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.

We Shall Suffer There chronicles the experiences of Hong Kong's Prisoners of War and civilian internees from their capture by the Japanese in December 1941, to -- for those fortunate or resourceful enough to survive -- liberation, rescue, and repatriation.

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.

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

Across the North, 26,000 Rebels died in what was called "Yankee captivity"—six times the number of Confederate dead listed for the battle of Gettysburg, and twice that for the Southern dead of Antietam, Chickamauga, Chancellorsville, Seven Days, Shiloh, and Second Manassas combined. "If there was ever a hell on earth," one Confederate veteran remembered, "Elmira prison was that hell." New York's POW camp—nicknamed "Helmira"—was the most infamous of Northern prisons during the Civil War, places where hunger, brutality, and disease were everyday hazards. So Far from Dixie is the gripping narrative history of five men who were sent to Elmira and survived to document their stories. Berry Benson promised that he would escape the prison under honorable circumstances. Anthony Keiley charmed Union authorities into giving him a job at Elmira and later became mayor of Richmond, Virginia. John King refused to build coffins for his fellow prisoners. Marcus Toney disdained to take the Union oath of loyalty until long after the war had ended. And Frank Wilkenson, a Union army volunteer only fifteen years old, endured the same humiliating punishments meted out to the prisoners he was guarding.

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.

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.

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.

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.

'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.

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?

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.

Horace 'Jim' Greasley was twenty years of age in the spring of 1939 when Adolf Hitler invaded Czechoslovakia and latterly Poland. There had been whispers and murmurs of discontent from certain quarters and the British government began to prepare for the inevitable war. After seven weeks training with the 2nd/5th Battalion Leicester, he found himself facing the might of the German army in a muddy field south of Cherbourg, in Northern France, with just thirty rounds of ammunition in his weapon pouch. Horace's war didn't last long. He was taken prisoner on 25th May 1940 and forced to endure a ten week march across France and Belgium en-route to Holland.

Horace survived...barely...food was scarce; he took nourishment from dandelion leaves, small insects and occasionally a secret food package from a sympathetic villager, and drank rain water from ditches. Many of his fellow comrades were not so fortunate. Falling by the side of the road through sheer exhaustion and malnourishment meant a bullet through the back of the head and the corpse left to rot. After a three day train journey without food and water, Horace found himself incarcerated in a prison camp in Poland. It was there he embarked on an incredible love affair with a German girl interpreting for his captors.

He experienced the sweet taste of freedom each time he escaped to see her, yet incredibly he made his way back into the camp each time, sometimes two, three times every week. Horace broke out of the camp then crept back in again under the cover of darkness after his natural urges were fulfilled. He brought food back to his fellow prisoners to supplement their meagre rations. He broke out of the camp over two hundred times and towards the end of the war even managed to bring radio parts back in. The BBC news would be delivered daily to over 3,000 prisoners. This is an incredible tale of one man's adversity and defiance of the German nation.

Throughout WWII, thousands of Allied prisoners dreamed of outwitting their captors and returning to war against the Axis. Their ingenuity knew no bounds: they went over the barbed wire surrounding them and under it as well; they built tunnels of enormous length and complexity, often working with only their bare hands. They concealed themselves in their captors' vehicles and hitched rides to freedom. They became world-class forgers and tailors; they stole anything that might be useful to their escapes that wasn't actually red-hot or nailed down. Some of them made it to freedom; some did not. Many of those who failed simply tried again and again until they succeeded. Some of the escapers who were caught were murdered by the Japanese or the German Gestapo. That did not stop others from risking torture or death to gain their freedom. Many men whose break was initially successful would not have survived save for the dangerous, selfless help of civilians, especially in occupied Europe and the Philippine Islands. The stories in The Greatest Escapes of WWII highlight the courage, endurance, and ingenuity of Allied prisoners, chronicling their ceaseless efforts and the alarm that spread far and wide when one or more escaped. These escapes tied up thousands of Axis soldiers who might otherwise have prolonged the war for many more bloody months. The troops committed to guard the Allied prisoners and recapture escapers numbered in the hundreds of thousands.

The internment of thousands of Japanese Americans during World War II is one of the most shameful episodes in American history. This history and reference guide will help students and other interested readers to understand the history of this action and its reinterpretation in recent years, but it will also help readers to understand the Japanese American wartime experience through the words of those who were interned. Why did the U.S. government take this extraordinary action? How was the evacuation and resettlement handled? How did Japanese Americans feel on being asked to leave their homes and live in what amounted to concentration camps? How did they respond, and did they resist? What developments have taken place in the last twenty years that have reevaluated this wartime action?

