What role could music play in a death camp? What was the effect on those women who owed their survival to their participation in a Nazi propaganda project? And how did it feel to be forced to provide solace to the perpetrators of a genocide that claimed the lives of their family and friends?

In 1943, German SS officers in charge of Auschwitz-Birkenau ordered that an orchestra should be formed among the female prisoners. Almost fifty women and girls from eleven nations were assembled to play marching music to other inmates - forced labourers who left each morning and returned, exhausted and often broken, at the end of the day - and give weekly concerts for Nazi officers. Individual members were sometimes summoned to give solo performances of an officer's favourite piece of music. It was the only entirely female orchestra in any of the Nazi prison camps and, for almost all of the musicians chosen to take part, being in the orchestra was to save their lives.

In The Women's Orchestra of Auschwitz, award-winning historian Anne Sebba tells their astonishing story with sensitivity and care.

Equally skilled in different trades than in the art of love, the Italian prisoners-of-war (POWs) who were incarcerated in South Africa during the Second World War are a source of great fascination to this day.

The first Italian POWs arrived in the Union of South Africa in early 1941, most of them being held in Zonderwater Camp outside Cullinan or in work camps across the country. The government of Jan Smuts saw them as a source of cheap labour that would contribute to harvesting schemes, road-building projects such as the old Du Toit’s Kloof Pass between Paarl and Worcester and even to prickly-pear eradication schemes.

Prisoners of Jan Smuts recounts the stories of survival and shenanigans of the Italian POWs in the Union through the eyes of five prisoners who had documented their experiences in memoirs and letters. While many POWs seemed to appreciate the opportunities to gain new skills, others clung to the Fascist ideas they had grown up with and refused to work.

Many opted to remain in South Africa once the war had ended, forging quite a legacy. These included sculptor Edoardo Villa, who left an important mark in the local and international art world, and businessman Aurelio Gatti, who built an ice-cream empire whose gelato was to delight generations of South Africans.

Historian Karen Horn painstakingly tracked down a number of former POWs in which their interviews reveal rich narratives of hardship, endurance, humour, longing and self-discovery. Instead of fighting, these men adapted to another war, one which was fought on the inside of many prison camps.

In their interviews, all the POWs expressed surprise at being asked to share their experiences of almost 70 years earlier.They returned home in 1945 to a country which soon afterwards tried its utmost to promote national amnesia with regard to the country’s participation in the war.

With great insight and empathy, Karen Horn shines a light on a neglected corner of South African history. Karen Horn is a lecturer at Stellenbosch University.

The incredible true story of Louis Zamperini, now a major motion picture directed by Angelina Jolie. THE INTERNATIONAL NUMBER ONE BESTSELLER In 1943 a bomber crashes into the Pacific Ocean. Against all odds, one young lieutenant survives. Louise Zamperini had already transformed himself from child delinquent to prodigious athlete, running in the Berlin Olympics. Now he must embark on one of the Second World War's most extraordinary odysseys. Zamperini faces thousands of miles of open ocean on a failing raft. Beyond like only greater trials, in Japan's prisoner-of-war camps. Driven to the limits of endurance, Zamperini's destiny, whether triumph or tragedy, depends on the strength of his will ... Now a major motion picture, directed by Angelina Jolie and starring Jack O' Connell.

Colditz Castle: a forbidding Gothic tower on a hill in Nazi Germany. You may have heard about the prisoners and their daring and desperate attempts to escape, but that's only part of the real story.

In Colditz: Prisoners of the Castle, bestselling historian Ben Macintyre takes us inside the walls of the most infamous prison in history to meet the real men behind the legends. Heroes and bullies, lovers and spies, captors and prisoners living cheek-by-jowl for years in a thrilling game of cat and mouse - and all determined to escape by any means necessary.

