The Island of Extraordinary Captives

August 29, 2022
Journalist Parkin (A Game of Birds and Wolves) documents in this vivid history the British internment of German refugees on the Isle of Man during WWII. He spotlights Hutchinson Camp, one of 10 internment camps on the island, where the 2,000 male detainees held between 1940 and 1944 included actors, artists, composers, lawyers, professors, and writers, “as if a tsunami had deposited a crowd of Europe’s prominent men into this obscure patch of grass in the middle of the Irish Sea.” Parkin details how government officials determined which foreigners constituted a “threat,” and explains that the camps’ system of self-governance was “designed to invest a community in the orderly and peaceful organization of its own captivity.” At Hutchinson Camp, the “high concentration of luminaries,” including artists Paul Hamann, Kurt Schwitters, and Hellmuth Weissenborn, necessitated a cultural department to coordinate the schedule of lectures and performances. Throughout, Parkin interweaves the story of Peter Fleischmann, an 18-year-old orphan and aspiring artist who was connected—via a German Jewish heiress with whom he used to spend summer holidays—to a Gestapo spy in the camp, with harrowing details about the “banal and enduring structures of cruelty and indifference” faced by refugees and asylum seekers. Character-driven and carefully researched, this is an engrossing look at a less-remembered aspect of WWII.

January 1, 2023

Parkin (Death by Video Game; A Game of Birds and Wolves) switches gears in this informational nonfiction title, offering a fascinating look into the daily life of German POW internees at Britain's Hutchinson Camp on the Isle of Man. Throughout the book, Parkin highlights the story of orphaned teenager and aspiring artist Peter Fleischmann, who unexpectedly found comradeship among his fellow prisoners. Narrator Elliot Fitzpatrick eloquently captures the shock and disgust of incoming internees who were rounded up without due cause; the satisfaction they felt in sharing their gifts and talents with each other by setting up a "university" with classes, lectures, concerts, and art shows; the empowerment of publishing a monthly paper about events that happened in the camp; and the empathy for thousands of artists and scientists who were released from Allied camps once they had been investigated and proven not to be spies for the Nazis. Fitzpatrick adds an element of sensationalism in his delivery of a secondary narrative of intrigue, about a Nazi spy who was in the camp. VERDICT An enlightening glimpse into the little-documented Allied treatment of prisoners of war during World War II.--Stephanie Bange

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