Cultural Heritage and Prisoners of War Creativity Behind Barbed Wire [Hardcover]

This book focuses on the numerous examples of creativity produced by POWs and civilian internees during their captivity, including: paintings, cartoons, craftwork, needlework, acting, musical compositions, magazine and newspaper articles, wood carving, and recycled Red Cross tins turned into plates, mugs and makeshift stoves, all which have previously received little attention. The authors of this volume show the wide potential of such items to inform us about the daily life and struggle for survival behind barbed wire. Previously dismissed as items which could only serve to illustrate POW memoirs and diaries, this book argues for a central role of all items of creativity in helping us to understand the true experience of life in captivity. The international authors draw upon a rich seam of material from their own case studies of POW and civilian internment camps across the world, to offer a range of interpretations of this diverse and extraordinary material.

1.The Importance of Creativity Behind Barbed Wire: Setting a Research Agenda Gilly Carr and Harold Mytum  Part I: Creativity and Narratives of Survival  2. Wonder Bar: Music and Theatre as Strategies for Survival in a Second World War POW Hospital Camp Sears Eldredge  3. Spiritual Vitamins: Music in Huyton and Central Internment Camps May 1940January 1941 Suzanne Snizek  4. Tins, Tubes and Tenacity: Inventive Medicine in Camps in the Far East Meg Parkes  5. Creativity and the Body: Civilian Internees in British Asia during the Second World War Felicia Yap  6. The Arts of Survival: Remaking the Inside Spaces of Japanese American Concentration Camps Jane Dusselier  Part II: Narratives and Counter-Narratives of Internment  7. In the Distorted Mirror: Carl