Deeply researched and full of incredible stories, this is a tale of ordinary people facing extraordinary circumstances - and will change how you think about Colditz forever.

a Call Them the Happy Yearsa recounts at first hand the first 40 years of the life of Barbara Everard in her own words, augmented, now in this second edition, with her elder son, Martina s boyhood memories of some of those years. From a privileged early childhood as a daughter of a wealthy Sussex farming family, Barbara grew up through the depression desperate to become an artist, an ambition that she achieved with award-winning success as one of the worlda s foremost botanical artists. But this followed some years of colonial life in Malaya and the horrors of war both in Singapore and England, described in graphic detail as is her husband, Raya s story as a Japanese PoW on the infamous Siam railway.

An incredible tale of one man's adversity and defiance, for readers of The Tattooist of Auschwitz. Horace Greasley escaped over 200 times from a notorious German prison camp to see the girl he loved. This is his incredible true story. A Sunday Times Bestseller - over 60,000 copies sold. Even in the most horrifying places on earth, hope still lingers in the darkness, waiting for the opportunity to take flight. When war was declared Horace Greasley was just twenty-years old. After seven weeks' training with the 2/5th Battalion, the Royal Leicestershire Regiment, Horace found himself facing the might of the German Army in a muddy field south of Cherbourg, in northern France, with just thirty rounds in his ammunition pouch. Horace's war didn't last long. . . On 25 May 1940 he was taken prisoner and so began the harrowing journey to a prisoner-of-war camp in Poland. Those who survived the gruelling ten-week march to the camp were left broken and exhausted, all chance of escape seemingly extinguished. But when Horace met Rosa, the daughter of one of his captors, his story changed; fate, it seemed, had thrown him a lifeline. Horace risked everything in order to steal out of the camp to see his love, bringing back supplies for his fellow prisoners. In doing so he offered hope to his comrades, and defiance to one of the most brutal regimes in history.

On 2 September 1944, a German Wehrmacht Liaison Officer was captured by the Russians in Bucharest. His name was Lieutenant-Colonel Heinz-Helmut von Hinckeldey and he was to remain a "war convict" of the Soviets until 1955. For 11 years, Heinz-Helmut von Hinckeldey had to endure the deprivation - both physical and psychological - of imprisonment; the filth and squalor of the cells, in which he was kept; the agony of isolation and repeated self-examination; and the pain of ignorance, of not knowing if his motherland (Germany) still existed or whether those he loved, ever realized that he was alive. The personal Story that, like countless others, would never have been told, had it not been for the admiration and fascination built up over time by the Author, Charles Wood

'Zekameron' comes from 'Zek' meaning prisoner and is a word-play on Boccaccio's Decameron. 'He came back from interrogation looking like death. Some people look better than he did when they're being put in their coffin. "What happened then? Did they stick any other articles of the Criminal Code on you? Or break your jaw?" "Nothing like that. I've got toothache..." The 100 tales in Zekameron are based on the 14th Century Decameron, but Znak is closer to Beckett than to Boccaccio. Banality and brutality vie with the human ability to overcome oppression. Znak's stories in different voices chart 100 days in prison in Belarus today. The tone is laconic, ironic; the humour sparse. The stories bear witness to resistance and self-assertion and the genuine warmth and appreciation of fellow prisoners.

Paul and Charlotte Bondy were refugees from Hitler caught up in Churchill's policy of mass internment. Paul was detained at the Alien Internment Camp at Huyton, near Liverpool, from late June to early December 1940. During this time his only contact with his wife and young daughter was by post. As this young married couple struggled to overcome the vicissitudes of war and exile to maintain some semblance of family life, they wrote to each other regularly. The letters, postcards and telegrams reproduced here are a unique example of a complete WW2 Internment Correspondence.

Unshackled Spirit was a unique 'Spitfire' fighter aircraft purchased by allied prisoners of war whilst imprisoned in Germany; the book explains how this remarkable achievement was possible using previously restricted and secret material. In addition, accounts are compiled from a collection of original YMCA personal wartime logs as issued to RAF prisoners of war in 1944. 'Unshackled Spirit' draws out the story of each aviator, how they became a prisoner of war and life in the various camps across occupied Europe. Extensive and amazingly detailed pieces of artwork are taken from the logs and illustrated in the book. The balance of fact and inspired drawings makes for an impressive collection from a number of incarcerated aviators. The hardship of POW's and the extraordinary means adopted to escape are touched upon, but more importantly the aspect of how agencies helped by supplying all manner of equipment to the thousands of men behind barbed wire. The role of MI9 is revealed and how it participated in those agencies exploring the efforts taken to smuggle escape material into the prisoner of war camps without breeching the Geneva Convention and finally the extraordinary measures taken to secure intelligence during the process of prisoner repatriation.

