I was a prisioner of war!

I WAS A PRISONER OF WAR!

These are the words that started the narrative of how World War I was experienced by hundreds of thousands of former soldiers. The exhibition offers fragments of long stories by eighteen POWs, two of whom spent many years of captivity far in the East. The rest of them experienced it in Europe, in Serbian, Austro-Hungarian, German and Italian POW (concentration) camps or at work in the hinterland. Medieval castles, abandoned fortresses, cabins in new camps ... Krasnoyarsk, Tashkent, railway construction site in Murmansk, Rastatt, castle at Azzano, Celle lager, San Giusto in Trieste, Cassino, ... Yes. Also the island of Asinara and Mauthausen. Infamous places!

At these places, there is no staging of historical events today to satisfy tourists with men in “historical” uniforms who would merrily shoot, shout, engage in fighting, produce explosions and smoke ... Even museum presentations would be a great challenge, whereas a visit to captives’ graveyards far in the East would almost be a “mission impossible”.

It is equally impossible to show within the scope of an exhibition an overview of the endless mosaic of individual fates, events and statistics. The purpose of the exhibition is to offer at least a chance to think about the fate of millions of lads and men, estimated almost at six million (!), who have remained in the collective memory of nations only in its margins. Already during the battles, after the unsuccessful campaigns, the commands preferably ranked them as “missing” on the loss list. The large number of captured could be a reminder of low morality and of the failure to search for the rescue from the hell into which they were sent by the masters of war.

Rescue? Captivity or maybe a “good” wound? General Robilant, commander of the Italian Fourth Army Corps, Kobarid, 16^th August, 1915: “I call your attention to the fact that the wounded of the 89^th Infantry Regiment were wounded by the shrapnel into different parts of the body, while the wounded of the 41^st have mainly a single firing wound in the left hand, which allows the presumption of self-mutilation...“ Soldiers had to be scared into believing the captivity was a ghastly experience, with terrible conditions in camps, hunger, relentless Cossacks, Austrians who brutally penalized captives the same way as they did their own soldiers... When they witnessed war crimes their army carried out on the occupied territories, they were afraid of revenge even without such a propaganda.

In the Hague Convention of 1907, the international community determined the rules for managing POWs, but the facts testify that they mainly remained just on paper. They could not foresee the Great War which soon followed. It was very difficult to establish a single, uniform system and a uniform, proper treatment of hundreds of thousands. It was simpler to order prisoners to work and pay them for granting their survival. The missions of the Red Cross International Committee thus recorded very different circumstances in hundreds of POW camps – from exemplary to catastrophic. Problems often began with the commander, nutrition, health care, heating, clothing, footwear, sanitary conditions, ... None of the signatory countries was entitled to boast that during and after the war that they consistently fulfilled the obligations of the adopted rules. “War masters” were unable to do so and often did not want to. It was hard to look oneself in the mirror and it still is!

And today?