Jerome Charles Caminada

From Brian Cooper. 16/06/2024

ON PUBLISHING OF HIS BOOK, ‘MY PURPOSE HOLDS‘, HE AND ROBERT JOHNSON ARE DESCRIBED AS THE ONLY BRITISH CIVILIANS TO ESCAPE FROM A GERMAN PRISONER OF WAR CAMP.

• Sent by The Times in May 1940 as a war correspondent to Brussels which he found in confusion, he made his way for the coast by bicycle and on foot. Arrived Boulogne where he was captured 25 May.
• Transported by ambulance, car, bus and train to Berlin over 3 days. Arrived 30 May. Route – St Omer, Cambrai, Charleville, the Ardennes, Aix-le-Chapelle [Aachen], Hannover, Berlin where he was held in a prison on Alexanderplatz. This appears to have been the Police Headquarters [Poliziepräsidium] which had previously received civilian internees detained in September 1939.
• 21 June Put on a gaol train which made daily moves from Berlin to other gaol locations. Leipzig and Bayreuth mentioned. On sixth day (26 June?) arrived Stalag XIIIA Nurnberg Langwasser; allocated POW No. 17932. [NOTE THE LOCATION OF STALAG XIIIA. THIS IS CLEARLY STAMPED ON HIS PERSONALKARTE. ]
• 28 June? Arrives Ilag XIII Wülzburg near Weissenburg. Here he meets Robert Johnson [POW No. 17487].
• September 1941 Moved to Ilag VIII at Tost – Gleiwitz [now Toszek); two days and nights by train passing through Chemnitz, Dresden and Breslau.
Volunteered to work in a sawmill on the road to Gleiwitz ca. 2 km from the camp.
After an escape attempt from the sawmill recaptured about 3 km from the main camp; sentenced to 21 days solitary confinement for the attempted escape. This was followed by 82 days segregated refinement.
• Overnight 10/11 September 1942 escaped from Ilag VIII with Robert Johnson.
Walking, Caminada, in his book, suggests that they passed by Oppeln (now Opole) until they found the River Oder where they turned southwest initially attempting to follow the river course. In turn skirted Ratibor (now Racibórz) and east of Teschen (now Cieszyn). Still walking arrived at Jablunka (sic, seems to refer to Jablunkov (German: Jablunkau) a town now in Frýdek-Místek District in the Moravian-Silesian Region of the Czech Republic).
Jumped a train transporting iron ore towards Slovakia. Finally identified a station sign which said Cadca and recognised that they were in Slovakia. The train moved on though Mosty [Mosty u Jablunkova] to a goods yard where they remained overnight. Left the by now engineless goods wagons and walked to Žilina where they jumped another train wagon filled with railway sleepers marked for Bratislava. When they judged that the train was near Bratislava left the train and walked towards the Slovakia-Hungary border. After spending a night in a straw stack, they were detained by an armed Hungarian.
In his book Caminada records the journey through Germany as taking 13 days i.e. 11 to 23 September.
The following morning turned over to the Hungarian border gendarmerie. A short train ride then took them to Komarom where they entered a multi-national detention camp masquerading as military prisoners of war. At Komárom they were visited by a representative of the Swiss Protecting Power and they, no doubt, pressed a case that they should not be held in a detention camp alongside prisoners of war held by the Hungarians.
Amongst the British POWs at Komarom they meet Reg Collins and Ted Lancaster whose path to freedom became entwined with Caminada and Johnson’s journey.
• Early December 1942, all British escapees held at Komarom moved to a camp at Siklós near the Yugoslav border.
• In January 1943, Caminada and Johnson were advised that their status as civilians, rather than as military prisoners of war, had been confirmed and that formal papers to that effect had been received by the Ministry of the Interior in Budapest.
Hungary detained escaped prisoners of war in conditions no different to those held in German prisoners of war camps while escaped civilian internees, who reached Hungary, were released to live freely in Hungary provided they did not break Hungarian laws. All efforts by the German authorities to have British prisoners of war and civilians handed over to them were rebuffed by the Hungarian Government until the Germans tightened their grip on Hungarian affairs in March 1944.
British civilians living in pre-war Hungary continued to live freely in Hungary. It is not clear to the author what happened to these civilians when the Germans tightened their grip on Hungarian affairs in 1944 but some at least were not detained by the Hungarians/Germans.
• In early February orders were issued for Caminada and Johnson to be sent to the Ministry of the Interior where they were advised that they were free to live in Budapest subject only to the need to report periodically to the police.