My grandfather, Frank Carollo, was a prisoner of war in the infamous POW camp Stalag 17 B during World War II. During these dark days, he managed to keep a diary of his experiences, depicting everyday life within, through beautiful short stories, poetry, and drawings. Now years later, I've taken his accounts, adding background details from friends and family, to create a memoir of hope, love, and survival; a story of one man's life before, during, and after being confined within one of the most notorious of Nazi camps. 20% of the profits from each book sold will be donated to the national Alzheimer's Association, in memory of Frank Carollo.

Many aspects of Britain's involvement in World War Two only slowly emerged from beneath the barrage of official secrets and popular misconception. One of the most controversial issues, the internment of 'enemy aliens' (and also British subjects) on the Isle of Man, received its first thorough examination in this remarkable account by Connery Chappell of life in the Manx camps between 1940 and 1945. At the outbreak of war there were approximately 75,000 people of Germanic origin living in Britain, and Whitehall decided to set up Enemy Alien Tribunals to screen these 'potential security risks'. The entry of Italy into the war almost doubled the workload. The first tribunal in February 1940 considered only 569 cases as high enough risks to warrant internment. The Isle of Man was chosen as the one place sufficiently removed from areas of military importance, but by the end of the year the number of enemy aliens on the island had reached 14,000. With the use of diaries, broadsheets, newspapers and personal testimonies, the author shows how a traditional holiday isle was transformed into an internment camp. of earning extra income. Eventually the internees took part in local farm work, ran their own camp newspapers and even set up internal businesses. With inmates of the calibre of Sir Nikolaus Pevsner, Lord Weidenfeld, Sir Charles Forte, Professor Geoffrey Elton and R.W. 'Tiny' Rowland, the life of the camp quickly took on a busy and constructive air; but the picture was not always such a happy one, as angry disputes flared between Fascist inmates and their Jewish neighbours, and a dangerous riot forced the intervention of the Home Office. Even now, there remains the persistent question never settled satisfactorily. Were the internments ever justified or even consistent?

The gripping, vividly told story of the largest POW escape in the Second World War - organized by an Australian bank clerk, a British jazz pianist and an American spy. In August 1944 the most successful POW escape of the Second World War took place - 106 Allied prisoners were freed from a camp in Maribor, in present-day Slovenia. The escape was organized not by officers, but by two ordinary soldiers: Australian Ralph Churches (a bank clerk before the war) and Londoner Les Laws (a jazz pianist by profession), with the help of intelligence officer Franklin Lindsay. The American was on a mission to work with the partisans who moved like ghosts through the Alps, ambushing and evading Nazi forces. How these three men came together - along with the partisans - to plan and execute the escape is told here for the first time. The Greatest Escape, written by Ralph Churches' son Neil, takes us from Ralph and Les's capture in Greece in 1941 and their brutal journey to Maribor, with many POWs dying along the way, to the horror of seeing Russian prisoners starved to death in the camp. The book uncovers the hidden story of Allied intelligence operations in Slovenia, and shows how Ralph became involved. We follow the escapees on a nail-biting 160-mile journey across the Alps, pursued by German soldiers, ambushed and betrayed. And yet, of the 106 men who escaped, 100 made it to safety. Thanks to research across seven countries, The Greatest Escape is no longer a secret. It is one of the most remarkable adventure stories of the last century.

