1914-1918

Prisoners of the First World War, the ICRC archives

Archives 1914-1918: during the First World War, 10 million people, servicemen or civilians, were captured and sent to detention camps.

The belligerent countries involved provided lists of prisoners to the ICRC, which created an index card for each prisoner and detainee. Now, you can search through all 5 million of them.

Read more... What is available online?

What is available online?

All individual ICRC records relating to the First World War (prisoner's index files and their associated lists) have been digitized and are now directly accessible on this site.

  Nevertheless, some imperfections remain in the indexing of certain lists, such as the references contained in the civilian internees' registers of the Central Powers, for example. These errors will be corrected as soon as our technical capabilities and resources become available.

  Thank you for your patience and understanding.

Search for

Employee in the archives

Learn about the prisoner-of-war and internment camps

through the ICRC historical archives

Postcards

The ICRC published postcards during the war containing pictures of camps in France, Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Germany, United Kingdom, British Empire and Italy.

Life in prisoner-of-war and internment camps

Some camps have been inspected by ICRC or Protecting Powers delegates. See their reports.

Accounts

Accounts, letters sent to the ICRC, notices of death and other historical records

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