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World War II - British Internment Camps - Simon Parkin
78 Plays1 year ago
Ep 003 - Nonfiction. I interview author and journalist Simon Parkin on his new book, “The Island of Extraordinary Captives: A Painter, a Poet, an Heiress, and a Spy in a World War II British Internment Camp.”
Simon is a terrific writer & storyteller, and I learned a ton from our conversation. British internment camps, like American internment camps, don’t get the kind of attention that they should— so it was great to get to talk to him about the topic.
You can buy Simon's book here: https://bit.ly/3ZBWWwz
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Transcript
Introduction to the War Books Podcast
00:00:02
Speaker
Hey everyone, this is AJ Woodhams, the host of the War Books podcast, where I interview today's best authors writing about war-related topics.
Overview of 'The Island of Extraordinary Captives'
00:00:11
Speaker
Today I was so excited to get to talk to author and journalist Simon Parkin about his new book, The Island of Extraordinary Captives.
Simon Parkin's Background and Works
00:00:21
Speaker
It's about British internment camps in Britain during World War II, a topic I knew nothing about, and we had such an interesting conversation. Simon, he's a great writer, super knowledgeable about what went on in Britain in the internment camps during World War II, and I was so glad that he agreed to come on and talk a little bit. So here is that interview, and let's get going.
Research and Discoveries on British Internment Camps
00:00:53
Speaker
Hi, everyone. I am here today with author Simon Parkin, who just wrote the wonderful new book, The Island of Extraordinary Captives, a painter, a poet, an heiress, and a spy in a World War II British internment camp. Simon, how are you today? Hey, I'm really well, thanks, AJ. Yeah, thank you for having me on. Yeah, well, thanks for coming on. Really loved your book. Super excited to talk about it.
00:01:22
Speaker
Maybe first, if you wouldn't mind, just tell me a little bit about your background and why you chose to write about this. Yeah, sure. So I am a journalist by profession.
00:01:35
Speaker
And that's what I've done for the best part of two decades as a freelancer. So I write for newspapers and magazines and websites. I'm a contributing writer for the new yorker.com. And I've written for Harpers in the States and a bit for the New York Times. And then here in the UK, I'm mostly right for the Guardian for their long read section. So that's, you know, long form reported pieces.
00:02:00
Speaker
And yeah, I wrote my first narrative nonfiction book in 2019, which was a World War II story.
00:02:10
Speaker
I cover as a journalist technology, but also video games. I write about lots of things, but the first thing I started out was writing about games. This book, which was called A Game of Birds and Wolves, was about a group of women in the women's role, Naval Service in the UK, who worked on
00:02:31
Speaker
a war game that helped Britain understand why we had such catastrophic losses in the Battle of the Atlantic. And I suppose writing a book about the Second World War, I was allowed to do that because I knew lots about games, and that sort of got me through the door to write that. And then having written a book about the Second World War, then you're allowed to do another one. That's sort of how it seems to work in publishing.
00:02:55
Speaker
And so yeah, the book that I'm here to talk about, The Island of Extraordinary Captives, it came about really because I was interested in POW camps in Britain during the Second World War. And I'd heard about this particular camp in the Lake District, which is this really picturesque part of England, all around lovely lakes, very green, people go walking there, people go on holiday there.
00:03:20
Speaker
And there was a stately home there in the 1940s that was converted into a POW camp where any U-boat captains and officers who were captured by the British were taken to this stately home. And that struck me as a pretty cool location for a story.
British Society and Refugee Attitudes Pre-WWII
00:03:39
Speaker
And so I'd gone to the National Archives, which is our big data where all of the records from the Second World War are kept in South London. And I was researching POW camps and it was while leafing through one of these folders that I came across.
00:03:55
Speaker
a handwritten, sort of like a fanzine, you'd call it today, but it was a handwritten newspaper full of illustrations and write-ups of theatrical performances and things like that. And it was all written in English, but it seemed to have been written by Germans who were behind barbed wire here in the UK. And despite this, it sort of included a letter from the editors saying, tell everyone that you hate the Nazis.
00:04:22
Speaker
It was quite an arresting document. I thought, what on earth is this? Who has made this? That led me into the world of internment during the Second World War here in Britain, which is a well-known story in the States. The internment of Japanese nationals is something that's well understood, I think, among the American population.
00:04:45
Speaker
But the fact that the British government interned nearly 30,000 German, Austrian, and Italian citizens in 1940 is not very well known in the UK. I had no idea. That's a piece of history that's sort of been not suppressed, but it's just not something that's taught in the UK. Even in the UK that history is not well known?
00:05:08
Speaker
I mean, it's well known among people who live on the Isle of Man, which is where a lot of the internment camps were. But yeah, I think you could stop probably 50 people in the high street and maybe one of them would know about internment here in the UK. So give us a little bit of context then for Britain just before World War II and right at the outbreak.
00:05:31
Speaker
What was going on in British society? What were some of the attitudes of the British people towards the Germans? Well, I suppose the story starts in 1933 when the Nazis come to power and they start expelling anyone with any Jewish heritage from positions of power and from educators. If you were a lecturer in a university or an academic, then you were
00:05:58
Speaker
kicked out of your post and so immediately you've got a group of people in Germany who are looking for refuge for asylum in other countries and many of them try to come to Britain and there are some efforts to help them certainly among academics were found positions in universities here in the UK and so it was relatively easy I suppose if you worked in that field to get into the country before the
00:06:25
Speaker
As the 1930s progress, more and more people are trying to leave Germany. And in fact, the Nazis are trying to kick out as many Jews as they can because they want to take all of their money and their belongings and their businesses to fund their plans. So there's this huge number of refugees who want to come to Britain.
00:06:47
Speaker
In fact, only a relatively tiny number of people come to Britain, around 73,000, a granted refuge, despite the fact that there were millions of case files of people trying to get in.
00:07:03
Speaker
And there's a sort of, I suppose, as you might imagine would happen today, there's a wariness about letting lots of refugees into the country. That would absolutely be the case. I read that and I was surprised, you had written at one point that attitudes in Britain weren't so dissimilar towards Jews, weren't so dissimilar to attitudes that were in Germany. There was a lot of antisemitism.
