For Our Prisoners

For our Prisoners is a stenographic recording of Dr Živko Topalovi's lecture on the circumstances which faced Serbian prisoners of war in Austria-Hungary 1914-1918.

Dr Topalovi himself was captured in 1914. and was in a POW camp until an exchange in 1917. During this period, he became active as an informal representative of the Red Cross in trying to improve the situation of Serbs in Austro-Hungarian concentration camps.

The lecture was given before the Serbian Red Cross society members on Corfu, where the Serbian government in exile and civil society continued to function after the Central Powers' overwhelming invasion in 1915.

As an eyewitness account of the state of affairs in the massive Austro-Hungarian concentration camp system (30 major and 300 camps in total), Dr Topalovi's testimony is one of the amazing first-hand accounts of survivors about the conditions they faced in a country which did not respect their rights guaranteed by the Hague conventions and which was suffering acute economic downturn and famine towards the end of the war.

Dettagli