Prisoner Of War Camps Research Articles

Society «Educational community named after Mykhailo Drahomanov in the Wetzlar Ukrainian POW camp, Germany, 1917 - early 1918) (based on the materials of the «Hromadska Dumka»)

The article analyzes the peculiarities of the activity of the «Educational Community named after Mykhailo Drahomanov» in the camp of Ukrainian prisoners of war in Wetzlar (Germany), which during 1917 achieved the greatest achievements in its activities, which was due to the general intensification of national organizational work in the Wetzlar camp after the overthrow of the Russian tsar. In their work, the enlightened people focused on two main categories - the illiterate, for whose services the People's School worked, and at the same time those who already had a certain educational qualification (including graduates of the mentioned school), who had all the opportunities to replenish the baggage of their knowledge. A notable feature of the current work of Ukrainian activists was the involvement of prisoners in political presentations, which prepared a significant number of camp inmates to accept the idea of creating an independent Ukrainian state. The credit for this belonged primarily to educators from among Galicians, who at the call of the IDF worked in the camps and managed to raise a whole cohort of Ukrainian patriots among the prisoners, who continued the work of their teachers, giving lectures in separate barracks (by conducting readings of abstracts and impromptu evenings), as well as and outside the camp (during the dispatch of prisoners to work as part of work teams). One of the significant results of this work was the formation of a distinctly national worldview in the majority of the prisoners of this camp, which made it possible for them to further join the ranks of the armed forces of the Ukrainian People's Republic, which, starting from the moment of the Bolshevik coup, stood up to protect Ukraine from aggressive encroachments by Moscow.

DDT Resistance Korean Body Lice and Development of Insecticide Resistance Knowledge during Korean War.

DDT exemplifies success and failure of modern science and technology. Once it was heralded as technological wonder that will deliver human from misery of insect-borne infectious disease. However DDT took dramatic downturn after failure in global malaria eradication program initiated by World Health Organization, with advent of DDT-resistant strain of mosquitoes. Although insecticide resistance has been know since late 19th century, the definitions and mythologies for finding resistance has not been settled until 1950s. This paper argues that discovery of DDT-resistant strain of body lice in prisoners of war camp in Korea during the Korean War provided essential knowledge and opportunity for advancing insecticide resistance studies. Since 1945 to the end of Korean War, US Army sprayed thousands of tonnes of DDT on Korean body and soil. DDT was only went into wide field application since 1943, was still a very new technology. The ways to deliver and utilize DDT was still under the investigation. And Korea, especially during the War, was ideal place to construct such knowledge and place it in the application. The main focus was to control public health threats, such as louse-borne typhus fever. Korean soldiers and prisoners of war exposed to regular dose of DDT, which soon gave rise to DDT-resistant strain of body lice. It was the first major outbreak of insecticide-resistance appeared in insect that has major public health importance. Until early 1950s, mechanisms of resistance, or even definition of insecticide resistance was unclear. Researchers in US Army and Department of Agriculture rushed to find the ways to quantify insecticide resistance. Network of laboratories, connecting Korea-Japan-US, had to devise new laboratory methods to rear, and test body lice. These body lice later migrate to laboratories in US, providing valuable asset for future insecticide resistance research in US. At the same time, laboratory methods of testing resistance in body louse became a standard across the globe, setting new research agenda through World Health Organization. This shows flow of knowledge, along with migration of body louse, during the Korean War. At the same time, this case show who new knowledge is constructed through the expense of involvement of minority populations, such as natives, soldiers, and prisoners of war.

Investigating Two Mass Grave Sites of WWII POW Camps in Lithuania

Abstract In 2020, archaeological excavations, exhumations, and field research were conducted at two mass grave sites near Zokniai and Armalėnai (Fig. 1) in order to locate, exhume, document, identify where possible, and respectfully bury the human remains. Archaeological field methodology was employed during the excavation and exhumation phases; the visual examination data, supplemented by osteological data obtained using anthropological methodology, was separately recorded for each individual using a standardized format. A total of 1927 individuals were exhumed, documented, and buried. The Zokniai investigation revealed that the burial site originated in late 1941 and contained POWs who were either in transit or performing harsh labour at the airport; many had died from gunshot lesions and mistreatment. The stationary camp inmates at Armalėnai were buried in late 1942 - early 1943, their deaths presumably being the result of exhaustion and disease. Both investigations illustrate how interdisciplinary collaboration between archaeology and anthropology can offer forgotten people greater respect and recognition.

