{"id":3014,"date":"2011-07-07T21:21:37","date_gmt":"2011-07-07T20:21:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kennethwoods.net\/blog1\/?p=3014"},"modified":"2011-07-07T21:22:20","modified_gmt":"2011-07-07T20:22:20","slug":"hans-gals-time-in-the-british-internment-camps-during-world-war-ii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kennethwoods.net\/blog1\/2011\/07\/07\/hans-gals-time-in-the-british-internment-camps-during-world-war-ii\/","title":{"rendered":"Hans Gal’s time in the British internment camps during World War II"},"content":{"rendered":"

Whenever I play or conduct the music of Hans Gal, I get asked a lot of questions about his experiences during World War II. As part of the Bobby and Hans project, we thought it would be good to gather some of the excellent web resources in one place to help readers understand more about Gal’s time in internment. The Gal family escaped to the UK in 1938, and moved several times within the country over the next 20 or so months, settling finally in Edinburgh, where Gal was arrested in 1940 as part of the UK government’s rounding up of all German-born males.<\/p>\n

Of course, the official Hans Gal Society website<\/a> is the best place to start when looking for biographical information on the composer. Gal’s internment experience is covered in a dedicated page of his biography here.<\/a><\/p>\n

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In all about 27,000 ‘enemy aliens’ were interned, including Jewish refugees, the group who, ironically, had the most reason to be on the side of the allies against Nazi Germany. The policy was, of course, motivated by the desire to control potentially dangerous enemies, but that it affected not just genuine Nazis but also those who were fleeing from them, and indeed incarcerated both together indiscriminately, can only be seen as not merely unwarranted, but also a serious misjudgement.<\/p>\n

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The camp on the Isle of Man where Gal was interred<\/p><\/div>\n

G\u00e1l, along with all the other Edinburgh refugees, was arrested on Whit Sunday, in May, 1940, and first accommodated in a disused hospital. After an uncomfortable few days, they were transferred to a camp at Huyton near Liverpool. A month later they were moved to Douglas, on the Isle of Man. The company included many of the most distinguished intellectuals, and it did not take long for a camp ‘university’ to be established, with lectures, study groups, and the like. Some of the internees thrived on the rich intellectual diet; G\u00e1l, too, found the company stimulating, but the experience was far from pleasant, given the deprivations of life as an internee and above all their total powerlessness in the face of mindless and petty bureaucracy, that appeared not to have understood the difference between Nazis and ‘refugees from Nazi oppression’. He was also cut off from news of the war, and for weeks on end had no idea of the fate of his eldest son Franz, who had been taken into internment at the same time, but then immediately separated from him. His anxiety became panic with the torpedoing in the Irish Sea of the\u00a0SS Arandora Star<\/a>,\u00a0<\/em>a ship carrying refugees, which was en route for Canada, as it was possible that Franz might be aboard. He also contracted a skin disease in the camp, which became so bad that he had to spend several weeks in the camp hospital and was eventually released early.<\/p>\n

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