Goya Dmytryshchak
An Altona student has won a national history contest for her research into Australian prisoners of war taken captive by the Japanese and Germans in the Second World War.
Ella Bibby, in Year 12 at Mount St Joseph Girls’ College, won three categories of the National History Challenge, which had a theme of “contested histories“.
She won a gold award (state champion) in the senior category and using primary sources category, and a platinum award (overall national champion) in the using primary sources category.
“I felt there is a lot more information available regarding what happened to those under the Japanese, compared to those who were captured by the Germans and the horrific nature of what they went through,” Ella said.
“When I was researching the Japanese prisoners, there was loads of research that was available online about Changi, the Sandakan Death Marches, the brutal Burma–Thai Railway – and those were synonymous with Australian prisoners of war.
“When I researched Australians in German captivity, I had to research a lot deeper.“
Ella said she examined declassified information but there was still a lot of classified information not yet released.
“The Germans were meticulous record-keepers and so when WWII was coming to an end, a lot of these records were destroyed – or during the bombings, even in London, a lot of the records of these prisoners were lost because of the bombings and pretty much the nature of war.“
She said winning the awards made her feel “like I had done justice to all of those that were prisoners of war“.
