An Island in Time

Ruhleben A. Grohs/Maurice Ettinghausen collection/Harvard Law School Library

Of all the curiously fascinating tales about human behavior in wartime, one of the most moving is the Christmas Truce of 1914 (http://www.history.com/topics/world-war-i/christmas-truce-of-1914). Another story with roots in that same war may not be as heartrending, but it is equally interesting, and it has to do with a category of people one doesn't usually think about when thinking about war. What does one do if the country in which one is living and working suddenly becomes the enemy of one's own? This is the story of the approximately 5,000 Britons who were trapped in Germany when World War I broke out: http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-28420676