Prison Pens presents the memoir of a captured Confederate soldier in northern Virginia and the letters he exchanged with his fiancee during the Civil War. Wash Nelson and Mollie Scollay's letters, as well as Nelson's own manuscript memoir, provide rare insight into a world of intimacy, despair, loss, and reunion in the Civil War South. The tender voices in the letters combined with Nelson's account of his time as a prisoner of war provide a story that is personal and political, revealing the daily life of those living in the Confederacy and the harsh realities of being an imprisoned soldier. Ultimately, through the juxtaposition of the letters and memoir, Prison Pens provides an opportunity for students and scholars to consider the role of memory and incarceration in retelling the Confederate past and incubating Lost Cause mythology.,br> This book will be accompanied by a digital component: a website that allows students and scholars to interact with the volume's content and sources via an interactive map, digitized letters, and special lesson plans.

The gripping, vividly told story of the largest POW escape in the Second World War - organized by an Australian bank clerk, a British jazz pianist and an American spy. In August 1944 the most successful POW escape of the Second World War took place - 106 Allied prisoners were freed from a camp in Maribor, in present-day Slovenia. The escape was organized not by officers, but by two ordinary soldiers: Australian Ralph Churches (a bank clerk before the war) and Londoner Les Laws (a jazz pianist by profession), with the help of intelligence officer Franklin Lindsay. The American was on a mission to work with the partisans who moved like ghosts through the Alps, ambushing and evading Nazi forces. How these three men came together - along with the partisans - to plan and execute the escape is told here for the first time. The Greatest Escape, written by Ralph Churches' son Neil, takes us from Ralph and Les's capture in Greece in 1941 and their brutal journey to Maribor, with many POWs dying along the way, to the horror of seeing Russian prisoners starved to death in the camp. The book uncovers the hidden story of Allied intelligence operations in Slovenia, and shows how Ralph became involved. We follow the escapees on a nail-biting 160-mile journey across the Alps, pursued by German soldiers, ambushed and betrayed. And yet, of the 106 men who escaped, 100 made it to safety. Thanks to research across seven countries, The Greatest Escape is no longer a secret. It is one of the most remarkable adventure stories of the last century.

This book explores the history of Dartmoor War Prison (1805-16). This is not the well-known Victorian convict prison, but a less familiar penal institution, conceived and built nearly half a century earlier in the midst of the long-running wars against France, and destined, not for criminals, but for French and later American prisoners of war. During a period of six and a half years, more than 20,000 captives passed through its gates. Drawing on contemporary official records from Britain, France and the USA, and a wealth of prisoners' letters, diaries and memoirs (many of them studied here in detail for the first time), this book examines how Dartmoor War Prison was conceived and designed; how it was administered both from London and on the ground; how the fate of its prisoners intertwined with the military and diplomatic history of the period; and finally how those prisoners interacted with each other, with their captors, and with the wider community. The history of the prison on the moor is one marked by high hopes and noble intentions, but also of neglect, hardship, disease and death

The status of prisoners of war was firmly rooted in the practice of ransoming in the Middle Ages. By the opening stages of the Hundred Years War, ransoming had become widespread among the knightly community, and the crown had already begun to exercise tighter control over the practice of war. This led to tensions between public and private interests over ransoms and prisoners of war. Historians have long emphasised the significance of the French and English crowns' interference in the issue of prisoners of war, but this original and stimulating study questions whether they have been too influenced by the state-centred nature of most surviving sources. Based on extensive archival research, this book tests customs, laws and theory against the individual experiences of captors and prisoners during the Hundred Years War, to evoke their world in all its complexity.

While serving as a crew chief aboard a U.S. Air Force Rescue helicopter, Airman First Class William A. Robinson was shot down and captured in Ha Tinh Province, North Vietnam, on September 20, 1965. After a brief stint at the "Hanoi Hilton," Robinson endured 2,703 days in multiple North Vietnamese prison camps, including the notorious Briarpatch and various compounds at Cu Loc, known by the inmates as the Zoo. No enlisted man in American military history has been held as a prisoner of war longer than Robinson. For seven and a half years, he faced daily privations and endured the full range of North Vietnam's torture program. In The Longest Rescue: The Life and Legacy of Vietnam POW William A. Robinson, Glenn Robins tells Robinson's story using an array of sources, including declassified U.S. military documents, translated Vietnamese documents, and interviews from the National Prisoner of War Museum. Unlike many other POW accounts, this comprehensive biography explores Robinson's life before and after his capture, particularly his estranged relationship with his father, enabling a better understanding of the difficult transition POWs face upon returning home and the toll exacted on their families. Robins's powerful narrative not only demonstrates how Robinson and his fellow prisoners embodied the dedication and sacrifice of America's enlisted men but also explores their place in history and memory.

