Published by Lyons Press, Barbed Wire University details the experiences of the professors, artists, writers and other intellectuals interned at Hutchinson Camp.
Published in 2021 by Lyons Press it tells the stories of a group of German Jewish artists and intellectuals interned on the Isle of Man during the Second World War.
When speaking of internment many thoughts would probably shift to the internment of Japanese Americans by the United States. Yet it also happened in Britain. The Isle of Man one of the locations that people, deemed to be a security threat to Britain, could find themselves being sent.
Some of those who were interned were highly gifted professors, artists and writers who fled the Nazi regime. The Barbed Wire University details their experiences in the Hutchinson Camp. Despite many being Jewish and anti-Nazi, they were arrested, separated from their wives and children and transported many miles from their homes. Often transiting through more than one camp. Quite early on in the book, it describes how these men were not told where they were going. As such when they sailed into Douglas, the largest settlement on the island, they were frightened as they saw red flags fluttering in the wind. They had mistaken the triskelion, the three-legged symbol of the Isle of Man, for swastikas.
The Barbed Wire University refers to the efforts of a number of the inmates who came together to organise lectures and classes. With 150 men teaching around 600 separate classes. Unsurprisingly demand was high and camp inmates would gather on the lawn at the centre of the square. There was equal access to all inmates who wanted to listen, meaning the least educated amongst them could find themselves being taught by Oxford and Cambridge fellows. Amongst the wide range of subjects taught were social sciences, photography, history, languages including Russian, Greek, Latin and Chinese. They could learn skills such as agriculture, bookkeeping and shorthand. They were spoilt for choice. Teenage boys whose education had been interrupted were able to finish their secondary education.
Each chapter reveals what life was like in Hutchinson Camp and the various characters that lived there. From Hans Brick also known as Johann Neunzer, who toured the world with the circus and whose father had been mauled to death by a tiger. To the Orthodox Jews, who, when an air raid inconveniently occurred on the Sabbath, couldn’t turn their lights off. Much to the annoyance of the camp’s Commandant Hubert Owen Daniel. By the time they found someone suitable who could turn the light off, the sirens had stopped.
Amongst the amusing tales there are understandably tragic ones as well. One that has stayed with me is the story of Rudolph Olden. A vocal opponent of the Nazis, he fled into Czechoslovakia on a pair of skis. He eventually had his German citizenship revoked. Travelling through Austria, Switzerland and into France he eventually reached England. He and his wife Ika sending their young daughter to Canada.
Although only at the camp a short while his story does not end happily. Despite being a well-known anti-Nazi, his release was on the condition that he book immediate passage from England. To rub salt in the wound as he boarded the ship City of Benares, his passport was marked ‘No permission to return’. He and his wife would never see their daughter again. Four days after departing Liverpool, the ship was torpedoed. The ship sank in thirty minutes. 298 people, of which 77 were children, were killed. Rudolph and Ika among the victims.
These are only a small selection of the stories of Hutchinson, the book is well written and easy to ready, although naturally the subject matter at times can be less so. I must admit I was only vaguely aware of internment and the Isle of Man’s link to it. I’d never really read much into it. It certainly wasn’t something discussed in school. Perhaps it should be. The widespread detention of large groups of innocent people is, whatever the motives for doing so, something I find greatly disturbing. If you can get hold of a copy Barbed Wire University, I urge you to do so.
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