I'm looking for information about an American POW (Prisoner of War) at Stalag Luft 1 in Germany during World War II. What free records of pilots/POWS, etc. are available online?
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Sandara, I removed identifying information about individuals probably born within the last 100 years as per the guidance at genealogy.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic– user104Feb 5, 2014 at 17:52
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3 Answers
The German Red Cross also maintains a WWII tracing service that works independantly from the ICRC services. They have their own records (I confirmed this via email), which indicates that they may even in some cases have information that the ICRC doesn't.
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Michael, this has already been covered below and the service is not available at the moment.– ColinMar 15, 2014 at 8:03
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1@Colin: as it says in my answer, this is a separate service operated by the German Red Cross, they have their own staff to process requests and nothing on their website indicates that it's unavailable. But it is possible that's an oversight and they are affected by the ICRC digitalization as well. I will send them an email to clarify. Mar 15, 2014 at 13:21
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2@Colin: I have now received an answer: the DRK tracing service has its own records and is completely unaffected by the ICRC digitalization project- Mar 28, 2014 at 8:26
The International Red Cross holds a lot of information about POW's from WW2. They are currently digitising all their records. At the moment you have to make a written application for them to conduct a search and as a result the response from them can take some time. I did some research on my Father-in-law with them. It took about 3 months from when I applied to getting the answer but it added to our knowledge of his war service. See this link for more details on how to apply for the information.
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2Unfortunately the ICRC have just suspended processing of most research requests pending the completetion of the digitisation work - see icrc.org/eng/resources/documents/article/other/… for more information.– TomHFeb 6, 2014 at 15:51
According to the FamilySearch Wiki, there are a few alternatives. World War II POW Search and NARA both provide the same basic information, almost certainly based on the records held by NARA.
As there is unlikely to be more detailed information about your person of interest on line, to learn more about his time in the camp, you may find it rewarding to research it more generally -- B24.net or Merkki.com may be good starting points.