Life Behind Barbed Wire: The Secret World War II Photographs of Angelo M. Spinelli

by Angelo Spinelli, Angelo Spinelli

Sergeant Angelo Spinelli was captured in North Africa by the Germans on Valentine's Day, 1943, and shipped to Stalag IIIB near Furstenburg, Germany. Using cigarettes obtained from the Red Cross, Spinelli bribed a camp guard to procure a Voitlander camera and film. Life behind Barbed Wire
features photographs Spinelli took during his time in prison camp. Of the more than one thousand photographs Spinelli risked his life to take, more than one hundred appear in this book. The remarkable photographs, enhanced by Lewis H. Carlson's explanatory text, feature prisoners trading with the
guards' combating ticks, lice, and other vermin, preparing meager rations on ingenious cooking contraptions, fighting off boredom by playing baseball, soccer, and football, putting on musical and dramatic theatre presentations, and worshiping in a chapel the prisoners themselves built. These
snapshots give us a window on camp life, where catastrophe was normal and normalcy was often catastrophic. In addition, there are dramatic shots of liberation from Stalag IIIA, where Spinelli and some thirty-eight thousand other Allied prisoners had been moved during the final months of the war.
Mounted as a traveling exhibit by the National Prisoner of War Museum in Andersonville, Georgia, 92 of these photographs are currently on display at the Italian American Museum in New York City.

Genres: History, War, Nonfiction

240 pages, Hardcover

Published February 19, 2004

Reviews

[Deeann Hendricks · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing that this gentleman was able to capture pictures during his POW days. My dad was captured at the same time and survived some of the same camps. He never spoke of his POW days but this book provided me with a picture of his life at that time. ❤️

[Drew MacGregor · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not a long book but a fascinating look at life in one POW camp. I had never seen the pictures before.

[Mmfniteowl · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting. I got the impression that these victims were treated much better than most concentration camp persons.

[Hannah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Aunt Jill let me borrow this bookof pictures and narrative from prison camp Stalag 3B in Germany during WWII. I found it fascinating reading Angelo Spinelli's narrative of his experiences as an American POW. All the pictures in the book are his pictures, taken with his various cameras, in prison! I found this book especially cool because Aunt Jill's father, Dick Gray, was a POW in the same camp as A. Spinelli and even got his name in the book!

[Judy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've read nearly every book I've found on POWs but never knew that Angelo Spinelli took over 1000 photos while in one of the Stalags in Germany during WWII. Incredible photos of their way of life and they're finally in a museum.