Sen. Kane, Southbury Delegation Arrange Historic Film Screening

Article as it appeared in the Waterbury Republican American
Bund film screened
Several showings of Southbury documentary

BY CHRIS GARDNER
REPUBLICAN-AMERICAN

SOUTHBURY — The town’s brush with an American Nazi group in 1937 remains news to many, although a documentary about the events is helping to make more people aware.

“People were saying they just never … knew about any of this, not only what happened in Southbury, but also about the Bund,” First Selectman Ed Edelson said about a Monday showing at Grace Meadows of “Home of the Brave,” a documentary that chronicles Southbury’s efforts to repel the German American Bund in 1937.

The film was shown at the housing complex off Roxbury and North Poverty roads on Martin Luther King Jr. Day. It was also screened Monday at The Taft School in Watertown, and Sunday at The Woodhall School in Bethlehem.

Edelson said he attended all three screenings with other members of a committee that promoted the film for its premiere in November.

Produced and directed by Scott Sniffen of Southbury, the documentary will play to a large audience in Hartford on Thursday when it is shown at the Legislative Office Building.

The screening was arranged by the town’s legislative delegation — Rep. Arthur J. O’Neill, R-Southbury; Rep. David K. Labriola, R-Oxford; and Sen. Robert Kane, R-Watertown.

The film, which runs about 35 minutes, chronicles the events of 1937, when the 50,000-member Bund bought 178 acres in the Kettletown section to build a training camp for Nazi sympathizers. Southbury was to be the group’s largest camp.

The community responded by forming a Zoning Commission and writing laws that would restrict the Bund’s land to farming and residential use.

The Bund, which had nearly two dozen camps across the country, had never faced that kind of resistance, so it abandoned its plans.