Can we trace POW's if so how?

[Rainy]

A friend has asked me if i can help her find a POW.

This person Painted a Protrait of her Grandmother, apparently this was painted by an Italian Prisoner of War in England 1943. The POWs had contact with her Grandparents during the war in the village where thePOWs worked on farms. They made things for her Mum as she was a little girl then and she was a reminder of their own families back home.

The village they lived in was Stanton on the Wolds near Nottingham and Melton Mowbray Nottinghamshire. Not sure where the camp was but there was a little railway station at a near by village called Plumtree back then.

I asked her to send me a pic of the Painting and the Signature and this is how i have transcribed it ( but could be compleatly wrong)


P.O.W.
L.Pilariello or C.Picariello
1-12-1943





Any thoughts as to how i could find this guy would be greatly apreciated, she would love to know what happened to him.

[lennon2011]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2010/nov/08/prisoner-of-war-camps-uk#data

http://www.plumtreeparishcouncil.org.uk/history.asp

Hope these can help a little.

[Darksecretz]

The village they lived in was Stanton on the Wolds near Nottingham and Melton Mowbray Nottinghamshire. Not sure where the camp was but there was a little railway station at a near by village called Plumtree back then

There is still a little station at Widmerpool I think it is [though it is now a Restaurant 'The Pullman Inn']
Plumtree is on the main A606 rd to Melton

and there also would have been a Station at Ruddington [which is nearer to Plumtree]

edit to say if they lived at Stanton, I believe that Widmerpool/Pullman Inn would have been the nearest Station.. [it still has trainline right next to it today]

[lennon2011]

Plus there's Stainton village in Middlesbrough, Little & Great Stainton village near where I am.

[Karamazov]

The National Archives have this research guide re POWs in British hands but warns that tracing WW2 POWs is very difficult so good luck ...

http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/records/research-guides/pow-displaced-persons.htm#16249

Christine

[Janet in Yorkshire]

Might be worth e-mailing the curator at Eden camp (the museum site was a WW2 POW camp for Italians.) I haven't been for some time, but one of the huts is primarily about people tracing service personel (UK, Allied,non-allied) and their wartime exploits. I realise your Italian would NOT have been interned here, but the museum is allied to The Imperial War Museum and is dedicated to military history for that time span.

http://www.edencamp.co.uk/contactus.htm

I wrote here several years ago, asking for help in identifying POW camps in Germany. It took a little while, but I did have a very helpful reply. Nothing lost, as worst scenario would be they can't come up with any suggestions!

Jay

[annswabey]

It would be useful to know the name of the Camp - there may be records of the Camp at the National Archives although men are perhaps unlikely to be mentioned by name.

Perhaps it would be worth contacting the Stanton on the Wolds site given above, to see if any older residents remember which camp they came from.

[Rainy]

Thanks for all the ideas guys there fantastic, ill get on to them after i drop the kids at school THANKYOU!!!!

[Mary from Italy]

I think the name is C Picariello.

I can't say I'd heard the name before, but it sounds Southern Italian.

If you put the surname into the search box on this site (based on the current Italian phone book, I think):

http://www.gens.info/italia/it/turismo-viaggi-e-tradizioni-italia?cognome=picariello&x=0&y=0#.UUUWTfkuyjM

you'll see there's a large cluster around the Naples area, but plenty more scattered all over the country. People with this name may well have come from the Naples area originally, because there was a lot of emigration from the south of Italy to the north in the 60s and 70s.

[Rainy]

Thanks heaps Mary, is there an Italian National War Memorial or similar that might have records of POW's?

[Mary from Italy]

No, sorry, you're really lucky to have that in Australia. There's very little genealogy information of any kind available here. I did try a Google search in Italian for him, just in case he became a well-known artist, but I didn't find anything.

[lennon2011]

Truly is a beautiful portrait though.

[Rainy]

Thank you for search ing for me Mary, i really appreciate it. What a shame about the lack of genealogy information :(

Yes Lennon it is and its history makes it just that more special.