Fall 2026 Militaria and Aviation Auction
Lot 227E:
Description
RARE Stalag Luft I (Barth) POW Newsletter 1 of 1 – "Barth Hard Times" Liberation Issue & 1944 Carol Service. Two camp-printed relics from Stalag Luft I at Barth on the Baltic: the last issue of the kriegie newspaper and a handwritten Christmas service for 1944. Barth Hard Times, Vol. 1 No. 1 LAST 1, Saturday 5 May 1945, price one D-bar. Banner RUSSKY COME! A Soviet tank packed with grinning POWs rolls through the wire-"WHAT D’YE KNOW-JOE!!"-drawn as Lowell Bennet of INS saw the relief. Inside: Colonel Hubert Zemke will not write a farewell because he has "taken a powder" to treat with the Russians; Major Braithwaite and Sgt. Korson meet Uncle Joe five miles south of camp; the Kommandant walks away at 1 a.m. on 30 April and leaves the compound to the prisoners; toasts at the gate, Hitler pictures in the gutter, cake the burghers would not sell to the SS. Editor F/L E.R. Inkpen, publisher 1st Lt. D. MacDonald. Camp papers of this kind were printed in handfuls and burned or left behind; only two or possibly three copies of this last (and only) number are recorded.
With it, Stalag Luft-1 Barth Germany / A Carol Service for Christmas Day 1944-padre Capt. the Rev. H.A.M. Mitchell of Dunedin, New Zealand; choir of thirty, orchestra of fifteen, conductor Charles Grisdale. Lessons and carols written out by hand: O Little Town, The First Nowell, Hark the Herald, We Three Kings, the bidding, the collect, the benediction. Paper thin, pencil and ink, the work of men who still expected another winter behind the wire.
Newspaper with fold wear and a small loss at the lower edge; carol book complete and legible. The last laugh of Barth and the Christmas they kept before the Russians came.
Share this lot:
