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Turkish Red Crescent to deliver letters written 100 years ago by prisoners of war
Turkish Red Crescent to deliver letters written 100 years ago by prisoners of war
The Turkish Red Crescent hopes to deliver thousands of letters that were penned by prisoners of war some 100 years ago to their original addressees. Click through for Zeynep Bilgehan's story in photos...
In its archives, the Red Crescent has 30,000 undelivered letters written by prisoners of wars and a total of 308,645 index cards for prisoners from both sides: The Ottoman army and soldiers from the Allied forces.
Over a time span from the Balkan War until the Independence War, some 300,000 Ottoman soldiers were taken as prisoners.
The Red Crescent, founded in 1868, is now planning to deliver those letters to their recipients some 100 years later.
Working under the umbrella of an international body, the Red Crescent established a special “Commission for Prisoners” in 1912 that was charged with the task of mediating the communication between the prisoners of war - both foreign soldiers held by the Ottoman Empire and Ottoman soldiers taken captive by the Allied powers - and their relatives.
During WWI, the commission worked closely with the Ottoman Empire’s Ministry of War and personnel from other countries’ Red Cross associations.
It exchanged information and documents regarding the prisoners with the U.K., Russia, France and Greece. Index cards for prisoners were created with the information obtained from the Ministry of War and information gathered through visits made to prisoner camps by Red Crescent teams.
During war time the Red Crescent worked to make sure that letters written by the prisoners were delivered to their recipients. However, some 30,000 of those letters did not reach their intended addressees.
“Those letters could not be delivered for certain reasons. Sometimes the recipients could not be found, while in other instances the letters could not be delivered because of the difficulties stemming from the war. Now, we are trying to make up for this and deliver those letters,” said İbrahim Altan, the general manager of the Red Crescent.
He noted that the Red Crescent has launched the “Prisoner Index Cards and Letters Transcript Project” to meet the demand from researches and people who are looking for relatives that were taken prisoners in war.
Those letters kept in the archives document the agonies of prisoners and tell a lot about life in prison camps, Altan said, adding that they need help and resources to have those documents translated.
“Your Highness, I have been kept as prisoner for three years. I have not yet received a single letter from home and I cannot possibly describe how sorrowful that is. I kindly implore you to provide me with information regarding my father Süleyman Ağa to the address below,” Hacı Dede, who was kept in the Indochina Shwebo Prison Camp, wrote in 1916. Hacı Dede penned it for his family in Ankara.
This would be one of the letters to be delivered to its recipients more than 100 years after.
“We have finally reached his family and visited his village. However, we figured that he had returned from the camp alive. He arrived home even before his letter,” Altan said.
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