By Gail Copeland, granddaughter of Arthur Copeland – POW (prisoner of war) at Schweidnitz POW Camp WWI from early December 1917 until April 1918.
Background History
At the beginning of World War I, the Germans had hoped the war would be a short one. As time passed, it became apparent that they hadn’t been adequately prepared to house and feed the large number of captives. By 1915, the Germans had to commandeer schools, barns and other shelters in both Germany and in occupied territories, to house the growing number of prisoners.
It was in one such camp that my grandfather, Arthur Harold Madill Copeland, found himself. In March of 1918, he and twenty-three other prisoners made an escape from Schweidnitz. That story is for another day. Today, the reader will find out a bit about the location, history and layout of Kriegsgefangenenlager (POW camp) Schweidnitz.
In the thirteenth century, Swidnica was part of Poland. There were many battles and wars fought over it through the centuries. During World War I, Schweidnitz (formerly Swidnica) was under the control of Germany and stayed that way until after the end of WW II when it reverted back to being part of Poland. Swidnica today is located in the region of Silesia.
In the middle of the 18th century, King Frederick of Prussia acquired the province of Silesia and between 1747 and 1750 he ordered the construction of several fortresses. It was upon the high ground of one of these old fortress sites that the prison of Schweidnitz was built in 1882 by the architect Stanislaw Gorgolewski. (1) In 1866, Swidnica was declared an open city (2) (meaning all defensive efforts were officially abandoned so that the city would be peacefully occupied). It was at that time that demolition of the fortresses began. Other than a partial moat, there was very little left of the original fortress when the prison was built.
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| Schweidnitz POW Camp 1918 |
Schweidnitz camp was located twenty-five kms southwest of the city of Breslau, Germany. Today Breslau is the Polish city of Wroclaw. Schweidnitz opened as a POW camp in mid to late 1917. Along the eastern side of the camp ran the river Weistritz with its marshes and sand banks. Through the moat on the southern and the lower part of the western side, ran a tributary of the Weistritz called the river Bogen Wasser. The town of Schweidnitz was located to the north and east. The name Weistritz was German and today the river is called the Bystrzyca and is now a tributary of the Oder. There is not much more than a stream there today, as there were two dams built in order to form lakes to the north of Wroclaw.
Description of Schweidnitz Prison Camp
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| A Sketch of the Camp by POW Aubrey Rickards |
A brick wall, topped by barbed wire, surrounded the entire Schweidnitz complex. Several arc lights lit up the grounds at night. Platforms were built in each corner of the walls. These crow’s nest lookouts held guards equipped with rifles and bayonets. Each guard also had a whistle to blow if they spotted any suspicious movement. Within the brick walls was a barbed wire fence surrounding the main buildings. The prisoners referred to the area between the two enclosures as “no man’s land.” Inside the complex was the large two storey brick prison building and behind it, four more recently constructed rectangular wooden barracks.
According to the memoirs of Lieutenant Aubrey Rickards, “the stone prison was a dining room and living quarters for 120 officers, and not to be forgotten the cells and guard room.” According to the memoirs of Eric Fulton, the stone prison had two large dormitories for prisoners. “At the end of each dormitory was an ‘abort’ or toilet. It was just an open shaft above an earthen pit. This served the needs of the whole building.” Sentries were located on each corner of the four wooden barracks as well as one in the middle. Of these barracks, three were used to house the prisoners and the fourth was a German headquarters which the prisoners referred to as ‘Boche HQ.’ The derogatory name of Bosh/bosche/boche, came from the French slang tête de caboche, meaning hard head, head of cabbage. POW’s regularly referred to their captors as the boche. In early 1918, the commandant of the camp was a Bavarian by the name of Hauptmann Schmidt.
From the memoirs of Edouard/Edward Desbarats, the prison could hold six hundred prisoners. J.W, Turrell, a Senior British Officer at the camp, wrote to the Prussian Ministry of War in Sept 1918 to complain about the conditions in the camp. With reference to the barracks, he described the ventilation as poor, due to the fact that part of it was below ground level, the windows were barred and the attics only had a couple of very small windows built into the roof. He said that in one of the attic rooms, thirty orderlies were living. In a copy of the camp magazine, there was reference to eighty officers from Lager 2 who forwarded applications regarding entrance into government service after the war. Assuming that only some of the men submitted inquiries, it certainly indicates that there were well over one hundred men per barrack. In the memoirs of Eric Fulton, he said each barrack had a wooden floor and beneath them were large cellars for the storage of potatoes, other vegetables and bulk goods.
Fruit trees were planted on the grounds between the prison and the barracks. The barrack on the eastern side was bordered by a wire fence, followed by a strip of “no man’s land.” Beyond that strip were a pigpen and a vegetable garden. The pigpen will have honourable mention in the escape story to be told another time. Within the prison walls were also a church, a kitchen, a bath house and a well.
With luck, you now have a clearer picture of Schweidnitz. In future articles, I will delve into life at the camps. I will cover entertainment, education, food, treatment, camp conditions and will touch on escapes…planned, attempted and successful.
(1) https://www.frankfallaarchive.org/prisons/schweidnitz-prison/
(2) https://www.hebels.nl/flights/20170624/swidnica.htm