00:07:28
Speaker
Yeah, there was anti-Semitism and it was sort of across the political divide because on the left, there was a lot of pressure from trade unions. There was obviously a great deal of unemployment in the UK at that time. And so there was a fear that suddenly if lots of skilled laborers were coming into the country from Europe, then British people would be unable to find jobs.
00:07:51
Speaker
So you can imagine all the arguments that happened today were precisely the same arguments that were happening then. But I would say there was a general acceptance of refugees who did come to Britain during that time. There wasn't any mass suspicion
00:08:10
Speaker
in the years leading up that all starts to change obviously with the outbreak of war when suddenly there's a there's a realization that you know tens of thousands of refugees have come from from Germany and from Austria and that there's a possibility that some of them may in fact be posing as refugees and could could be spies sent by the Gestapo or whoever
00:08:32
Speaker
And so the British government in November 1939, as a way to sort of mitigate those risks, says that anyone who's come to the country during the previous six years has to stand in front of a tribunal to basically give an account of themselves to tell their story, how they came to Britain and why they came to Britain. And then a senior member of the British judiciary will ascertain whether they think that they're telling the truth, whether they
00:09:01
Speaker
are genuine refugees from Nazi oppression or whether they are, in fact, Sparta is posing as refugees. The people on this tribunal, their attitudes are probably a reflection, I think you're right about this, of the general xenophobia of the antisemitic attitudes. It's really not a fair is the right word, but it's not really a great tribunal maybe.
00:09:30
Speaker
Yeah, I think it's fair to say that it would vary from place to place. And in some places, you would have judges who were well-equipped to make those calls. But there was, in fact, this is not my judgment. Years on, at the time, there was a government inquiry into the tribunal process that was quite critical and said, look, many of the people making these decisions were completely oblivious to the political situation in Germany, didn't really understand.
00:09:58
Speaker
you know, or the forces at play. So, you know, they, as you say, they weren't, they weren't all well-equipped to make these decisions. But anyway, the decision that they were making was to categorize the refugees standing in front of them, whether category A, so that is high risk, that they're either a, probably a fascist or probably a communist, in which case they should be immediately interned and taken off the streets.
00:10:23
Speaker
or a category C, which was no risk at all. This is a genuine refugee from Nazi oppression. And then the category B, which was sort of the one where they were unsure. And each category was subject to different restrictions. If you were category B, you couldn't own a bicycle, you couldn't travel more than five miles from your home or own a map, things like that, or a camera.
00:10:45
Speaker
But anyway, these are the measures that the government puts into place toward the end of 1939 and they so move.
Internment Process and 'Enemy Aliens' Definition
00:10:52
Speaker
How many people for these tribunals, how many people were hauled before the tribunals?
00:10:58
Speaker
I think it was 55,000 had been through tribunals by the start of 1940. I have to double check that, but it's around that, so it's a large number of people. It's the majority. These are mostly foreigners. What types of people are these?
00:11:16
Speaker
So the classification, which is the same one that was used in the United States until the Biden administration outruled it. So the official category is enemy alien. So that is someone living in your country who holds the nationality of the country with whom?
00:11:34
Speaker
your nation is at war. So in this case, it was Germans and Austrians. And then from the beginning of June, 1940, that includes Italians as well. So yeah, anyone who's in that same category existed up until just recently here in the United States. Yeah, I think it was two or three years ago, the American government said they'll never again use the term enemy alien because it's demeaning, which I agree with. I think that's the correct decision.
00:12:03
Speaker
And particularly when applied to refugees, this was also really some of the problem in the building xenophobia towards refugees that starts to happen in the beginning of 1940, because that term enemy alien, I mean, it sounds quite frightening, right? Despite the fact that these are people who in many cases have left their lives, their livelihoods, their savings, they've been stripped of their belongings. They are the very definition of people who
00:12:33
Speaker
who need asylum and need help yeah and so the one of the anecdotes that you write about in your book so there was there were the british authorities thought that there were there were fascist plots everywhere
00:12:48
Speaker
And one of the anecdotes that you write that I, I mean, it's kind of like a, it's not really a funny anecdote, but it's just like, you write about how there was a detective who found somebody's diary. And in the diary, it's written that they wanted to substitute the British queen for an Italian queen.
00:13:11
Speaker
And the authorities took this as subversive writing that, oh my gosh, this is like the beginnings of a coup attempt. Come to find out it was a beekeeper who was talking about the queen bee in his hives. And you give some other anecdotes too. And I thought that's so incredible that
00:13:38
Speaker
the attitudes, people can be so afraid of plots everywhere that are trying to overtake the country. And I think you also- There's another one from a young art historian called Klaus Henriksen,
Life Inside British Internment Camps
00:13:52
Speaker
who was a great source for my book because he wrote his diaries and very useful. But yeah, the police come knocking because one of his neighbors has reported him because she believes that the knocking of the bed
00:14:05
Speaker
when Klaus is making love to his girlfriend Gretel, contains a coded message. And as Klaus points out in his diary, it's very difficult to convince a police officer that you don't actually understand Morse code. I remember reading that too. I thought that was so fascinating. I mean, it's awful, but it's really just like telling of the attitudes
00:14:32
Speaker
going on at this time in Britain.
00:14:38
Speaker
Well, let's talk about then, let's talk about the internment camps. So your book specifically is about Hutchinson Camp. But as we talked about at the very beginning, there are a lot of camps in a lot of different countries right now for people who are perceived to be working with the enemy. Tell me in Britain around this time, how many camps are there?
00:15:08
Speaker
What are these camps like? How big are they? Where do people eat and sleep and just kind of give us an overview of the camps.
