Camp Algona and the Prisoners' Nativity

During the Second World War, Algona held a prisoner of war camp for captured German soldiers, thousands of men over its life, until nineteen forty-six. One prisoner, a commercial artist, had an idea while recovering in the camp hospital. He wanted to build a nativity scene.

He and other prisoners set to work, shaping more than sixty half life-sized figures out of concrete and plaster. By Christmas of nineteen forty-five the scene filled its own building, with camels and a small lighted waterfall. After the war the prisoners left, but the figures stayed.

A local church adopted the nativity, and it is still displayed every December, an enduring gift made by enemy soldiers far from home.