The Christmas Gift Given by Nazis

image via Wikipedia and ChristmasKid

During World War II, the Allies found themselves capturing more and more prisoners in their plight to stop Hitler from taking his rage out all over Europe for being denied entrance to art school.

image via SkitCafe

It's amazing we were ever terrified of this lil' fella.

Many of these prisoners were shipped back to the United States and put into large POW camps scattered across the nation. And at one particular camp in Algona, Iowa, a wonderful relic that was gifted from the POWs is still on display every Christmas.

Sgt. Eduard Kaib was a German soldier who like most soldiers on the losing side of a war, was captured and shipped to a POW camp. He found himself at the Algona POW camp, where he was put into labor assisting the farms in the area for the salary of eighty cents a day. Which may seem shitty, until you remember that the Holocaust was going on also.

image via Vergapipe

To distract you from that, here is an adorable kitten.

Suffering from homesickness for Germany, Kaib decided to give himself a project to distract himself. Recruiting six others, they set out to construct a nativity scene.

Using concrete poured over wire frames, and plaster for the finer detailing, Kaib and his compatriots spent $8,000 of their own earned money from the fall of 1944 to finish it just in time for Christmas 1945. Once they were done, they set the entire scene up at the edge of the POW camp so that the citizens of Algona could view their work through the barbed wire fence that separated them.

image via Wikipedia

Just like the real birth of Jesus.

What the residents of Algona found astonished them. Kaib and his fellow German soldiers had constructed not only included the usual baby Jesus, Mary, Joseph and three wise-men, but had also created a flock of thirty sheep, a running stream, and a miniature Bethlehem in the distance. All at half scale. 

image via UglyHedgehog

The actual scene.

When the Germans were released in 1946, they let the town keep the nativity scene under the agreement that nobody ever be charged to view it. Nobody has to this day, and the scene is still set up every year in the town. Thousands come every year from all over to view the nativity scene as one of the small good things that came out of World War II.

And it was given to us by Nazis.

image via DailyCaller

Merry Christmas.