00:15:17
Speaker
Well, I mean, it's worth saying that really until May 1940, it's only people who are being categorised A's, like I mentioned before, who are sent to internment camps. And they're sent to, for example, Kensington Olympia, which was a very big exhibition hall in central London. So they're sent to places like that. That all changes in May 1940 with the fall of France, because suddenly it's much more likely that the Germans are going to invade Britain. And in fact,
00:15:47
Speaker
the British government is distributing leaflets that say what to do when the enemy arrives. So it's pretty widely understood that Britain's going to be invaded any day now. And that's really one of the things that changes the government's policy to become much more strict. And so throughout May, you see this escalation in the people who must be in turn. So
00:16:08
Speaker
So one day, all of the category Bs, right, you've now got to be arrested and taken off to camps. And then from mid-May, it's also category Cs. So everyone who had previously been judged to not be a risk at all, they also now need to be arrested and taken to camps, including women and children as well who are taken to the Isle of Man. So suddenly, all across Britain, there's this need for internment camps that are going to house these people, nearly 30,000 of them.
00:16:37
Speaker
The Isle of Man, which is a small island in between Liverpool and the coast of Ireland in the Irish Sea there, about in the middle, is chosen as the ideal site for internment camps. It had also been used during the First World War for this purpose.
00:16:55
Speaker
So, ten camps were established there, but there were also camps on mainland Britain as well. Some of them, for example, there was one very notorious camp called Wharf Mills in Lancashire. This is what's known as a transit camp.
00:17:14
Speaker
Once the policeman comes and knocks on your door and bumbles you into a van, you're taken off and you go to one of these transit camps like Wharth Mills for a couple of weeks. This was an old disused cotton factory. It had been abandoned for 10 years. The British army move in just, I think, nine days before the first internees turn up.
00:17:32
Speaker
So you can imagine it was not fit for human habitation. There were, I think, 2,000 men sharing hardly any bathroom facilities and lying on lice-ridden mattresses. Some of the people that are being interned are more than 60 years old and have
00:17:54
Speaker
pre-existing medical conditions. So it's really a terrible place to be. I think Wharth Mills was probably the worst of them, but there were others that were similarly not unfit for human habitation, I think you would say. And of course, because you've got lots of very qualified eminent German doctors among the internees because of the kinds of people who have left Germany in the years leading up to it, they're able to note all of this down and the terrible conditions and are very well educated about the situation
00:18:24
Speaker
there. After you'd spent a couple of weeks in one of these transit camps, you'd be taken probably to the Isle of Man, to one of the 10 main camps that are established there, and they varied. Some of them were in hotels around which barbed wire had been put. Hutchinson, which is the main camp that I write about in my book, was around a sort of picturesque boarding
00:18:44
Speaker
a square of boarding houses, which is where holidaymakers typically would go and spend their summers in peacetime. But barbed wire is put up around this enclosure and then the men move into these boarding houses that would typically, I think, take six or seven people
00:19:01
Speaker
when they were boarding houses, but now have more than 30 men, five or six to a room, cramped together, lying on the floor. So yeah, pretty cramped conditions, but better than that's what they'd had before. These are just the transit camps or these are the actual internment camps? Oh, so yeah, the ones on the Isle of Man are the
00:19:21
Speaker
the long-term camps where you'd end up. And as you mentioned before as well, there was also a big drive to send as many attorneys as possible abroad. So a deal is struck with Canada, which agrees to take a few thousand of these attorneys as well as German POWs. And the ships start leaving in June 1940, but they quickly come to an end because of a notorious incident when the
00:19:46
Speaker
SS Arendor, a star, is sailing from Liverpool across to Canada and is picked up by a U-boat which torpedoes the ship and it sinks with, I think, 650 people died in that wreck.
00:20:02
Speaker
So once that happens and there's the outcry at what's happened in Britain, the government policy of shipping off internees to Canada and to Australia is reversed and then internees are only being held in the British Isles and the Isle of Man.
00:20:21
Speaker
So are there just the two camps on the Isle of Man? How many camps are in Britain? No, there were 10 camps. There were maybe a couple more very small ones that only lasted for a couple of weeks. I think there was one called Granville. But yeah, for sort of in the long-term establishment, there were 10 camps. And as the war
00:20:41
Speaker
progresses and people start to be let out, that number reduces and Hutchinson remains one of the last internment camps still functioning. You had just mentioned this, that I'm curious about that at least one of these camps, maybe more, were used during World War I as well.
00:21:02
Speaker
Yeah, it was different sites, but yes, the Isle of Man was used for internment purposes during the First World War as well. It was slightly different. Not the same site though. Not the same site. They were under tents, I think, in the First World War. But there were similarly poor conditions and there was a riot during that, during which
00:21:21
Speaker
A number of internees were shot by British soldiers. And the whole episode had been so terrible during the First World War that actually afterwards the government says, never again are we going to repeat the internment measures.
Key Characters in Parkin's Book
00:21:33
Speaker
And then, you know, lo and behold, not that many years thereafter, it's all repeated and on a much greater scale as well. Well, let's talk about, so your book really focuses, so the title or the subtitle of your book, a painter, a poet, an heiress, and a spy.
00:21:52
Speaker
So let's talk about those characters, those people. Well, let's start with the painter, Peter Fleishman, who really is the central character of this book. Who is Peter Fleishman? What's his background, his personality, what led him to Britain, and what led him to the camp?
00:22:12
Speaker
Peter is 16 years old when he enters the story of the book. He's living in Berlin. He actually comes from quite a wealthy family. His grandfather was a banker and had done very well from that until the Great Depression, which affects
00:22:33
Speaker
Germany as well because many of the banks had their money in America. So there's that knock on effect. And so he's reduced to poverty and then dies in the 1930s. And Peter is left without a carer because his parents, he's always been told, were murdered by the Nazis. They were anti-fascist journalists and the steering of their car was apparently tampered with and they drown in the onesie lake. That's the story he's told for why he's got no parents.
00:22:59
Speaker
So in the early 30s, he goes to the Auerbach orphanage in Berlin, becomes an orphan there. And then during the November pogroms,
00:23:11
Speaker
the British government, together with aid agencies, comes up with the very famous Kindertransport initiative to try and take children out of the city. Because he's an orphan in Berlin, he qualifies, and he's under 17, he qualifies for a position on the very first train to leave Berlin with Berlin children on it.