Living freely in Budapest was financed by funds from the Swiss Legation drawn from a British Government account left when the British Legation to Hungary had returned to the UK plus Caminada and Johnson’s earnings as English teachers. Caminada’s description of their time as teachers reads more like Hungarians able and willing enough to support British civilians in Budapest now that the fortunes of war had changed for the Germans and a desire to practice English learnt pre-war and unused for years. Life seems to have been something of a continual social whirl of activity.
Caminada and Johnson no doubt hoped that the Swiss Legation in Budapest could assist in their repatriation to the UK. Nothing ever came of such a hope.
• In May 1943 Caminada and Johnson started studying the possibility of escape from Hungary either by barge along the Danube or by train using false passports at the same time hoping that something might come from the Hungarian Government’s desire to exit the war by revoking their support for the Germans. Hope lingered on into 1944 only to be dashed, in March 1944, by the German occupation of Hungary to prevent the country’s defection for the Axis alliance and to ensure the German installation of a more pro-Nazi government in Budapest.
• After the German occupation of Hungary, Caminada and Johnson were allowed to continue living at liberty while in contrast the Germans attempted to arrest escaped prisoners of war to return them to Germany.
• Sometime in the summer of 1944 Caminada and Johnson sought and received an invitation from friends to visit Transylvania, then part of Hungary. Granted permission to travel outside Budapest this provided the opportunity to reconnoitre right up to a border crossing into Romania at Kolos (sic. Koluzs and now Cojocna, Romania) near Kolosvar (sic. Kolozsvár but now Cluj-Napoca).
Returning to Budapest, it was now early September, and a decision was taken to try to cross the border into Romania at Kolos planning from there to walk twenty kilometres to Torda, inside Romania, and from there take a train to Bucharest.
• After a day walking around in circles near Kolos, they finally reached a Romanian border post. Welcomed by locals they were put on a train the following day to Torda. Here they heard the news in German on the BBC European Service that Italy had capitulated [8 September 1943]. Moving on again a train journey of a day and a half bought them, via Brasov and Ploesti, to Bucharest and army headquarters. Sent to a villa to await a decision from the Romanians on their future, they found themselves once again under armed guard at the headquarters of the Romanian secret police.
At the headquarters of the Romanian secret police, Caminada and Johnson met Lancaster and Collins, who had separately escaped from Siklós and made their way into Romania.
• 23 September 1944 All four were taken to a school in Bucharest to join American prisoners then in Bucharest for onward transportation to a new camp in the Carpathians; the Americans being survivors of bombing raids on the oilfields and refineries at Ploesti and other infrastructure facilities.
Moved by bus via Ploesti, Sinaia, Timisul de Sus to the camp at Timisul de Jos just to the south of Brasov.; the camp being Lagărul No 18. After their experiences from 1940 in German camps perhaps Caminada and Johnson saw some truth the commandant’s view of the camp as almost hotel like.
• While Caminada and Johnson appear to have sought the assistance of the Swiss Legation in Bucharest in gaining freedom of the camp, no response was forthcoming. Thoughts again turned to the possibility of escaping the camp with the obvious direction of flight being via Bulgaria. The perceived reputation of the Bulgarians for sending any prisoner of war detained by them back towards Germany dampened enthusiasm for escape.
As in Hungary, the Romanian Government resisted all pressure from the Germans to return escaped prisoners of war to them.
• March 1944 A visit to Timisul de Jos by the Rumanian dictator Antonescu. While meeting prisoners, Caminada presented him with a letter requesting that Johnson and he be set free. No reply was received from Antonescu.
April 1944. The Americans and British launched an air campaign against the Germans in Rumania. Raids against Ploesti in August 1943 had been followed by a lull before the storm of April 1944. The raids brought a new influx of prisoners of war to Timisul de Jos.
• 13 April Believing there no hope of being moved to Bucharest and freedom, Caminada, Johnson, and four others determined on escape by digging a tunnel. By mischance they were almost immediately discovered and sentenced to 10 days confinement to rooms; the camp though had no detention facility. Some weeks later they were sent to the punishment camp at Slobozia for a month.
At some point during the stay at Slobozia D-Day occurred although the Rumanians said that the Allies had been thrown back into the sea.
• Caminada and Johnson again started to contemplate trying to get away with an attempt planned for 24 August.
After the Axis front in northeastern Romania collapsed in the face of a successful Soviet offensive, on 23 August 1944 a coup état led King Michael of Rumania, supported by several political parties, forced the resignation and arrest of the pro-Nazi government, the formation of a new government supportive of switching sides to support the Allies against Germany.
Despite the presence of a whole German army in Romania, the German Government opted to withdraw into Hungary to make their next stand against the Soviet Army’s advance into central Europe. Though the Germans withdrew through Rumania they left there normal calling card by bombing Bucharest and destroying Rumanian infrastructure as they went.
