* Prisoner of War

[Johnr65]

There appears to be no 'fact type' for POW's? Should it be put under 'imprisonment?'

[Jane]

I might be tempted to put it under occupation and customise the sentence for the fact and add an explanatory note. Another option could be a set of Residence Facts detailing the camp details.

[LornaCraig]

It may depend on how much information you have. But I would't call it 'imprisonment' because at first glance that makes it sound as if the individual was a criminal in jail.

If all I know is that someone was a POW in a particular camp for a particular period, I have included this information in a note relating to their military service. So if you already use a custom fact for military service it could go in a note to that fact. Otherwise record the military service as an occupation and make a note against the occupation fact.

However, in a case where I have a great deal of information about a prisoner of war (actually, a civilian internee) held by the Japanese in various camps in Sumatra for three and a half years, I have created a custom event. I didn't use the standard Residence fact because to call the appalling experience 'residence' would be an insult.

[dewilkinson]

I have made my own Custom Fact as I have quite a few people who were prisoners of war. I probably need to tinker with the words by changing "was" to "became a" but I'll think about that as it does for the moment. I'm also thinking do I need a captured one as well as a PoW Fact. The downside of this is there may be a problem in transferring in the future as it isn't a GEDCOM Fact but I am happy to live with that.

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[tatewise]

A minor observation is that arguably it should be an Attribute rather than an Event.
Strictly, an Event happens on a specific Date, perhaps within a Date Range such as Between A and B.
Whereas, an Attribute may apply to a Date or over a Date Period such as From A to B.
That is heavily implied in the GEDCOM specification, and the FH Date Entry Assistant, but few products impose any limitations.
i.e.
DATE_RANGE is defined in terms of Event happened...
DATE_PERIOD is defined in terms of The state of some attribute...

Most Custom Facts migrate well to most other products, as that feature is well defined in the GEDCOM specification.
So don't worry about that too much.

[Johnr65]

David that looks good and I've copied it to my tree but as yet only have 2 that became PoW's.

[AdrianBruce]

Yes, for what it's worth, so far as I remember, I only have one PoW and I've actually used the Occupation attribute. The value is "prisoner of war", the dates as appropriate and the places (he has 2 such attributes) Italy then Germany. All further details about precise camps are in the notes, not least because I don't think I have full details. The narrative sentence then appears as "In April 1945 he was a prisoner of war in Germany"

If I had several PoWs, then I'd probably want something a bit more specific, but just for one (so far), I'm not bothered.

For my interned civilian (he had a position as a commercial clerk in Hamburg and married a German girl in May 1914 - it did not end well) I actually created an Interned event as I didn't feel existing alternatives worked well. Just personal point of view.

[E Wilcock]

I disagree that Imprisonment implies criminality. I have a custom event, Imprisonment. And use it frequently for any enforced detention - prisons, concentration camps, mental hospitals, internment of enemy aliens.
Edited to add -
I created the custom event Imprisonment because that is the word used by the German Government site listing Holocaust victims to record any type of detention. And it works well.

I have always entered Prisoners of War under the Military Service event and adjusted the local sentence. I like POWs to be distinguished from other prisoners.

[LornaCraig]

I understand, and in my previous post to this topic I didn't mean to suggest that imprisonment implies criminality. Everything depends on the context, and in the context of the type of study you are doing the term is appropriate and unambiguous. No offence was intended.

Like you, I want to distinguish between POWs and other prisoners. The 'other prisoners' in your study were forcibly detained and held captive through no fault of their own. Unfortunately, with the exception of one civilian internee, the small number of 'other prisoners' in my project were criminals!