00:23:32
Speaker
And so he comes to Britain. So there's this great irony where Peter has been rescued by the British state, given asylum and refuge in the country and brought out by them. And he lands in Harwich on the Essex coastline and is put up by a family in Manchester, goes to live with them.
00:23:50
Speaker
It's actually kind of because he's older, his life is a little bit more difficult maybe than some of the younger orphans because their families are more willing to take them in. So Peter has kind of a rough time when he first arrives to Britain, right?
00:24:05
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, that's the sort of more nuanced side of the Kindertransport story is that, in fact, when appeals are put out for British families to come and take in Kindertransport children, have them live with them, and they show a preference for young girls and blond, sort of slightly mirroring the Nazis' own judgments on sort of
00:24:29
Speaker
Aryan standards, unfortunately, but yeah, you're right, you know, Peter, Peter turns 17 quite soon after he arrives in Britain. And so he has treated differently and he's put to work, but he's an aspiring artist. He was at
00:24:45
Speaker
an art college in Berlin before the Nazis say that Jewish children can no longer study there. And that's his dream. He's sort of designing posters. And when he gets to Britain, he gets this job working to colorize old photographs from the First World War, essentially.
00:25:01
Speaker
And yeah, once the mass internment policy comes into effect in May 1940, he's arrested, along with many other people in Manchester where he's living at the time. He's taken to Wharf Mills, that terrible cotton mill that I mentioned earlier. And from there, about two weeks later, he gets on the ferry that carries him across to the... Well, actually, no, he goes to another camp for a little while called Priest Heath, but then after that, he goes on to Hutchinson on the Isle of Man. And
00:25:29
Speaker
Yeah, that's the camp that he lands in. And it just so happens that Hutchinson has this very high density of accomplished artists who have also fled Germany. And so Peter has this slightly strange
00:25:45
Speaker
situation where, for many of the men, they're experiencing a great deal of depression, they've been taken away from their families, they've been locked up indefinitely, there's been no trial, they've got no charge against them, and also they're fearing German invasion. Well, Peter's a bit younger and he's an aspiring artist and he suddenly finds himself in this community of very well-known, in some cases world-famous artists who are also interned in the camp.
00:26:09
Speaker
who are putting on art lessons and staging art exhibitions. He has quite an interesting time of it because for him, it's much more exciting. I'm not sure if you mentioned this, but I think it's definitely worth mentioning that Peter is actually a Jewish orphan, right? Yeah.
00:26:29
Speaker
So, and I thought this was very fascinating in your book that obviously he's put in the camp because there's a suspicion that he could be spying for the German government.
Irony of Jewish Refugees' Internment
00:26:43
Speaker
But he is Jewish and there are a lot of Jews who are put into the camp who are just completely opposed to obviously Nazism and the Nazi regime.
00:26:55
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. In fact, it was 80% Jewish people in the camp. There's this great story that's passed around a lot by those who lived through this of arriving on the Isle of Man and overhearing a British officer say to his subordinate
00:27:13
Speaker
I never had any idea that so many Jews were Nazis. And it just gives you a sense that the complete lack of understanding of who these people were, of how they had come to be in Britain and of actually the German government's position towards them where it wanted to strip their citizenship from them and eradicate them both financially and materially and in terms of
00:27:39
Speaker
their personhood as well. So yeah, it is the great irony. I think probably if you were interviewing a British government official who was working at that time right now, they would say, well, we knew that the majority of people that we were interning were of no risk.
00:27:57
Speaker
but far better to just intern everyone and maybe catch a few spies that way and then we can sort out who and release people thereafter than not to intern anyone and let a few spies get away who are going to help with an invasion of Britain. Yeah, that was kind of the attitude, right? It's like Cass is very wide net and if there's a thousand people and only one of them is a spy, then we've done our jobs. That was the attitude. But that's so crazy, you say 80%
00:28:25
Speaker
of the attorneys were Jewish then. So I forget, how did the authorities get to him? How did he draw attention to himself?
00:28:37
Speaker
Well, I mean, he didn't. He was just like every other refugee who come to Britain. He was registered at the police station. They knew where he was living. They had a card for him, an enemy alien, on which it had stamped that he was a category C. So he sat in front of one of these tribunals and being deemed by one of the most senior judges in the land to pose no risk to Britain.
00:28:57
Speaker
none of that matters now with the mass internment policy. So they knew where to find him and they went to arrest him. In fact, in London, once word gets out of these arrests happening, some of the refugees go and they spend the daytime in the parks and in libraries because they know that the police are only doing arrests during working hours. So they managed to evade capture that way. But
00:29:22
Speaker
But yes, as I say, I think around 27,500 people are arrested in this way. So Peter's journey then, so Peter gets arrested and then he goes to one of the transit camps, Worth Mills, correct? Yeah, he goes to Worth Mills, yeah. And so he's there for about five days, really awful conditions.
00:29:46
Speaker
You talked a little bit about it, but people are sharing beds and it's very cramped. Anyway, so Peter's in transit and then he ends up at Hutchinson camp. What's Peter's story once he arrives at Hutchinson?
00:30:05
Speaker
Yeah, so when he arrives at Hutchinson, the camp has been going for about six to eight weeks, I think. So it's already quite a well-established setup. The British Army's policy was to basically make each camp quite an autonomous self-governing unit. So the way the British Army had learned this technique when colonizing
00:30:30
Speaker
countries whereby the best way to control the people is to
00:30:38
Speaker
join up with them to appoint some of them as leaders to self-manage themselves and then you get far less trouble. And so the camp had its very own sort of, it had a camp commander who was voted for by the internees and it had its very own clear hierarchy and really British soldiers didn't really enter the camp. They just let them get on with it unless there was like a real big dispute or violence or anything like that.
00:31:03
Speaker
And what had happened at Hutchinson is just four days after the camp opened, because it had this high number of very accomplished individuals, including world famous lecturers, lawyers, artists, writers, journalists. It had a number of people who had fled Germany and taken up teaching posts at Oxford and Cambridge universities, the very cream of the crop.
