Paul Canin

2nd Lt., U.S. Army Air Corps

In October 1942, at the age of 19, Paul Canin enlisted in the Army Air Corps and attended basic training at Randolph Field in San Antonio, Texas.  At his gunnery school, Canin learned how to shoot .50 caliber machine guns from various types of gun turrets.  Following his gunnery training he attended tech school at Ellington Field in Houston and navigation school in Austin.  After this training he received his wings and was commissioned a Second Lieutenant.  Lt Canin was later selected for additional training as a radar navigator at Langley Field, Virginia where he honed his flight crew skills before shipping off to Europe.

Lt Canin started his combat tour at Cerignola Airfield, Italy as a radar navigator in the 485th Bomb Group – 828th Bomb Squadron – 15th Air Force.

In the bombing missions over Europe, a “lead” plane, with the most experienced crew, would be flanked on each side by equally experienced “deputy lead” planes.  These three planes were responsible for leading an entire armada of bombers to their specific target and determining when they would drop their bombs.  As a radar navigator, Canin would fly with one of the lead planes and play a major role in the missions.

Lt Canin’s first mission was in August 3, 1944 over Friedrichshaven, Germany, where they were to bomb a ball bearing factory.

We were advised, should our plane be crippled in action, to try and make it to a Swiss airfield where we would be interned for the duration of the war.  The Germans knowing this built an airport near the Swiss border, leaving some planes around with Swiss markings to lure Allied planes making emergency landings.

His next two missions included a major bridge in France and a refinery in Hungary.

Lt Canin’s last mission was on September 13, 1944.  His unit was to bomb the Oswiecan refineries that were located on the outskirts of the Auschwitz death camp.

After a morning filled with panic over a missing briefing portfolio, Canin was a little on edge.  Crusing along with the bomb bay doors open at 24,000+ feet, Canin was calling out closing distances to the bombardier over the roaring wind and engine noise.  They were encountering heavy flak and being bounced around a lot.

The moment the bombs dropped out, I heard a loud explosion; debris and broken glass shot through the flight deck.  Acrid smoke came through my mask, forcing me to rip it off.  At the same time the intercom went dead.  The turret gunner above me climbed down and yelled “the engine’s on fire.” Hydraulic fluid was spurting across the bomb bay, then flames.  The gunner and I each grabbed fire extinguishers in a futile attempt to put out the fire, when we both saw the pilot and copilot getting out of their seats, preparing to abandon ship.  We then grabbed our chute packs, and clicked them in place on our harnesses.  We got to the edge of the open bomb bay preparing to jump out through it.  The gunner was in front of me, the pilots behind me.  The gunner froze as I pushed him out anxious to follow, when the plane went into some twisting diving condition throwing me as well as both pilots into the nose wheel compartment, forward of the bomb bay.

The three of us struggled to pull ourselves over to the open bomb bay to no avail, scraping parts of the metal interior and each other.  Suddenly the plane twisted into another position in its death spiral and I was, miraculously, sucked out of the bomb bay and falling through space.

Only four of the crew of eleven survived the mission.  The plane exploded moments after Canin escaped and the pilots were among the seven crewmembers that perished that day.

As he parachuted down, Canin was fighting numerous injuries as he noticed motorcycle troops on the ground following him on the ground.  Shortly after he hit the ground, unformed German soldiers rushed him and took his sidearm.  Fortunately, these soldiers were part of the Volksturm (People’s Army), and not the Gestapo, who would have surely tortured and killed him.

Canin stayed in a temporary prison camp until a larger number of captured flyers were brought in and justified a transfer.  Canin noticed numerous anti-Semitic and anti-Russian posters throughout the city during his transfer.  They traveled through Breslau, Dresden, Leipzig, and Schweinfurt on their way to the main interrogation center in Frankfurt, Dulag Luft.

Canin spent his first week at the prison in solitary confinement.  “For five days I was held in a tiny cell, uncertain of my fate; aware of my vulnurability as a Jew.”

One evening, his cell door was opened and a guard escorted him to a room filled with high-ranking Nazi officers.  Nearby was a table filled with mouthwatering food.  The officers began to taunt Canin with the food, which he refused.

