Tracing Your Prisoner of War Ancestors

The First World War

Sarah Paterson

• Publisher: Pen & Sword Family History
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN:
  9781783376582
• Print ISBN:
  9781848845015
• Subtopic: British History

The experience of civilian internees and British prisoners of war in German and Turkish hands during the First World War is one of the least well-known and least researched aspects of the history of the conflict. The same applies to prisoners of war and internees held in the UK. Yet, as Sarah Paterson shows in this authoritative handbook, a wide-range of detailed and revealing information is available if you know where to look for it.Briefly she outlines the course of the campaigns in which British servicemen were captured, and she describes how they were treated and the conditions they endured. She locates the camps they were taken to and explains how they were run. She also shows how this emotive and neglected subject can be researched - how archives and records can be used to track down individual prisoners and uncover something of the lives they led in captivity.Her work will be an essential introduction for readers who are keen to get an insight into the experience of a POW or an internee during the First World War, and it will be an invaluable guide for anyone who is trying to trace an ancestor who was captured.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Family History from Pen & Sword
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Chapter 1 Introduction
• Chapter 2 The International Committee of the Red Cross
• Chapter 3 The British Red Cross Society and the Central Prisoners of War Committee
• Chapter 4 The Commonwealth War Graves Commission
• Chapter 5 British Prisoners of War in Germany
• Chapter 6 British Civilian Internees in Germany
• Chapter 7 British Prisoners of War in Turkish Hands
• Chapter 8 Britons Exchanged and Interned in Neutral Countries
• Chapter 9 German Prisoners of War in the United Kingdom
• Chapter 10 German Civilian Internees in the United Kingdom
• Appendix 1 Quick Guide to Key Resources for Tracing Prisoners of War and Civilian Internees in the First World War
• Appendix 2 British Prisoners of War held by the Bulgarians
• Appendix 3 British Prisoners of War and Internees in East Africa
• Appendix 4 Abbreviations and Glossary
• Appendix 5 Select Bibliography
• Appendix 6 Locations of Prison Camps in Germany and Austria
• Appendix 7 List of Turkish Camps
• Appendix 8 Camps and Places of Internment in the United Kingdom
• Index