00:31:28
Speaker
And so there's this decision made in the camp, rather than just, we don't know how long we're going to be here for. We could be imprisoned indefinitely. Rather than just waste our time, why don't we try and self-organize, I suppose, quite a German way of looking at things. Why don't we just come up with a schedule of lectures and we'll try and make the most of our time here. And that's what they do. There's an architect called Bruno Ahrens, and together with his
00:31:57
Speaker
Assistant Klaus Hendrickson, who I mentioned earlier, he's the guy with the Morse code and the bed knocking. Together they draw up this schedule of lectures each week and they appoint a committee and they call themselves Hutchinson Camp University. And what happens is because they're situated around this square, some of the lecturers set up around the square, they get stools out and they stand on them and they start giving lectures about the subject in which they're an expert.
00:32:25
Speaker
little crowds of internees gather around them and wander between lessons. And there were also musical performances. There was a very famous pianist in the camp, Mayen Rovitz, who played in a piano duo that would play for the Prince of Wales and things like that.
00:32:42
Speaker
he puts on a matinee performance and the artist as well managed to persuade the British commandant of the camp, Captain Daniel, to give them space in which they can do their work and provide them with supplies. And so yeah, by the time Peter arrives, it's quite a
00:33:00
Speaker
quite an established community, I suppose, with lots of events going on. There's chess, there's table tennis, there's a football team that plays against other teams from other internment camps.
Cultural Life in Internment Camps vs. Nazi Camps
00:33:14
Speaker
If you were a 17, 18-year-old young person, there is quite a lot to be excited about, I suppose, a very different situation if you are someone for whom
00:33:25
Speaker
You know, your wife and your children are in London where the blitz is happening. They've been left with no provider, obviously very different experience for them. But I think for Peter, it was generally quite an exciting time. And so this camp is not, this isn't what most people think of World War II camps. You know, the camps in Germany come to mind and just really
00:33:50
Speaker
poor, terrible conditions and slave labor. And this is not that. This is a place where even though people are imprisoned, there are communities springing up and the internees are allowed to give lectures or study art or do different activities.
00:34:15
Speaker
Yeah, that's true. Yeah. Tell me about the conditions of Hutchinson Camp. I should say that those comparisons were made between Wharf Mills, the big converted oil factory that we mentioned. The Red Cross sent inspectors in. In fact, there's a inspector goes in who had already visited the camps at Dachau and Buchenwald in Germany.
00:34:42
Speaker
And he says that the conditions in Walthamills are worse than in those German camps. Now, obviously, the purpose of the camps here is very different. It's not to exterminate people, it's just to hold them until they can be sorted. So in that sense, yes, it's very different. But yeah, some of the conditions were equivalent, although not at Hutchinson, I would say. It's different there.
00:35:07
Speaker
Right. So this is really these communities that spring up. They're all there. And so what are they going to do when they're there? Yeah. Although, of course, there are stories of that happening as well in the Nazi concentration camps. So I think it's really just testament to human beings when you are put in those very difficult situations.
00:35:31
Speaker
art and creativity. If you're an actor, you want to stage performances. If you're a painter, you want to paint. If you're a musician, you want to make music. Those are just very human reactions to imprisonment, I think. In terms of the cultural output of these camps, there are similarities between the concentration camps and the internment camps. We'll talk a little bit about the artist community at Hutchinson.
00:35:59
Speaker
Who were the artists there? What kind of art did they make?
00:36:07
Speaker
Well, there was really a range of artists from all sorts of different disciplines. So you had people who were commercial poster artists, for example, like Willie Dubas was in the camp. So for example, he would do fantastic art deco posters when he was working in Berlin to advertise holidays.
00:36:31
Speaker
And then at the other end of the spectrum, you had fine artists, like the most famous of whom is Kirchfitters, who was associated with the Dadaist movement, and was famous enough that during the notorious exhibition that the Nazis staged mocking modern art,
00:36:50
Speaker
Schwitters had one of his paintings hung up and Adolf Hitler, in fact, poses in front of it and the picture appears in the newspapers. So, you know, someone of his stature is a genuine celebrity in the camp, someone like Schwitters. He's best known now for his collages that he made, but he at that time was also doing much more traditional portraits within the camp. You know, as a sort of hustle, tried to earn some money, he would charge people
00:37:18
Speaker
£3 to paint their head, £4 I think for head and shoulders and £5 for a half figure and anyone who had a bit of money in the count would be able to basically get an internationally renowned artist to paint their portrait for them and those who did did very well out of it because those paintings later are worth tens of thousands of dollars.
00:37:42
Speaker
Yeah, and people got pretty creative too, right? I remember reading, there was an artist who would, the windows had like a film tint on them. And there was an artist who would cut out figures of, I don't know, like animals and shapes and stuff. And that became like well known. So people became pretty creative with their surroundings.
00:38:01
Speaker
Yeah, it was like a blackout film that was put on. So the actual blackout material that was supposed to be used had been lost in an attack by a U-boat that has sunk the ship carrying it. So they had to get creative and use this blackout film. And so, yeah, as you say, Helmut Weissenborn, he was best known as a lithographer, but he starts to cut shapes into the
00:38:27
Speaker
the material and it starts a craze in the camp because you get people just you know making animals and all sorts of shapes because it looks really nice when the sun shines and the rays come through the holes and the etchings that have been made in this material and sort of bring light to the rooms.
Diverse Community Practices in Hutchinson Camp
00:38:47
Speaker
I think one of the Jewish blocks even had him carve biblical scenes into their windows. Yes, that's right. Yeah, because there was a wide range of Jewish people, so you had very orthodox houses that tended to group together. They would not even turn their light switch off on the Sabbath. They would have to get someone else to come and do it.
00:39:13
Speaker
for them and would get in trouble for blackouts for that reason. And then at the other end of this spectrum you would have people who perhaps just had one grandparent who was of Jewish extraction and in no way were practicing. So all of that was accommodated.
00:39:30
Speaker
And then Utschfitters as well gets very creative in the camp. He goes around and collects up the porridge after breakfast from loads of the different houses. People from the continent were not used to porridge as a breakfast food so would make it much too thick and so it was almost inedible. And he'd go and collect up all the leftovers and use them to make a sculpture in his attic room.
