WW1 Internment Camp at Knockaloe

[loo]

my dear research friends, is it interned or interred?
Siri Galliano

So glad you asked, although I am late getting back to you. 
It's INTERNED.
Interred refers to burials.
I wish everyone could get this straight, as it makes searches tedious.  I'd be thrilled if a mod could possibly go through and change the references that erroneously used the word "interned" to refer to buials, as there are a lot of them!

[victorsj]

Hi, we are still trying to find anything at all about my husband's grandfather - we know that he was german and was interned in Knockaloe.  I have heard back from the Swiss Red Cross and in spite of giving a camp personal ID number they say that they have no information about him. His surname was either Herold or he sometimes used Rolf-Herold. Does anybody have any ideas at all? - He never came back to Manchester to be with grandma - we are not sure where he could have gone to from the camp - was he put onto a ship to go somewhere?. There is no information at the cemetery at Cannock about a burial - and we think that he may have been Jewish.
This was during WW1.
Anything at all would be most gratefully received. Thanks

[loo]

That's very disappointing, that the Red Cross could not help you.  The likelihood is that he was sent back to Germany.  You can read about how this worked if you would look at the bibliography I posted. You will need to do some reading to educate yourself so that you will be able to think of possible ways of getting around this conundrum.
I have never found out what happened to my person either, and it's possible you will not be able to trace him.
Have you tried the Anglo-German Family History Society?
There was at least one shipload who were sent back only to have the ship sink, so that was the end of them, and I have never heard that there were any records of that shipload that survived.
Are there any other persons in England with the same surname, on the census or later BMDs?  If so, I would follow them up for clues.  There is also a German-English genealogical site where you can post inquries.  I don't remember the name of the latter, but somenone else might.  I think it is a Geram site, ending in "dot-de".  I found some of my other German family through it.
There is also the Jewish Genealogical Society, which has a website.  It would have information on people with this surname who may have died later, in the Holocaust, for instance, and there are names-interests lists as well.

[victorsj]

Thank you so much for your very informative and prompt reply.  It has been very helpful.  I will let you know if I come up with anything. Bye and regards

[loo]

Thank you so much for your very informative and prompt reply.  It has been very helpful.  I will let you know if I come up with anything. Bye and regards

You're very welcome. I hope you get somewhere.
Just for encouragement, with my other German family, who were not interned but were hard to trace, I eventually discovered that all the people with the same surname who had come to London in the late 19th century were all part of the same family (although all modern descendants denied any knowledge of this).  It was because I hypothesized this link that I was eventually able to find the family in Germany, and prove it.

[stebo]

I am doing some research into a Hungarian man, Oszkár János Rausch, born in Budapest on 22 May 1884 (he claimed). He lived in the UK from about 1910 under the name Oscar John Raush, and was the manager of an early film company called Selsior in London from about 1912 to 1914. Then during the First World War he was interned as an enemy alien in Knockaloe camp on the Isle of Man. His prisoner number may have been 21684, but that might be another Rausch. I cannot trace him after the First World War. I am wondering if he stayed in Britain, returned to Hungary or went somewhere else. Perhaps he worked in the film industry again? I just don't know. Would anyone have any information on him?
(I have been in touch with the Manx Museum and will also contact sources in Austria and Germany.)
 
Stephen Bottomore (London)

[annfrances]

Hello  I am wondering if anyone can help me I am looking for my German born Great Great grandfather who was Rudolph Bischoff(Bishop) born around 1866. I was informed by the Red Cross that he was interned in Stobbs POW Camp May 1914 and they have no other infomation. I have read that civilians was then taken to Knockloe on the Isle of Man in 1916. I am not sure if he was one of them I have come to a dead end and have no idea what happened to him after Stobbs, not sure if  he died or was put on a ship out of UK. I know he came to LIverpool from Berlin Germany and married my GG Granmother 1898 and had seven children my grandfather being one of them, My mum has only just found out that her grandfather was German as he was never spoken about by her father who was only eight years old when  his father Rudolf was taken away. My mum is now 79 and is wanting to know as much about her grandfather as possible I have requested infomation from Kew Archive but have been informed that the text is not readable any infomation would be appriciated

[loo]

You must be very disappointed that neither TNA nor Red Cross could solve your problem re Bischoff.
The name rings a bell somehow, but I searched my records and couldn't find it anywhere.
There is someone here at rootschat who has posted something about someone else with the same surname, in Yorkshire - http://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php/topic,283590.0.html

If I were in your situation, and I was determined to solve the situation, this is what I would do:

I would read all the info I could find on the subject of WW1 internments and deportations, and see if that leads me to anything useful.  See my bilbiography elsewhere on this site.

Ask the Anglo-German Family History Society to run a search for you in their records, if you have not already done this.  You may need to join, and to pay a fee.  You can also post inquiries in their newsletter.

I would research anyone and everyone with the same surname, at least the German spelling, who shows up in the UK in the late 19th/early 20th centuries; if not there, then I would look at other countries which received German immigrants by that name in that time period.  I would be looking for clues that they may have come from the same family, and if I couldn't find that,

I would be looking for living descendants to interview.  Usually more than one person would leave home, from what I can make out.  This latter quest proved to be the key that unlocked my own family.  If I had not done that, I would never have solved the mystery, as the clue that really worked was actually my ancestor's uncle, which I did not know he was at the time.  Bear in mind that a lot of people left Germany intending to go to America or beyond, but did not get there, as they ran out of money or married in England and got stuck there; but their other family members may have gotten further.

Lastly, there is a German-English genealogy site where you can post inquiries.  I have lost track of what it is called, but it is bilingual, and you can give it a shot.  I believe the URL ends in .de as opposed to co.uk etc  Hopefully someone else remembers what it is called.  In my case, after I had pursued the course of action in my previous parragraph, I was able to identify a possible link on the German archival "auswanderer" records online, and then was able to find what looked like same person in online parish records, which gave me the ability to construct a genealogy for that one individual (although it did not include my ancestor).  When this was posted on the bilingual site, we got a response right away from a close relative in Germany!  You may need a little help from someone who can decipher a little German, if you cannot, in order to do these things.

Odds are that he somehow returned to Germany.  It was not at all unusual for families to be broken up on this account.  No one wanted to let on that they were German ancestry any time in the 20th century in Britain as far as I can figure out. 

[annfrances]

Thank you very much for all the infomation and advice. I will look up other people with the name Bischoff hopefully i will find more infomation on my gg grandad  I will defenaitly join as a member on the German Anglo site.