The authorities quickly escalated their internment programme. In May 1940, ‘protected areas’ were set up around coastal areas deemed susceptible to invasion in which no aliens were permitted, and all aliens classed in the middle ‘risk’ category were interned. By June 1940, this was extended to all German, Austrian, and, by this stage, Italian, men over the age of 16, alongside women deemed in the upper two ‘risk’ categories. The result was the internment of approximately 28,000 ‘enemy aliens’ (most of whom were Jewish refugees). 

One of those interned was the German refugee Gerhard Oertel, who had been working in forestry in Llangollen, Denbighshire before his internment. He later noted that “As far as myself and others were concerned, we had already made the acquaintance of prisons and concentration camps in Germany.” Another refugee, Paul Hornig, recalled that “it was humiliating to have been rejected by the Austrians as a Jew, and imprisoned by the English as an Austrian”. Paul was later accepted by the British Army, training at Aberdyfi with X Troop. 

Conditions in many of the camps were poor. Medical support was lacking, as was sanitation, and some refugees were forced to live in tents. The independent MP Eleanor Rathbone (later known as the ‘MP for Refugees’) drew attention to the situation in the House of Commons in July 1940. She criticised that despite many refugees being fervently anti-Nazi,

they find themselves treated as dangerous people and interned, under present conditions, along with their lifelong enemies — Jews and political refugees with Nazis — and treated as so dangerous that they may not even receive newspapers or listen to the wireless and they live in conditions very similar to those of a convict prison. 

Pro-Nazi internees would intimidate Jewish inmates by singing Nazi songs and rejoicing when there was news of German victories in Europe. Eventually, fascist sympathisers were transferred to another camp in Swanwick, Derbyshire, but there were still complaints of tensions as late as 1941.

There were limited exceptions to internment, such as some industrialists at Treforest Trading Estate whose businesses were essential to the war effort. Even so, nineteen of these refugees were interned, and 75 people connected to the estate were forced to move due to their proximity to Cardiff, which was categorised as a ‘protected area’ where no enemy aliens were permitted. Under the law, British women who married ‘alien’ men assumed their husband’s nationality, and were also now subject to the wartime regulations. Some were even interned themselves. Gladys Pelican, a woman from the Welsh valleys, was required to get a permit to visit her husband, Fred Pelican, while he was stationed with the Pioneer Corps at Weymouth. In his memoirs, Fred wrote: “What an absurdity. I am an alien in the forces, was allowed to travel anywhere and she was under restrictions. How silly can one get”.