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Remembered Today:

Red Cross records to go online 4 August


David_Underdown

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Excellent Chris,

Regards

Gerry

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Hats off to them for making it free, indeed. I just found out that the seven-year digitisation project was funded essentially by the Swiss government, to the equivalent of £2.6 million.

I'm told by the archivists there that they still have around 20% of the cards left to index. They opted to go online with the 80%, rather than waiting, because of the August 1914 anniversary. In addition, they explained that holes in the records can in some cases be pinned on the fact that there may have been gaps in the lists transmitted by the belligerents to the Red Cross, as they were the basis for producing the individuals POWs files.

While it doesn't affect Western Front in a major way, its interesting to note that the Gneeva indexes only covered around 2.5 million of the 10 million POWs and civilian internees held during the war. A notable gap is in the records for the Eastern Front, where indexing was handled by the Danish Red Cross rather than the ICRC. Apparently the transmission of details about Eastern Front POWs was sloppy at best (historians note the very different attitude in Tsarist Russia towards the rank and file), while registers also went missing during the Russian Civil War, and the Danish files were apparently destroyed after the war during a clear out, which is a major blow to today's researchers.

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Now all we need are the lists of the "Unknown" graves.

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Just tried to find pows interned at The Hague during the war. There are two photographs of these men in the 8 DLI History, but it would appear that internees at The Hague are not listed.

On the plus side it is possible to find out, as far as my interest is concerned, records of men taken prisoner on the Aisne in 1918- but as this is over 10,000 this list will have to wait.

David

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I used them for the first time last night.

I found the chap I was seeking almost straight away once I worked out how the search/indexing worked. His main card had three other reference numbers that I put in and looked at the information.

My daughter in law is German so I then sent her copies so she could translate the parts [most of them] that I with my school boy German could not.

What information do I know now about this man I did not before.

A] What company he was in within the battalion

B] On what date and where he was captured

C] What camp was he in

D] What he died of and the name of the hospital he was in when he died.

As an aside the spelling of his name on the records is wrong, but I was able to confirm it was the right man by his number and his next of kin details.

Regards

Peter

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Pretty sure you're right on that. By the later stages of the war any hopes of turning any Irish men was a pointless task. Not that it met with much success in the first place. I feel he may have been there or that area either medically or perhaps as others have suggested purely administratively to be processed/registered and moved on.

My search was purely a cursory one I will spend more time when able trawling through records for Murray's (different spellings etc) and both aforementioned camps.

Regards

Mike

Andrew seemed to go to great lengths to join the Seaforth Hrs. and although he was Irish with Scots connections I don't think there would be any doubt as to where his loyalty lay. Did it say on the sheet his previous location? It seems that quite a few of those captured at that time were forced to put down the name of a German camp on their cards without actually going. I have a couple of those to chase up as I would be interested to see if the records show them to eventually be at the camp they were forced to put down as an address.

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Andrew seemed to go to great lengths to join the Seaforth Hrs. and although he was Irish with Scots connections I don't think there would be any doubt as to where his loyalty lay. Did it say on the sheet his previous location? It seems that quite a few of those captured at that time were forced to put down the name of a German camp on their cards without actually going. I have a couple of those to chase up as I would be interested to see if the records show them to eventually be at the camp they were forced to put down as an address.

Info on his card is basic name, rank, number, regiment and section. With only a single PA ref number. This takes me to a roll for Limburg dated June 1918. No reference to any previous camps.

On the plus side I now have a definite full DOB for Grandad which has eluded me thus far.

Also I have noticed on the details of Grandad and the other men on the same batch of registers all are wounded... Except for two doctors listed nearby. My conclusion from this being this May have been the camp/area where his medical treatment was administered before being moved east.

Need to find some PA numbers for Czersk and Stralkowo to trawl through those registers hoping that he appears on those.

Mike

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Very impressive - I have found both records for the POW's on my signature below, Josef and Martin.

Good work Red Cross !!

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I've just found this, made a quick search and what a result! I now have a cause of death after about 10 years of searching.

What a great resource this is.

Now I just need to get a proper translation to get the full picture - more than my basic German can cope with.

I'll have to look again tomorrow properly.

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I've just found this, made a quick search and what a result! I now have a cause of death after about 10 years of searching.

What a great resource this is.

Now I just need to get a proper translation to get the full picture - more than my basic German can cope with.

I'll have to look again tomorrow properly.

Fred???

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Fred???

It certainly is! :D

There's a couple of things puzzling me though. On some of the documents his entry has been circled in red pencil - what's that all about? Why has he been singled out?