00:39:54
Speaker
which after a few weeks starts to go off and... It goes to the floor, right? It goes to the floor and it's like dripping on the beds of the people below him, so it causes a lot of disharmony in his house, but yeah. Well, let's bring in some of the other people then from your title then, the poet, the heiress and the spy. Talk about them and how they end up in this story.
00:40:22
Speaker
Yeah, so Peter's story also intersects in quite interesting ways when you're coming to tell a story like this with two other significant characters, one of whom is an heiress to the Kompinski fortune. Her name is Elizabeth or Aiken Kossen. The restaurant.
00:40:46
Speaker
the restaurant hotel chain, which is still sitting around today. You can stay at Kompinskiy hotels all around the world. When she's trying to find a way out of Germany, essentially just before the war, she's not a
00:41:04
Speaker
certainly not an orthodox Jew, but is on the Nazi list, not only because she has Jewish blood, but also because they want to acquire her fortune, and she's trying to find a way out. One of the ways she does this is by getting in contact with a chap called Ludwig Worschauer, who claims to be an inventor
00:41:25
Speaker
who enters her life in Germany and woos her and they fall in love and he says, look, I will get you out of Germany to Britain if you'll agree to marry me. And she says, yes, I'll do that. He also gets out her parents and also her children from a previous marriage.
00:41:42
Speaker
So she manages to flee to Britain and then marries Worschau here. Now, Eken knows Peter Fleischman from their time in Germany because Peter's very wealthy grandfather was friends with her. And so when he was a child, he would go and play at the Kempitsky.
00:42:01
Speaker
restaurants, and she looks after him. He'd gone after his grandfather dies. Peter goes and stays with her family in the summer holidays, and so they've got quite a close relationship. Peter ends up years later in the camp in Hutchinson, and so do, so too, does this chap Ludwig Vorschauer, who arrives at the camp
00:42:22
Speaker
soon after it opens, and he's quite a boisterous character, very noticeable, and goes around boasting, you know, well, I'm a world-famous inventor, there must be some mistake for why I've been interned, you know, I've got friends in high places, I'll just be here for a couple of days. And then he also lets slip, oh, and also, I'm married to the wealthiest woman in Berlin, Aiken Vorschauer, and Peter Pipes up and goes, well, I know you're not, I know her, like I've stayed at her house, I know that you're not her husband.
00:42:51
Speaker
And so in this way, these three lives intersect in the Hutchinson camp. It just so happens that Vorshauer is also suspected of being a Gestapo spy by MI5, the security services in Britain, and is subject to what is perhaps the longest investigation by the security services into any refugee during the Second World War.
00:43:17
Speaker
And so while he is busily going around proclaiming how he's only going to be in town for very long. In fact, in London, there are two MI5 agents who are building up a massive file on him, on how he came to Britain, on how he happened to marry Eken and in how these three people have their stories intersect in interesting ways. Being married to the wealthiest woman in Berlin, you probably don't fly under the radar quite so easily.
00:43:47
Speaker
Yeah. He was not trying to keep a low profile either. I mean, he was a big show off and also because he claimed to be this very, after a few couple of weeks, he realizes he's probably not going to be released. And so he goes to the British officer, the camp commandant and says, look, I'm a very excellent technical genius and inventor of
00:44:10
Speaker
of things. Will you allow me to set up a technical school in the camp?" And so he demands to be given a whole house where he can train up young internees and how to become engineers. And the commander agrees to it and gives him this whole... So he then has lots of comforts associated with that. And it turns out he doesn't really do any teaching because he's not quite who he
Phased Release and Post-Internment Success
00:44:33
Speaker
says he is. But he does manage to convince some of the real
00:44:37
Speaker
electrical geniuses in the camp to do the teaching for him. So manages to keep his position in this house for a few months at least. So how do some of these characters, I guess we've been talking a lot about, well, how do they evolve over the, I guess it's four years, four or five years at this camp is running. How do these characters evolve?
00:45:01
Speaker
Well, the camp really starts emptying of its brilliant individuals towards the end of 1940. The government, after the disaster that was the Arandora Star, public opinion in Britain changes towards the internment policy. There's more outcry. And of course, Britain's position in the war has changed. No longer is
00:45:21
Speaker
Does it look like the German army are going to invade from France? And so there's a bit less pressure now on the internment situation. So the government releases a white paper to start permitting those people who are deemed to be no risk to the British state to leave the camps. And there's also an opportunity for any attorney who is fit enough to join the Pioneer Corps and actually pledge their allegiance to Britain by serving in the army in this way.
00:45:49
Speaker
And so, yeah, you start to see releases happening. Peter applies to be released because he wants to go to art school in the UK, but it takes a very, very long time for anything to happen. And so while many of his friends and his tutors start to be released from the camp, he's left there languishing all the way through 1941 until eventually the refugee organizations manages to find him a place in Becken and Mark College in London, and he's finally released.
00:46:18
Speaker
So his story continues from there. He's always dreamed of being this fine artist. While he's in the camp, he receives fantastic training from really brilliant people. He wins the camp art competition. He gets to display some of his works during the camp art exhibitions that are held there. He takes life drawing lessons from Kirchfitters, things that just would have been impossible for him had he not been interned.
00:46:44
Speaker
And so, you know, some of this training really stands him in good stead when he's eventually released. And he goes on to study at the Royal College of Art in London. He graduates top of his year and is awarded with the Rome Scholarship, the highest accolade you can get. And then goes on to exhibit in Germany all around, after the war this is, all around the world and takes on commissions for British universities and even the Royal Navy.
