SECOND WORLD WAR PRISONER OF WAR RECORDS

In our last series EastEnders star Lisa Hammond discovered the distressing news that her grandfather, Henry Hammond, had been a prisoner of war (POW) during the Second World War. He spent most of the conflict in Germany after being taken captive in Italy in 1942, and was among tens of thousands of soldiers who suffered a similar fate.

The Who Do You Think You Are? research team was able to discover a great deal about Henry’s story using the many POW records created at the time, including lists of prisoners kept by the Germans themselves.

These records are available at ancestry.co.uk, findmypast. co.uk and thegenealogist.co.uk, and show the names of the camps at which individuals were held and how long they spent there. Crucially Findmypast’s vast POW collection (which spans conflicts between 1715 and 1945) includes records of soldiers who were captured in Japan, as well as in Europe.

The National Archives (TNA) holds a collection of POW interrogation forms, which were issued by the War Office department MI9 and completed by prisoners upon release. These are not available online, but in series WO344 at Kew. Further details about accessing the records can be found at bit.ly/WW2_POW.

Finally the International Red Cross has a collection of POW records in its archive that could also be worth consulting. You can submit a formal research request to gain access, but there is a waiting list (see bit.ly/ICRCJan18).