It is almost 35 years ago now. There were three of us: Professor Jim Crooks of Dundee, Dr Moeschlin of Lucerne, and I. We had been working for the World Health Organisation in Geneva. It was our last evening together. Dr Moeschlin, who knew Geneva well, was taking us to a small auberge on the outskirts of the city for our evening meal.
We were walking along one of the wide boulevards of Geneva when there was a shout. A man on the other side of the road broke off from some friends and dashed across the road. He grasped Moeschlin and hugged him and kissed him and, in broken German that was hard to understand, thanked him again and again and again for saving his life and the lives of his colleagues. It all took quite a time, for the man, a Pole, was clearly overwhelmed at seeing Dr Moeschlin again. Jim and I, and the small crowd that had gathered around, understood that somehow Dr Moeschlin had saved the life of this man and the lives of other Poles in a German prisoner of war camp in 1944.
A German POW camp in Poland
Later that evening after our dinner as we sat in front of a fire, Moeschlin explained that during the war he had worked for the Swiss Red Cross and that late in 1944 he had been sent to inspect a prisoner of war camp near Lodz in Poland, where Russian and Polish POWs were interned. The conditions in this camp were appalling. They were so bad that he refused to leave the camp until the commandant allowed him to speak by telephone to Berlin. He eventually got through, with great difficulty. He lodged his complaint on behalf of the Swiss Red Cross. And he insisted that inspectors must immediately be sent to the camp.
The commandant of the camp was furious. He clearly believed that Russians and Poles were subhumans and deserved little or no respect or care. Moeschlin did indeed, briefly, fear for his own life, so outraged was the commandant. But he refused to leave the camp. He stayed in that camp until senior officers from Berlin arrived, and until fuel, food, and badly needed clothes and blankets were found for the prisoners.
The man who had recognised him and who had run across the road had been one of the prisoners. Moeschlin told us that the man was right; if he had not insisted that officers from Berlin must come immediately many of those prisoners would have died, for the winter weather was bitter and the conditions in the camp were awful.
When Dr Moeschlin had finished we were silent. And then, very quietly, Jim Crooks spoke.
A Japanese POW camp in Thailand
When war broke out in 1939 Jim had joined up as a private in the Royal Corps of Signals. He rose to the rank of corporal. After training they were embarked for the East. His unit landed in Singapore on 13 February 1942. Two days later Singapore capitulated, and Jim was one of 130 000 troops taken as prisoners of war by the Japanese.
At first he was in a prison camp in Singapore. But he was later moved up country to a camp on the Burma railway. Officers were in a separate camp from the men, who were made to work constructing the railway. Thus it was to Jim that the Japanese commandant of the camp, through his interpreter, issued orders or negotiated with the prisoners. It was Jim too who recorded the names of the men drafted to the camp, and it was he who recorded the names of those who died. Many did die, for the living conditions in the camp were appalling and food was scarce.
A few months later Jim was called one day to the commandant's office. He found him and the interpreter in a state of great anxiety. They had received an order from Tokyo that all men who worked on the railway were to be paid in accord with the Red Cross convention. Their problem was that they had no money and were unable to obey the order. Non-obeyance of any order was totally unacceptable in the Japanese army—hence their anxiety.
Jim solved the problem for them by offering to make money. A decimal currency in dollars and cents was made by crude printing on cardboard cut from old cartons, and the men working on the railway were paid in this extraordinary currency.
To everyone's amazement the introduction of this peculiar money brought about a remarkable improvement in the living conditions in the camp. The local villagers were willing to accept this “money” and sell fruit, vegetables, eggs, and, occasionally, chickens to the prisoners. This was a tremendous benefit to both the health and the morale of the camp, and there was a decrease in the death rate in the camp.
But there were other unexpected benefits. Slowly and insidiously what economists might term “service industries” began to develop. In the morning, instead of getting up and queuing with a bowl for your food, you could for a few cents get someone to do this for you, and you could lie on your bunk a little longer before going to work on the railway. Two men started a hair cutting business, and others started to repair shoes, darn socks, suture torn shirts, and even make trousers. The big business, run by a group of enterprising cockneys, was tobacco. Tobacco could be brought from the villagers, and a cigarette factory was started. The cigarettes were very popular and sold for 5 cents each.
There were many men in the camp who were too ill or too frail to work on the railway. They got no wages. But those who did work and did earn contributed to a kitty that was used to buy food and other comforts for these men.
Not that there were no difficulties. The cigarette business in the hands of the cockney “entrepreneurs” was so successful and profitable that after a few months a large amount of the money that had been manufactured by Jim was lying in boxes under the bunks of the “tobacco barons.” There was a major “cash flow” problem.
Jim thought hard about this problem and then solved it by issuing “IOUs on the Bank of England” to the barons and got the money from under the bunks back into circulation. Astonishingly, for many years after the war ex-prisoners from the camp were still trying, in vain, to get these IOUs redeemed by the Bank of England.
When Jim had finished we were again silent, and then we walked back to our hotels. I never saw Dr Moeschlin again, but of course I saw a lot of Jim Crooks over the years—although I never again ever heard him speak of his time as a prisoner of war.
My two colleagues have long ago died. For me it was an unforgettable evening—unforgettable and unforgotten.
Figure.
STERN ART DEALERS/BRIDGEMAN ART LIBRARY
“Prisoners of War” by Gregoire Michonze (b 1902)