German Prisoner of War Camp

Louisiana legislators wanted prisoners of war to ease farm labor shortages that threatened sugarcane in the south and cotton in the north. The state ended up with five base camps and more than 40 satellite camps holding over 20,000 prisoners, most of them Germans from Rommel's Afrika Korps. Enlisted men worked about 80 cents a day, eight to ten hours, six days a week, paid in scrip good at the camp commissary, and officers did not have to work. Satellite camps in farming areas put prisoners in cane and rice fields at harvest.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Grevemberg House Museum — 0.5 mi
  Franklin's 1851 Greek Revival townhouse, the official St. Mary Parish museum, saved from demolition by one vote and set in the Franklin Historic District on Bayou Teche.
• Chitimacha Museum — 6.6 mi
  The Chitimacha Tribe of Louisiana's own museum at Charenton: the tribe's account of its territory, the French wars and enslavement, the land held in trust, and river cane baskets.
• Wedell-Williams Aviation and Cypress Sawmill Museum — 15 mi
  A Louisiana State Museum in Patterson on the world's largest cypress sawmill town and the Wedell-Williams racing planes, with a theater and changing exhibits.
• Cypremort Point State Park — 22 mi
  A 185-acre Vermilion Bay park reached by road, with a half-mile man-made beach, a marsh boardwalk, shore fishing and a boat launch, and a Chitimacha tradition of a great cypress here.

More markers nearby

• Battle of Irish Bend — 0.3 mi
• The Gunboat Diana — 0.3 mi
• Jared Young Sanders — 0.3 mi
• Franklin — 0.3 mi