94 LONGISLANDPRESS.COM • AUGUST 2019
REAR VIEW
CAMP SIEGFRIED HITLER’S LONG ISLAND
By ANNIE WILKINSON
On the shore of Upper Yaphank Lake,
happy children picnicked, hiked, and
explored 54 wooded acres deep in
Suffolk County. At least 150 children
summered at Camp Siegfried in the
1930s, learning camping skills and
studying international ideologies as
their families struggled through the
Great Depression.
By 1933, unemployment nationwide
was at 25 percent; in Yaphank, jobs
for tradespeople and craftspersons
were scarce. Few graduated from
high school, toiling instead in potato
and cauliflower farm fields for 50
cents an hour.
When Siegfried’s operators, the
German-American Settlement
League, proposed an 11-acre housing
development opposite the camp in
1936, the Town of Brookhaven Planning
Board approved the German
Gardens project, hoping it would
bring business.
It looked like a win-win deal.
HAPPY CAMPERS?
Camp Siegfried and many camps
across the nation were sponsored by
the German-American Bund (“Bund”
means “alliance” in German), which
focused on Americans of German
descent. The group’s aim: Blend
American democracy and European
fascism.
Yet the campers’ uniforms — brownshirts
and jackboots — resembled
those worn in Germany by the Hitler
Youth under Nazi party leader Adolf
Hitler. All non-Jewish boys were
required to join for paramilitary
training.
Hitler had seized absolute dictatorial
power in 1933 by delivering diatribes
against economic policies, racial
equality, and political stability, at rallies
filled with enthusiastic crowds.
He transformed Germany into a totalitarian
state where almost every
aspect of life was under government
control, in accordance with Nazism
beliefs.
Hitler supplied Camp Siegfried with
teachers and German philosophy
textbooks and smuggled in uniforms.
Yaphank youth were taken on trips
to Germany, including a 1936 trip to
the Olympics, where Hitler urged
Siegfrieders to maintain the kampf,
the struggle, in the states.
Camp Siegfried’s purpose was to
raise future leaders of America; they
had to be Aryans, adhering to another
key Nazism belief: Aryans — Nordic
looking, non-Jewish Caucasians
— were the so-called master race.
But life was far from idyllic. Forced
to sleep in tented platforms, campers
cleared brush and trees, and built infrastructure.
They were coerced into
having sex with campers to preserve
the Aryan race, and to attend anti-Semitic,
white supremacist lectures by
propagandists promising that they,
the “Friends of New Germany in
America,” would be as important
as storm troopers, the private Nazi
army known for violent attacks.
Racial politics came to Long Island
as Bund leaders demeaned Jews,
communists, and labor unions. In
Germany, Hitler intensified persecution
of non-Aryans.
FREE DANCES
In Yaphank, the German-American
Settlement League invited Bundists
and other German-Americans to visit,
promising free dances, celebrations,
and camaraderie. The Long Island
Rail Road Camp Siegfried Special ran
from Penn Station every Sunday to
Yaphank, where uniformed marchers
greeted guests with Heil Hitler
(Hail Victory) salutes and sang the
Nazi National Anthem. With Hitler
portraits prominently displayed,
orators denounced Jews, insisting
that German blood was different than
others’ blood.
By 1937, pro-Nazi sympathizers occupied
German Gardens’ bungalows
on Adolf Hitler Strasse and on streets
named after Hitler’s head honchos.
Embedded in the houses’ brickwork
were swastikas, fascist symbols of
severe economic regimentation and
forcible suppression of opposition.
Residents drank beer with local political
activists and gun enthusiasts
(the Bund was affiliated with the
National Rifle Association), and the
development flourished. In August
1938, A New York Times article
headlined “40,000 at Nazi Camp Fete”
reported that nearly “40,000 persons
attended the annual German Day
of Long Island at Camp Siegfried.”
About 2,000 uniformed Ordnungsdienst
storm troopers kept order.
At a Madison Square Garden rally in
February 1939, some 20,000 attendees
raised Nazi salutes to a George Washington
portrait flanked by a picture
of Hitler. Hitler invaded Poland six
months later.
THE PEOPLE WAKE UP
Locals became disenchanted with
the demonstrations and saw to it that
the camp’s liquor license was not
renewed. When Democratic leaders
condemned the pro-Nazi behavior,
campers blamed the media for negative
accounts and supported the
Republicans. Young villagers ripped
apart the swastika-shaped flowerbed,
fired buckshot at the camp water
tank, painted “Down with Hitler” on
the main camp building, and overturned
outhouses.
All pro-Nazi camp activity stopped
when America entered World War
II after the 1941 Pearl Harbor attack.
The camp closed and the FBI placed
many Nazi sympathizers in a nearby
Camp Upton stockade. The property
was incorporated into the town of
Yaphank as Siegfried Park, no longer
under German-American Bund
control.
Courtesy of Longwood Public Library, Thomas R. Bayles Local History Room
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