Student film records reunion of German POWs in Houlton

Except for the occasional U-boat sighting, Maine was a long ways from the action during World War II.

That wasn’t the case at Camp Houlton. Not an idyllic summer retreat, Camp Houlton was instead a compound housing German prisoners of war from 1944 to 1946. These prisoners were used as laborers, picking potatoes, cutting ice and harvesting wood.

Four of those former POWs returned to Houlton last September to reminisce and visit the sites that they remembered. This reunion and their stories are the topic of the film “Don’t Fence Me In,” which will air at noon Sunday on the TV stations of Maine Public Broadcasting.

“Don’t Fence Me In” is the creation of the video production class at Caribou Regional Technology Center, also known as Viking Video Productions.

The documentary began when the class instructor, Brenda Jepsen, read an article about the coming reunion, accompanied by a photo of a German POW barber giving a haircut to a local U.S. soldier.

“That leapt off the page at me,” Jepsen recalled. “I thought it would be a wonderful project for my students. So I got in touch with Kay Bell, curator of

the Aroostook County Historical and Art Museum [in Houlton].”

With quite a few local and national media interested in the story, the shoot marked the first time that Jepsen’s eight students found themselves jockeying with the media to get the interviews they needed.

So they worked to get a jump, doing interviews they needed with local people, such as Bell and Camp Houlton historian Milton Bailey, before the reunion. They also arranged to interview the former POWs at the homes of their host families in Houlton, away from other media.

Still the students had to do the bulk of the filming during the three days that the German group was in town. Jepsen had taken German in college and could speak and write the language somewhat, but Jan Schramke, a University of Maine student who lives in Houlton, provided the bulk of the translation.

“The four are all in their 70s and 80s, and this is probably their last hurrah,” Jepsen said. “They may not get back again. So we really wanted to capture their story while we had the chance.”

The interviews were just the start of the work for the students. There was a great deal of rostrum photography and shooting of historical photos and documents to be done. Also, subtitling was necessary in a few places, with one five-minute interview taking about two weeks to translate. The class had to hurry to get the film done before school let out in June.

In addition to its showing on public TV, the documentary has been accepted into the permanent World War II collection at the Library of Congress.

Also, during a trade mission in November, Gov. John Baldacci formally will present the film to the Haus Der Geschichte (“house of history”), the German equivalent to the Library of Congress, which is located in the capital of Bonn. Jepsen has been invited to go on the trip, but isn’t sure if she’ll be able to go.

Jepsen said that a couple of things happened to help her students realize what a special project they were working on. One was that the German counsel general, traveling from Boston to the Biathlon World Cup in Fort Kent, stopped off at the school to view an unfinished cut of the documentary.

Then people came from throughout the northern half of the state for the premiere showing, held on the 60th anniversary of D-Day, June 6, in Houlton. Also, e-mails came from across the country seeking to buy copies of the video.

Jepsen said that her students enjoyed this unique history lesson.

“It gave my students an appreciation of history that they never could have gotten from a textbook,” she said. “Also, they said it was an honor to meet all the older people. You have these cocky teenagers, but when you get them together with older people, they just seem to take to them.”

Dale McGarrigle can be reached at 990-8028 and dmcgarrigle@bangordailynews.net.