Prisoner of war magazine

Hi all
My grandfather (Grenadier Guards) was injured at Anzio and shipped to Stalag X1A Altengrabow, Eastern Germany
In his possessions was this magazine consisting of 30 pages produced by the Red Cross and covers life in PoW camps
I am sure it’s from ww2 but there is no date of production except a quote from Jan 1942 (last photo)
It covers such things as concert parties, sport within the camps, food, medical treatment etc
Anyone seen this before?





Inside page

 

Hi,

Welcome to the forum. I’d hazard a guess that the POW publication was printed for home consumption by relatives of men who were POW and likely paints a rosy picture of POW life.

You may be interested in this series by publications shared by forum member Incredibledisc last year -

New Resource - The Prisoner of War, June 1944

Steve

BTW Your Grenadier photo looks like a company group photo.

 

Thank you
The attached from Incredibledisc seems to be a paper, mine is a magazine.
I’m assuming it was produced by the same people?

 

Hi Gary - the papers I posted were produced by the Red Cross of St John in the UK and were sent free of charge to families of POWs. From the photos you’ve posted your magazine appears to have been printed in 1942 by a company called Fanfare Press and sold for 6d (sixpence) so guessing it was on general sale to the public. With thousands of men in Stalags from across the UK there was probably a decent market for it.

 

Thought you may like to know that Forces War Records holds these magazines (at least most), which can be downloaded as a JPG, or PDF. Each page is a separate download, and each issue is 16 pages long, they are worth having a look at.

 

I have a copy of that too (bought on ebay).

The British Red Cross and St John's also produced a monthly newspaper type publication called The Prisoner of War that was sent to relatives of POWs. It ran from May 1942 - July 1945 (39 issues).

There was a similar Scottish POW News and also the British Prisoner of War Relatives Association Newssheet which ran for 62 Issues from May 1940.

 

Thanks, Tim091, for the information. Could you please tell me how to source the 'Scottish POW News' you referred to, as I tried searching for it, but got no hits.

 

Hi Chris, I will have to dig mine out as it seems likely it is called something different! Bear with me, I will update here.

 

Hi Tim, Thanks, mate, sorry to put you to any trouble, but this is appreciated.

 

Here you go: Prisoners of War News.

 

Further info: in addition to The Prisoner of War there was also a Far East version. I'm not sure how many were issued but the one I have is September 1945 and is Volume 1, number 9.

Also Canadian Red Cross version.

 

Thanks for all that information, I truly appreciate your help.

 

No worries.