Figures behind wire

Depicts a young man standing behind wire fence with a group of men behind him. Lieutenant Charles Winzer was a POW at Ruhleben (racecourse) Berlin 1914-18 period. In September 1914, about forty British "suspects" are transferred from Berlin to the racecourse at Ruhleben. They are the first inmates at Germany's new internment camp for British civilians. In the autumn of 1914, the British Government decided on interning a great number of Germans in Great Britain and the German government immediately, as a reprisal, interned all the British civilian men who, up to this time, had enjoyed comparative freedom in Berlin and other cities of the Empire. The British civilians were shut up in a race track about five miles from the centre of Berlin, called Ruhleben. The National Archives in London hold documents from 1915 at FO383/27 regarding the possible release of Ruhleben prisoner Charles Freegrove Winzer, who was a member of French Red Cross. Charles Winzer was also noted in the third issue of the Ruhleben Camp Magazine (May 1916, p.43) and provided illustrations for the Ruhleben Camp Magazine. He was a British subject who worked for the French and Belgian Red Cross.