Film examines mass hanging in city
‘The Last Hangman’ uncovers history and poses questions
Aspecial showing of the film “The Last Hangman” recently took place at the Galt Museum and Archives. Funded by Telus STORYHIVE, the complex film looks at the circumstances and history surrounding second largest mass hanging of condemned prisoners in modern Canadian history, which happened at the Lethbridge Provincial Gaol on Dec. 18, 1946. The number of men hung at the same time, (five), was eye-opening, but even more eye-opening were the identities of the condemned — four Nazi Prisoners of War and a serial child killer.
Based in part on the book penned by author David J. Carter, “Prisoners of War: Behind Canadian Barbed Wire,” Medicine Hat film maker Carla Olson recounts the history of how Lethbridge and Medicine Hat became the two of the largest German PoW camps in the world during the Second World War, holding over 12,000 prisoners each.
The film delves into how the camps were allowed to organize their own internal societies with loose oversight from Canadian guards, and how due to this, a hard-core Nazi faction rose to take over leadership of the Medicine Hat camp.
This leadership eventually imposed a campaign of fear among the largely moderate prisoners which continued the culture of the Nazi Reich on Canadian soil, and led to the pre-meditated murder of a moderate, Marxist-leaning school teacher named Karl Lehmann, an outspoken critic of Nazism in the Medicine Hat camp.
Lehmann was allegedly murdered — under direct orders from the camp leadership — by four fellow prisoners: Bruno Pezenowski, Walter Wolf, Willi Mueller and Heinrich Busch.
“The Last Hangman” further recounts the undercover RCMP investigation into Lehmann’s murder, the trial of the four accused in the Medicine Hat Court of Queen’s Bench, and their eventual sentencing to be hung for the killing.
The film also references the history of Donald Sherman Staley, one of Canada’s most notorious child serial sex offenders and killers, and a brief history of Canada’s three official hangmen between 1892 and 1972 to throw another ball up in the air for the viewer’s consideration.
“I call it my thesis statement,” explained filmmaker Carla Olson during a question and answer session following the screening. “I was trying to look at in times of war whose crimes are worse? A Nazi’s? A pedophile’s? Or a hangman’s? That was sort of my through thread in the film, and what I kept working toward. I crafted all my questions around that, and I asked everyone the same same questions.” Her conclusion? “Like one the people I interviewed for the film said, ‘the world isn’t still reeling from the crimes of Donald Sherman Staley, but the world is still reeling from Nazism,’” she explained, when asked by audience members who she would choose if forced to choose the worst. “If I were to give an opinion, I felt like the Nazis were the worst of the three.”
Olson said in her film she also wanted to look at a little known but fascinating part of Southern Alberta history.
“I was looking for history here, and I thought it only happened somewhere else,” Olson stated. “It was a real gift to learn southern Alberta played such an integral part of one of a million Second World War stories.”
In the film, Olson also dwells on some of the relationships those living near the PoW camps built up with the prisoners; especially in the local farming and ranching community which often used German PoW labour with their own sons away fighting in the war. The film explains that more than 5,000 former PoWs returned to Canada over the next decade following their repatriation to Germany after the war.
Bernie Pohl’s dad Harry was one of those 5,000. Pohl said his dad, who served in the German merchant marine before being captured, always tried to focus on the positive which came out of his six years as a PoW in Canada.
“My father worked for a Mr. Daniels in the Village of Rolling Hills,” explained Pohl, “and he actually worked on Mr. Daniels’ farm for two years while he was a prisoner. There was quite a bonding that happened between the Daniels family and my father.
“When my father went back to Germany there was nothing — people were starving, people were freezing to death in the winter — and my father wrote to Mr. Daniels asking if there was anything that could be done? Mr. Daniels agreed to act as sponsor to my family, and he paid all of the expenses to bring my family back to Rolling Hills. He gave them a fresh start in a country that had a future.”
“The Last Hangman” can be viewed on YouTube free of charge for those interested in seeing the film. Follow @TimKalHerald on Twitter