Image of the Month

At first glance, this looks like a normal Christmas card; if you look closer, however, you see that the Christmas bells are actually mess tins, and the snowy main picture is not quite the cheery village scene you might expect. This is a Christmas postcard sent by the physicist James Chadwick to his mother in Britain in 1915 while he was held as a civilian prisoner of war at the Ruhleben internment camp in Spandau, on the outskirts of Berlin.

Before the war Ruhleben had been a racecourse. It was converted into a camp on the outbreak of war, and all male British citizens between the ages of 17 and 65 living in Germany were sent there. During the war the camp housed over 5,500 people, nearly all British, in crowded and insanitary conditions, with prisoners living in converted stables. However, they were allowed to administer their own affairs, setting up a printing press, library and postal service, their own police force, businesses and numerous artistic, musical and sporting events.