Prisoners of the Empire: Inside Japanese POW Camps

Prisoners of the Empire: Inside Japanese POW Camps

Review: Enemies among Us: The Relocation, Internment, and Repatriation of German, Italian, and Japanese Americans during the Second World War, by John E. Schmitz

As we watch in horror the Russian invasion of Ukraine, we are again faced with the question of how much responsibility individual citizens should bear for the atrocities their political leaders inflict upon other nations. We also are forced to think what should be done with the expatriates supportive of their aggressive homeland, and how the people connected to the adversarial nations through ethnic ties should be treated when they may or may not be sympathetic to their ancestral nations.John E. Schmitz’s Enemies among Us illuminates the complications posed by these questions by presenting how the U.S. government treated enemy aliens and U.S. citizens with ethnic ties with the enemies during World War II. Schmitz uses historical sources as well as personal episodes, including those of his grandparents who were incarcerated in POW camps as naturalized German Americans, to show that warring nations tend to prioritize national security concerns at the expense of individual human rights.The forced removal and incarceration of Japanese Americans (which Schmitz calls “relocation and evacuation”) is a prime example of the governmental abuse of its war powers. To this tragic episode of human rights violation, Schmitz adds the “internment” of German, Italian, and Japanese aliens and a smaller number of German and Italian Americans, and he tells a larger story of involuntary—and mostly wrongful—confinement of individuals whose loyalty was rendered suspicious. Schmitz’s research on the executive records, the FBI records, and the War, State, and Justice Departments’ archives reveals the comprehensive scheme of the Roosevelt Administration aiming at protecting the nation from fifth-column activities not only within the United States but in the Western Hemisphere. The earlier chapters elucidate how J. Edgar Hoover took advantage of FDR’s fear of the fifth column to transform the FBI into a formidable secret police agency. The book also offers much information on the U.S. government’s intervention into Latin American policies regarding the arrests and deportation of alleged Axis sympathizers and alien enemies.By connecting the “internment” schemes on the East and the West Coasts, this book illuminates the “internment” of Japanese nationals (Issei) in detention centers—an understudied aspect of the wartime Japanese American experiences—as a part of the larger anti-espionage federal policy. The hostage exchange scheme explains the abduction and shipment of Japanese Latin Americans along with German Axis sympathizers to the United States. Schmitz describes how the federal enemy alien policies were confusing and often shifted clumsily. In the case of the hostage exchange policy, the government had to abandon the scheme because it turned out to be more dangerous to deport subversive internees to the enemy nations than to keep them in the United States. The book illustrates the overall injustice that befell those who were labeled potentially adversarial, and the primary sources show how the U.S. enemy alien policies were poorly managed.The major problem of this book lies in its handling of the story of 110,000 Japanese Americans incarcerated in the War Relocations Centers. The book would have worked better if it had focused on the treatment of Japanese, German, and Italian enemy aliens. Schmitz carefully distinguishes the terms “internment” (detention of enemy aliens) and “relocation/evacuation” (involuntary removal of American citizens), but often his arguments become muddled throughout the book. On the latter issue, scholars in Asian American studies—such as Eiichiro Azuma (2005, 2019), Brian Masaru Hayashi (2004), Masumi Izumi (2019), and Erik K. Yamamoto, Lorraine J. Bannai, and Margaret Chon (2020)—have produced many works that explain the complex and significant roles Japanese Americans played in West Coast agriculture and in the debates related to national security and civil liberties. The book’s bibliography and many of the simplistic and faulty descriptions of the state of Japanese America before and during World War II reveal that the author was ill-prepared to explain how issues of national security, loyalty, and race intersected with one another when Japanese Americans were locked up in the inland concentration camps.

GLOBAL CAPTIVITY IN THE FIRST WORLD WAR: PRISONERS OF WAR IN TURKESTAN, 1914 – 1916

This articleexamines the health of prisoners of war in Turkestan during the First World Warthrough the lens of internationalrelief. Using the example of typhus, it considers the spread of epidemic disease seen through the reports of Red Cross delegates who inspected the conditions in POW camps in theRussian Empire. Alongside this, the article contributes to the growing literature that considers wartime captivity from a global perspective; bycomparing imperial managementsof wartime captivity in the Russian, British and German Empires, this article reframes experiences of captivity in Turkestan and places them in the wider global context of captivity in the early twentieth century.

