Monday, Jul. 08, 1946
In the F
Werner Schwalb, a staunch Nazi for most of his 31 years, joined the German Army in 1937. As a tank gunner he won an Iron Cross in the invasion of France. He was with Rommel in North Africa. Then he was captured, and that finished him as a soldier. But not as a Nazi.
On July 22, 1943 in prison camp at Medicine Hat, Alta., Sergeant Schwalb and another Afrika Korps man, Private Adolf Kratz, decided that a fellow prisoner, August Plaszek, was an anti-Nazi "swine," apparently because he objected to the ironhanded rule of the prisoners by a Nazi clique. So Schwalb and Kratz hanged Plaszek. They were tried for murder in a civil court, convicted, and sentenced to be hanged.*
In his death cell at Lethbridge, Schwalb said: "Canada will never hang us. It was so stupid of you people to spend all that money on trials for us, because we are going to get off." But Schwalb was wrong. One midnight last week the guards marched him twelve steps to the gallows, strapped him hand & foot. Schwalb stiffened to attention, and shouted in English: "My fuehrer, I follow thee!" Then they slipped a noose around his neck and pulled it tight. The trap was sprung. It was the first time a prisoner of war had ever been executed in Canada.
Kratz, 24, had his sentence commuted to life imprisonment. As two Mounties took him away to the penitentiary at Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, he too was arrogant, and contemptuous of the soft-hearted Canadians. Said he: "After a few years all will be forgiven and I'll be sent home free."
*In the same case a third P.O.W., Corporal Johannes Wittinger, was acquitted. For another, unrelated P.O.W. camp killing, a fourth German was convicted and sentenced to hang at Medicine Hat last week, and three other Germans were awaiting trial.
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