Remembrance Sunday is a day we remember those who made the ultimate sacrifice. However do we also remember the 1,000’s of POW’s (prisoner of war) who were incarcerated in sometimes brutal and appalling conditions?
Researching your ancestry should include finding as much about our ancestors including war records. Today more and more resources are becoming available on the internet. Six great sites (and there are many) are featured below.
Prisoners of War – National Archives
The National Archives have a series of transcribed interviews from POW’s which you can read which brings the ordeal to life. Features a number of databases including evaders and escapees.
Stalag Luft I Barth
A varied collection of stories, photos from Stalag I located in Barth, Germany near the Baltic Sea. Nearly 9,000 Allied Airmen were imprisoned here.
Stalag VIIIB/344 Lamsdorf
Lamsdorf was a very large German prisoner of war camp located in SW Poland. More than 100,000 prisoners from Australia, Belgium, Britain, Canada, France, Greece, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Poland, South Africa, the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia and the United States passed through this camp.
A famous prisoner from here was Group Captain Sir Douglas Robert Steuart Bader.
Stalag XVIIIA/Wolfsberg
Wolfsberg was located in Austria and this website is adding names to the roll call of prisoners who passed through. Currently this site has nearly 11,000 names and is being added to as information comes forward.
Far East Prisoners of War
Approximately 55,500 names of British POWs are on the database, taken from army, navy and air force records.
Ruhleben Civilian Internment Camp 1914 -1918
In 1914, thousands of British civilians and merchant seamen, along with foreigners from other nationalities with British connections, were interned at the hastily constructed prisoner of war camp at Ruhleben racecourse by Spandau, near Berlin, Germany.
http://ruhleben.tripod.com/ By kind permission of Chris Paton
Prisoner of War websites