I need to see if I can get the headings on the pages translated so I can understand the forms properly but I think he may have been at Stendal after all.

Sounds like you've had a bit of luck as well.

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Hats off to them for making it free, indeed. I just found out that the seven-year digitisation project was funded essentially by the Swiss government, to the equivalent of £2.6 million.

I'm told by the archivists there that they still have around 20% of the cards left to index. They opted to go online with the 80%, rather than waiting, because of the August 1914 anniversary. In addition, they explained that holes in the records can in some cases be pinned on the fact that there may have been gaps in the lists transmitted by the belligerents to the Red Cross, as they were the basis for producing the individuals POWs files.

While it doesn't affect Western Front in a major way, its interesting to note that the Gneeva indexes only covered around 2.5 million of the 10 million POWs and civilian internees held during the war. A notable gap is in the records for the Eastern Front, where indexing was handled by the Danish Red Cross rather than the ICRC. Apparently the transmission of details about Eastern Front POWs was sloppy at best (historians note the very different attitude in Tsarist Russia towards the rank and file), while registers also went missing during the Russian Civil War, and the Danish files were apparently destroyed after the war during a clear out, which is a major blow to today's researchers.

Thanks for this additional information. Most interesting.

As mentioned earlier, Peter Barton's new book gives a brief background to the processes of recording this information and how it was used and transmitted between the countries. He also mentions that, at various times, both Britain and Germany got uppity about alleged infractions of this and/or other agreements and stopped sending the lists to Geneva. I need to look at the book again but I don't think it was mentioned if the backlogs were sent through or not once service was restored. That could explain some of the gaps in the records.

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It certainly is! :D

There's a couple of things puzzling me though. On some of the documents his entry has been circled in red pencil - what's that all about? Why has he been singled out?

I need to see if I can get the headings on the pages translated so I can understand the forms properly but I think he may have been at Stendal after all.

Sounds like you've had a bit of luck as well.

I wouldn't be so sure of it. Below is a quote directly from one of the FO files:

'Adoption of Gustrow and Schneidemuhl as the address for prisoners detained behind the firing line. '

There is one of these for Stendal too and so happened to be in amongst the stuff I just happened to be copying so I seem to have quite a bit on Stendal. I managed to finish rotating all of the images the right way around last night and now I just need to go through them properly! Unfortunately, and I hate to say this but, many will see these Red Cross files as the end game for their man and in many of the cases it will be so. However, there will also be an awful lot of cases where it isn't and just appears to be that way particularly for those captured later in the war from the last few months of 1917 onwards. That said, even earlier in the war, camps were being declared as abandoned but still being used.

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Thanks for this additional information. Most interesting.

As mentioned earlier, Peter Barton's new book gives a brief background to the processes of recording this information and how it was used and transmitted between the countries. He also mentions that, at various times, both Britain and Germany got uppity about alleged infractions of this and/or other agreements and stopped sending the lists to Geneva. I need to look at the book again but I don't think it was mentioned if the backlogs were sent through or not once service was restored. That could explain some of the gaps in the records.

From what I can gather, they decided to go live on the 4th August with 80% of the records so they could hit the anniversary date rather than waiting and doing them all. On that basis, 20% still to come.

There was certainly a lot of tit for tat going on and things got really quite serious in 1918 due to the frustrations of the British over the Germans blatant lies about their ill treatment of POWs resulting in British reprisals being discussed in parliament. The British came to the conclusion that Germany was trying to reduce the amount of British prisoners they had by deliberately working them to death en masse thus reducing their costs and responsibilities. It was a bit of a double edged sword for Germany because by keeping such large numbers working behind the lines, many of them were able to escape more easily and report what was really happening. Germany of course, tried to counter this by saying they had transport and train problems and were unable to move the prisoners the required 30km away from the danger zone. However, men were escaping and they were talking to the press they were also managing to get coded messages out so there are articles in the newspapers of 1918 too.

One such man who escaped reported that they were being forced at gun point to fill out cards giving Stendal as their address but were retained behind the lines to work. Some were sent to camps that didn't exist (as far as Germany was concerned) and managed to get word back via sympathetic civilians that they had been there for 6-8 months with no mail or parcels because they had been forced to give the address of a camp that did exist and thought that anything due to them was being sent there.

I read a report on a man bayonetted in the back by a guard and a number of eyewitness accounts followed to support this. His cause of death is given by the Germans as 'lung trouble' I now have serious doubts about one of my lost boys - cause of death - lung trouble...these records for me are not the end of the line but the beginnings of more research and enquiry so massively helpful in that respect.