A variety of materials is provided to assist readers in understanding the internment experience. Six interpretive essays examine key aspects of the event and provide new interpretations based on the most recent scholarship. Essays include:

- A short narrative history of the Japanese in America before World War II

- The evacuation

- Life within barbed wire-the assembly and relocation centers

- The question of loyalty-Japanese Americans in the military and draft resisters

- Legal challenges to the evacuation and internment

- After the war-resettlement and redress

A chronology of events, 26 biographical profiles of important figures, the text of 10 key primary documents--from Executive Order 9066, which authorized the internment camps, to first-person accounts of the internment experience--a glossary of terms, and an annotative bibliography of recommended print sources and web sites provide ready reference value. Every library should update its resources on World War II with this history and reference guide.

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.

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

Located on Pea Patch Island at the entrance to the Delaware River, Fort Delaware was built to protect Wilmington and Philadelphia in case of an attack by sea. When the Civil War broke out, Fort Delaware's purpose changed dramatically--it became a prisoner of war camp. By the fall of 1863, about 12,000 soldiers, officers, and political prisoners were being held in an area designed to hold only 4,000--and known as the Andersonville of the North, a place where terrible sickness and deprivation were a way of life despite the commanding general's efforts to keep the prison clean and the prisoners fed. Many books have been written about the Confederacy's Andersonville and its terrible conditions, but comparatively little has been written about its counterparts in the North. The conditions at Fort Delaware are fully explored, contemplating what life was like for prisoners and guards alike.

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.

Journey Out of Darkness is a poignant collection of portraits, in words and photographs, of 19 former prisoners of war who bravely endured captivity in Nazi Germany in World War II. Through these men, one can learn essential truths about the POW experience during that war—truths that counter many popular myths and misconceptions. The men featured here gather every week in offices of the Veterans Administration in Boston and Brockton, Mass. to talk about their experiences and find comfort in each other. In their eighties and nineties, they are unique individuals with unique wartime experiences, but also representative of the more than 120,000 American POWs held in Nazi Germany. They are men who fought a double war, in combat and then as POWs. Using both oral histories and photographs to tell their stories, LaCroix and Meyer humanize a terrifying aspect of war, redefining how we think about these men as POWs, survivors, patriots, and members of the Greatest Generation. Journey Out of Darkness is a poignant collection of portraits, in words and photographs, of 19 former prisoners of war who bravely endured captivity in Nazi Germany during World War II. Through these men, one can learn essential truths about the POW experience during that war—truths that counter many popular myths and misconceptions. The 19 men featured here gather every week in offices of the Veterans Administration in Boston and Brockton, Mass., to talk about their experiences and find comfort in each other. In their eighties and nineties, they are unique individuals with unique wartime experiences, but also representative of the more than 120,000 American POWs held in Nazi Germany. They are men who fought a double war, in combat and then as POWs. Together, their photos and their stories go beyond typical first-person accounts. Until the men in this book began meeting in VA support groups, few had spoken of their POW experiences. Some were told by the military not to talk; others were coerced by military intelligence into signing non-disclosure papers called security certificates. With little exception, they received no recognition for enduring as POWs, even as they struggled with traumatic memories and shame for having been held captive, for losing power over their fate, and for surviving combat when friends died. These portraits also illuminate another little-known story: the plight of Jewish-American POWs. Two of the men featured in the book were Jews who concealed their religious identities from the SS. LaCroix and Meyer have crafted a powerful exploration of the struggles of these brave veterans. Using both oral histories and photographs, Journey Out of Darkness humanizes a terrifying aspect of war, redefining how we think about these men as POWs, survivors, patriots, and members of the Greatest Generation.

The Civil War prison camp at Elmira, New York, had the highest death rate of any prison camp in the North: almost 25 percent. Comparatively, the overall death rate of all Northern prison camps was just over 11 percent; in the South, the death rate was just over 15 percent. Clearly, something went wrong in Elmira. The culmination of ten years of research, this book traces the story of what happened. Author Michael Horigan also places the prison in the context of the greater Elmira community by describing the town in 1864 and explaining its significance as a military depot and draft rendezvous.