Perhaps I was the evening’s diversion for a group of bored officers.  I instantly felt a responsibility as a Jew, not to reinforce any of their ideas of stereotyped Jewish behavior; to give them no satisfaction in that regard.

The following is Lt Canin’s account of the conversation with the officers:

Nazis: You must be curious Lieutenant, why we brought you here.  You see we seldom find any Jews actually doing the fighting.  They always manage to get others to do that for them.

Canin: In my experience, that’s not the case.  I’ve had training with many other Jewish officers.

Nazis: What have you heard in American news about the condition of Jews in Germany?

Canin: We know they are treated harshly and are placed in concentration camps.

Nazis: That is not true and is your own propaganda… do you know that 80% of the lawyers in Berlin were Jews, that 60% of the judges were Jews, that…etc. etc. Don’t you think we have a right to our own country?

I didn’t reply to this harangue, not having statistics to correct this obvious exaggeration.  Even if I did, it would have fallen on deaf ears.

The interrogation continued and the Nazis pressed for more detailed information on their mission and his training as a radar officer.  Canin, unsure of what the best course of action was, fed his captors as much misinformation that he could, exaggerating the American capabilities and training.

Over the next month, Canin was transfered to other prisons and grouped with different flyers.  He eventually ended up at Stalag Luft 1, a camp established to hold American and British flying officers.  Lt Canin would spend the next eight months in the prison camp.  By the end of the war there were about 10,000 officers in the camp north of Berlin.

Canin’s artistic ability was a sought after commodity, as he was often offered goods in exchange for illustrating other prisoners’ diaries.  He earned the nickname of “Remmie”, short for Rembrant.

In December of 1944 the Germans, with an upsurge of optimism of winning the war, began to distribute anti-Semitic pamphlets throughout the camp.  Soon after, guards went through the rooms in the barracks notifying the Jewish officers that they should prepare to leave the following morning.  The next day, all the known Jewish officers were placed in a separate compound, now very uncertain of their fate.

The Jewish officers were never sent away to a death camp and ironically, the new segregated arrangement made life better for the Jewish officers:

As the Russians forced the Germans to retreat west, the prisoners in P.O.W. camps being overrun were also moved… to camps further west.  With the influx of many more officers, double deck bunks became triple decked.  Later, aisles between bunks shrunk, or were eliminated completely.  In our “Jewish” compound, even with more transplanted Jewish officers moving in, we were still managing with double deck bunks and some aisle spaces.

At the end of April, the German guards fled west to surrender to the British or Americans as the Russian advance grew close.  The prisoners swiftly took charge of the camp and maintain order while attempts were made to contact Allied forces.

Contact was made with the Russians and their officers began to work out the logistics of returning the prisoners to their homeland.  In celebration, 60 cattle from the countryside were rounded up and slaughtered for a giant feast of steak.  A Red Army entertainment troupe put on a “marvelous show of ethnic dances with appropriate costumes and accompanied by balalaika music!

On may 14th, 1945 the prisoners marched to the airport in Barth where Canin boarded a B-17 flying fortress to Rheims, France, followed by a train ride to Le Havre.  After a brief stay in France, Canin travelled via a “Liberty Ship” home.

After his discharge from service, Paul Canin studied at Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY and graduated as an Industrial Designer.  He worked at General Motors in Detroit, then returned to Pratt to study Architecture after winning first prize in an architectural competition.  After working in NYC for 3 years, he and his wife (Helen) moved to upstate New York.  They lived in Poughkeepsie, NY over 30 years, raising 3 children while running a very active and varied architectural practice.

This is just a brief summary of the amazing and harrowing experiences Paul Canin went through.  I highly encourage you to read Mr. Canin’s full account of the events in his online memoirs.  They are filled with details and amazing stories of his life and experiences in and out of the camp, as well as many of his wonderful drawings.

While many readers may find it strange, Mr. Canin considers himself fortunate to be a prisoner in the Salag Luft camp:

It was a dramatic and impressionable period in my life and has had a lasting affect on me; to the good I believe.  Beside my gratitude to have survived the war when so many others didn’t, I remain in awe at what we did in camp to maintain each other’s morale.

You can read his full explanation of those feelings here.