National Archives films of the German Bund camp in Riverdale
Click here for a list
The following text is from a report prepared for one of
my Riverdale School classes in the early 1960s. I'm not sure
what I used for source material,-- probably newspaper clippings.
This text is as it appears in the original longhand document.
-- Cal Deal
The German Bund Camp on Federal Hill
In the late 1930s, Germans moved up onto Federal Hill and
started a Bund camp called the Bergwald, which means mountain
forest. Bund is a German society.
When Hitler came into power, the Klu Klux Klan went up to
the entrance of the bund camp and burned a cross in protest.
They warned the swastika-wearing Germans to get out of the area,
but no attention seems to have been paid.
After the attack on Pearl Harbor, the government stepped in
and chased the bundists out.
When the bundists were gone, the government found some ammunition
and guns on the hill, but no gunpowder.
In 1950, a fire started on the hill and there were three explosions,
probably caused by some hidden black powder.
FBI
film on German bundists (don't know whether there's a local connection).
From the National Archives.
The
National Archives also has 300 photographs of the German Bund
in the U.S. taken from 1934 to 1940.
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