Featherstone Park POW Camp
Coordinates: 54 ° 56 ′ N , 2 ° 31 ′ W
The Featherstone Park POW Camp (British name: Camp 18 ) was a British POW camp during the Second World War . It existed between 1944 and 1948 and was about six kilometers southwest of Haltwhistle in Northumberland on the banks of the Tyne . The remains are still visible today.
The camp was built in 1944 for American soldiers who were to take part in Operation Pegasus . The camp was converted into a prisoner of war camp in early 1945. The camp, which was one of the largest camps in England with around 200 huts, was intended to accommodate prisoners who were classified as particularly fanatical National Socialists and was one of the largest camps in Great Britain. In the camp lived up to 4000 officers and 600 enlisted men .
Together with the interpreter officer Herbert Sulzbach , the German camp leader Ferdinand Heim as well as professors, teachers and master craftsmen from the ranks of the German prisoners of war, the British organized a comprehensive program of lectures in the officers camp and made it possible for the inmates a. a. the acquisition of the Abitur, technical training and even the visit to the camp's own university . The camp's education program was so successful that the barbed wire fence around the camp was dismantled in 1947 because it was no longer considered necessary.
The camp had its own German language newspaper called Die Zeit am Tyne , which was printed in Hexham .
In the context of the Conti affair , the German resistance fighter Willi Brundert was accused by the GDR authorities of having been recruited by the British secret service while he was detained in Camp 18 .
Documents
Certificate of participation in the cultural life of the camp
Felix Lamert, portrait of a prisoner of war, painted in Camp 18 in 1946
Certificate of participation in the cultural life of the camp
Postcard to a camp inmate from June 1947
Certificate of discharge from 1947
Letter from Captain Herbert Sulzbach about the liquidation of the camp from June 1948
Web links
- Pictures from the warehouse - English language page, accessed March 4, 2020
- Escape from Camp 18 - Camp 18 site at Featherstone Park, accessed March 4, 2020
- Hectographed camp newspaper of the POW camp Camp No. 18, Featherstone Park Camp Haltwhistle (forerunner of "Zeit am Tyne") in the German Digital Library
- Examples of re-education in individual camps , article on De Gruyter .com, accessed on March 5, 2020
- Reeducation officer , article by Ingrid Leifgen about Herbert Sulzbach in the Jüdische Allgemeine from July 9, 2013
- The Jews who helped cure Nazis , article by Daniel Sugarman from May 28, 2018 on The Jewish Chronicle, with a photo of the camp from 1947
- Manuscript Since we learned what democracy is from May 5, 2010 on Deutschlandradio Kultur (note copyright), accessed on March 5, 2020
Individual evidence
- ^ Matthias Weindel: Life and learning behind barbed wire - The Protestant camp congregations and theological schools in England, Italy and Egypt. Göttingen 2001, p. 103.
- ↑ a b c Featherstone Park on The Pegasus Archive - The 6th Airborne Division in Normandy.Retrieved June 17, 2014
- ^ Renate Held: Captivity in Great Britain - German soldiers of the Second World War in British custody. Munich 2008, p. 193 ff.
- ↑ Eduard Hoffmann and Ingrid Leifgen: As a young German in English captivity . Broadcast on Monday, October 19, 2009, 10:05 a.m., SWR2 , audio document, accessed on June 17, 2014.
- ↑ Wolfgang Mittmann: Time of the offense - Great cases of the People's Police. Berlin 2000, p. 92 f.