Internment and internee stories from England and Germany

Time Stood Still: The Internment of Civilians at Lofthouse Park Camp near Wakefield, 1914-18

Claudia Sternberg talks about Lofthouse Park Camp which held nearly 3,000 German and Austrian-Hungarian civilian and military prisoners during the First World War and was in use until the last officers left Yorkshire in December 1919. This talk focuses on the experience of the civilian internees and shares some of the official and personal stories that were brought to light in the collaborative British German project Am falschen Ort zur falschen Zeit/In the Wrong Place at the Wrong Time.

Ruhleben: Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) civilian internees in Germany during WW1

Sonia Grant describes how classified as British subjects, approximately 300 BAME men in Germany at the outbreak of World War One were rounded up and interned at a makeshift camp—Ruhleben—a racecourse outside Berlin.

Although relatively small in number, their experiences were unique and, for the most part, has remained obscured. A diverse group, some men fared better as internees than others in the camp—coined Little Britain—which had been transformed into a virtual outpost of the British Empire.
Ultimately, however, their collective stories represent triumph over tragedy and the overall narrative is the rescue of a marginalised group of men otherwise lost to history.

‘Hunting the Hun’ – WW1 and the German Communities in the North East of England

Silvie Fisch explains how the German community in the North East of England had become a substantial community by the end of the nineteenth century. The majority of Germans had successfully integrated into British society but attitudes towards them changed in the years before 1914. When Germany became a serious military threat, German residents in Britain became a cause of national concern. Anti-German sentiments were soon followed by riots, restrictions, repatriation and internment.