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Being Jamaica, life in the Camp was reasonably placid. One seaman wrote "Now every
prisoner receives from Germany regular payments in English currency, we have plenty of
smokes and extra foodn. Morale in the Camp was stated to be good, mainly due the efforts
efforts of the German Camp Supervisor, Captain Fritz von Witte, monotony excepted. There
were, however, sports facilities and books, another internee stated "The time which I
must waste here will not be quite lost ; I am working through various agricultural text
books and refreshing the knowledge I haven. {the writer was an African planter}. This
internee continued "I am also busy with language studies . The Captain gives Spanish
lessons, whilst an officer held classes on mathematics and preparatory studies for the
school of navigation. In the evenings, when it is cooler, we play handball and footba ll .
I was allowed to order the local paper . n

The prisoners were allowed to produce their own newspaper, parts of two issues are
extracted below : -

"LAGERBLATTn, The Voice of the Month - Internment Camp, Jamaica, December 1941 .

CHRISTMAS!

Christmas! Which one of us did not feel happiness, from earliest days, at the approach
of this most beautiful of all German feasts! Who can't remember with pleasure the
sharing out of presents under the Christmas tree, in close family circle! Even if we
come from different provinces of our Fatherland and belong to different professions, we
still share this dear memory : Christmas at home! We feel in festive mood ----

LOOKING BACK .

No time i s more suitable for going over past events than the end of the year . All over
the world, wherever newspapers are printed, the main events of the past year are given
more or less extensive coverage; so let us also be true to this journalistic principle ,
and run through the most important events in the life of our camp.
Just over a year ago, at the beginning of December 1940, the camp population increased
mightily . From the West Coast of Africa came some 450 palefaces, half of them Germans
who had been domiciled on the dark continent, the other half Italians who had homes in
Nigeria and the Gold Coast. As soon as these "Africansn (the word was quickly coined!}
had settled in, we had a further increase, the crews of IDARWALD and RHEIN. That was in
the days when you saw the Africans every morning on their way to some early drinking .
They met so that they could, under strict supervision, have a Bitter in the great dining
room. There was only one drawback: It tasted too much of quinine . On Christmas Eve we
all joined together for the first time, for a small and cosy Christmas celebration . And
the change into the New Year was exactly like the change from day to day : Very quite, and
certainly very dry!

Following month we had a visitor, Dr . Hofmann of the YMCA (This was Dr. Conrad Hoffmann
of the War Prisoners' Aid YMCA, then 347 Madison Ave ., New York) who took photographs and
--- took care that we had food, sports equipment

[There then follows two paragraphs relating to a play the prisoners produced and a l i st
of part of the cast . ]

"LAGERBLATTn, July 1943, Internment Camp, Jamaica .
In the Spring of 1943, 400 internees built an ideal football field, lOlm by 66m; a lOOm
track; and a nearly horizontal circular running track (344m} with raised curves. They
used 20 mattocks, 10 pickaxes, 14 large and 14 small spades , 5 shovels , 5 rakes ; and for
transport; buckets , 2 wheelbarrows , 1 two-wheel cart and an old car chassis covered with
corrugated tin. There had been a lot of doubt and derision on the lines of "No chance -
no volunteers in this camp!n But the doubters were proved wrong after only 28 days.
Voluntary discipline, consideration for others , waiving of privileges for the love of
sport did the trick . They had a musical evening to celebrate and felt very proud .

[There then followed four paragraphs on a hockey match played between the prisoners
and their guards - attended by the Camp Commandant and all his staff and a few ladi es
and a two paragraph long account by a German prisoner of his voyage across the Atlantic.]