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A prisoner-of-war camp (often abbreviated as POW camp) is a site for the containment of enemy fighters captured by a belligerent power in time of war.

There are significant differences among POW camps, internment camps, and military prisons. Purpose-built prisoner-of-war camps appeared at Norman Cross in England in 1797 during the French Revolutionary Wars and HM Prison Dartmoor, constructed during the Napoleonic Wars, and they have been in use in all the main conflicts of the last 200 years. The main camps are used for coast guards, marines, sailors, soldiers, and more recently, airmen of an enemy power who have been captured by a belligerent power during or immediately after an armed conflict. Civilians, such as merchant mariners and war correspondents, have also been imprisoned in some conflicts. With the adoption of the Geneva Convention on the Prisoners of War in 1929, later superseded by the Third Geneva Convention, prisoner-of-war camps have been required to be open to inspection by authorized representatives of a neutral power. Not all belligerents have consistently applied the convention in all conflicts.

Detention of prisoners of war before the development of camps

Before the Peace of Westphalia, enemy fighters captured by belligerent forces were usually executed, enslaved, or held for ransom. This, coupled with the relatively small size of armies, meant there was little need for any form of camp to hold prisoners of war. The Peace of Westphalia, a series of treaties signed between May and October 1648 that ended the Thirty Years' War and the Eighty Years' War, contained a provision that all prisoners should be released without ransom. This is generally considered to mark the point where captured enemy fighters would be reasonably treated before being released at the end of the conflict or under a parole not to take up arms. The practice of paroling enemy fighters had begun thousands of years earlier, at least as early as the time of Carthage but became normal practice in Europe from 1648 onwards. The consequent increase in the number of prisoners was to lead eventually to the development of the prisoner of war camps.

Development of temporary camps

Following General John Burgoyne's surrender at the Battle of Saratoga in 1777, several thousand British and German (Hessian and Brunswick) troops were marched to Cambridge, Massachusetts. For various reasons, the Continental Congress desired to move them south. For this purpose, one of the congressmen offered his land outside of Charlottesville, Virginia. The remaining soldiers (some 2,000 British, upwards of 1,900 German, and roughly 300 women and children) marched south in late 1778—arriving at the site (near Ivy Creek) in January 1779. Since the barracks were barely sufficient in construction, the officers were paroled to live as far away as Richmond and Staunton. The camp was never adequately provisioned, but the prisoners built a theater on the site. Hundreds escaped Albemarle Barracks because of the shortage of guards. As the British Army moved northward from the Carolinas in late 1780, the remaining prisoners were moved to Frederick, Maryland; Winchester, Virginia; and perhaps elsewhere. No remains of the encampment site are left.

First purpose-built camp

The earliest known purpose-built prisoner-of-war camp was established by the Kingdom of Great Britain at Norman Cross, in 1797 to house the increasing number of prisoners from the French Revolutionary Wars and the Napoleonic Wars. The prison operated until 1814 and held between 3,300 and 6,272 men.

American Civil War camps

Lacking a means for dealing with large numbers of captured troops early in the American Civil War, the Union and Confederate governments relied on the traditional European system of parole and exchange of prisoners. While awaiting exchange, prisoners were confined to permanent camps.

Neither Union or Confederate prison camps were always well run, and it was common for prisoners to die of starvation or disease. It is estimated that about 56,000 soldiers died in prisons during the war; almost 10% of all Civil War fatalities. During a period of 14 months in Camp Sumter, located near Andersonville, Georgia, 13,000 (28%) of the 45,000 Union soldiers confined there died. At Camp Douglas in Chicago, Illinois, 10% of its Confederate prisoners died during one cold winter month; and the 25% death rate at Elmira Prison in New York State very nearly equaled that of Andersonville's.

Boer Wars

During the Second Boer War, the British government established concentration camps to hold both Boer civilians and prisoners of war. In total 109 camps were constructed by the end of the war. However, the majority of prisoners of war were sent overseas (25,630 out of the 28,000 Boer men captured during the fighting); the vast majority of locally held Boer prisoners were women and children. The camps were poorly administered, the food rations insufficient to maintain health, standards of hygiene were low, and overcrowding was chronic. Over 26,000 women and children died in the camps during the war.

