Hello AskHistorians, I've been doing research on my grandfather who flew in the Air Force during World War II, he was shot down and captured in Germany sometime in 1943, and he was held as a POW in the prison camp Stalag Luft I.
I am curious about the treatment of the prisoners there, and if there are any resources I can look into to find firsthand accounts of others who may have been held at the camp during the time my grandfather was there. Thank you in advance for any information you can provide
Stalag Luft I was the first Luftwaffe camp for air force prisoners of war, opened in 1940. It closed briefly in 1942 when Stalag Luft III was established in Sagan, but soon reopened as increasing numbers of Allied airmen were captured; overcrowding was a persistent issue in PoW camps. Conditions were reasonable, as far as camps went; with aircrew being senior NCOs or officers they were not forced to work, and Germany generally adhered to the Geneva Convention for western allied prisoners as opposed to the appalling conditions for e.g. Soviet prisoners. Camp life was no picnic, though, hunger and boredom being the dominant experience; an RAF prisoner in the early days of Stalag Luft I describes the rations:
"We subsisted on the German rations for a non-working civilian: a cup of Ersatz coffee, made from acorns, in the morning, a bowl of soup, usually Sauerkraut, with a few potatoes at mid-day, and one fifth of a loaf of black bread with a pat of margarine and a small piece of sausage or cheese in the evening, supplied on a room basis and divided up by the room ‘stooge’ for the day—very accurately as he had to wait until the others had chosen their portions! These rations accounted for barely 800 calories per day, less than half the optimum for an adult human being. The pangs of hunger were ever present."
There were escape attempts, some successful during the early years; from late 1943 around sixty tunnels were constructed but only two reached beyond the perimeter fence and the escapers who emerged were recaptured. Though such activities attract much of the attention around PoW camps (most notably in e.g. The Great Escape), as an ex-POW put it: "fictional portrayals of POWs have invariably focused on the excitement generated by attempted escapes, gloomy resignation and stifling boredom more typically characterized a prisoner's daily existence".
The above quote about rations comes from S. P. Mackenzie's The Colditz Myth, an excellent overview of PoW life in general (though focusing on British and Commonwealth prisoners), the details of tunnels from Aidan Crawley's Escape From Germany. For specific accounts of Stalag Luft I, you're spoiled for choice; there's Stalag Luft I online with stories, art, poetry and more from prisoners, and its book list is also rather comprehensive (though doesn't appear to list the British official history).