User:Pratclif/Pg wodehouse at Tost

BBC Four broadcasted on 25 March 2013, a film under the title "PG.Woodhouse in Exile". The film is a piece of entertainment and romance based on the life of PG.Woodhouse, his exile, his short time as an internee in Germany and his broadcasts from Germany after his liberation from Tost on 21 June 1941 before he reached 60 years .... I understand the making of this film, but that as a descendant of men who were interned there, knowing their sufferings, and in contact with some of them still alive today more than 90 years old, I feel compelled to recall the facts to which this romance film refers to. These were facts of total war, servitude and suffering that cannot be minimized nor forgotten. In the circumstances, as in real life, not all men behaved bravely and with altruism to their fellow prisoners. Several of his co-internees that I have interviewed believe that PG Wodehouse did not behave correctly after he was liberated, was welcomed by the Germans in Berlin, stayed there in a [luxury hotel] provided by the Nazis, had his wife join him from Paris, and gave radio broadcasts to America not yet at war with Germany and to Britain.

I am a descendant - now French - of one of the many British soldiers of WW I who stayed in France after the war, married French girls and had children. I am also the author of a book of reference on British civilians who were arrested in France in July and August 1940, after the armistice signed by Pétain on June 22 1940. Because Britain remained at war with Germany, British civilians who had not escaped to Britain but remained in France, were arrested and interned at Ilag8 (Civilian Internment Camp), in Tost Upper Silesia, now Tozek in Poland. Most of them, remained interned until their liberation by the allied forces in April-May 1945.

After the broadcast, I spoke with ex-prisoners of Tost who are still alive, about PG.Wodehouse and his broadcasts from Berlin after his liberation in June 1941. Their assessment of PG.Woodhouse was that he was a traitor. The kindest said he was only trying to make himself popular, being a well known humorist and novelist. PG.Wodehouse was certainly not aware that his broadcasts were being listened by his fellow prisoners left behind in Iflag8. Based on these interviews, my view is that the film broadcast on 25 March 2013 by BBC4, unduly sweetens these dark circumstances of his life.

When her majesty Queen Elizabeth II conferred knighthood to PG.Wodehouse 1958, as author and novelist, he didn't come to Britain to receive the honor. Why? He probably feared having to face the committee of former prisoners who were waiting to remind him of his odious behavior on the Nazi radio in 1941. PG.Wodehouse died a few months later having never returned to his home country after the war.

Regretfully, I have not been able to see the film in its entirety because of restrictions to viewing BBC4 outside Britain. I only saw the trailer on You Tube, and many English friends have given me their sentiment. After many years of extensive documentary research for my book, whose object is to honor the men who suffered in these dark times, I can provide useful factual information. For example in the trailer sequence which shows the arrival of PG.Wodehouse at Tost, four mistakes cast doubt on the film's veracity. One: the camp at Tost where the buildings still exist and that I visited with my father, was not surrounded by barbed wire but by a tall red brick wall. Two: the prisoners arrived at the camp at night, not in daytime. They wore the clothes they had on the day of their arrest in July 1940, that is to say light clothes, not overcoats. Three: The men who were interned at the fortress of Huy in Belgium, were not just a few prisoners as shown in the film; they were 624 men, having been arrested in Belgium and in the departments of Nord and Pas-de-Calais of France.

I am still in contact with three very elderly prisoners of Tost who knew PG.Wodehouse there; they still live in the places where they were arrested in July 1940: one lives near Boulogne-sur-Mer, the second near Dunkirk and the third near Lille. They are more than 90 years of age. The BBC may interview myself and these survivors to provide counter information on PG.Wodehouse as a supplement to the film; this could be in the form of a news clip, a reaction to the film by witnesses that lived the circumstances.

The first edition of my book - 'LES OUBLIÉS DE 39-45. LA RAFLE DES BRITANNIQUES' is currently out of stock, but a second edition with additions will be available shortly. In this second edition I have recorded the names of 2,300 ex-internees, ie. 375 more than in the first edition.