ОСОБЛИВОСТІ ПРАВОВОГО СТАТУСУ ВІЙСЬКОВОПОЛОНЕНИХ, ЯКІ УТРИМУЮТЬСЯ В УСТАНОВАХ ВИКОНАННЯ ПОКАРАНЬ ДЕРЖАВНОЇ КРИМІНАЛЬНО-ВИКОНАВЧОЇ СЛУЖБИ УКРАЇНИ

The article is devoted to studying the peculiarities of the legal status of war prisoners detained in penal institutions of the State Criminal and Executive Service of Ukraine. In addition, it was noted that there were some problems in determining the legal status of war prisoners, defining the range of their rights and responsibilities, outlining the legitimate interests of persons in POW camps in Ukraine. According to the authors, in order to disclose the legal status of war prisoners, the legal status of convicts detained in penal institutions should be considered and due to it the legal status of war prisoners should be determined. It should be done because of the fact that they are held in the institutions of the State Criminal and Executive Service in the same way as those sentenced due to the following elements: a) subjective rights, b) legitimate interests and c) responsibilities of convicts. According to the authors, special attention is paid to such rights as: respect for human honor and dignity; the right to freedom of religion and the conduct of religious rites; the right to maintain contact with the outside world; the right to apply to controlling and supervisory bodies; the right to possess personal belongings and funds, all items and things for personal use, uniforms and food, sums of money and valuables remain war prisoners’ property, except when the removal of the latter is necessary to ensure war prisoners’ safety; the right to health care; the right to normal material and domestic support for compliance with national legislation; respect for the staff of penal institutions and POW camps; obligatory work for certain categories of people. Key words: war prisoner, military man, criminal liability, legal status, POW camps.

“only the rags we had on …”

Abstract The Italian prisoner-of-war (POW) experience in the Union of South Africa is not well represented in scholarly publications. Research on this topic tends to focus on the general feeling of partnership between captors and captives that came about after 1943, when a new camp commandant was appointed at Zonderwater, the largest POW camp in the Union. There is no doubt that POW s and military authorities shared a mindset cooperation, but it represents one interpretation only. With educational, cultural, and sporting programmes arranged by welfare officers, many POW s gained skills and positive experiences from their captivity. However, POW s arrived early in 1941, when Zonderwater and its staff were ill-prepared for the challenges that awaited them. From 1941 to 1942 the camp commandant, Colonel DW de Wet, attempted but failed to manage the camp according to the regulations set out by the Geneva Convention of 1929 for the treatment of prisoners-of-war, of which the Union was a signatory. This article looks at the causes of De Wet’s apparent failure and the consequences thereof on the prisoners, the camp staff and to a smaller extent, on the Union government.

The Stalinist Political Culture of the Second Wave of the Russian Diaspora: A Case Study

This article examines the career of Vladimir Vasil’evich Pozdniakov during the Second World War and the early Cold War. A lieutenant colonel in the Red Army who was arrested during the Great Terror, Pozdniakov was captured on the Eastern front in October 1941. He collaborated with the Germans, first serving as the head of camp police in 1942, then becoming a propagandist in the system of POW camps, and finally serving as a high-ranking officer in the short-lived Russian army under General A. A. Vlasov. He escaped repatriation to the USSR after the war and worked as an intelligence agent in the Gehlen Organization and the CIA while also taking part in anti-communist groups in West Germany. Pozdniakov also acted as an amateur historian of the Vlasov movement. Pozdniakov’s career provides a window on the actions of one individual across the upheavals of war, occupation, and Cold War. Pozdniakov’s actions were shaped by the political culture of the Stalinist 1930s. Like other members of the Soviet party-state and military elite, Pozdniakov was opportunistic, suspicious, and dogmatic – all qualities that were crucial for advancement and mere survival in the Stalinist 1930s. The political culture of the 1930s helps to explain his activities during a time of unprecedented chaos and violence: his willingness to collaborate diligently with the Nazis and then with Germany’s Western conquerors, his constant battles within circles of collaborators and the Russian diaspora, and his hagiographic writing of the history of the Vlasov movement while in postwar exile. Pozdnyakov’s example suggests a new approach to the study of the political culture of the second wave of Russian emigration. Due to the historical context of the formation of the second wave – captivity on the Eastern Front, life and sometimes collaboration during the Nazi occupation and flight from repatriation – its members had no other source of public identity other than the continuing devotion to Vlasov’s semi-fictional Russian liberation army.