Boer War camps

Combatant	Name	Location	Notes	Image
Boer		Pretoria
Boer		Waterval
Boer		Nooitgedacht
Boer		Barberton
British		Bloemfontein	The camp was constructed in 1900 following the Battle of Paardeberg. It was primarily a concentration camp for civilians, of whom 26,370 Boer women and children, 14,154 black Africans, and 1,421 Boer men died during the camp's existence.
British		Cape Town
British		Simonstown
British		Natal
Overseas		St. Helena	The first Boer POW contingent was sent to St. Helena on 11 April 1900, where they were incarcerated at the two camps on the island, Broadbottom and Deadwood.
Overseas		Ceylon	Approximately 5,500 Boer prisoners of war were transported to Ceylon, with the first prisoners arriving on 9 August 1900. The majority of which were incarcerated at Diyatalawa, which opened 8 August 1900, with a convalescent camp at Mount Lavinia, housing 150 prisoners, opening on 17 December 1900, whilst a camp at Ragama, opened 8 January 1901, housing 150 dissidents and irreconcilables. On 10 September 1901 a parole camp for 80 prisoners, was established at Urugasmanhandiya, with a subsequent parole camp for 120 prisoners opening on 19 September 1901 at Hambantota.
Overseas		India
Overseas		Bermuda	Approximately 4,500 prisoners were sent to Bermuda between 28 June 1901 and 16 January 1902. The camps were situated on six islands located in the Great Sound (Burt Island, Darrell's Island, Hawkins Island, Hinson's Island, Morgan's Island and Tucker's Island).
Overseas		Portugal

World War I

The first international convention on prisoners of war was signed at the Hague Peace Conference of 1899. It was widened by the Hague Convention of 1907. The main combatant nations engaged in World War I abided by the convention and treatment of prisoners was generally good. The situation on the eastern front was significantly worse than the western front, with prisoners in Russia at risk from starvation and disease. In total during the war about eight million men were held in prisoner of war camps, with 2.5 million prisoners in German custody, 2.9 million held by the Russian Empire, and about 720,000 held by Britain and France.

Permanent camps did not exist at the beginning of the war. The unexpectedly large number of prisoners captured in the first days of the war by the German army created an immediate problem. By September 1914, the German army had captured over 200,000 enemy combatants. These first prisoners were held in temporary camps until 1915, by which time the prisoner population had increased to 652,000 living in unsatisfactory conditions. In response, the government began constructing permanent camps both in Germany and the occupied territories. The number of prisoners increased significantly during the war, exceeding one million by August 1915 and 1,625,000 by August 1916, and reaching 2,415,000 by the end of the war.

Geneva Conference

The International Committee of the Red Cross held a conference in Geneva, Switzerland in September 1917. The conference addressed the war, and the Red Cross addressed the conditions that the civilians were living under, which resembled those of soldiers in prisoner of war camps, as well as "barbed wire disease" (symptoms of mental illness) suffered by prisoners in France and Germany. It was agreed at the conference that the Red Cross would provide prisoners of war with mail, food parcels, clothes, and medical supplies and that prisoners in France and Germany suffering from "barbed wire disease" should be interned in Switzerland, a neutral country.

A few countries were not on the same terms as Germany and Austria. For example, Hungary believed that harsh conditions would reduce the number of traitors.

The countries in the east continued their fight to help the Red Cross provide support to POWs. At the end of the war, a Franco-German agreement was made that both countries would exchange their prisoners, but the French kept a small number while the Germans released all French prisoners.

Krasnoyarsk

Krasnoyarsk in Siberia, Russia, was used after the Russian defeat to the Japanese in the Russo-Japanese war, as a base for military camps to train for future wars. Conditions there were dire and the detainees could be conscripted for war while they lived in concentration camps and prisons. Over 50,000 camp tenants were used for transportation, agriculture, mining and machinery production.

