POW camp Hameln.

30 b/w photopostcards, 8 x 13 cm, most written on verso, with stamps.

Mostly all from the same prisoner of war, Etienne Van Goidsenhoven, n. 2608, addressed to his family in Leuven. With official photographs from the camp during a parade, soccer tournaments and theater performances, giving us the image of a humane treatment of the internees. But the real circumstances were likely to be very different. The Camp kept 10.000 prisoners. Hameln was one of the first cities in the German Reich to build a prisoner of war camp just after the outbreak of W.W.I. The prisoners were subjected to forced labour and many died. Also during the Nazi era, Hamelin Prison, was notorious as an institution, where Jews, communists, homosexuals and prisoners of war had to stay. It had the status of a prison from 1935. In the post-war period the prison was used by the British military government to execute war criminals.