Postal History exhibit, one frame
Italian Prisoners of War in Egypt, 1941-1946
The mail of Italian prisoners held in the Egyptian camps 304 to 310, and the service that carried it.
The exhibit
The Western Desert campaign of 1940 and 1941 put about 130,000 Italian soldiers into British hands. Egypt was where they were first held, in seven camps numbered 304 to 310, from Helwan to Suez.
The Geneva Convention of 1929 fixed what each prisoner could send: a card home within a week, free postage at both ends, and a central agency in a neutral country. The exhibit follows the service built around those rules, from February 1941 to May 1946, five years in all.
No census of the Egyptian camp handstamps or their censor series has been published. The exhibit records the 308 and 305 camp marks for the first time and seventeen P/W Middle East censor numbers, sixteen of them new.
Plan of the exhibit
| Chapter | Pages | |
|---|---|---|
| I | Notification of capture | 2-4 |
| II | Correspondence outward | 5-11 |
| III | Mail inward | 12-13 |
| IV | The same places, other senders | 14 |
| V | The close of the service | 15-16 |