Two Historical Documents from Two World Wars


Above, a page scaned from a zine produced by residents of a WWI prisoner of war camp. What follows is without a doubt one of the most incredible reader submissions we've ever received. Daniel J. Geduld says,

On a recent trip to visit my parents, I was given several documents which belonged to my late grandfather, Sol Geduld. He led an amazing life. Born in Germany in 1905, he was put, along with his father, Harris Geduld, in a POW camp when World War I broke out because his father was a British subject. His mother, Bertha, was German and was not put in the camp. He and his father were traded for two German POWs and went to live in England. My Grandfather didn't know any English, but picked it up very quickly and ended up going to a prestigious high school where he showed an early aptitude for art and was on his way to becoming an architect or commercial artist.

Unfortunately, when his father died, he was pulled out of school at age 16 by his mother and taken back to Germany and forced to work odd jobs which is where my English Grandmother found him, working in an ice cream parlor in 1930 and they married that year and moved back to England. This was very lucky as they were both Jewish.

Although he continued to work various odd jobs during the depression apart from a few months where a serious bout of dermatitis made work impossible, when WWII broke out, he was incredibly active in the war effort despite being too old to join the military. He painted huge posters seen all over London to promote the war, he volunteered as an air raid warden meaning he was outside of a shelter during air raids, making sure others got to safety.

He also got a job as an aircraft inspector, first for Handley-Paige and their Halifax Bomber and later for DeHaviland and their Mosquito fighter/bomber. Being an inspector meant he actually had to go up in the planes with the test pilots and make sure everything was working properly.

Eventually, they emigrated to America to be closer to my father who had moved to Indiana after receiving his PhD in London to work at Indiana University but only moved to Indiana itself shortly before I was born and they had retired. They both lived out the rest of their days there and my Grandfather spent his retirement volunteering for a community guarden and head start programs while doing much of the promotional artwork and advertising for them. He was a brilliant man and unfortunately died when I was still in high school but I still miss him very much.

Now, on to the documents. Although there are more than these two and I plan to scan more in later, I will share these first. They are from two very different points in my grandfather's life and you will see why I gave you his biography first.

The first document was a souvenir from his days in the POW camp, known as Ruhleben camp. It was in Germany on a former race course and around 4000 English men lived there. The document was a magazine which was printed at the POW camp called In Ruhleben Camp. It is sometimes very funny and sometimes very poignant (the story about the camp orchestra actually brought tears to my eyes: page 1, 2, 3, 4). Above all it is very, very English. Ridiculously English in the way only people away from their beloved homeland could be. There are more issues which I will scan in at some time in the future, but they are all in bad shape and this one was the most deteriorated. It is missing its cover. You can see it here: Link.

The second document is his notebook from when he was training to be an aircraft inspector in the second world war. Despite never finishing high school, he had to learn some pretty complex engineering, but his skills definitely helped him out. All of the illustrations were hand-drawn by my grandfather with a fountain pen. I don't understand a lot of it, but it is still just a beautiful document to look through. There is a second, longer notebook I will scan in at some point which is better preserved as it has been re-bound. You can see the notebook here: Link.

I hope you enjoy these two little pieces of history.

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FLICKR PHOTOSETS:
Part 1 (WWI POW camp zine)
Part 2 (WWII engineering notebook).
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I found myself poring over the elder Mr. Geduld's drawings for hours, and the prose in the camp zine is incredible. I think the inside cover is my favorite scan of all, if only for this one short line:

This is our first number, alas,
it will not be our last —
a quaint wish but our readers will understand.

And then, there's this announcement for a short story competition:

Stories should not exceed 1600 words,
and and it should be borne in mind
that they have to pass the Censor.

Many thanks to Daniel, from all of us at BoingBoing, for sharing these amazing, rare documents with the world.