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This application will assist the New Forest National Park Authority to translate a newsletter written by German POWs residing at a camp in the Setley Plain during and immediately after WW2.
It forms part of the New Forest Remembers project that was funded via Heritage Lottery Fund and ExxonMobil at Fawley between 2012 and 2014, with the aim of recording the archaeology, history and living memories of the New Forest during the Second World War and to make the findings and material freely available via an online digital archive. In particular, the NFPA's interactive portal is a growing online archive including written and audio memories and recollections from those that lived, worked and served in the forest during the war years. The site also holds a wealth of photographs and links to online additional material such as archive film footage, news videos and computer generated reconstructions of historic WWII sites. Thousands of pages of documents have been digitised and some are available for download. For more information about the project visit our pages on the New Forest National Park’s website.
The current application focuses on Newsletter 2. Written in German and including artwork, quizzes and puzzles, as well as the local sports results, these newsletters offer a glimpse into the lives of German POWs in the UK. Setley Plain POW Camp 65 was built in 1941 to hold Italian Prisoners of War. From 1944 the camp went on to hold German prisoners, and continued to do so until 1947. The camp was then handed over to the New Forest Rural District Council to house young families of returning servicemen, previously housed in Nissen huts at Beaulieu aerodrome. The camp had a shop, run by Harry Munden, and was in existence until the early fifties, when sufficient permanent council housing had been built.
© Digital copy – New Forest National Park Authority 2015 Digitised as part of the New Forest Remembers; untold stories of WWII project