Remembering prof. Zygmunt Kraczkiewicz (1900-1971) and his pioneering research

Zygmunt Kraczkiewicz (1900-1971) On October 11, 2021, at the Holly Cross Church in Warsaw, there was a Holly Mass dedicated to the memory of Professor Zygmunt Kraczkiewicz who passed away 50 years ago, in 1971. Zygmunt Kraczkiewicz was born July 20, 1900, in Biala in Ukraine. In 1928 he received his Ph.D. and in 1935 the doctor habilitatus (D.Sc.) degree at the Faculty of Philosophy of Warsaw University. From 1926 until 1939, he was an assistant professor in the Department of Cytology at Warsaw University. At the beginning of World War II, he was called to military duty. After the fall of Poland, he was interned in Romania until 1941, and from 1941 until 1945 he was held captive in Dorsten and Dossel German POW camps. In 1945, after the liberation by Americans and relocation to Belgium, he co-organized and lectured in the Polish Center of Academic Studies in Brussels. He returned to Poland in 1946. Prof. Kraczkiewicz joined, in the rank of associate professor, the re-opened Department of Zoological Cytology at Warsaw University in 1946. From 1951 to 1956, he was the Dean of Faculty of Biology and Natural Sciences, and from 1956 to 1965, he held the position of the Pro-Rector of Warsaw University. From 1955 until retirement in 1970, Prof. Kraczkiewicz was the Chair of the Department of Cytology Faculty of Biology, University of Warsaw.

EXCAVATING WAR AND IDLENESS: THE CASE OF SVÆRHOLT

ABSTRACT For the last decade, the World War II prisoner-of-war camp and battery at Sværholt in northernmost Norway have been objects of archaeological investigation. This article presents the results from excavations and associated studies, including new descriptions of extant structures and found artefacts, comparative osteological analyses of middens, and their implications. Our purpose in presenting these results is to: 1) explore what an extraordinary array of unearthed material can reveal about the conditions and fates of those involved in, or affected by, the German occupation during the war; 2) to show how the archaeology of Sværholt, with all its heterogeneity, leads us in a direction at variance with historical generalizations and expectations; 3) to convey how the extant ruins and remains provide affective glimpses into their formative causes: the abandonment and near-complete destruction of the battery, garrison, hamlet, and POW camp, during a few intense days of evacuation in November 1944.

The conflict archaeology of the 19th–20th century in Hungary

Conflict archaeology has significant traditions in Hungary. This paper presents conflict archaeological research on three military sites of the 19th and 20th centuries (the battlefield of Kismegyer, the POW camp of Ostffyasszonyfa and the aircraft wreck of Bágyogszovát) associated with the Ministry of Defence Military History Institute and Museum. Finally, the Appendix concludes the study by presenting 25 more Hungarian conflict archaeological research projects from the Napoleonic Wars to the Cold War.

POW Camp in Jindřichovice: Founding, Everyday Life, Memorialization

The prisoner of war camp in Jindřichovice (German: Heinrichsgrün), located in the Ore Mountains on the territory of the modern Czech Republic, was one of the largest such camps of the First World War in Austria-Hungary. In the period from 1915 to 1918, tens of thousands of prisoners of war from Serbia, Montenegro, the Russian Empire, and Italy passed through it. Many Serbian civilians were interned in addition to military personnel. Over 170 buildings were erected for the camp which was capable of accommodating almost forty thousand prisoners and which was surrounded by a fence with barbed wire and watchtowers. The whole complex was almost autonomous, with all the necessary infrastructure, including a bakery, hospital, laundry, ablutions, and a chapel. Prisoners of war were used in a variety of jobs in the vicinity, primarily related to agriculture. Their labour was also used for the repair of roads, the extraction of basalt in a nearby quarry, and in industry, primarily at a metallurgical plant in Rotava and in the construction of a chemical plant in Sokolov (at that time Falknov; German: Falkenau). From 1917, the situation with the provision of food and medicine began to worsen in the camp, leading to the spread of disease and a rapid increase in the mortality rate. In total, 3,855 people died here, including 2,465 Serbs and Montenegrins, 1,301 Italians, 56 Russians, and approximately two dozen of the Austro-Hungarian camp guards, among whom were several Czechs. The prisoners of war were buried in a cemetery near the camp, which has survived to this day. After the war, the remains of the Serbian prisoners were exhumed and, together with the remains of thousands of soldiers of the newly established Yugoslavia who had previously been buried in locations all over Bohemia, were transferred to a mausoleum, which was converted from the camp’s water supply cistern. Today, it contains the remains of about 7,190 of those who came from the territory of the former Yugoslavia — mostly Serbs, but also soldiers who fought in the war on the side of Austria-Hungary, primarily Slovenes, Croats, and Bosnians, and also 189 Russians.

