POW Camps in India

From FIBIwiki
Jump to navigation Jump to search

Prisoner of War and Internment Camps in India

Boer War

Until April 1901 the British captured approx 25,000 Boers. Of these various numbers were sent to various places as POWs.Only a total of 9000 Boer POWs were ever sent out to India of this number, and they were held in some 14-15 camps in selected Indian cantonments.[1]

In India, there were Boer prisoners of war camps at

(Information mainly from the Anglo Boer War Museum website)

Catalogue reference BACSA Archive at the British Library Ceylon: Boer POW Camp Mss Eur F370/785

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 (archive.org links 1 and 2)
  • Boers,( ancestry24.com) includes a section “Boer Prisoners of War – Camps” (scroll down) including general mention of the camps in India. (archive.org link)
  • 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 now archived, 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". (archive.org link)
  • Boer prisoner of war art Extract of article by Fransjohan Pretorius in History Today 1 March 2006. (archive.org link)
  • 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". (archive.org link)
  • Photograph of Boer prisoners held by the British army at Kakul, India (now in Pakistan) during the Second Boer War, 1902. Getty Images
  • Abstract of an article "The erection and maintenance of monuments to Boer prisoners of war in India 1902-1948" by J Wassermann South African Journal of Cultural History Volume 24, No 2 (2010). (archive.org link)
  • Article "Island of no return" (St. Helena) by Gavin Bell Weekend Australian 14 July 2012 Travel and Indulgence section, page 1 briefly says "Nothing remains of a prisoner-of-war camp on a high plateau where 6000 Afrikaners were held during the Boer War, but the graves of 156 who never saw their homeland again are carefully tended on a steep hillside. Two granite obelisks bearing their names stand as a memorial ..."
  • Details of The Anglo-Boer War Diaries of Jan Geldenhuys Includes the period from April 1902 when he was captured and sent as a prisoner of war to Umballa, where his experiences till 20th November 1902, were documented. He later met up with his father and brother who were POW’s at Bhimtal. The diaries were originally written in High Dutch. (archive.org link)
  • Details of Boer Boy: Memoirs of an Anglo-Boer War Youth by Chris Schoeman. Charles du Preez, a ten year old boy and his father were taken prisoner by the British. Includes an account of the journey aboard the SS Aurania to the prisoner-of-war camps of Umballa and Solon where Charles was the youngest inmate. Based on an account Charles wrote later in life and other documentary sources. Available at the British Library (archive.org link)

Historical books online

First World War

Historical books online

External links

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. It was used as a POW camp up to May 1942 when the POWs were moved out and the United States Chinese Training Command was established there.
  • 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
  • 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 (archive.org link). (archive.org link)

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.

Catalogue reference BACSA Archive at the British Library India: Italian POW Camps Mss Eur F370/853

External links

German prisoners of war

Italian prisoners of war

Records at the British Library

  • United Kingdom High Commission files relating to cemeteries IOR/R/4/1-539 1943-1967. Transferred from Indian Public Works Department to the British High Commission, New Delhi, and from there to the India Office Records in 1972-73. As they were originally Public Works Department files, they may not often (if at all) refer to individuals.
    • File 18/3/1 General correspondence on prisoner of war graves IOR/R/4/102 Dec 1947-Feb 1951
    • File 18/3/2 General correspondence on prisoner of war graves IOR/R/4/103 Feb 1951-Jul 1965
    • File 18/3a Lucknow Diocese: cemeteries containing prisoner of war graves IOR/R/4/104 Mar 1951-Jul 1952
    • File 18/3b Bombay Diocese: cemeteries containing prisoner of war graves IOR/R/4/105 Nov 1948-May 1953
    • File 18/3c Nasik Diocese: cemeteries containing prisoner of war graves IOR/R/4/106 Nov 1948-Jul 1952
    • File 18/3d Calcutta Diocese: cemeteries containing prisoner of war graves IOR/R/4/107 Nov 1948-May 1953
    • File 18/3e Nagpur Diocese: cemeteries containing prisoner of war graves IOR/R/4/108 Oct 1951-Dec 1953
    • File 18/3f Punjab Diocese: cemeteries containing prisoner of war graves IOR/R/4/109 Jul 1948-May 1953
    • File 18/3g Delhi Diocese: cemeteries containing prisoner of war graves IOR/R/4/110 May 1949-May 1953
    • File 18/3h Chota-Nagpur Diocese: cemeteries containing prisoner of war graves IOR/R/4/111 Jul 1950-Apr 1953
    • File 18/3i Madras Diocese: cemeteries containing prisoner of war graves IOR/R/4/112 Nov 1948-Jun 1953
    • File 18/3j Assam Diocese: cemeteries containing prisoner of war graves IOR/R/4/113 Nov 1948-Jun 1949
    • File 18/4/1 Correspondence on German prisoner of war graves in India IOR/R/4/115 Dec 1952-Jul 1953

References

  1. ↑ Email to FIBIS Webmaster dated 8 November 2012 from Prof Omer SK Tarin. Director, TSI, Abbottabad, Pakistan.

Retrieved from "https://wiki.fibis.org/index.php?title=POW_Camps_in_India&oldid=49029"