Death Certificates World War 2 (General)

by Jefff , West London, Middlesex, Sunday, February 03, 2013, 20:47 (4306 days ago) @ terry2424

Hi Terry,
you're welcome, no problems at all. As I wrote I had a suspicion you'd have known at least some of the history, but still thought the various sites might have been of interest to others if not you, plus I learned too so I'm gratefull to you and HarryBrook for that. The Red Cross website was new to me, but it seems like you've already dealt with them.

Your sad story is very interesting, thanks so much for sharing it with us. It seems ridiculous to me now but I hadnt realised that British POWs in Germany were used for working parties, I suppose my knowledge of POW camp life is too influenced by films, plus the only POW research I've attempted was my Uncle in Burma and thats a whole different situation wrt official records, or not. I've visited WW2 rocket sites in France which were built by many thousands of longsuffering slave workers including civilians from Belgium & Holland, but never a mention of British POWs.

Given the timing your Uncle was imprisoned I suspect you may never find any more "official" details, I hope not but I suppose "illness" probably appears all too often on such reports and could maybe have been used in all sorts of situations... In fact its not inconceivable such a generalism may have occurred if a WW2 Bevin boy had died in Wales, say. I also suspect that an official Death Certificate would still use the same source re Cause of Death, in this case the same source as the Red Cross, such an abnormally high number were being produced during wartime so...
That said errors can occur at anytime. When my father died in Gloster Hospital in 1992, his death certificate initially had an incorrect cause of death given strictly speaking and my mother insisted we went thro the official routes to get it ammended, to clarify that it was the specific drugs used and not the general overiding illness. So in wartime under difficult circumstances its understandable I guess that vague statements were made.

I do hope you can find out more, best wishes, Jeff.