Calvarul prizonierilor de război români în perioada Primului Război Mondial
The Ordeal of Captivity: Romanian Prisoners of War during World War I

Summary/Abstract: This study sets out to analyse a rather omitted, if not forgotten issue of the Romania’s participation into the First World War, namely the fate of the Romanian prisoners of war, their captivity experiences and, of course, the wide range of violence and mistreatment that Romanian prisoners of war have endured from the first moments of their captivity and continuing with their life within the enemy prison camps, until their release from captivity. The research had also explored the size of violence against Romanian prisoners of war as well as the traumatic impact upon individual captives. Following a comparative approach, the study revealed that death percentages among Romanian prisoners of war were significantly higher than, for instance, in the case of German prisoners of war kept in captivity in France, or French prisoners of war held in Germany. The study also underlines the fact that, despite some actions, initiated particularly by the Romanian Red Cross, the scale of (Romanian) state involvement in the matter of improving the status of the Romanian prisoners of war (and limiting the violations of prisoner’s rights to bodily and mintal integrity, during the years of captivity) were rather poor, when compared to other Governments involved in the war. An explanation for that could be the dramatic situation faced by Romania at that time, after losing two thirds of the national territory to Central Powers (which could have jeopardised its very existence), due to the disastrous campaign of 1916.

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