GERMAN PRISON CAMPS 15 prisoners were not housed in damp or dark places or in hangars not properly covered. By a circular of December 23 directions were given that new camps should be erected only on elevated ground which could be easily drained.1 Inspections made by representatives of the American embassy and by delegates of the International Red Cross society found nothing to complain of regarding housing facilities in the French prison camps,2 and no complaints appear to have been made by the German govern ment. In the United States prisoners were housed in specially constructed wooden huts, well built, heated, lighted and furnished, and surrounded by ample grounds for exercise and recreation.3 No complaints appear to have been made regarding quarters or treatment generally.1 The German regulations of February, 1915, provided that prison camps must be located on healthy sites, that a minimum breathing space of at least five cubic metres for each man (fifteen for officers) must be provided, and that rooms must be well aired, must admit full daylight, and must be heated and supplied with artificial light. They added that "sleeping accommodations consist of cloth sacks (paillasses) filled with straw or wood shavings; each prisoner is allowed two woollen blankets, a towel and eating utensils and in each camp provision is made for a bath and wash house." Many complaints were made, however, that the quarters provided in some of the camps were inadequate to accommodate the large numbers of prisoners confined in them, that the blankets and clothing supplied were 1 Le Régime des Prisonniers, etc., p. 29. 2 Ibid., p. 29. The number of prisoners held in the United States at any time was hardly more than five thousand, five hundred. They consisted in the main of officers and seamen removed from German merchant ships in American ports, those from German cruisers and "raiders" which came into American ports during the war, and enemy aliens who were interned on account of violation of the laws or who were confined because they were regarded as suspicious or dangerous characters. The camps were located at Fort Oglethorpe, McPherson, Ga., and Fort Douglas, Utah. There was also a small camp at Lancaster, Mass. Official Bulletin, June 8, 1918. As to the regulations of the general agreement of November 11, 1918, see Supp. to 13 Amer. Jour. of Int. Law (January, 1919). • The treatment of prisoners in the United States is described in detail in articles in the New York Times Magazine of July 7, 1918; in the Boston Herald of May 4, 1918, and in Munsey's Magazine, 1918, pp. 137 ff. As in England, there were complaints in some quarters that German prisoners were too well treated. Text of the German regulations in McCarthy, op. cit., pp. 271 ff. insufficient, that the quarters were not well heated and lighted, that they were unsanitary, that the facilities for bathing and exercise were inadequate, and the like. The published reports of the American and Spanish inspectors show that in the majority of camps the quarters provided were fairly satisfactory and perhaps as good as could have been reasonably expected under the conditions, especially during the early months of the war. On account of the large number of prisoners that had to be suddenly provided for, the task of providing adequate accommodations was almost impossible. A few camps - those at Göttingen and Friedrichsfeld, for example were almost models and afforded examples which should have been followed in every prison camp in Germany. In a good many cases, however, the inspectors found much to be desired, and in some instances the conditions were thoroughly bad. The camps at Ruheleben, Minden, Limburg, Wittenberg, Schneidemühl, Langensalza, and Gardelegen were some of the more notable examples.2 $338. The Ruheleben Camp. The camp at Ruheleben near Berlin was set apart for the confinement of interned British civilians. There between four and five thousand men of every social rank, degree of education and wealth, occupation and profession, native-born Englishmen and naturalized British subjects of German origin and of pro-German sympathy, were herded together in the filthy stables, box stalls, and hay-lofts of an old race course. Six men were compelled to sleep on a pile of straw, infrequently renewed, in each box, which was 1 McCarthy, op. cit., p. 73, and Gerard, My Four Years in Germany, p. 165. * McCarthy, p. 74. The shocking conditions prevailing at Minden are detailed by McCarthy, pp. 76–104. Mr. Gerard and Mr. Grew inspected the camp at Döberitz in October, 1914, and reported that the conditions were fairly satisfactory. Misc., No. 7 (1915), pp. 8, 1г. But in December "a citizen of the United States living at Havre" found it greatly overcrowded and with insufficient bathing facilities. The men were covered with vermin, the tents were without floors, the straw was sour and of a musty odor, etc. The German government admitted that the charges were not wholly untrue, but stated that the tents had since been replaced with wooden buildings. In any case, it added, the conditions were far better than those prevailing in the internment camp at Newbury, England. Misc., No. 19 (1915), p. 18. Eric Fisher Wood visited the camp during the autumn as a representative of the American embassy and made a most unfavorable report upon the conditions prevailing there. Note Book of an Attaché, p. 296. But in January, 1915, another representative of the American embassy visited the camp and found conditions much improved, only three tents being left. Misc., No. 16 (1916), p. 48. RUHELEBEN AND WITTENBERG 17 about ten feet square. The stables were poorly heated and lighted, and the stench was wellnigh unbearable. The washing arrangements were hopelessly inadequate; toilet facilities were repulsive, and for weeks the prisoners had no place to eat except in the narrow passage ways. The conditions at Ruheleben were the subject of vigorous protest by the British government, and on January 19, 1915, Mr. Acland, parliamentary undersecretary of state for foreign affairs, laid before the American ambassador a memorandum which described in detail the shocking conditions existing there.2 The charges set forth in the memorandum were, however, denied by the German foreign office in February.3 Mr. Gerard interested himself in the matter and urged the German authorities to remedy the conditions complained of. He wrote letters to the various authorities, from the commander of the mark of Brandenburg to the minister of war, but "the only result was that each of the officers addressed claimed that he had been personally insulted by me because I had presumed to call his attention to the inhuman conditions under which the prisoners were compelled to live in the Ruheleben camp." The hopes of the prisoners were raised by the first visit of the ambassador to the camp in March, 1915, when, we are told, he "recoiled with a shudder and denounced the loft as unfit for habitation." 