Arthur Ernest Fry was taken prisoner following the loss of the Blue Star Line’s Afric Star on 29 January 1941by the Hilfskreuzer Kormoran of the Germany Navy.
Fry was taken prisoner and was sailed to Bordeaux during which a fire broke out on the vessel. The Germans presuming that the fire was caused by mutineers, sentenced Fry to death by a Nazi court at Hamburg for this. Following the sentence he was brutally tortured by the S.S. and made to dig his own grave but, probably as a result of the intervention of the Swiss authorities, eventually emerged from captivity at the War’s end: in the interim he had been shot following a gallant escape attempt from a train.
Fry was finally liberated by the Russians in East Prussia where he had to witness assorted Soviet atrocities while held at Barth, prior to being flown home in a B-17 on 11 May 1945:
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