In the mid 1940s, while World War II raged, a serious deficit in farm labor arose in the United States. At this same time, over 426,000 POWs were being held by the U.S. government and kept in camps throughout the country. To relieve the strain of the labor shortage, President Roosevelt announced in May of 1944 that 100,000 POWs would be available for work.
     Minnesota is especially needed farm labor, so the U.S. Agricultural Extension Service arranged to bring 1,275 German POWs to seven different locations throughout the state. One camp was established in Moorhead and was officially known as the Algona Branch Camp I.

German POWs who worked on the Peterson and Horn farms.

     All of the POW camps had to follow a code for the care and treatment of prisoners of war as established by the Geneva Convention. While the one in Moorhead followed the guidelines of feeding, clothing and housing the prisoners, some of the local farmers who contracted for the work did much more. During the two summers the POWs worked on the Moorhead farms of Hank Peterson and Paul Horn, the farmers showed them kindness and fun, and changed some lives forever. But unknown to Peterson and Horn was how their own lives would alter after the POWs arrived.

Letter written by parents of the POW in the upper right photo.

In 1944, Peterson and Horn made a request for 150 prisoners to help on their vegetable farms. Once the Army granted the order, a search for housing began. Army inspectors originally chose a barn on 12th Avenue South and Elm Street, near the Red River. But residents of the area protested the housing of the prisoners in their neighborhood and threatened to distribute a petition against it. To prevent the project from being canceled, an onion warehouse at 21st Street and 3rd Avenue ultimately became the Algona Branch Camp I.      The first 40 German prisoners came to Moorhead on May 28 from a larger camp in Algona, Iowa. In a 1974 interview for the Northwest Minnesota Historical Society, Horn said: "You could hardly tell the prisoners from anyone else. They were just young fellows." Horn allowed the POWs to stay in tents at his farm for the first night, and the next day they occupied the warehouse.      As for the living conditions at the warehouse, Horner said in the 1974 interview: "There weren’t any conveniences. The prisoners themselves connected the sewers and the water."

     The rest of the POWs arrived at the Northern Pacific Railroad Depot on May 31 and marched to the camp.
     Fargo resident Gretchen Rosenberg remembers when her father took her to see the camp of prisoners. Rosenberg stated that one day, when she was in second- or third-grade, her father told her: "Put on your coat…We’re going for a ride." When Rosenberg and her father arrived at the camp, she remembers peering through the 8-foot-high chicken wire fence. She said: "We just stood there and looked at them, and they looked at us, like we were at the zoo. It was a very peculiar feeling."
     While some Moorhead residents found the camp a distraction, the prisoners tried to retain some sense of routine in their day. Accompanied by guards, the POWs went out each morning in trucks supplied by Horn and Peterson for their 10 hour workday. They planted, hoed and picked vegetables. Horn and Peterson paid the government 40 cents an hour per prisoner. The government then paid the prisoners 10 cents per hour in coupons for use at the camp canteen. The other 30 cents paid for the prisoners housing and food.
     But work wasn’t all that Horn and Peterson showed the prisoners. Although it was against army regulations, Peterson provided the prisoners with two visits to the movies and gave them beer and cigarettes on Saturdays. The man in charge of the camp was also lenient when it came to showing kindness to the POWs. In the 1974 interview, Horn said of Lt. Blair: "The fellow was all right. He liked a good time rather than pay attention to duty." Lt. Blair took the prisoners or to Buffalo State Park or the Benedict Gravel Pit on Sundays for a swim.
     In November 1944, with the harvest season complete, the 150 German prisoners went back to Algona, Iowa. Another group returned for the season in 1945.
     When the war ended in 1945, the prisoners were released and sent back to carry on their lives in Germany. It wasn’t until the POWs began to write letters that Horn and Peterson realized the impact they had had on these people they knew for only a brief while.
      In the 1974 interview, Horn said, "For about five or six years we got letters from some of them…sometimes we sent them care packages." One such letter, written Sept. 1, 1948, by Alois Sauer, exemplifies the gratitude felt towards the farmers:

     Besides receiving letters, one former prisoner’s family sent a recent picture of their son, Onno Louis, who worked on the Peterson farm in 1945. Louis’s parents said:
"Our son felt very happy on the farm and he has the intention of returning to you."
     These letters, as well as many others sent by the prisoners, serve as an example of the effect of kindness shown to prisoners of war, even in midst of the terrible conflict and great destruction. Rosenberg says, "World War II is very vividly imprinted in my brain because it was so horrible." Yet, perhaps, because of the kindness and compassion displayed toward the "enemy," Horn and Peterson lifted the spirits of those in a most bleak situation and gave them hope for the future. As one prisoner, Sepp Meyer, said in a letter he wrote on Aug. 2, 1946: "At last you lightened our imprisonment with your kindness."