UK National Archives open POW Collection

In a blog post dated January 16, 2018 entitled, "Opening up our prisoner of war collection," the United Kingdom National Archives announced the following:

In December 2014, the Ministry of Defence transferred to The National Archives the series of records WO 416 consisting of an estimated 190,000 records of individuals captured in German occupied territory during the Second World War, primarily Allied service men (including Canadians, South Africans, Australians and New Zealanders) but also several hundred British and Allied civilians and a few nurses. 

The series also includes several thousand records relating to deceased allied airmen, whose bodies were found by or near to their aircrafts which had been shot down. To some degree, these act as a record of death as the individuals were never prisoners of war as such. The number of cards for each individual varies from one to fifteen, but in most cases there are just one or two.

An explanation of the contents of the new database is included in the blog post linked above. The announcement also notes the following:

The entire series has been closed: since the collection was accessioned in 2014 it is is not catalogued by name of individual as many may still be alive – we believe that the youngest of them was born in 1928. The collection can contain sensitive information about living individuals so, with the support of volunteers, we have started to catalogue the entire series: this enables us to open records for those born more than 100 years ago or where we have proof of death. 

This ambitious project will continue until the end of 2020 and for the main we are working our way through the series alphabetically by surname. This page, under ‘Arrangement’, provides a link to the projected completion stages of the project, subject to change. Fifteen per cent of the collection has now been catalogued by name of individual; we have loaded this information on Discovery so researchers can access the material on site or arrange for digital or paper copies to be sent to them. We are offering a paid search service for uncatalogued pieces for those who do not want to wait until the project has completed: details of this service are available at piece level descriptions in Discovery. 

Please note: as we are cataloguing the series, although cards are arranged in boxes according to alphabetical groupings, we are discovering some that are misfiled and can be found in pieces with descriptions outside their surname range. Very occasionally, cards for the same individual can be found in multiple boxes.