Throughout World War I, captured prisoners of war were sent to various camps including the one in Krasnoyarsk. There was a point where a large mix of nationalities was together in Krasnoyarsk which included Bulgarians, Czechs, Germans, and Poles. Many prisoners were nationalists, which led to violence within the camp. Militants would be forced to put down the instigators and keep the camp running.

Polish–Soviet War

From autumn 1920, thousands of captured Red Army soldiers and guards had been placed in the Tuchola internment camp, in Pomerania. These prisoners lived in dugouts, and many died of hunger, cold, and infectious diseases. According to historians Zbigniew Karpus and Waldemar Rezmer, up to 2000 prisoners died in the camp during its operation.

In a joint work of Polish and Russian historians, Karpus and Rezmer estimate the total death toll in all Polish POW camps during the war at 16–17 thousand, while the Russian historian Matvejev estimates it at 18–20 thousand.

On the other side of the frontline about 20,000 out of about 51,000 Polish POWs died in Soviet and Lithuanian camps

While the conditions for Soviet prisoners were clearly exposed by the free press in Poland, no corresponding fact-finding about Soviet camps for Polish POWs could be expected from the tightly controlled Soviet press of the time. Available data shows many cases of mistreatment of Polish prisoners. There have been also cases of Polish POWs' being executed by the Soviet army, when no POW facilities were available.

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Korean War

U.N. camps

The International Red Cross visited United Nations-run POW camps, often unannounced, noting prisoner hygiene, quality of medical care, variety of diet, and weight gain. They talked to the prisoners and asked for their comments on conditions, as well as providing them with copies of the Geneva Convention. The IRC delegates dispersed boots, soap, and other requested goods.

A prison camp was established on the island of Koje-do, where over 170,000 communist and non-communist prisoners were held from December 1950 until June 1952. Throughout 1951 and early 1952, upper-level communist agents infiltrated and conquered much of Koje section-by-section by uniting fellow communists; bending dissenters to their will through staged trials and public executions; and exporting allegations of abuse to the international community to benefit the communist negotiation team. In May 1952, Chinese and North Korean prisoners rioted and took Brigadier General Francis T. Dodd captive.

In 1952 the camp's administration was afraid that the prisoners would riot and demonstrate on May Day (a day honoring Communism) and so United States Navy ships (such as the USS Gunson Hall) removed 15,000 North Korean and Chinese prisoners from the island and moved them to prison facilities at Ulsan and Cheju-do. These ships also participated in Operation Big Switch in September 1953 when prisoners were exchanged at the end of the war.

Communist camps

The Chinese operated three types of POW camps during the Korean war. Peace camps housed POWs who were sympathetic to communism, reform camps were intended for skilled POWs who were to be indoctrinated in communist ideologies and the third type was the normal POW camps. Chinese policy did not allow for the exchange of prisoners in the first two camp types.

While these POW Camps were designated numerically by the communists, the POWs often gave the camps a name.

• Camp 1 – Changsong – near Camp 3 on the Yalu River.
• Camp 2 – Pyoktong – on the Yalu River.
• Camp 3 – Changsong – near Camp 1 on the Yalu River.
• Camp 4 – north of Camp 2
• Camp 5 – near Pyoktong.
• Camp 6 – P'yong-yang
• Camp 7 – near Pyoktong.
• Camp 8 – Kangdong
• Camp 9 – P'yong-yang.
• Camp 10 – Chon ma
• Camp 11 – Pukchin
• Camp 12 – P'yong-yang- (Peace Camp) was located in the northwestern vicinity of the capitol. Nearby were several other camps including PAK's Palace.
• Bean Camp – Suan
• Camp DeSoto – P'yong-yang locale – The camp was near to Camp 12.
• Pak's Palace Camp – P'yong-yang locale – Located in the northernmost area near the Capitol. The camp was near Camp 12.
• Pukchin Mining Camp – between Kunu-ri and Pyoktong – (aka. Death Valley Camp).
• Sunchon Tunnel – - (aka. Caves Camp)
• Suan Mining Camp – P'yong-yang
• Valley Camps – Teksil-li

Vietnam War

South Vietnamese Army camps in South Vietnam

By the end of 1965, Viet Cong suspects, prisoners of war, and even juvenile delinquents were mixed together in South Vietnamese jails and prisons. After June 1965, the prison population steadily rose, and by early 1966, there was no space to accommodate additional prisoners in the existing jails and prisons. In 1965, plans were made to construct five POW camps, each with an initial capacity of 1,000 prisoners and to be staffed by the South Vietnamese military police, with U.S. military policemen as a prisoner of war advisers assigned to each stockade.