Once again Caminada and Johnson were free men.
• 29 August the prisoners held at Timisul de Jos arrived in Bucharest.
Operation Reunion. 56 B-17s were mustered for the airlift of POWs, flying into Romania in three waves of 12 bombers each, timed to arrive in Bucharest at one-hour intervals. A total of 739 POWs were repatriated on August 31st, while the remaining 393 prisoners would fly home on September 1st, including twelve ambulatory patients on stretchers.
The final stragglers who had evaded capture in Romania would be flown home on September 3rd, closing out Operation Reunion with a total of 59 Fortress sorties, 94 Lightning sorties, 281 Mustang sorties, and one C-47 sortie, repatriating a total of 1,127 Americans, 31 British airmen, two Dutch naval officers, one French soldier, and one Romanian stowaway with shaky claims to American citizenship. Back at their respective bases, half-starved POWs slowly came back to life.
• 1 September Caminada and Johnson, and other British military personnel held in Romania arrived Bari transit camp on the second day of the evacuation.
• 3 September Moved to Naples by train.
• 5 September Left Naples by sea transport; arrived in Liverpool on 14 September.
The Times 4 September 1943.
PRISONERS RELEASED FROM RUMANIA.
ARRIVAL IN ITALY.
FROM OUR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT.
BARI, SEPT.3.
After four years of captivity in Germany, Hungary, and Rumania I have just returned to allied territory in company with other prisoners flown from Bucharest in Fortresses.
About 1,100 British and American nationals were liberated after the change of Government in Rumania. Most of them were already in Bucharest but about 100 were in the Carpathians, 100 miles north of the capital. This party’s ride to freedom was made along roads filled with disarmed Germans driving northward in the hope of leaving the country. These were later taken prisoners, after Rumania’s declaration of war on Germany.
The party included Mr. Robert Johnson. Of Middleham, Yorkshire, who accompanied me from Germany, and two British sergeants who between them had made 19 escapes. They were Sergeant R.D. Collins, of the Gloucestershire Regiment, capture at Dunkirk, and Sergeant Edward Lancaster, of the Sherwood Foresters, captured in Norway.
The prisoners in the camps at Bucharest had an almost hilarious time after their release – partly a reaction from the constraint of internment and partly also, perhaps, a reaction from two days’ continuous sojourn under-ground during the murderous German bombing of Bucharest. When we left the citizens were still clearing the debris caused by these vengeance raids. On the day after the King’s proclamation the enemy dive-bombers took off from an airport so close to the city that there was no time for warnings to be given. Unopposed, the aircraft flew along the main thoroughfares and picked off the principal buildings, including the royal palace, the library, the national theatre, and many hotels and shops.
The number of persons killed was still being computed a week later. The public services were not seriously interrupted, food supplies remained adequate, and the life of the city is now returning to normal after an almost continuous siege, bombing having begun with the first allied attacks last April and culminated in the indiscriminate German attacks.
The Russians have not interfered with life in Bucharest. Increasing numbers of Russian soldiers are seen passing through the streets on British and American tanks and lorries with here and there a woman, almost indistinguishable from her comrades. One day there was a large parade of Rumanian prisoners, now fully armed, on their way to engage their new enemy, the Germans. Allied flags are flying on many buildings, and the Rumanians seem to have settled down to the new order of things.
*The forgoing is the first message received from a staff correspondent of the Times who was captured in Belgium during the German advance in 1940. After more than one attempt, he escaped from his prison camp in Germany into Hungary, and subsequently made his way into Rumania.
On return to London Caminada obtained a commission to the RNVR, in which he served from November 1944 until May 1946. During this time, he was interviewed about his escape from Germany. The report is undated but before 3 September which is the date of the earliest attached correspondence.
The UK National Archives ADM 1/30640 Report of escape of J Caminada, Correspondent of The Times (later S/Lt RNVR) from Germany and Hungary. 1945-1946
ESCAPE FROM GERMANY THROUGH HUNGARY AND RUMANIA BY JEROME CAMINADA CORRESPNDENT OF THE TIMES AND ROBERT JOHNSON, OF MIDDLEHAM, YORKSHIRE.
I was captured as a correspondent of the Times at Boulogne in May 1940, and after a short imprisonment in the Alexander Platz gaol, Berlin, I was sent to the British civilian internment camp Ilag V111, at Wulzburg, near Nuremburg.
