POW notification cards to the Red Cross
This is a card given to new captured POWs by the Germans to enable them to inform the Red Cross in Geneva of their capture. This card dated the 12th of June 1944 was used by a Canadian Private Moffatt who had been captured on the previous day.
I only collect items with a Canadian connection and this is the first of these cards I have seen. Only about 9,000 Canadian POW s were held by the Germans so these specific ones used by Canadians must be fairly uncommon. However there must have been many, many more used by other Allied POWs.
My main question is
How did this card come to be in the public domain. Did the Red Cross dispose of their holdings at some time after the war and of so how. Moffatt’s family in Canada were not aware of it existence?
Also are these cards common for other nationalities?
As a point of interest, I was impressed by how relatively quickly the information that Moffatt had been captured was sent to Canada and to his family.
I assume that the red date stamps on the card are all from the Red Cross. The earliest is for the 4th of July. Moffatt’s family had been notified by telegram on the 8th of July that he was missing. Only 8 days later, on the 15th they had another telegram saying that the Red Cross had notified the Canadians that he was a POW.
John Cranmer