Prisons and jails

• Con Son National Prison
• Chi Hoa National Prison
• Tam Hiep National Prison
• Thu Duc National Prison
• plus 42 Province jails

Camps

• Bien Hoa camp – in III Corp area was opened May 1966
• Pleiku camp – in II Corps area was opened August 1966
• Da Nang camp (Non Nuoc) – in I Corps area was opened in November 1966
• Can Tho camp – in IV Corps area was opened December 1966
• Qui Nhon (Phu Tai) – opened March 1968 (for female PoWs)
• Phu Quoc Island – off the coast of Cambodia, opened in 1968

North Vietnamese Army camps

• "Alcatraz" – North Central Hanoi
• "Briarpatch" – 53 km (33 mi) WNW of Hanoi
• "Camp Faith" – 14 km (9 mi) West of Hanoi
• "Dirty Bird" – Northern Hanoi
• "Dogpatch" – 169 km (105 mi) NNE of Hanoi
• "Farnsworth" – 29 km (18 mi) SW of Hanoi
• "Hanoi Hilton" – Hoa Lo, Central Hanoi
• "Mountain Camp" – 64 km (40 mi) NW of Hanoi
• "Plantation – Northeast Hanoi
• "Rockpile" – 51 km (32 mi) South of Hanoi
• Sơn Tây – 37 km (23 mi) West of Hanoi
• "Skidrow" – 10 km (6 mi) SW of Hanoi
• "The Zoo" – SW suburb of Hanoi

Yugoslav wars

Serb Camps

• Manjača camp – Banja Luka, Republika Srpska
• Sremska Mitrovica camp – Sremska Mitrovica, Vojvodina
• Stajićevo camp – Stajićevo, Vojvodina

Other Camps

• Čelebići prison camp – Konjic, Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina
• Lapušnik prison camp – Kosovo

Afghanistan and Iraq wars

This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources in this section. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Prisoner-of-war camp" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (July 2020) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

The United States of America has refused to grant prisoner-of-war status to many prisoners captured during its War in Afghanistan (2001–present) and 2003 invasion of Iraq. This is mainly because it classes them as insurgents or terrorists, which do not meet the requirements laid down by the Third Geneva Convention of 1949 such as being part of a chain of command, wearing a "fixed distinctive marking, visible from a distance", bearing arms openly, and conducting military operations in accordance with the laws and customs of war.

The legality of this refusal has been questioned and cases are pending in the U.S. courts. In the Hamdan v. Rumsfeld court case, on June 29, 2006, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the captives at Guantanamo Bay detention camp were entitled to the minimal protections listed under Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions. This is under dispute. Other captives, including Saddam Hussein, have been accorded POW status. The International Red Cross has been permitted to visit at least some sites. Many prisoners were held in secret locations (black sites) around the world. The identified sites are listed below:

• Abu Ghraib prison – 32 km west of Baghdad, Iraq
• Bagram Air Base – near Charikar in Parvan, Afghanistan
• Camp Bucca – near Umm Qasr, Iraq
• Camp Delta – Guantanamo Bay, Cuba

See also

• List of World War II prisoner-of-war camps in the United States
• American Civil War prison camps
• Finnish Civil War prison camps
• Internment camp
• List of prisoner-of-war escapes
• List of World War II POW camps
• Military prison
• Eden Camp Museum

