Wittenberg market square by Leon Petrosyan
Tuesday 28th March 1916: Biggleswade’s Private Albert Freeman
of the 1st Bedfords is languishing in a prisoner-of-war camp in Germany at a
place called Wittenberg. A recent report has made it clear that this may be the
worst camp in Germany. The report tells of 15,000 prisoners being herded together
in a 10½ acres confine(1). There were English, French and Russian. The latter had
the seeds of typhus in them, but the ‘Germhuns’ ordered that the prisoners be
mixed together and a terrible epidemic was the result.
The report in
The Times states that washing facilities
were very basic, one cupful of soft soap being allocated to every 120 men. When
the typhus epidemic broke out all the German medical staff fled the camp. A
British doctor ordered to the camp by the Germans in February says that there
were no mattresses, sick men being carried on tables the men ate from which
could not be washed as there was no soap. Even healthier men lost limbs to
gangrene due to lack of socks.
We understand
that the German Chief Medical Officer in charge of the camp, Dr. Aschenbach,
routinely spoke of “English swine” and that when the dead were carried out the
cultured people of Wittenberg were allowed to jeer at the coffins.
Source: Biggleswade Chronicle 21st April
1916
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