This year marks the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II and the 80th anniversary of the closing of Camp Concordia, the German Prisoner of War facility north of town. The Charles and Marian Cook Series will partner with the Camp Concordia Preservation Society for a showing of Thomas Nelson's documentary film "Prisoners of Plenty" and discussion by guest speakers Nelson, Jack Meister, and Lowell May. The presentation is Saturday, November 8, at 7 p.m. at the Brown Grand Theatre, in downtown Concordia.
Concordia was home to the German POW Camp Concordia from 1943-1945, and the film "Prisoners of Plenty" will be shown to provide background for the speakers' presentations. The documentary tells the story of the camp using recollections from German prisoners, civilian workers at the camp, and local farmers who hired prisoners to help with farm labor.
Nelson, who produced and directed "Prisoners of Plenty", a documentary about Camp Concordia, is an associate professor at Elon University near Greensboro, North Carolina. He has taught at the university's School of Communications for 30 years. He came to his role at Elon after a career in television news as both a reporter and an anchor in small and mid-market stations. He also briefly reported for a division of Germany's Deutche Welle television as a freelance presenter. Nelson says he is a ghost resident of Concordia - a place he truly feels at home.
Jack Meister was an eight-year member of the faculty in the early days of Cloud County Community College. He taught English, German, built the college's radio station, KVCO, and started the college soccer program.
Meister did his undergraduate studies in German language and Literature at Bowling Green, with summer courses at the University of Salzburg, Austria. He taught German on an NDEA Fellowship at the University of Cincinnati and Kansas State University, where he earned a Master of Arts in German.
Meister's work "The Last Furlough" is the culmination of a two-year challenge for Meister during which he translated from German more than 200 letters written by a World War II soldier, Paul Claudius, to his wife. Through a chance meeting in Keokuk between two strangers — Meister being one and the German soldier's daughter being the other — Meister spent his next years translating the cherished family letters.
Lowell May enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1959 and during his service in Germany and as a stockade guard at Fort Leonard Wood, he became interested in prisoners of war. After college and service as a military policeman, he became a career counselor with the 101st Airborne Division in Vietnam. Upon returning to the States, he was again assigned to military police duty at Fort Riley, where he earned an associate degree from Wichita State University and became a charter member of the Fort Riley Historical and Archaeological Society.
After another reassignment to Germany, May returned to Fort Riley and earned a B. S. degree in Administration of Justice. Following his selection to attend the U. S. Army Sergeants Major Academy at Fort Bliss, he retired as a Command Sergeant Major. After receiving a B. S. in Education from Kansas State University, May became a Court Services Officer in Concordia.
He has been instrumental in the preservation of Camp Concordia and has served on the camp's board of directors since its inception as a historical site in the 1990's and is the author of "Camp Concordia: German POWs in the Midwest" and is co-author with Mark P. Schock of "Prisoners of War in Kansas: 1943-1946."
Books will be available for purchase and signing by the authors
