POW Camps in India

Prisoner of War and Internment Camps in India

Boer War

In India, there were Boer prisoners of war camps at

• Kakool (Kakul) near Abbottabad
• Ahmadnagar
• Bellary
• Bhim Tal, near Nainital
• Dagshai and Solon
• Fort Govindgarh, (Gobindgarh) , Amritsar
• Kaity ( Keti,Kaiti) in the Nilgiris, near Ootacamund. There is also mention of a camp at Wellington which is in the same area. It is not known whether these are the same, or different camps.
• Satara
• Shahjahanpur
• Sialkot
• Trichinopoly
• Umballa
• Upper Topa, near Murree

(Information mainly from the Anglo Boer War Museum website)

External links

• Prisoner of War Camps in the Boer War in India , Ceylon and St Helena with a map from Anglo Boer War Museum. This website includes a Prisoners of War database search
• Boers,( ancestry24.com) includes a section “Boer Prisoners of War – Camps” (scroll down) including general mention of the camps in India
• Camps for Boers - India angloboerwar.com (This link may be slow to load and is found at Miscellaneous information/Prisoner of war camps/ Camps for Boers – India).
• Article "South-South Gothic" by Isabel Hofmeyr, University of the Witwatersrand “A haunting tale of suspense featuring a cemetery in the punjab, boer prisoner of war graves, cold war neo-medievalism and much more” html version, original pdf
• Article "The Indian Ocean Civil Dead: Boer Prisoner-of-War Graves in India" by Isabel Hofmeyr, University of the Witwatersrand. Paper presented at "The Politics of Heritage" 8-9 July 2011 Museum Africa, Johannesburg html version, original pdf
• Article "India and the Anglo-Boer War" by E S Reddy 29 July 1999 html version, original pdf not available; version from mkgandhi.org,without footnotes
• India 1902 Fort Govindgarh Censored Envelope With Letter "The POW camp at Fort Govindargh was known as "The Hell" amongst the 1200 Boer prisoners kept there. The heat was oppressive and the Boers sometimes swam in the moat surrounding the fort. The water, however, was polluted and inevitably would give both the POWs and their guards typhoid fever. The camp was eventually closed on 10 December 1902".
• Boer prisoner of war art Extract of article by Fransjohan Pretorius in History Today 1 March 2006
• Time to settle old score 20 December 20 2011. iol.co.za. Contains reference to the playing of cricket in the camps, particularly in Ceylon, and contains a photograph of the Ahmednagar Boer Cricket Club in India who "played frequently against their British guards"
• Photograph of Boer prisoners held by the British army at Kakul, India (now in Pakistan) during the Second Boer War, 1902. Getty Images

First World War

Historical books online

• Reports on British prison-camps in India and Burma, visited by the International Red Cross Committee in February, March and April, 1917 1917 Archive.org Contents
  • page 18 Sumerpur, Rajputana. Mainly Turkish prisoners of war, some civilians
  • page 25 Ahmednagar, Bombay Presidency. Mainly civilian, but some military including captured crews of German ships
  • page 35 Belgaum, Bombay Presidency .German and Austrian civilians
  • page 40 Bellary, Bombay Presidency. Turkish prisoners of war
  • page 44 Depot Camp at Calcutta for prisoners of war in transit to Burma
  • page 45 Katapahar in the Hills near Darjeeling. Civilians
  • page 47 Thayetmyo, Burma. Turkish prisoners of war.
  • page 57 Camp for Convalescents at Schwebo, Burma. Turkish prisoners of war.
  • page 59 Quarantine Camp Rangoon, Burma. Turkish prisoners of war.

External links

• Postcard to Germany from Ahmednagar POW camp 1919 stampcommunity.org

Second World War

The Prisoners-of-war were interned in India in 29 camps forming 6 Groups of camps. In addition, there were two Civil Internment Camps at Dehradun and Deoli and one camp in Delhi for the Japanese prisoners captured in Burma.

• Group I – Bangalore: Camps 1 to 8 - Italian prisoners.
• Group II – Bhopal: Camps 9 to 16 – Italian prisoners. Camp 16 was a hospital. Bhopal Bairagarh (Wikipedia)
• Group III – Ramgarh: Camps 17 to 20 – German Civil Internees and later Italian prisoners. Had a punishment camp for difficult Italian POWs Ramgarh was near Hazaribagh
• Group IV - Clement Town (Dehra Dun): Camps 21 to 24 – Separated in Wings 1: pro-Nazi, 2: anti-Nazi, 3: Italians. One of the camps was a *Central Internment Camp.
• Group V – YOL: Camps 25 to 28 – Italian prisoners. Yol was situated near Dharamsala (Wikipedia)
• Group VI – Bikaner: Camp 29 – Japanese prisoners. It was also a punishment camps for difficult Italian POWs.Bikaner (Wikipedia)
• Central Internment Camp (Dehra Dun / Premnagar): This was mixed civilian internment and prisoner-of-war camp. Italian prisoners of war and German civilian internees housed in separate camps. WING 1 and WING 6 held German internees.
• Delhi – Japanese Camp: Delhi housed the Japanese prisoners captured in Burma.
• Deoli – Civil Internment Camp: Deoli housed German civilian internees and Japanese civilian internees. It was also a punishment colony for Germans. Deoli (Wikipedia)

The above information is mainly taken from the website Indian Banknote:India: Prisoner-of-War Coupons

This Wikipedia article lists the following additional camps

• Deolali from February 1941, later also transferred to Dehra Dun 11 August 1941: Germans.
• Yercaud for females from Madras Presidency. Summer 1941, closed late 1942.
• Fort William, Calcutta, army camp, closed early 1940, males were sent to Ahmednagar, females to Katapahar parole camp.
• Smaller Parole Camps at Naini Tal, Kodaikanal and Katapahar (near Darjeeling), were all closed by late 1942. Inmates transferred to (family reunions) to the camps near Poona: Satara from May 1940, Purandhar (lower Fort), initially for Jewish refugees, later also other Germans, many missionaries with families.