Creating and Passing on Okinawan Culture in Hawaiʻi POW Camps Through Songs and Theatrical Performances

Creating and Passing on Okinawan Culture in Hawaiʻi POW Camps Through Songs and Theatrical Performances

Prisoners of the Empire: Inside Japanese POW Camps by Sarah Kovner

Prisoners of the Empire: Inside Japanese POW Camps by Sarah Kovner

On the History of the Cooperative Movement in POW Camp Wetzlar, Germany: The establishment and activity of the union «Chainia» (December 1915–1916)

The article highlights the specifics of the creation and activities in the camp of Ukrainian prisoners of war Wetzlar (Germany) of the «Chainia» Cooperative Society (December 1915–1916). From the very beginning of its work, «Chainia» offered its visitors low prices for food and provided a convenient opportunity to drink tea, which attracted a large number of campers. This in turn made «Chainia» a highly profitable enterprise (commercially), allowing it to make a significant profit. The income was distributed by the decision of the general meeting both on the payment of dividends on paid shares, and on the needs of various camp organizations and charitable support to the needy (including outside the camp). At the same time, the excessive influx of campers to «Chainia», the fierce debate on political issues and created some inconvenience for members of the cooperative. Some of the shareholders did not understand why campers with hostile or indifferent views to Ukrainians had the opportunity to use “all the amenities” and buy low-priced products in «Chainia». Therefore, from May 1916, the Tea House worked only for members of the cooperative, thus encouraging campers to join their ranks. Throughout its existence, «Chainia» remained an effective commercial enterprise, uniting prisoners of different political views and preferences. It made a significant contribution to the development of national life in the camp, effectively supporting the activities of educational courses and camp literacy schools and sponsoring funds for all-Ukrainian needs.

Narrating the Imprisoned Body in Life Writing from the Kamioka POW Camp

ABSTRACT During WWII, a number of British, American and Dutch Far East prisoners of war (FEPOWs) held captive by the Japanese in the Kamioka POW camp in Japan are known to have kept secret war diaries. This paper examines the ways in which these six men recorded the state of the body in their diaries, and their preoccupation with detailing their own (loss of) physical and mental wellbeing during captivity. Unsure of their lives, severely undernourished and forced to do hard labour in the local Mitsui mines, the men carved out an alternative identity or persona in their diaries. In this case study of writing the body in times of prolonged and extreme duress, and the relation to textual identity formation, analysis of the diaries shows that there are several bodily themes such as ‘hunger’, ‘illness and pain’, ‘weight’, ‘mental anguish’ and ‘death’ that cut across differences of nationality and background. As the men struggle to survive, they oscillate between identification with, and disassociation from these sufferings of the body and mind. Their position in the camp hierarchy, to whom they write, and their sense of home are other factors that impact upon their corporeal experiences and their diary personas.

Oflag II C Woldenberg. Największy niemiecki obóz jeniecki dla polskich oficerów 1940–1945. Stan polskich badań

The study presents the current state of research related to the history of the Officers and the Oflag II C Woldenberg camp. The article is a rich source of information on published research and popular studies. The in-depth inquiries carried out by the author in this regard were the basis for the development of a new monograph of the largest POW camp for Polish officers, organized by the German state during World War II. The bibliography attached to the article, consisting of over one hundred items, may be an excellent reference for researchers of the issue of prisoners of war during World War II. It does not contain complete information relating to press publications, as there are over four hundred of them, but it indicates the article in which they were discussed.

Sarah Kovner, Prisoners of the Empire: Inside Japanese pow Camps

Sarah Kovner, Prisoners of the Empire: Inside Japanese pow Camps

Heideggers Ungebrauch

Abstract This essay is concerned with a topic that has been widely discussed in East Asia for decades – the relationship between Martin Heidegger’s thought and Daoism. At the centre of my reflections is a motif that appears in Heidegger’s 1945 “Evening Conversation: In a Prisoner of War Camp in Russia, between a Younger and an Older Man” – a “doing that is a letting” (ein Tun, das ein Lassen ist). Starting from this, I discuss Heidegger’s approach to the Daoist “thinking of the useless” expressed in his Black Notebooks and other texts. In the development of Heidegger’s thought the “turning” (die Kehre) marks an important juncture. I propose speaking of a second or transcultural turning, which begins around 1943. For this transformation in Heidegger’s thought, what has been of outstanding importance is his preoccupation with Daoist texts, and especially his reading of the classical texts Lǎozǐ and Zhuāngzǐ. This is evident in his numerous explicit or implicit references to the Daoist classics. In 1945, in a situation of extraordinary emergency, Heidegger refers to Zhuāngzǐ’s motif of uselessness and the “necessity of the unnecessary”. This can be seen as a personal escape from responsibility, but also, importantly, as a way out of his deep entanglement with National Socialism. Although the way Heidegger proposes is arguably twisted and disturbing, its value lies in its providing a necessary perspective from which to unfold the critical potential of transcultural philosophy.