POW Christmas Cards from WW II and After

Introduction

MPHS has a major collection of Holiday Cards at http://www.militaryphs.org/holiday_cards/index.html.

Lost among its many items of military-inspired greeting cards mainly from WWI are a few cards from WWII POW camps. The purpose of this page is to focus attention on the WWII POW Christmas cards. A few hand-drawn/painted cards have been reported, and these will be listed at some point. For now, the listing is confined to printed cards.

This project grew out of Paul Albright's article in the January 2021 MPHS Bulletin on what appears here as USA4401. To that I have added some cards found on eBay, and Harold Krische has contributed images of cards that he has owned.

The information shown in the table below is intentionally very bare bones. This is conceived to be first a catalog, though additional information that might eventually turn it into a handbook is welcome.

The Item 'ID' (first column) can be thought of as a catalog number. If there are more details and any illustrations of the card, there will be a link shown just below the ID. The link will take you to a 'detail' web page with illustration(s) and any additional notes regarding the item.

The fields shown below include ID (described above), country of issue, year (if known), issuing organization (such as YMCA), and indication of the source, such as a collector or 'eBay' (for an unattributed item seen online at that website).

Whether this project grows will depend largely on contributions from the people who visit it. I plan to scan eBay listings fairly regularly, but these are not likely to be very productive, in the 2 months since this project was conceived, only one new item has turned up there.

Reporting New Items

When you report a new item, please provide the Country Year and Produced By information shown in the table on this page along with scans of the image side and address side where available, along with whatever notes you want. I will supply Item ID and Notes numbers and in due course Bob Swanson will do his magic to put all this onto the pages.

Scans should be 300 dpi .jpg files.

Notes can be whatever you feel is important. My fantasies extend as far as:

This is the card that my dear old Dad sent from Stalag Luft 3 for the Christmas of 1944. He was shot down September 18th 1944, when 206 Lancaster bombers of the Royal Air Force attacked the centre of Bremerhaven and destroyed it within 20 minutes. The artist who drew the card was Flight Lt. Archibald Waverly, DFC, DSO, CBE, Dad's pilot, who went on to be a studio art director for the Royal Shakespeare Company after the war. It was printed in the camp print shop using card stock taken from Red Cross parcels received during the year.

Or it could be as mundane as noting the type and thickness of the card stock.

Please send information to dannmphsmayo1jdhsh3349rd@yahooncnden796958tugu.com3cnsitu79889