THE ISLAND OF EXTRAORDINARY CAPTIVES

A World War II tale about how panic, fear, and xenophobia led to a drastic governmental policy in the U.K.

Drawing on copious unpublished and archival material, British journalist Parkin has produced a richly detailed history of the internment of thousands of men and women because of their German or Austrian ancestry. Many had fled to England as refugees from Nazi Germany, and the vast majority were Jewish. Though they had become productive, upstanding members of their communities, “jingoism and hatred,” stoked by the media, became justification for the new policy. “Instead of taking an enlightened lead,” writes the author, “the government now used public opinion as justification for strict measures.” Parkin focuses on Hutchinson, on the Isle of Man, which housed some 2,000 men from the time it opened in July 1940 and whose inmates included artists, musicians, fashion designers, architects, academics, and writers. “It was as if a tsunami had deposited a crowd of Europe’s prominent men onto this obscure patch of grass in the middle of the Irish Sea,” writes the author. Officials ran the camp as humanely as possible, and the inmates worked to make it a community. They gave theater and music performances, set up cafes, started a newspaper, and conducted classes, especially for the younger men whose schooling had been disrupted. Among those younger men was Peter Fleischmann, whose story exemplifies the inconsistencies—indeed, the absurdity—of the policy of internment. An orphan who had come to the U.K. on the Kindertransport, he was at first seen as no threat to national security. Nevertheless, he was later arrested, and six weeks after the camp opened, he arrived at Hutchinson. His experiences there changed the course of his future. Parkin also chronicles the policy shift that eventually freed about half of the internees by the spring of 1941. “Historical ignorance and bedrock xenophobia” led to a “panic measure” that, Parkin warns, reverberates in contemporary treatment of asylum seekers.

A vivid recounting of a shameful event that still resonates.