methods. The first, and by far the most popular, was the day-haul program, transporting youths between towns and fields. Next were the live-ins who stayed on farms. Least popular was the camp program, consisting of only 36,236 enrollees in 1943.¹⁶ Within Des Plaines alone droves of eager youths became VFVs. The farm of Fred W. Mahler in 1944, for example, located at Mt. Prospect Rd. and Touhy Ave., had as many as 70 locals youths working on it at one time.¹⁷

In the case of the Jamaican laborers, they were not at the camp long enough, nor in sufficient numbers, to leave a lasting impression on local residents. An advertisement in the South Holland newspaper The Pointer informed farmers the necessity of contracting Jamaican laborers for work in Fall 1944 beforehand:

About 160 Jamaicans are now availble for fall use according to P.E. Johnston, State Supervisor of Labor. “However,” states Mr. Elmer Steil, Cook County Supervisor of Labor, “These Jamaicans will not be held in camp for farmers to use if and when they are needed. This labor must be contracted for now for use beginning the last week in August until freezing… They may be kept in the camp at Dam 2 above Des Plaines or at Thornton.

South Holland’s The Pointer, 27 July 1944¹⁸

There was also some level of tension existing between the Jamaicans and local residents. Farm advisor C.A Hughes did report to the FPDCC, in his letter of 11 April 1945, that businessmen from several surrounding communities had issues with Jamaicans making free use of their goods. Granted, this allegation requires further investigation, as no other corroborating evidence has been found to date.

In contrast to their civilian counterparts, the PoWs at Camp Pine were consistently available for work and in large numbers for over a year. The quality of their labor was also superior, with the well-disciplined men physically conditioned from years of military service. That they were an exotic entity in the American Midwest, as PoWs, elevated their status in the eyes of locals. Thus, with all these factors in mind, the memory of civilian laborers at the former CCC Camp Des Plaines was relegated to the shadows.

All of this new information brought to the light raises the question, what will now become of the memory of the old campsite at Dam No. 2. Yes, the German PoWs contributed greatly to the local economy and developed long-lasting relationships with residents. Yet the work of the Jewish boys and Jamaican laborers was equally important in its own right. Just like the Germans, both groups alleviated a critical agricultural manpower shortage and did more below the surface. When it comes to the boys of Camp Avodah they challenged Jewish stereotypes and built cultural bridges. The Jamaicans became a source of racial discussions in the homogenous white farming communities of the area.

Des Plaines and its neighbors are today melting pots of residents from all walks of life, religions, and ethnicities. Celebrating the communities’ multiethnic history can bring future generations further together.

^{Photos showing the site of former CCC Camp Des Plaines and a still standing wood pole. Summer 2022.}

1. ‘CCC Camp Opens at Dam No. 2’, The Des Plaines Suburban Times [Des Plaines, IL.] (DDST), 17 August 1934, p.1. Available on microfilm at the Des Plaines Public Library (DPPL).
2. The original permit granted to the Extension Service is found in, series I, box 6, folder 46, Forest Preserve District of Cook County records (FPDCC); Special Collections and University Archives, University of Illinois, Chicago (UIC).
3. ‘B’nai B’rith Aids “Food Fights for Freedom”‘, The Wisconsin Jewish Chronicle [Milwaukee, WI.] (TWJC), 31 December 1943, p.5. Retrieved from Newspapers.com: https://newscomwc.newspapers.com/image/49947741 (accessed 9 July 2022).
4. ‘Victory Farm Youths Take Over Old CCC Camp at Dam No.2’, The Des Plaines Journal [Des Plaines, IL.] (DPJ), 15 July 1943, pp.1 & 6. Available on microfilm at DPPL.
5. C.A. Hughes, ‘I Saw Jewish Boys on Farms’, TWJC, 26 November 1943, p.1. Retrieved from Newspapers.com: https://www.newspapers.com/newspage/49945722/ (accessed 2 August 2022).
6. ‘Victory Farm Youths Take Over Old CCC Camp at Dam No.2’, DPJ, p.1.
7. ‘V.F.V. Camp Avodah Boys Will Be Honored At Dinner’, The Sentinel [Chicago, IL.], 7 October 1943, p.11. Retrieved from Illinois Digital Archives: https://www.idaillinois.org/digital/collection/p16614coll14/id/63864/rec/53 (accessed 27 January 2023).
8. Walter Roth, ‘Camp Avodah 1946’, in Chicago Jewish History, Summer 1999, vol. 23, no. 3, pp.4-5, and 12. Available at: http://chicagojewishhistory.org/pdf/1999/CJH.3.1999.pdf (accessed 19 February 2023).
9. Charles G. Sauers, correspondence to FPDCC president and board members, 11 April, 1945, in Official Record of the Proceedings of the Board of Commissioners of the Forest Preserve District of Cook County, in the State of Illinois, published by the authority of the board, for the period commencing January 1, 1945 and ending December 31, 1945 (Chicago: Calumet Publishing Company, 1946), p.106.
10. ‘Prisoners of War Just Arrived at Dam No. 2 Assigned Farm Work’, DPST, 27 April 1945, p.5. DPPL.
11. Hans Reinhold’s letters to the Schroeder family are in the collections of the Des Plaines History Center, box FH 01- Schroeder.
12. Recordings and a partial transcription of Rudolph’s interview is in the collections of the Des Plaines History Center.
13. ‘Three German War Prisoners Escape Camp’, Chicago Daily Tribune, 30 March 1946, p.12. Retrieved from ProQuest Historical Newspapers: Chicago Tribune. https://www.proquest.com/hnpchicagotribune/docview/177194876 (accessed 27 January 2023).
14. ‘Dads Pitch in to Give Daughters a Girl Scout Camp Near Des Plaines’, Chicago Daily Tribune, 13 June 1948, pg.NW1. Retrieved from ProQuest Historical Newspapers: Chicago Tribune. https://www.proquest.com/hnpchicagotribune/docview/177546881 (accessed 11 October 2022).
15. Roberts Mann, Origin of Names and Histories of Places: Including Major Forests and Holdings, Picnic Areas and Recreational Facilities, Nature Preserves, Aquatic Areas, and Wildlife Refuges in the Forest Preserve District of Cook County, Illinois (Chicago: FPDCC, 1965), p.13.
16. Wayne D. Rasmussen, A History of the Emergency Farm Labor Supply Program, 1943-1947 (Washington, D.C.: US Government Printing Office, 1951), p.124.
17. ‘D.P. Volunteer Victory Farmers’, 6 July 1944, DPJ, p.4.
18. ‘Jamaicans Available This Fall’, The Pointer [South Holland, IL.], 27 July 1944, p.8. Retrieved from Newspapers.com: https://newscomwc.newspapers.com/image/74582668 (accessed 11 October 2022).