5 1 Cf. the very interesting book "The Ruheleben Prison Camp" (especially ch. VI) by Israel Cohen, a British subject who spent nineteen months in the camp. The writer says that when he first saw his quarters, he broke down; the air was so thick that one could cut it with a knife; the stench was overpowering, and it was impossible to light a match in the darkness without setting the whole building ablaze (p. 42); the cold was intense; many prisoners had no changes of clothing (p. 73); medical facilities were "shamefully inadequate" (p. 183), and conditions in the hospital were "utterly disgraceful" (p. 185). Cf. also Mahoney, Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons, chs. 18-19. 2 Misc., No. 7 (1915), pp. 46-48. My Four Years in Germany, p. 177. • Ibid., p. 63. Cohen, op. cit., p. 50. Mr. Gerard in a despatch of June 28, 1916, severely criticised the housing conditions at Ruheleben. The barracks, he said, were overcrowded, notwithstanding that the Imperial authorities had had nearly two years in which to provide ample accommodations. It was unfortunate, he added, that people of education should be herded six together in a horse's stall. In the haylofts above the stables conditions were even worse. In one hay-loft, ten by twelve metres, sixty-four men were confined; beds were so close that they touched; there was little light; the heating system was bad, and no provision was made for the drying of clothes, although the men were often required to answer roll calls in the rain. British white paper respecting conditions at Ruheleben, Misc., No. 25 (1916). Cd. 8296, p. 3. VOL. II-2 There was also much criticism of the camp for interned civilians at Holzminden, where there were five thousand prisoners, including a large number of women. The camp was greatly overcrowded; the barracks were small; the beds were arranged in double tiers and consisted of mattresses filled with excelsior; the whole place was infested with vermin, and there was a general atmosphere of depression and uncleanliness.1 § 339. The Camp at Wittenberg. The worst of the German camps was the "plague" camp at Wittenberg, which was the seat of a typhus epidemic in 1915. According to a report made by a government committee under the chairmanship of Mr. Justice Younger of the English High Court, this camp was built on a flat sandy plain devoid of trees or shrubbery. Each barrack was originally intended to accommodate 120 men, but there were before and during the epidemic from 180 to 200 prisoners in each. Between 15,000 and 17,000 prisoners were confined in the camp, although its area was only 10 acres. The heating arrangements were altogether inadequate, and there was a shortage of coal, although the winter of 1914-1915 was particularly severe in Germany. Added to this, the men were insufficiently clothed, their overcoats having been taken away from them at the time of their capture. What remained in the way of clothing was in rags; many had neither shoes nor socks, their feet being wrapped in straw. No hot water was supplied, and the only facilities for bathing consisted of a trough the water in which was usually frozen during the winter. Normally there was but one mattress for every three prisoners, and every British prisoner was compelled to share his bed with one Russian and one French prisoner. All were covered with vermin, well-known carriers of typhus, and no effort was made to separate those afflicted with the disease from those who were not. 1 McCarthy, op. cit., p. 222. "What possible object," McCarthy adds, "could the Imperial German government have in confining babes in arms, children, young women, middle-aged women and old women tottering to the grave in such a camp?" 2 Published as a parliamentary paper in April, 1916, Misc., No. 10 (1916), Cd. 8224. Cf. also McCarthy, op. cit., ch. VIII. McCarthy, after reviewing the treatment of interned civilians at Ruheleben and Holzminden, remarks: "After a careful inspection of the Germans interned in England it may be stated that Germany has failed miserably in meeting this problem as compared with the solution of it by the British," p. 225. RUHELEBEN AND WITTENBERG 19 Little or nothing was done to prevent the spread of the epidemic, which broke out in December, 1914, although the German officers were urged to take measures to this effect. Upon the outbreak of the epidemic the German military and medical staffs precipitately abandoned the camp, and until August, 1915, with a few rare exceptions, they held no communication with the prisoners or their guards except by means of directions shouted from a distance outside the wire fence. Supplies were pushed in through chutes, and no medical attention whatever was provided by the German staff. At first there were no British medical officers in the camp, although there were a number of Russian and perhaps some French doctors. In February, 1915, however, a number of English doctors, who had been detained at the camp at Halle in violation of the Geneva convention, were transferred to Wittenberg. When they arrived, they found a deplorable condition of affairs. Of these doctors, one only, captain Lauder, survived. He found in one camp fifty hidden cases of typhus, and there were no mattresses at all in the improvised hospital. During the first month of the epidemic the food ration for each patient was half a petit pain and half a cup of milk each day. By the first week in March there were one thousand cases of typhus in the camp, and new ones were arriving at the rate of fifty or more a day. There were between two hundred and fifty and three hundred English cases and sixty deaths. The number of deaths among the Russians and French was much larger. In addition to gross neglect and indifference the camp officials were charged with cruelty. "Incredible as it may seem," says the committee in its report, "the action of the officers and guards in precipitately deserting the camp and thenceforth controlling its caged inmates with loaded rifles from the outside, was only in keeping with the methods and conduct of these men throughout." "My whole impression of the camp authorities at Wittenberg," says Mr. Osborne of the American embassy, who visited it some months after the epidemic, "was utterly unlike that which I have received in every camp I have visited in Germany. Instead of regarding their charges as honourable prisoners of war, it appeared to me the men were regarded as criminals, for whom a regime of fear alone would suffice to keep in obedience. All evidence of kindly and humane feeling between the authorities and the prisoners was lacking, and in no other camp have I found signs of fear on the part of the prisoners that what they might say to me would result in suffering for them afterwards." |