In this camp was Robert Johnson, of Middleham, Yorks, taken prisoner while doing research in agriculture in Denmark. Johnson made an unsuccessful attempt to escape from Ilag V111 in the summer of1941 and in October 1941 we were all moved to Ilag V111, at Tost, Upper Silesia. In April 1942 I attempted to escape alone from there, having volunteered to work in a sawmill outside the camp for this purpose, but was recaptured on the same day. After serving a sentence of 103 days confinement and segregation, I planned an escape with Johnson.
In September 1942 we succeeded in getting out of our building an old asylum with stone walls and barred windows. On the night of September10 we pushed a plank out of a second floor window, about 25 feet above the ground, having cut the wire which on this window formed the bars. Johnson crawled out on the plank, above the heads of two sentries, and at the end dropped down a rope onto a brick wall about 20 feet from the building. He then jumped from the wall into the roadway. I followed him, but the plank broke, so that I began to come down inside the wall. I was able to get hold of wire running along the top of the wall, pull myself up, and drop into the street. The sentries who were at the distant ends of their beats, heard and saw nothing.
For 13 days we travelled in Germany, hiding on goods trains and walking. We followed roughly the course of the Oder flowing south east from Oderberg. We ran out of food after seven days, but kept going with fruit and occasional gifts from peasants. Once we were caught, but passed ourselves off as Italians, though we could not speak Italian.
We crossed the border into Slovakia near Teschen, hidden in a train, and travelled across Slovakia by the same method, near Bratislava we jumped off, and walked into Hungary.
In Hungary we were caught the first night in a haystack, some peasants having seen us and made a report. For 2½ months we then remained in an old fort at Komárom, on the Danube. An unpleasant collecting camp for a mixture of 17 Nationalities. As a result of protests by the Swiss in Budapest we were moved then to a punishment camp for Polish officers at Siklós, near Yugoslav border.
We learned that British civilians in Hungary were free at that time, and after our identity had been cleared through the Protecting Power the Hungarians allowed us to go to Budapest to live under police surveillance. We went there in February 1943.
Here we laid many plans to get out of the country and back to England, but none reached a point of being ready to put into operation. At one time or another we tried to get false passports, join the partisans in Yugoslavia, travel down the Danube by barge, disguise ourselves as Jews for emigration to Palestine, hide ourselves in a consignment of goods for Switzerland, and so on. Many people assisted us directly or indirectly in our plans and in our means of subsistence.
All these schemes In Budapest came to nothing, in September 1943 we left Budapest by train, against police orders, and crossed the Hungarian border on foot into Rumania, hoping to reach Turkey. In Rumania we were again caught, and after two weeks in the Secret Police H.Q. in Bucharest were sent to the camp for American airmen newly opened at Timisul de Jos in the Carpathians. Here we made two unsuccessful attempts to dig tunnels, and as punishment were sent for a month to a notorious camp for Russians at Slobozia, near the Black Sea. Johnson received a serious knee injury from Rumanian guards who attacked him when he was discovered digging the second tunnel, and could make no further attempts to escape. I was on the point of making a third effort after returning to Timisul de Jos, this time in company with an American pilot, when Rumania fell out of the war on August 24, 1944; and we were all free.
After a week in the Carpathian mountains we reached Bucharest and were flown with the American prisoners to Italy. From there we came by sea to England and I joined the R.N.V.R. in Nov 1944.
Signed Jerome Caminada.
Lieut. R.N.V.R.

Following demobilisation, Caminada rejoined The Times as a foreign correspondent.
In 1952 he published My Purpose Holds, an account of his wartime experiences.
Following the publishing of his memoir, he went back to South Africa for The Times. After a short time away from the newspaper in South Africa, he returned to The Times in 1955 first as Singapore correspondent and then from 1960 as Middle East correspondent. Returning to London in November 1965 he became Foreign News Editor. After retirement he continued to work part time for the Obituaries, Letters and Sports departments.

He died in London on 13 October 1985.

Data source: References.
1. Jerome Caminada, My Purpose Holds, published by Jonathan Cape, London, 1952.
2. Obituary for Mr Jerome Caminada, The Times 15 October 1985.
3. Report on his own liberation ‘Prisoners Released From Rumania’, The Times 4 September 1944.
4. The UK National Archives WO 416/55/345 [German Record cards of British and Commonwealth Prisoners of War and some Civilian Internees, Second World War] Jerome Charles Caminada.
5. The UK National Archives ADM 1/30640 Report of escape of J Caminada, Correspondent of The Times (later S/Lt RNVR) from Germany and Hungary. 1945-1946
6. The UK National Archives WO 361/1859 Prisoners of war, Hungary: prisoner of war camp at Siklós; report by the Swiss Legation, Budapest 1943 Jan 01 – 1943 Dec 31.
7. https://dailydosedocumentary.com/operation-reunion/ accessed 10 September 2023.