They have 150 large prison camps and five hundred small prison camps in Germany, and there are hundreds of places where the working prisoners live. The largest camps are at Guben and Czersh, where the prisoners are mostly Russians. The camps at Zossen, Wunsdorf, Nuremberg and Ratisbon are also very large.
The camps are divided into military divisions, and they are run like real military camps. The common prisoners sleep in dormitories, and they are furnished with a straw mattress, a pillow and colored bed covers. The men must keep their own beds clean, and they are compelled to take a bath every day. Many of the prisoners are employed around the camp, some of them helping in the cooking and the baking. In a camp of 10,000 prisoners it is no easy task to get the meals ready.
The prisoners, especially on the east front, are compelled to be vaccinated against cholera, typhoid and small-pox, and every prisoner must be disinfected for lice and fleas, even his clothes. Every Russian prisoner must have his head shaved. Prisoners are employed as barbers.
A Street in Ruhleben, the English Prison Camp.
Every prisoner is allowed to write four postcards and two letters each month, and these letters are censored. All prisoners except the Russians receive many packages from their homes. In the Stuttgart camp, where the soldiers are mostly English and French, the twenty-four hundred prisoners receive on an average seventeen thousand packages each month. Every package is censored. No alcoholic drinks are allowed to be sent, and also no cartoons that would be offensive to the Germans.
Russian Prisoners Receiving Bread.
The English and French prisoners receive spending money from their families, and most of them are never without spending money for tobacco and beer. It goes much harder with the Russians whose families are too poor to send anything. That is one reason why the Russian prisoners are anxious to work.
Most of the Russian prisoners are employed in carrying the ashes out of the apartment houses, and the big burly fellows lift the great iron cans as though they were made of paper. These men are quite free, and they run their wagons without a guard. They are very well behaved, attending strictly to their own business and speaking to no one. It is verboten for the German people to speak to them, so of course they do not do it. The working Russian prisoners wear their soldier uniform, a brown coat, brown corduroy trousers and a brown cap with a green band. They have a black stripe sewed around their sleeve. This shows they are prisoners.