Notes and references

1. "Prisoner of war (POW)". Encyclopædia Britannica. Archived from the original on October 24, 2012. Retrieved October 27, 2012.
2. Fooks, Herbert C. (1924). Prisoners of War 297.
3. Thomas James Walker (1913). The depot for prisoners of war at Norman Cross, Huntingdonshire, 1796 to 1816. Constable & Company.
4. "National Life After Death". Slate. Archived from the original on August 29, 2011. Retrieved July 19, 2013.
5. "Andersonville: Prisoner of War Camp-Reading 1". Nps.gov. Archived from the original on November 18, 2007. Retrieved November 28, 2008.
6. |"US Civil War Prison Camps Claimed Thousands". National Geographic News. July 1, 2003. Archived from the original on February 25, 2010.
7. Judd, Denis; Surridge, Keith (2003). The Boer War. ISBN 1-4039-6150-6.
8. A Century of Postgraduate Anglo Boer War Studies, p. 32, at Google Books
9. Arthur Clive Martin (1957). The Concentration Camps, 1900–1902: Facts, Figures and Fables. H. Timmins. p. 31.
10. "Black Concentration Camps". Anglo-boer.co.za. 2010. Archived from the original on August 15, 2013. Retrieved July 19, 2013.
11. Phillimore, Geo G.; Bellot, Hugh H. L. (1919). "Treatment of Prisoners of War". Transactions of the Grotius Society. 5: 47–64.
12. Robert B. Kane; Peter Loewenberg (2008). Disobedience and Conspiracy in the German Army, 1918–1945. McFarland & Company. p. 240. ISBN 978-0-7864-3744-3.
13. ^ Hinz (2006), p. 92.
14. Hinz, Uta (2006). Gefangen im Großen Krieg. Kriegsgefangenschaft in Deutschland 1914–1921. Essen: Klartext Verlag. pp. 93–128–320. ISBN 3-89861-352-6.
15. Guglielmo, T. A. (2010). "'Red Cross, Double Cross': Race and America's World War II—Era Blood Donor Service". Journal of American History. 97 (1): 63–90. doi:10.2307/jahist/97.1.63.
16. Davis, Gerald H. (Summer 1987). "Prisoner of War Camps as Social Communities in Russia: Krasnoyjarsk 1914–1921". East European Quarterly. 21 (2): 147.
17. Rezmer, W.; Karpus, Zbigniew; Matvejev, G. Red Army POWs in the Polish POW camps 1919–1922. p. 671.
18. "Czerwonoarmiści w niewoli polskiej". Archived from the original on September 24, 2011. Retrieved April 13, 2013.
19. "ПЛЕННЫЕ КРАСНОАРМЕЙЦЫ В ПОЛЬСКИХ ЛАГЕРЯХ". Archived from the original on April 17, 2010. Retrieved April 13, 2013.
20. ^ Karpus, Zbigniew; Stanisław, Alexandrowicz; za drutami, Zwycięzcy (1995). Jeńcy polscy w niewoli (1919–1922) Dokumenty i materiały (Victors behind the fences. Polish POWs (1919–1922) Documents and materials. Toruń: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Mikołaja Kopernika w Toruniu. ISBN 83-231-0627-4.
21. Truce Tent and Fighting Front, 1992
22. "Chinese operated three types of POW camps for Americans during the Korean War". April 1997. Archived from the original on April 3, 2013. Retrieved March 30, 2013.
23. Arnold Krammer (November 30, 2007). Prisoners of War: A Reference Handbook. Praeger Publishers. p. 71. ISBN 978-0-275-99300-9.

Bibliography

• Burnham, Philip. So Far from Dixie: Confederates in Yankee Prisons (2003)
• Byrne, Frank L., "Libby Prison: A Study in Emotions," Journal of Southern History 1958 24(4): 430–444. in JSTOR
• Cloyd, Benjamin G. Haunted by Atrocity: Civil War Prisons in American Memory (Louisiana State University Press; 2010) 272 pages.traces shifts in Americans' views of the brutal treatment of soldiers in both Confederate and Union prisons, from raw memories in the decades after the war to a position that deflected responsibility.
• Horigan, Michael. Elmira: Death Camp of the North (2002)

• Prisoner-of-war camps
• Imprisonment and detention
• Lists of prisoner of war camps
• Total institutions