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It certainly is! :D

There's a couple of things puzzling me though. On some of the documents his entry has been circled in red pencil - what's that all about? Why has he been singled out?

I need to see if I can get the headings on the pages translated so I can understand the forms properly but I think he may have been at Stendal after all.

Sounds like you've had a bit of luck as well.

Just being a wee bit nosey but Fred, unless I am mistaken because I didn't drill down into the documents, seems to have 3 different cards (one being a relatives enquiry) and 5 document references - not bad for a man who might not have even made it away from the front line! In case you didn't spot all of them in your excitement! They are PA: 34816, 39343, 33534, 33634, 40052

The two underlined might be the same one but miss-numbered?

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Just being a wee bit nosey but Fred, unless I am mistaken because I didn't drill down into the documents, seems to have 3 different cards (one being a relatives enquiry) and 5 document references - not bad for a man who might not have even made it away from the front line! In case you didn't spot all of them in your excitement! They are PA: 34816, 39343, 33534, 33634, 40052

The two underlined might be the same one but miss-numbered?

No, you have found the same ones I have. I think the 33634 is a mis-read, he's not on that one.

I have emailed them all to a friend who's wife and daughter are German so hopefully he'll be able to translate them for me.

As far as I can see he's died at 5.30am from Plurosy and TB and his brother James had been looking for him.

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First proper sit down with it today & I have to say you soon get the hang of it, my PA link was 120 pages out but if you check the top of the page you can soon scroll down no probs.

However I have encountered another can of worms!

I was searching for a man who`s details were sent to me a number of years ago from Geneva under the old system (William Charles Eveleigh) just to get the hand of searching, aided by a name that wouldn`t throw up to many spanners...........however, imagine my surprise to find an enquiry card from the Eveleigh family, not asking after William but after his Brother.

Now his Brother Oliver 22153 in the Berks Regiment is recorded KIA on the 1st April 1918 on all other archives, this enquiry by his Brother records him missing on the 22 March 1918.

The lower end of the card I believe suggests nothing found? (negative envoye) and 2 dates that I presume are when checks were c/o?

So now I am back looking into Oliver a bit more, and this has got me thinking whether I am not only going to search for my 16 KNOWN POW`s, but also whether to look for all the lads reported missing as maybe their families did the same & submit an enquiry?

Research is never ending & constantly throwing up surprises,

post-21863-0-23759300-1407334904_thumb.j

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Thanks for posting this thread... found a lead on a family stray Fredercik Charles Greason who we only knew from his medal card ... raises more qustions about who he was ... but a birth date surely will help us progress.

Robin

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Confounded again! Their Macs and Mcs are all over the place. Has anyone noticed if they are using 'Cameronians' or 'Scottish Rifles'? I'm not sure that will help though because I can't even locate his name at the moment (McCreath). That's two I can't find. :angry2::excl:

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Just looked up the records for my great-grandmother's brother, Gunner George Whatling, RFA. Can anyone help me out with the little bit of German/Abbreviations on his records PA41361 and 41470, particularly his cause of death in Oct 1918? Any assistance much appreciated!

Mike

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Just looked up the records for my great-grandmother's brother, Gunner George Whatling, RFA. Can anyone help me out with the little bit of German/Abbreviations on his records PA41361 and 41470, particularly his cause of death in Oct 1918? Any assistance much appreciated!

Mike

PA is just a code, an index for prison numbering. Cause of death? Type it out and I will try.

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I can make out that he died at Heilaberg POW camp then it says something like 'Infolge allg(o)z.(K)rach(-)pfung'.

Not sure of the letters in brackets as it's a poor copy. Any ideas much appreciated!

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I can make out that he died at Heilaberg POW camp then it says something like 'Infolge allg(o)z.(K)rach(-)pfung'.

Not sure of the letters in brackets as it's a poor copy. Any ideas much appreciated!

AS a result (Due to) Cracked (?) one would need the full word or letters.

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I've looked at the record with the cause of death, according to google translate it means:

infolge - as a result of

Allgem. - it can't translate it so it may be an abbreviation

Erschopfung - exhaustion

Added:

From comparing it to the record I have researched I would say the rest of 41470 is telling you that he was a soldier in the Royal Field Artillery regiment, he was born at Gotkill, he was 26 years old and died on the 1st of Oct 1918 in a military hospital at Heilsburg

Michael

Edited by Shiny
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