Like so many British and Commonwealth prisoners of war who ended up in Carinthia, Private Norman Barton of the Royal Army Ordnance Corps was captured by German forces in Greece in late April of 1941. After transiting POW camps in Kalamata, Corinth and Salonika, Norman was transferred to Stalag 18A in Wolfsberg in June 1941 and subsequently assigned to work camps in Knittelfeld and Zeltweg (both in Styria) and then to two work camps in Carinthia.
According to his military record, Norman was an inmate of work camps at Radenthein (10105 GW) from 22 October 1941 until 29 November 1942, where he worked on road making, and Gummern (11088 GW) from 10 December 1942 until 8 May 1945, possibly working on repairing damaged railways.
In his personal oral account of his time as prisoner of war, written up by his wife Kathleen, Norman recounted:
Had to work, repairing bombed railway track. Also, quarry at top of mountain – helped around the quarry area. The mineral mined was used for German steelworks in Germany. Another job was large stones unloaded from rail wagons to put along riverbank.… Camp Commandant was an old Austrian, who had been forced into German Army – he was very understanding with POWs.
The Unit interpreter was in British Army … spoke fluent German. … He also had a camera and got reels from somewhere and took photographs of P.O.W. unit.
The “Red Cross” took photographs of camp inmates “in groups” — to prove they were still at the camp. The “Red Cross” also provided uniforms and clothing.
The jobs Norman describes above would have been typical of the work done by prisoners of war at the Radenthein or Gummern work camps. Radenthein was the location of the “Magnesitwerke Radenthein”, where magnesite was mined for use in producing refactories for steelmaking, while Gummern, just to the south, is very close to the railway and the river.
Son Norman believes that the camp commandant who was “very understanding” with POWs may have been called Hugo. Norman inherited one, possibly two photos of Hugo – one a portrait with “Hugo” written on the back, and one showing a uniformed railway employee who looks very like the Hugo in the other photograph, with some works in the background that have been identified as the “Österreichischen Chemischen Werke“ (ÖCW) or Austrian Chemical Works, in Weißenstein, which is just down the road from Gummern.
Son Norman would dearly like to identify Hugo’s family and descendants to express his thanks and gratitude to them for the kindness and consideration Hugo showed his father and the other prisoners of war under his command.
We would love to hear from anybody who recognises Hugo in the photos above and may be able to put us in touch with his descendants, on behalf of Norman and wife Debbie. Just drop us an email, perhaps with a phone number, and we’ll be in touch.
Finally, below are two more photos from Norman’s collection. The first, one of those photos mentioned above courtesy of the Red Cross, was taken on New Year’s Day 1944 at Work Camp 11088 GW Gummern, and Norman is (probably) second from the right in the second row.
The second photo, below, is highly unusual in a number of respects. The group of Austrian soldiers and two women can only be some kind of musical formation, perhaps even a camp choir, with the commanding officer in the centre. Sadly, there is no date or location noted on the photo, so it could have been at any of the work camps Norman was assigned to. It seems unlikely that an Austrian Army musical group would perform for an audience of prisoners of war and share photos with them, so why does Norman have a copy? We’d be very grateful for any ideas.
