Midlands Heritage Forum Contact Us Form - archives Spring Hill POW camp‏

**yamahapaul** · 15th August 2012, 12:02

I've received this, don't know if anyone can help or not?

Dear Sir/Madam,

I am looking for information about my father who was (wrongly) detained at Spring Hill POW camp in parts of 1944 and 1945.

Here is somesome background information:

I am the son of Willem Naeije, also spelled Naeye (y and ij are the same letter in Dutch), born 25 November 1916 in Axel in the Netherlands and died on 20 January 1989. My mother’s name is Jacoba Johanna Maria Naeije-Bakx, born on 15 August 1921 in ‘s-Hertogenbosch and died 4 September 2011.

During the war my father was in the resistance, first in the Netherlands and since 1943 working for the resistance in France. He was arrested in 1943 in the South of France when he was trying to leave the occupied territories , sent to several camps and prisons in France. Could escape a few times, was arrested again. In June 1944 he was liberated near Paris, where he was in hiding after he escaped from Rouen, and wanted to go to England. There was only a boat with prisoners of war and my father was given a letter by the Americans that he wanted to join the Dutch forces and that he should not be considered a prisoner of war. Unfortunately when he arrived in August/September 1944, he was sent to Camp 23 Devises and stayed there until about 6 September. The Dutch refused to come and hear him. From 6 September 1944 until about 23 November 1944 he was in Camp 185 Spring Hill, from 23 November 1944 until 5 April 1945 he was back in camp 23 Devizes and from about 5 April 1945 until 12 September 1945 he was in camp 2 Knutsford. All that time he was wrongly imprisoned in POW-camps.
You can imagine the effect this wrongful imprisonment had on my father. The treatment by the Germans, including the tortures, was nothing compared to the trauma which my father had as a result of the treatment of the Dutch authorities. All those years I have thought his was a single case. It came as a shock when people at the Dutch National Archives told me there were more cases like my father’s.

I have been given access to his file in the Dutch National Archives and it is absolutely shocking to see how he was simply ignored by the Dutch Government in exile. In his file at the Dutch National Archives I saw his POW nr: A771034. During the time in the camps he also wrote to the British authorities. I must say that the British were very supportive of him during that time and could not do much to make the Dutch Government come and screen him. On 31 August 1945 he went on hunger strike. In September 1945 he was finally screened and joined the Dutch military staff in London.

Could you tell me where the archives of the POW-camp are kept and if you have them if there is still anything about my father?

Yours sincerely

Jan Naeije