More great websites
The Imperial War Museums’ PoW records guide is found at bit.ly/1duqzaZ. The museum also preserves diaries, journals, letters, photos and recorded interviews, many of which can be explored via the online catalogue ( iwm.org.uk/collectionsresearch).
Lamsdorf Remembered ( lamsdorfremembered.co.uk) is built around Sojourn in Silesia by former Irish Guard Arthur Charles Evans, recounting his PoW experiences in Stalag VIIIB. It links to various other interesting websites, including a chilling description of the infamous Lamsdorf Death March of March 1945 ( buckdenpike. co.uk/lamsdorfmarch.html). A New Zealand history site also has a section on Second World War PoWs, including diary entries recording a 962-kilometre forced march. Find it at: nzhistory.net.nz/war/ second-world-war/prisoners- of-war. For an insight into the experiences of American airmen, there’s the PoW Research section of the 392nd Bomb Group ( b24.net). It boasts the “internet’s largest and most complete research on the WWII PoW Stalag Lufts in Europe”, focusing on the seven German Stalag Lufts 1, 3, 4, 6, 7a, 13d and 17b.
There are many more sites dedicated to areas and individual camps, including stalag-viiib.com; the excellent Stalag Luft I Online ( merkki.com), which has stories, photos and information about this PoW camp in Barth, Germany; the dated Stalag VIII-B discussion board ( disc. yourwebapps.com/ Indices); PoW Taiwan ( powtaiwan.org); stalag18a.org.uk; plus there’s the RAF Escaping Society Museum ( rafinfo.org.uk/rafescape/rafesmus.html), and the National ex-Prisoner of War Association ( prisonerofwar.org.uk).
At nfb.ca/film/war_story, you can watch the 1981 docudrama A War Story – based on the diaries kept by Canadian doctor Ben Wheeler during his internment in a Japanese PoW camp in the Second World War – comprising newsreel footage, interviews and re-enactments. There’s also the Allied PoWs Under the Japanese site ( mansell.com/powindex.html) and PoW Research Network Japan ( powresearch.jp/en).
Finally, while the focus here is prisoners of the Second World War, it’s worth visiting the Prisoners of the First World War site at grandeguerre.icrc.org to explore archives preserved by the Red Cross.