Barbed Wire University: The Untold Story of the Interned Jewish Intellectuals Who Turned an Island Prison into the Most Remarkable School in the World

By: Dave Hannigan

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Synopsis: Barbed Wire University tells the extraordinary tale of Winston Churchill&’s internment of some of the most gifted Jewish refugee writers, professors, artists, and painters of their generation in a camp on the Isle of Man in the Irish Sea. These were men who had fled Hitler&’s Germany, found refuge in Britain, and then, in the hysteria of 1940, were held in captivity as a perceived security threat. They turned the camp—Hutchinson Camp—into a school, concert hall, and artistic community.Using memoirs and diaries, some of which have only recently become available in archives, Dave Hannigan pieces together a richly detailed account of what these remarkable men did during their time in captivity. This is a forgotten corner of World War II, and the way these men constructed a Bohemian idyll in the middle of the Irish Sea, their freedom taken from them, is an extraordinary tale of grit and creativity.