[Texas]. [World War II]

[Manuscript Friendship Album of a German Prisoner of War in Texas During World War II]

Huntsville, Tx. 1944-1945. [84]pp. Primarily in German. Quarto. Brown cloth album with leather corners and snap closure. Manuscript initials on front cover. Corners lightly worn. Contents evenly toned. Very good. Item #6431

A rare friendship album kept by Franz Kozian, a German prisoner of war at the POW camp in Huntsville, Texas. The album contains over seventy-five entries from fellow incarcerated soldiers, all of them lengthier than just an autograph. Many of them include lengthy expressions of friendship or quotations from famous German-language authors, such as one that copies out the text of Rilke's poem "Herbst" ("Autumn") with the illustration of a tree with falling red leaves. Most of the entries also include details of the internees' home towns and other camps they've been in. At the end of the album is a detailed list of fellow prisoners with their home addresses. By the end of World War II, there were over 425,000 enemy prisoners on U.S. soil, and Texas had twice as many POW camps as any other state due to space and climate. The Geneva Convention specifies that prisoners must be kept in a climate similar to that of where they were captured, and Texas was considered similar to northern Africa, resulting in a serious influx. The present item seems to be a relatively unusual survival from the POW camps, and is quite detailed in its contents. A valuable research tool for this unusual chapter of American military history.

Price: $2,500.00