00:47:11
Speaker
He has a really interesting trajectory before the end of the war, however, because he joins the army to work as an interpreter because he can obviously speak fluent German. And he is taken back to Wharth Mills, the terrible camp that he's held in right at the beginning of his interment experience. Now it's been converted into a POW camp and is full of captured Nazis, some of the most dangerous, in fact,
00:47:38
Speaker
Those who are most committed to the Nazi cause are held in Walthamills and so he goes and provides translation for that. And at the end of hostilities, he returns to Berlin and then he also works as a translator during the Nuremberg trials. So he's really present at all of these key moments during the Second World War, there for Kristallnacht
Legacy and Recognition of British Internment Camps
00:47:59
Speaker
on the Kindertransport, in the internment camp, there at the end of the war in Berlin and at the Nuremberg trials, a real gift of a character, I think, for a writer like me who can take that full sweep through. I don't want to give too much about the Vorshauer story away because that's some of the mystery is what happens to him and the truth of his story. So yeah, I'll leave that to readers to find.
00:48:26
Speaker
Well, that's interesting with Peter being an interpreter. There was a story I remember hearing about here in America of Jewish refugees who had fled Germany in the 1930s coming here and then
00:48:42
Speaker
getting recruited by the army or by the government to go back to Germany, fight the Germans and serve as interpreters because they're language skills where they could speak fluently. And so I've heard of similar stories here of Jewish refugees going back to Germany to interpret and to talk to a lot of these captured, just
00:49:08
Speaker
diehard Nazis as kind of their effort towards, one of the efforts towards the war.
00:49:15
Speaker
Yeah, and of course, I think there's a lot of eagerness to return to Germany and see with their own eyes the end of the war and what Germany's returning to and what its future is going to be like. These were forced emigrations, weren't they? And so you can see why a person would be curious to see, to return to the places that they'd fled really in a moment of panic in many cases.
00:49:41
Speaker
And what's the reputation of, so obviously Peter, his career as an artist benefited from being at the camp. I can't imagine he feels fondly about being interned at such a young age, much like other people, or maybe that's not true. What's the reputation that these camps have in Britain today and how do the internees, how do they often feel about their time there?
00:50:10
Speaker
Yeah. Well, I mean, there's no consistent feeling towards the camp among the internees themselves. It would depend on a range of factors, what your individual experience was like, whether you made friends in the camp. Really, in many cases, how old you were because that would dictate the amount of investment you have in your life outside the camp.
00:50:33
Speaker
So if you're 17, 18 years old, it's a big adventure. That's that part of life when you want to go and see the world and meet new people and all of that stuff, and you don't have much outside pulling you back. For older people with families and businesses, it was very different and a huge amount of anxiety and stress and fear. But at the beginning, from what I understand, if you had a wife, your spouse couldn't visit you, now that changed towards- Yeah, it was so difficult. Yeah.
00:50:59
Speaker
So, you know, when you read the diaries that are written at the time, especially from, you know, say anyone over the age of 30, they're filled with, you know, they're quite dark documents, people are very depressed, it's a long sense of gloom, especially as other people start to be released and you're questioning, well, why am I not getting out? What have I done wrong? You know, who do I need to petition to help me get out?
00:51:23
Speaker
That view does, I think, start to soften in the post-war years. For example, Fred Ullman was a lawyer and an artist who was interned in Hutchinson. He wrote a diary, and when you read the original diary, it's very gloomy, it's very depressed. He edits his diaries three times during his lifetime, and each time, a few decades later, and it gets softer and softer, and he takes out the edge, he smooths off the edges, and I think can maybe focus more on some of the positive
00:51:54
Speaker
outcomes or experiences that he had during that time. So it's not a static thing, however, how people view their interment experience, especially after the war when the full extent of the horrors of the Holocaust are
Political and Social Implications of Internment Policies
00:52:09
Speaker
revealed. It starts to throw the interment experience in a different light, I think, because
00:52:15
Speaker
You can say, well, there was this great injustice. I shouldn't have been in turn. I was obviously a refugee. You should not have called me an enemy alien. You should have said I was a legitimate refugee from Nazi oppression. But then when you find out that perhaps family members or friends had died in the Holocaust,
00:52:31
Speaker
it makes complaining about it feel a bit different. And as well, many of these individuals want to make their life in Britain. They change their names from their German surnames to British English variants. They want to assimilate and they're remaining furious at the British government for the internment measures. It's not a good way to make peace with your new life circumstances.
00:52:55
Speaker
So I think that's a factor as well. But there are some people who definitely held a grudge, and there was one, one attorney, Tristan Bush, who describes it as a war crime. I don't think many people would have agreed with that at many of the attorneys, but that just shows the range of responses that you could have.
00:53:14
Speaker
And yeah, I think in terms of the general public who were not interned, it's an episode that is not exactly suppressed, but it's not celebrated, it's not addressed. The British government doesn't issue any big apology for what happened in contrast to the Canadian government, which has done that.
00:53:33
Speaker
The interment episode does not sit comfortably with the story that Britain likes to tell itself about its wartime character, which is one of a great just nation fighting the personification of evil. That is perhaps true, but also it's more nuanced than that. Of course it is. Things are always more complicated.
00:53:55
Speaker
So yeah, that's why I think you would struggle to find people who are aware of the full detail of what happened during the mass internment episode.
00:54:06
Speaker
Yeah, and I think throughout the book, you're rightly very critical of the British government at this time. And you're right that it doesn't match with the image that they want to portray of themselves as being very honorable in how they conducted themselves as opposed to the Germans in the war. Yeah, I think as well, America has a parts planer with Hollywood and the type of films that are being made in the 1950s. They're very
00:54:35
Speaker
They're obviously celebratory about the Allied victory. It then starts to build a certain memory of the Second World War, particularly among perhaps the children of people who fought in the war. The baby boomers start to have a particular view of what the war was like that's a little less nuanced than the truth.
00:55:00
Speaker
I know you said that the government has never apologized for the camps. What has the government done to atone for these camps? I believe there was an apology for what happened with the Arandora Star, the ship that was carrying internees, refugees, as well as POWs to Canada when many people died, and as well
00:55:26
Speaker
for the HMT Doneira, which is a notorious ship that was the one ship that went to Australia. There were terrible conditions on that ship and terrible looting by the British army officers of the internees. They took away their papers. It was just an appalling episode. The British officers involved in that were court-martialed and held to account.
