Conditions in the Camps

The situation at Huyton Camp provides an insight into the physical conditions that prevailed in the hastily-arranged transit camp network. Suzanne Snizek quotes an account (reproduced below) from an unnamed doctor, which was given to a relief worker following time spent at Huyton: 

‘The arrival at Huyton was without any doubt the most terrible during my whole internment period: You came to a site covered by little houses surrounded by barbed wire in a way that looked not only very ugly, but very formidable too […] Then we were directed to our lodgings, small houses, completely empty, neglected and not suitable to be inhabited by human beings […] Then we had to get straw for our palliasses, but as there was not sufficient straw, a great many of us had to sleep on the filthy floor. The whole impression which I got from Huyton when I arrived was most depressing. The internees we met looked not like human beings. They were not shaved, dirty, their suits neglected and filthy. They were pale and thin and had a hopeless look in their eyes.’ (qtd. in Snizek, 2014, p.205).

This image shows internees filling their beds with straw at Huyton, as described in the quote above.

Likewise, at Huyton, composer Hans Gál noted in his diary that ‘there is nothing to eat. The catering arrangements are in a desperate mess […] We are constantly being put on half rations […] there is still no real famine. But there is an atmosphere of hunger revolt in the camp, and the mess hall has acquired the nickname “Starvation Hall”’ (qtd. in Snizek, 2014, p.205).

Here, artist Hellmuth Weissenborn has produced a wooblock still-life of some food in the kitchen at an Isle of Man internment camp.

Similar conditions were in evidence in the old factory requisitioned as an internment camp at Warth Mills in Bury. The factory was in a state of disrepair, having not been used for a number of years, and the floor was littered with debris, including pieces of broken machinery, oil, and glass. The building was cold at night, despite the summer period in which internment began, and the internees were exposed to the elements owing to broken roof lights (Warth Mills Project, 2021).

Read more about Warth Mills  here , at the website of the Warth Mills Project.

The factory quickly became overcrowded due to the hurried internment of thousands of ‘Category B’ and ‘C’ immigrants, yet there were only around twelve taps for the use of hundreds of men. The lavatories, meanwhile, consisted of ‘hastily dug latrines’ (Warth Mills Project, 2021).

Hellmuth Weissenborn depicts the W.C. at Hutchinson Camp on the Isle of Man in this image.

The situation with food was similar here to that at Huyton, too. Historian Dina Gusjenova notes that, unlike prisoners of war, civilian internees were not protected under the Geneva Convention (Gusjenova, 2020, p.699). Particularly, the Convention ensured that adequate food was (in theory, at least) provided for prisoners of war, but the authorities were not bound by the same obligations toward internees. At Warth Mills, as with elsewhere in the camp system, this resulted in the lack of an adequate rationing system to ensure that internees were sufficiently well-fed (Warth Mills Project, 2021).

This image is another still-life woodblock print of food by Weissenborn, again from the Isle of Man.

Conditions at the Isle of Man camps were marginally better, not least because they consisted of boarding houses, hotels, and homes, and were therefore buildings fit for habitation. Indeed, many of the buildings had been commandeered by the authorities at very short notice, as this newspaper article from the Isle of Man Examiner in June 1940 indicates.

Nonetheless, many similar problems to those experienced in the transit camps persisted. Snizek notes that Hans Gál was not able to take a bath for 3 months, before finally being allowed to do so at Central Camp in Douglas, largely owing to a medical condition with which he was suffering (Snizek, 2014, p.213). 

Similarly, there were at times issues with the supply and quality of food, and it took many months before internees were allowed to purchase supplementary food items from local suppliers. The quote to the right draws attention to this situation, and is taken from a report into conditions in the camps.

Serious overcrowding was another persistent issue. This image, produced by internee Fred Uhlman – a Jewish writer and artist originally from Germany – provides some indication as to the cramped nature of life within the internment camps. Here we see the ‘café’ at Hutchinson camp, which appears overwhelmed by the mass of clothes hanging from the ceiling to dry. 

A persistent, oppressive feature of internment was the presence of barbed wire – this was common to virtually all of the camps, whether in transit or at the main camps on the Isle of Man. Snizek notes that the presence of the wire led a number of internees to experience what was known as ‘barbed wire sickness,’ with Hans Gál describing in his diary how ‘terribly inflated this barbed wire has become in our consciousness […] Being imprisoned means […] a clamp around the brain, a pressure that does not leave one, even in one’s dreams.’ (Snizek, 2014, 213)

Here we see an example of the barbed wire that surrounded the camps, in this instance on the Isle of Man.

Rachel Pistol notes that a ‘large number of internees suffered from depression during their time in the camps’; besides the physical conditions, this was often the result – at least in part – of the injustice inherent in the internment of refugees from Nazism and avowed anti-Nazis, along with the indignities of arrest and imprisonment that made up the hastily-organised process (Pistol, 2020, p.39). Shockingly, in a report for the Ministry of Information into conditions at Warth Mills, Sir Walter Monckton noted that two survivors of Nazi concentration camps had taken their own lives while interned:

This image depicts a group of German and Austrian men, following their arrest, being escorted onto trains in order to be removed to the Isle of Man.

Of course, conditions in the Nazi camp system were much worse than those in British internment camps, and as the war ground on victims of the Nazi camps would become exposed to mass murder, starvation, and extreme deprivation on an industrial scale. Nonetheless, that Warth Mills could be compared in such a way to places like Dachau at this early stage in the war provides a striking indication as to the immense emotional pressure internment placed on those who experienced it.

Here we see Hellmuth Weissenborn's bleak depiction of Warth Mills.

On the part of many internees there was a mood of frustration at not being able to contribute to the fight against Nazism in the early stages of the war. Indeed, upon their release many refugees and immigrants went on to make vital contributions to the British war effort through both the Pioneer Corps of the military, and in a wide variety of civilian roles.

This image depicts an internment camp in November 1939, prior to the arrest of 'Category B' and 'C' immigrants.