A number of readers have asked questions about the internment of German Jews by England during World War II. It does seem so cruel to take people who had just escaped from Germany for being Jewish and imprison them for being German, but war does bring out the worst in human nature. In our own American history, there are many examples, including the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II for no reason other than their Japanese roots.

To answer some of the questions and to provide links to more information, I am providing a link back to a post I published almost four years ago when I first learned about the English internment of German Jews. I hope this post and the links it includes will answer some of those questions.  It only addresses the internment on the Isle of Man, only one of the many places where England sent “enemy aliens.”

https://brotmanblog.com/2016/09/21/imprisoned-on-the-isle-of-man/

In addition, for more information in general about the internment of enemy aliens, here are some other links:

Enemy Aliens scholarly article

https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ww2peopleswar/timeline/factfiles/nonflash/a6651858.shtml

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/aug/12/shining-a-light-on-the-enemy-aliens-of-the-second-world-war

This article was sent to me by another reader. It is a contemporary news report from The London Times of May 17, 1940.

There are many other articles and websites devoted to this topic, which is too large for me to do justice to on the blog. I hope this will help those who are interested find some of the answers to their questions.