The issue of prisoners in war is a highly timely topic that has received much attention from both scholars and practitioners since the start of the military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq and the ensuing legal and political problems concerning detainees in those conflicts. This book analyzes these contemporary problems and challenges against the background of their historical development. It provides a multidisciplinary yet highly coherent perspective on the historical trajectory of legal and ethical norms in this field by integrating the historical analysis of war with a study of the emergence of the modern legal regime of prisoners in war. In doing so, it provides the first comprehensive study of prisoners, detainees and internees in war, covering a broad range of both regular and irregular wars from the crusades to contemporary counterinsurgency campaigns.
The book revolves around two major developments: First, there has been a continuous increase in the political relevance of prisoners in war, in particular since the emergence of POW camps in the nineteenth century. Secondly, and related, the growth in the legal regime pertaining to prisoners had contradictory consequences. Whilst it enhanced the protection of prisoners in regular conflicts, its state-centric bias tends to exclude combatants who do not fit the template of regular inter-state war. Detainees in the 'war on terror' embody both tendencies, the development of which, however, is by no means a novel phenomenon.
This book is a project of the Oxford Leverhulme Programme on the Changing Character of War.

Min verhale uit die Anglo-Boereoorlog het lesers só aangegryp as die avonture van die Boere-James Bond, kaptein Koos Naudé(1876-1956).

Onvergeetlik is avonture soos dié waarin hy 'n Engelse uniform vrylik in die besette Pretoria rondbeweeg, die Engelse offisiere se spogperde steel, tien keer gedurende die oorlog die stad in die geheim as spioen besoek en 'n groep vroue organiseer om die spioenasie van die ontbinde Geheime Diens voort te sit. Sy avonture, wat in 1904 vir die eerste keer onder die titel In doodsgevaar gepubliseer is, is in 1940 deur G.D. Scholtz verwerk en heritgegee.

Dié boek het intussen een van die klassieke verhale van die Anglo-Boereoorlog geword.

This book reviews the nature of the alleged abuse committed by the UK military forces, exploring the legal paradigm in which the abuse allegedly occurred; the morality of those accused; and the robustness of the accusation of a 'policy of abuse'.

A former prisoner of the Gestapo, Kulka leads us through the horror of the Nazi death camps, describing such unbearable conditions as the over-crowded ghettos where Jewish minorities were left to starve, separation of families in cases where parents were brought to one concentration camp and children to another, and fear of an unknown fate such as the gas chambers of Auschwitz. Few people escaped from Auschwitz, and fewer survived such escape attempts. From personal experience as well as accounts from other survivors, Kulka details the only successful escape, led by Siegfried Lederer, where all those involved survived.This is a test

A collection of prisoner of war and concentration camp survivor stories from some of the toughest World War II camps in Europe and the Pacific, this book details the daring escapes and highlights the fundamental aspects of human nature that made such heroic efforts possible. Levine takes a comprehensive approach, including evasion efforts by those fleeing before the enemy who never reached formal prisoner of war camps, as well as escapes from ghettoes and labor camps.

Levine pays particular attention to dramatic escapes by small boat. Many are not widely known, although some were made over vast distances or in fantastically difficult conditions from enemy-occupied areas. Accounts include attempts at freedom from both German and Japanese prisoner of war camps, stories that reveal much about the conditions prisoners endured. Some of these escapes are far more amazing than the famed Great Escape from Stalag Luft III. German and Austrian prisoners also recount their amazing flights from India to Tibet and Burma. This study challenges some ideas about behavior in extreme situations and casts interesting light on human nature.