Long Island Pro-Nazi Camp Inspires Off Broadway Play, 'Camp Siegfried'

YAPHANK, NY — A little-known history of the serene Long Island hamlet of Yaphank has been brought to light in an off-Broadway play that opened last week.

The sleepy and picturesque hamlet was once the home of the real-life Nazi playground, Camp Siegfried, which was operated by the German-American Bund, a colony that openly supported the Third Reich by holding marches and preaching fascist rhetoric, according to published reports.

It was also a place where the children of those Nazi supporters went to camp for the summer — indoctrinated into the group's ideology — and now Tony Award-nominated playwright Bess Wohl's "Camp Siegfried" gives a fictional glimpse into one summer shared by two teens falling in love as they experience the camp in the backdrop.

The historical Camp Siegfried was eventually shut down by the federal government after the U.S. became involved with World War II, according to reports.

Wohl told The New York Times that she had been inspired to write the play, "Camp Siegfried," during the pandemic in 2020. Wohl was staying at an Airbnb in Bellport and began googling nearby attractions only to discover nearby Yaphank's history, she told the outlet.

In her research, she found the private roads where the camp had once been and the surrounding community of bungalows once had streets named for Nazi Germany's leaders, including Hitler, Goebbels, and Goering, according to the outlet.

The street names have since been changed, but a restrictive housing covenant precluding the sale of homes to anyone outside German ancestry was only nullified in 2017, The Times reported.

But to residents there now, the hamlet's history seems very far away from what they experience now.

Wendy Gillette, who has lived on nearby Cedar Garden, which was formerly Berliner Boulevard, in German Gardens, next door to Siegfried Park, told Newsday that "some people say there's a bad vibe" to the neighborhood, but that she does not feel that way.

''It's a nice community. People are friendly. We look out for each other," she told the outlet.

Wohl's work is described as "an exhilarating new play about how far we’ll go to belong" and centers around a "golden summer" Camp Siegfried where two teens "find themselves on a collision course with youthful passion and unbridled extremism," according to 2nd Stage Theater.

It questions whether the two are "falling in love or falling for something more sinister," a synopsis reads.

The play, which is set on the cusp of World War II, is a "boy-meets girl-meets-cautionary tale about the seductive nature of fascism reveals a shocking part of America’s past and reminds us how easily darkness can sneak up on us," the passage continues.