This is an essential book for all academics, heritage professionals, collectors and museum curators who seek to understand the range of objects which give testimony to the creativity of prisoners of war. From sheet music and theatre, to painting, embroidery, newspaper articles and metalwork, this book is the first to address creativity behind barbed wire.

This book focuses on the numerous examples of creativity produced by POWs and civilian internees during their captivity, including: paintings, cartoons, craftwork, needlework, acting, musical compositions, magazine and newspaper articles, wood carving, and recycled Red Cross tins turned into plates, mugs and makeshift stoves, all which have previously received little attention. The authors of this volume show the wide potential of such items to inform us about the daily life and struggle for survival behind barbed wire. Previously dismissed as items which could only serve to illustrate POW memoirs and diaries, this book argues for a central role of all items of creativity in helping us to understand the true experience of life in captivity. The international authors draw upon a rich seam of material from their own case studies of POW and civilian internment camps across the world, to offer a range of interpretations of this diverse and extraordinary material.

The archaeology of war has revealed evidence of bravery, sacrifice, heroism, cowardice, and atrocities. Mostly absent from these narratives of victory and defeat, however, are the experiences of prisoners of war, despite what these can teach us about cruelty, ingenuity, and human adaptability. The international array of case studies in Prisoners of War restores this hidden past through case studies of PoW camps of the Napoleonic era, the American Civil War, and both World Wars. These bring to light wide variations in historical and cultural details, excavation and investigative methods used, items found and their interpretation, and their contributions to archaeology, history and heritage. Illustrated with diagrams, period photographs, and historical quotations, these chapters vividly reveal challenges and opportunities for researchers and heritage managers, and revisit powerful ethical questions that persist to this day. Notorious and lesser-known aspects of PoW experiences that are addressed include: Designing and operating an 18th-century British PoW camp. Life and death at Confederate and Union American Civil War PoW camps. The role of possessions in coping strategies during World War I. The archaeology of the ‘Great Escape’ Experiencing and negotiating space at civilian internment camps in Germany and Allied PoW camps in Normandy in World War II. The role of archaeology in the memorial process, in America, Norway, Germany and France Graffiti, decorative ponds, illicit saké drinking, and family life at Japanese American camps As one of the first book-length examinations of this fascinating multidisciplinary topic, Prisoners of War merits serious attention from historians, social justice researchers and activists, archaeologists, and anthropologists.

More than two thousand people from the British Channel Islands were deported to and interned in Germany during the Second World War, making up as many as 60% of all interned British citizens in occupied territory during this period. This book carries out an in-depth analysis of artwork, objects, oral testimonies, archives, poetry, letters, diaries and memoirs gathered from the internees and drawing from around one hundred collections. The work is based on over 15 years of research and interviews with more than 65 former internees, and explores analytical themes and narratives of placemaking, resistance, communities, food and cooking. It also proposes new concepts and categories to help us understand objects that distinguish the experience of internment. This book will be of great value for scholars and museum professionals, as well as postgraduate students in the field of Conflict Archaeology and scholars of the Second World War. Cumulatively, this materiality comprises one of the major surviving assemblages of internees to emerge from the war, comparable in size, quality and importance with that from other theatres of war.

This book reconstructs the fate of Italian prisoners of war captured by the Red Army between August 1941 and the winter of 1942-43. On 230.000 Italians left on the Eastern front almost 100.000 did not come back home. Testimonies and memoirs from surviving veterans complement the author's intensive work in Russian and Italian archives. The study examines Italian war crimes against the Soviet civilian population and describes the particularly grim fate of the thousands of Italian military internees who after the 8 September 1943 Armistice had been sent to Germany and were subsequently captured by the Soviet army to be deported to the USSR. The book presents everyday life and death in the Soviet prisoner camps and explains the particularly high mortality among Italian prisoners. Giusti explores how well the system of prisoner labor, personally supervised by Stalin, was planned, starting in 1943. A special focus of the study is antifascist propaganda among prisoners and the infiltration of the Soviet security agencies in the camps. Stalin was keen to create a new cohort of supporters through the mass political reeducation of war prisoners, especially middle-class intellectuals and military élite. The book ends with the laborious diplomatic talks in 1946 and 1947 between USSR, Italy, and the Holy See for the repatriation of the surviving prisoners.

Museums of Language and the Display of Intangible Cultural Heritage presents essays by practitioners based in language museums around the world. Describing their history, mission, and modes of display, contributors demonstrate the important role intangible heritage can and should play in the museum. Arguing that languages are among our most precious forms of cultural heritage, the book also demonstrates that they are at risk of neglect, and of endangerment from globalisation and linguistic imperialism. Including case studies from across Europe, North America, Africa, and Asia, this book documents the vital work being done by museums to help preserve languages and make them objects of broad public interest. Divided into three sections, contributions to the book focus on one of three types of museums: museums of individual languages, museums of language groups – both geographic and structural – and museums of writing. The volume presents practical information alongside theoretical discussions and state-of-the-art commentaries concerning the representation of languages and their cultural nature. Museums of Language and the Display of Intangible Cultural Heritage is the first volume to address the subject of language museums and, as such, should be of interest to academics, researchers, and postgraduate students in the fields of museum and cultural heritage studies, applied linguistics, anthropology, tourism, and public education.

A fresh look at the how US troops played a part in the resistance of US troops to the American war in Vietnam Even if you don't know much about the war in Vietnam, you've probably heard of "The Hanoi Hilton," or Hoa Lo Prison, where captured U.S. soldiers were held. What they did there and whether they were treated well or badly by the Vietnamese became lasting controversies. As military personnel returned from captivity in 1973, Americans became riveted by POW coming-home stories. What had gone on behind these prison walls? Along with legends of lionized heroes who endured torture rather than reveal sensitive military information, there were news leaks suggesting that others had denounced the war in return for favorable treatment. What wasn't acknowledged, however, is that U.S. troop opposition to the war was vast and reached well into Hoa Loa Prison. Half a century after the fact, Dissenting POWs emerges to recover this history, and to discover what drove the factionalism in Hoa Lo. Looking into the underlying factional divide between pro-war “hardliners” and anti-war “dissidents” among the POWs, authors Wilber and Lembcke delve into the postwar American culture that created the myths of the Hero-POW and the dissidents blamed for the loss of the war. What they found was surprising: It wasn’t simply that some POWs were for the war and others against it, nor was it an officers-versus-enlisted-men standoff. Rather, it was the class backgrounds of the captives and their pre-captive experience that drew the lines. After the war, the hardcore hero-holdouts—like John McCain—moved on to careers in politics and business, while the dissidents faded from view as the antiwar movement, that might otherwise have championed them, disbanded. Today, Dissenting POWs is a necessary myth-buster, disabusing us of the revisionism that has replaced actual GI resistance with images of suffering POWs—ennobled victims that serve to suppress the fundamental questions of America’s drift to endless war.