Hi all! I am doing research on my great-grandfather’s life. He was a Polish lieutenant at Camp Woodhouselee in Scotland, doing interrogations of PoW’s in 1944, under the British Army. Hoping to find more information on what the camp was like/ what other similar camps were like, how they operated, etc. Were officers at these camps part of M19? Were these camps outposts of the larger interrogation centers? Found minimal interrogation reports from this camp at Kew, mixed in between reports from London Cage and the large interrogation centres. Thank you in advance.
MI19 connection confirmed by this contribution from "Martin Briscoe" (quoted below) from the webpage here: Woodhouselee, Camp 2, German Working Camp | Canmore which also includes an officer's name to work on. "PWIS(H), Prisoner of War Interrogation Section (Home). 15-08-2021 Scottish Command Interrogation Centre under Captain Cyril Norman MacLeod. It was in operation in 1942, there were nine command interrogation centres but they were phased out by 1944. They were part of MI19." MI19 - Wikipedia Good luck with all your searching Kasia. Kind regards, always, Jim.
The broad picture, and again the MI19 connection, courtesy of The National Archives Discovery: PRISONERS OF WAR SECTION | The National Archives The page from the link above contains the passage; "For further information, see 'The Story of M.I.19' (from which the accompanying Administrative History information has largely been extracted) in WO 208/4970." Kind regards, always, Jim.
Courtesy of English Heritage (pdf attached below), list of Prisoner of War Camps, Great Britain, in numerical order, within at page 18. Woodhouselee is listed. Kind regards, always, Jim
From WW2Talk: Camp 2 - Woodhouselee Camp, Milton Bridge, Midlothian, Scotland Kind regards, always, Jim.
Posting photos taken by my great-grandfather of Camp Woodhouselee in 1944. Hoping uniform could give more information on possible unit? Also, just awesome to have visuals from this PoW Camp, of which I cannot find any other photos. Grateful my great-grandfather captured so much of his time during/after the war.
Polish soldiers formed a significant part of the defence of Scotland after they had escaped from France in the evacuations following the 1940 breakthrough there by the Germans. These men had also previously escaped from Poland in 1939 after the German/USSR invasions. Thank you Kasia for posting this. It is one of the camps with Polish guards that I have been trying to identify for years. There appear to have been only ten camps guarded by Poles in the UK. This camp (superb photo #2) clearly a prison camp.Here is it's entry in a list dated 9 November 1944 from TNA HO 215/201. This was a base camp (no one allowed outside the wire at all) unlike a working camp.Usually contained hard core German prisoners. However, among them were many other nationalities, including Poles, who the Allies were trying to unearth. These Poles had been largely pressed/forced into the German forces and had not necessarily been screened out in France, especially by the US, or by the British. The desire was to offer them the chance of fighting for the Allies and to obey the Geneva Convention which required nationalities to be segregated. There were, though, German speaking Poles living predominantly in eastern Poland who had willingly joined the German Army, their families being upset by the partition of Germany post 1919. The failure to screen successfully meant POW camps sometimes had undetected pro-Allies Poles and the interpreter officers, IOs, (a cover title for their other role as intelligence officers)* were by autumn 1944 asked to find them for recruitment to the Polish forces (heavy casualties in Normandy). If they found them they went to Polkemmet Polish Army camp for in-depth screening to ensure they were not really pro-German. Other reasons were to find individuals willing to transfer to working camps. POW camp commandants and IOs were appointed by the War Office POW Department. All camp other ranks and officers were appointed by local regional commands (in this case Scottish Command), mainly from those recovering from war wounds, older age groups and those unfit for foreign service. The central interrogation location was the London Cage. Prisoners were usually sent there from the screeners at Kempton Park where nearly all new POW arrivals coming from France and Belgium in British hands were crudely screened. I think they were overwhelmed by the numbers in September -December 1944 hence many POWs falling through the net / skilfully verbally evading it. This is one reason for the re-screening that went on well after the war's end in individual camps. May I ask Kasia which file numbers have you consulted at Kew? *Edit 10.4.24 Intelligence Officer title changed to the correct one of Interpreter Officer even though he undertook the intelligence role too. This was to try to prevent the Germans from being so wary in his presence.
Thank you so much for this information, it is so helpful. If you have any other file numbers concerning information at Kew that would be wonderful!! The file numbers I found at TNA that specifically referenced Camp Woodhouselee are: WO 208/3622 | PWIS(H) 101-255 - PWIS(H)/199 - 202 - PWIS(H)/ 210 - PWIS(H)/216 More photos taken by my great-grandfather in 1944 at Woodhouselee:
Kasia, Thank you for your reference and more wonderful photos. My research was not specifically about Woodhouselee, but was on POW camps in general. While Woodhouselee was Camp 2 elsewhere my pinned thread in UK POW camps also says that Camp numbers were not specific to the location, but the prison unit managing it. Therefore the commandant and his HQ/admin staff were British, and the guard company working the 3 x 8hr guard shifts were, at your camp, Polish. They would be commanded by Polish officers answering to the British commandant. # The Poles were attached from the 4th Polish Infantry Division, and I suspect, from the papers I have seen, possibly from the 25th or 26th Pomorski Battalions. By early 1945, Camp 2 left Woodhouselee and moved to Toft Hall, Cheshire, still commanded by Lt Col Windsor. Polish 4th Division:Docs – United Kingdom 1944 - 1947 – Polish Formations Your g. grandfather may have been the IO, but he could also have been on the staff of the British camp, or assisting the IO, often a captain, with the interrogation because of his language proficiency. Not many Brits spoke Polish, more commonly German, so the camp IO, if a Brit, should have been a German speaker. Unbelievably some were not, because there was a terrible shortage of Brit German speakers due to the pressure of POWs, and the demands of the Allied armies in Europe for German linguists that grew even greater when it came time to govern capture German territory after September 1944 when the Allies had already taken Aachen. Have you applied yet for g. grandad's army records? You are entitled to them and although in Polish, should be in Britain. More would be revealed about him and antecedent history.
Thank you for this context, it is so helpful. Could you point me in the direction of where I could find/ read up on more, similar contextual historical information on camps like Woodhouselee? I did apply for his records from the MOD and have been waiting a few months for them. I am hoping I can get them soon to understand more.
I have had to piece this together from various books. The websites BBC WW2 People's War, Martin Richards collection of War Diaries (this section appears to be down for maintenance), book- Kochan, M. Prisoners of England, (London, 1980). These are good starts but you have to look for odd scraps and sentences in POW personal accounts in small publication run books where an important clue lies. For example one POW at Camp 184 said they British screened out Poles and a few days later they were no longer POWs but came back with rifles as the guards. There's no definitive focus on prisoner screening or the Polish guards and recruitment of ex POWs.Your g.g.'s Polish records will be illuminating if they're anything like the one's I have seen. If you can get it, Murdoch J, The Other Side The Story of Leo Dalderup, (Hodder and Stoughton, 1954) describes capture and interrogation quite well in 1944. Organised chaos at times. 150,000 prisoners in one month taken by the Allies in late summer. Faulk, H. Group Captives, (Chatto and Windus, 1977) written by the man overseeing the re-education programme for de-nazification of prisoners. Clear headed and balanced picture of success and failure. If you work through the immense density of Sullivan, M.B. Thresholds of Peace German prisoners and the people of Britain 1944-1948, (London, 1979) you will see it's based on first hand knowledge of the author and prisoner accounts. I can see you've looked at the help for researchers thread I started. You may pick up more scattered amongst other entries on other threads where I have tried to help. It's taken me 12 years to get where I am.