00:55:49
Speaker
Likewise, Major Alfred Braybrook, who was the commander at Wharth Mills, the terrible transit camp. He oversaw the looting of the internees when they arrived and they had valuables, money, wristwatches, typewriters stolen from them.
00:56:05
Speaker
He also said to the attorneys to keep them occupied. If you write down your stories, I'll make sure that they get sent to the government and they'll review your cases. Well, he then threw all of those bits of paper into the bin. It was just a way to sort of keep the attorneys occupied. He's also court-martialed for that and goes to prison for six months.
00:56:24
Speaker
So there were some consequences, but there was never really a proper official acceptance that the government had failed to distinguish between legitimate threats.
00:56:40
Speaker
and genuine refugees from Nazi oppression. People who had already sat in front of these tribunals and been judged to pose no risk to the state shouldn't have been treated in this way, I don't think. And that should have been faced and acknowledged. Do you think an apology will ever come?
00:57:02
Speaker
I don't know. I don't. I think it's too far from the public conversation, the mainstream of conversation. It wasn't always like that. During, in 1940, this was the big topic of debate in governments, in the Houses of Parliament, as you can go back and look at the transcripts. It's endlessly talked about in the House of Commons in London. But yeah, at some point it really fades from the national conversation. And I think
00:57:30
Speaker
many of the people to whom the apology should have been directed are no longer with us. There's very, very few attorneys who are still alive today. I did actually speak to one
00:57:44
Speaker
one man who was an attorney in Hutchinson who now lives in the States. He contacted me after my book was published over there and said, I was there. I was 16 at the time. He's, I think, 99 years old now. There are a few, but very few. I think, perhaps regretfully, that moment has passed.
Moral Reflections and Current Relevance
00:58:04
Speaker
What are you hoping that your readers take away from your book?
00:58:11
Speaker
I think this is a story about internment in 1940, but the question that underpins the book and that underpins this whole British political policy is
00:58:24
Speaker
How far can a nation go in the rightful defence of its values before it starts to abandon them along the way? You know, Britain is saying, we're doing these interment measures in order to protect our democracy and our way of life. That's why. But of course, in doing so, you start to resemble the thing that you are fighting against.
00:58:44
Speaker
That's a question that will sit with every government forever.
Conclusion and Future Projects
00:58:49
Speaker
It's a question that always will be with us. There's these irrelevant conversations right now. In Britain, we have refugees. There's a big political debate about refugees from Syria who are trying to escape to Britain on
00:59:06
Speaker
rafts, you know, often with a huge risk to their lives. And, you know, they're a huge cause from the Conservative government here to stop those boats, to send people back. And the argument, I suppose, from people who believe in that nations have a responsibility to provide asylum when they can, would say, well, they're doing that because there are no legitimate routes for refugees to come to this country right now. It's far too difficult and there's no clear process.
00:59:36
Speaker
So these are debates that sit with us today, and I can imagine as well if Vladimir Putin was expelling his political rivals from Russia and they were coming to Britain en masse, much like they had from Germany in the 1930s, then there would also be perhaps concern that there would be FSB agents among that number.
01:00:00
Speaker
So, yeah, you can see how it would never be the exact same circumstances, but you can see how some of these political and military pressures might result in a similar set of circumstances again. Well, this has been a wonderful interview, Simon. Thanks so much for joining me here. My pleasure. Before we wrap things up,
01:00:27
Speaker
Let's talk about your next project, which I read is about Leningrad. I don't know if you've ever read the book City of Thieves.
01:00:35
Speaker
by David Benioff, who actually created Game of Thrones, the TV series, of course, George R. Martin book series. One of my favorite books, it's about two Soviets, a gentleman and a boy who were sent by a Soviet general to go find two eggs in the middle of the siege of Leningrad for his daughter's wedding. It was such a good book.
01:01:04
Speaker
but I knew nothing about Leningrad before that. So I'm really excited for your project about Leningrad. Can you tell us a little bit about that project?
01:01:14
Speaker
Yeah, I can. The book's title at the moment, which may change, but I think it probably won't, is The Forbidden Garden of Leningrad. It's about the Plant Institute. The world's largest seed bank at the time was in the middle of the city on St Isaac's Square with a quarter of a million seed and plant samples that had been gathered from every continent in the world.
01:01:37
Speaker
The siege begins towards the autumn of 1941. The German army surrounds the city, really with the plan to starve the population into submission. It's a sort of way to claim Leningrad, which is now called St Petersburg, of course, without having to
01:02:00
Speaker
using the blunt, remote tool of war that is starvation and siege. By the winter of 1941, a notoriously cold, difficult winter where the city's supplies are running out,
01:02:18
Speaker
There's a mass death event where people across the city just start to die, perish because through starvation, which the Soviets refer to at the time as dystrophy, which is a sort of made up word that they use to describe what's happening.
01:02:33
Speaker
And at the seed bank, there's been a failed evacuation of the seeds and the samples. So the botanists in charge of that building and that collection have this terrible moral dilemma. Do they distribute the seeds and the samples that they have to the starving people to prolong their lives for a few weeks? Or do they preserve the collection so that when the siege eventually breaks, they can plant the fields and feed a much greater number of people?
01:03:00
Speaker
So my books about the scientists that had to make that terrible decision. Well, when it comes out, I don't know if you have a timeline for when it's coming out. Do you have a day? I think next year. Next year. I'm not quite finished with the writing, but it's, yeah. So I hope next year or early the year after perhaps. Well, when it does come out, I hope you will come back on my show. Of course, yeah. And talk about it because it sounds fascinating.
01:03:30
Speaker
Simon, where can people, if people want to get in touch with you, where can people find you? Are you on social media? Yes. I'm on Twitter, at Simon Parken. I've got a website, simonparking.com, where you can find a contact email and also links to the pieces I've written and my books as well. Wonderful.
01:03:51
Speaker
Well, Simon Parkin, the author of The Island of Extraordinary Captives, a painter, a poet, an heiress, and a spy in a World War II British internment camp. Go buy the book. It's a great book. It's a great read. I really enjoyed it, and I really enjoyed this interview, Simon. Thank you so much. Yeah, thank you. Thank you for having me. It's been great.